I’m a bit late to the feast, a function of my blogging schedule, but I might as well add my voice to the chorus of folks condemning ABC for the conduct of the “debate” last night.
Maybe it was a sixth sense, but I didn’t watch it in real time. I recorded it on my computer, cut out the ample commercials, and skimmed through it at around 10:45 last night. I find I can stomach these things better if I watch them after the fact. If I know I’m watching live I feel duty bound to scream, curse, and otherwise rail against the inanity. TV may be a cool medium, but not for me. After all, who’s to say that my screaming might not have some small effect. If I watch after the fact, I am more subdued, perhaps since nothing I can do can make the slightest difference. Even chaos theory would deny that one mouth flapping can affect events that occurred in the past.
By the time I started watching I some idea what to expect from the comments on the “live debate blogging” sites. It truly was a travesty. To me, the low point was when Hillary attempted to pile on Obama about William Ayers. If ever there was a manufactured controversy, that is it. What I find depressing is Hillary’s inability to understand that she could have served her cause better had she stood four square with Obama, and berated Stephanopoulos for spewing right wing talking points. She just can’t stop herself; she has become her own worst enemy.
Yesterday, my wife and I took a step we had been putting off for some time. We had intended to wait until the nominee was crystal clear, but we’ve seen enough. My “Cheney-Satan 08” bumper sticker came down, and my Obama 08 sticker went up. My wife doesn’t go in for snark, so she just added a bumper sticker where none had gone before. We’re fully committed now. I admire the guy tremendously. Had I had to answer such inane questions I could not have contained my fury. The contrast between him and the other folks on stage was stark.
Comedic highlight of the night: Charlie Gibson trying to convince Obama that the middle class was sorely threatened by any talk of a hike in the capital gains tax. You could see the panic in his face as he contemplated his increased tax bill. On a serious note, his claim that lowering the capital gains tax increases tax receipts is, as anyone with a brain could intuit, not well founded. As Dean Baker observes:
At last night’s Democratic debate, ABC’s co-anchor Charlie Gibson was intent on arguing with the Senators Clinton and Obama that a capital gains tax cut raises revenue. As others have pointed out, the evidence that a capital gains tax cut raises revenue is rather dubious, since most of the apparent increase is likely due to timing: investors delay selling stock when they know a tax cut is imminent. After the cut takes effect, they then declare their gains and pay taxes at the lower rate.
But this is only part of the story. As President Reagan noted when he signed the 1986 tax reform, taxing capital gains at a lower rate than other income gives people enormous incentive to game the tax code. If the tax rate on ordinary income for high-income taxpayers is 35 percent, and the tax rate on capital gains is 15 percent, then these folks can get a 20 percent return if they can make wage, interest, rent or dividend income appear as capital gains income. This can fuel a lot of creative tax shelters. This gap will also lead to an increase in capital gains tax collection – at the expense of ordinary income tax collections.
There is one other important point worth noting about the capital gains leads to more taxes story. Presumably the greater collections are supposed to come from people selling their stock or other assets more frequently. This means more fees for the financial industry, but is this what we really want to promote. The fees from these trades are a drain on people’s investments. There is a lot of research showing that active traders typically lose money. Is it good policy to promote more active trading (that is, if you don’t work on Wall Street)?
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