Debate this!

The final Presidential candidate's debate is tonight. I'll have to listen to it on the radio on earbuds because I'll be in a meeting.

The subject is supposed to be the proposed economic policies of the two candidates, but I'm not holding my breath that Obama won't discuss primarily the economic policies of President Bush, since bashing Bush, not running against his opponent, has been his primary modus operandi for the whole campaign.

I REALLY want to hear proposed economic policy discussed though, because we've just been hit with one barrel of a double-barrel drive-by: the stock market collapse. The other barrel, of course, is the recession and how deep and long it will be, so the proposed policies of the candidates is really their most important discussion to the voters.

I just watched CNBC's pre-market-opening program, and they had the biz-whizzes for both candidates on. Nothing new there, with the (D) guy accusing the (R) guy of simply presenting "more Bush". Obama HAS presented some specific ideas, and I can buy into them, but his idea of insisting on starting up a trillion-dollar health care program during a recession has me wondering what the man smokes (when no one's looking).

Look, it's bad enough that the (R) President thought he had to spend well over a trillion bucks trying to re-inflate the deflated banking industry WITHOUT fixing any of the leaks in said industry first, but the very idea of dragging the economy down further by bringing in a whopping deficit item like a nationalized health care system seems absurd during these down times. It is hard to swallow during boom times, but when small business owners are probably eating cornmeal mush just to keep their doors open, hammering them with any additional tax to "fund" health care seems like a non-starter to me, but hey, maybe it would work in Chi-town, the one place where economics seem to be re-invented repeatedly (the first derivatives trading was on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange).

What I will be waiting for also is some discussion, hopefully by McCain, of just how the current idea of the Feds buying up/into banks passes Constitutional muster. The whole idea seems to be a rehash of an FDR initiative which was never used, and therefore never struck down by the SCOTUS as were all his other ideas to have the Feds take over the economy. There is every reason to believe that had FDR actually started buying up banks as Bush2 wants to do (and both candidates find OK), the SCOTUS would have nixed that idea along with the WPA and the other programs he invented. I'd wager some good money that our present SCOTUS would also strike down the "TARP" if it was brought before them, since it seems to thrash the Tenth Amendment quite soundly, and maybe the "takings" clause of the Fifth as well.

We've heard precious little support for the Constitution during any phase of any debate so far, so maybe I'm expecting a little too much from these two men, both of whom seem to have their own ideas of how to bend it, and little thought of how to enforce it as written. I'm sort of surprised that some conservative group or other hasn't sued the Feds yet over their decision to put hobnailed boots to the economy to try to make it conform to the Socialist world's economies. If I could duke in just ONE question for the candidates to expound on, it would be, "Gentlemen, since the Founders obviously followed a "laissez-faire" economic policy, and wrote nothing into the Constitution about bailing out or buying banks, etc, how would your Administration justify continued support of a policy that seems to be one hundred and eighty degrees out of phase with the original intent of the Constitution?"

I am NOT holding my breath that this question would ever be asked or would be answered if it was. Remember, I was, and still am, in favor of the original "lockbox" idea of the Treasury buying up the worst of the bad debt instruments, but although it's been mere days since that simple idea was first broached, the mess we've adopted in it's place bears no resemblance at all to the basic idea, and with every passing day, seems to put the Constitution farther and farther behind it.

Hopefully, we can remind the politicians of their first responsibility, to uphold the Constitution, on November 4th, but I'm not holding my breath on that, either.

I AM practicing holding half-breaths for five seconds, though.