What the Presidential Debates Need

An eight-way chess clock. Each candidate gets 10 minutes to answer all questions they receive, and any left at the end of questions could be used as the candidate wishes. Candidates who zero out the time on their clocks have their microphone turned off. If that isn't good enough, then it's time to be escorted off the stage.

Or: No Time Limit At All. Let them go at it as long as they want. Any time they look like they're losing steam, that's when the moderator tosses out another question.  

Disinfo-meters on the Screen. As candidates are speaking, dials along the bottom show how relevant the answer is to the question, the degrees of factual the content and/or hypocrisy in the answer. 

You've Got USPS Email

Recent news about the United States Postal Service has been mostly bad. Buffeted by a massive shift to electronic media and the recession, the USPS is struggling to maintain its existence, much less its relevance.

So, perhaps it's time for USPS to do email. Consider what the postal service offer to physical mail, that could be extended to email:

• An assurance of privacy, backed by federal law
• A legally enforced prohibition on mail scams 
• A promise of a best effort to deliver
• No banner ads (okay, maybe not)

Privacy
The postal service provides a guarantee that your mail was private. Opening it without a court order or a similar special dispensation, or tampering with it in any way, is breaking federal law.

Nothing like it holds for public sector email. Google and other major providers reserve the right to scour your email, to better target you for advertising.I really don't like the way the content of my email is scraped for ad targeting. Or the ads themselves, for that matter. Leaving email in the hands of the Googles and Microsofts of the world is uncomfortable at best and eventually it will lead to serious problems. I'm sure there will come a day when Google lawyers will equivocate on the company's "Do no evil" byline with the argument, "it depends on what your definition of 'evil' is."

Corporate email goes even deeper into this hole. Anything in your business email account is the property of the employer, who can inspect it, back it up, delete it or do pretty much as they please with it.

Consumers could pay a nominal subscription fee for a USPS email account, but then, we're used to paying postage for physical mail already. And the payment would comes with guarantees regarding privacy and delivery.

Email Scams
Committing a crime using the mail is a crime itself, and it has teeth: imprisonment up to 20 years, and a fine of up to $1 million. It'd be something if email were similarly protected.

While this won't eliminate spam, it could help control the problem. Spam-vertisers -- excuse me, legitimate bulk email advertisers -- could pay fees for the privilege of sending email to people that have opted into their mailing lists. Those fees could cover the bulk of the post office' IT costs, much as bulk mail subsidizes traditional mail costs.

No Banner Ads (Or Maybe Not)
If the USPS did put up banner ads on their site, they'd probably be the kinds of ads you already see in the post office: USPS products and services, the "ten most wanted" list, and pointers to other government services. How did the post office become the place to get passports done, anyway? This isn't a bad thing. At least the banner ads would have a sensible context, unlike what Yahoo scrapes up. And the ads should not be the bulk of their earned revenue.

Other People's (Planet) Money

Recently, Planet Money on NPR broadcast a story about the three reports of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. There's the majority report (the Democratic Party's), the minority report (the official Republican Party version) and the minority minority report (I won't even go there).

The story goes into some detail contrasting the two versions, then they comes to the conclusion that the Dem version says the crisis was avoidable, and the Republican version said that the crisis was not. Their conclusion is confirmed by Keith Hennessey, one of the authors of the minority report.

Of course that would have to be the Republican position. If the crisis was avoidable, then Republic economic policy must be bankrupt (forgive the pun). It was the Republican party that appointed Allen Greenspan to the Federal Reserve, who in turn pushed a laissez faire attitude towards the derivatives market and investment banks. It was the Republicans who pushed for free market "reforms: and deregulation of the financial industries for the last thirty years, and it was the Republicans that dominated either the White House, or Congress, or both, for that period.