The Pennsylvania debate on April 16 between Democratic presidential hopefuls Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama, which was sponsored by ABC News and moderated by George Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson, was an embarrassing example of how the corporate media plays its hand for attention.

Not one policy question was asked in the first half of the debate.

Instead, the moderators concentrated on inane subjects such as sniper bullets in Bosnia, American flag lapel pins and the Weather Underground, to name a few.

These trivial subjects pale in comparison to the enormous problems facing Americans as the 2008 presidential campaign begins its swing into high gear.

Recent polls have indicated that an average of over 80 percent of Americans think the country is headed in the wrong direction. Over 70 percent disapprove of the way that President George W. Bush is handling his job.

Americans are worried about their economic future and the economic future of their children, the increasing expenditures associated with the no-win war in Iraq, the impact that global warming is having on the world’s climate and the economic impact it will have on the world’s nations as devastating weather phenomena play a greater role in the ensuing years.

As of today, cumulative costs for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are expected to be between $1.7 trillion and $3 trillion.

In September 2002, when former Bush White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey estimated the eventual costs of the Iraq War to be between $100 billion and $200 billion, he was abruptly fired by the president. Then White House budget director Mitch Daniels predicted the costs would never reach $50 billion and that Iraqi oil revenues would pay for the entire cost of the operation.

Rather than dwelling on the inconsequential, the ABC News pundits should have been asking the candidates tough questions:

1) If elected president, will you allow the out-of-control expenditures required by the endless Iraq War to continue to steal money from the pockets of American taxpayers, while American fighting men and women continue to die in a fruitless effort to keep order in Iraq?

2) With the unemployment rate at 5.1 percent and rising, what will you do to help the unemployed, including those who have dropped out of the job market? What will you do to create new jobs for those in the construction trades laid off because of the sub-prime credit crisis?

3) Should America continue to be dependent on oil to lube its economic engines?

4) Every industrialized country in the world, except for South Africa and the United States, has implemented a national health-care program for its citizens. Why hasn’t the richest nation in the world followed suit?

5) Why has the world’s most powerful nation not led the way in the fight to reverse global warming?

6) Why is the Bush government allowing the shipment of arms from China to Zimbabwe when it is readily apparent the use of those arms will be against the freedom voters who legitimately defeated Robert Mugabe in the recent election?

7) Why does the current American government play second fiddle to the Chinese government’s efforts to stifle dissent? Why is China allowed to ship imports to the United States that endanger the health and welfare of Americans and of their beloved pets?

8) If you are elected president, will torture remain an accepted practice?

9) According to a Rand Corporation study, of the 1.6 million American soldiers deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, 300,000 are currently suffering from mental-health issues and an additional 325,000 are suffering from brain injuries. What will you do to help those American women and men who are suffering the effects of the Iraq War?

10) Should taxes paid by corporations be decreasing while the middle class, due to the acceleration of inflation, currently suffers the lowest take-home pay in seven and a half years?

As long as today’s journalists are beholden to their corporate sponsors and the enormous multi-million-dollar contracts those corporations bestow upon them, the truly tough questions will never be asked.

Why should Stephanopoulos and Gibson be paid big money to defend the conservative oligarchy whose tenets are anathema to truth and the American sense of fair play?

In his radio program “This I Believe,” journalist Edward R. Murrow once said, “We hardly need to be reminded that we are living in an age of confusion — a lot of us have traded in our beliefs for bitterness and cynicism or for a heavy package of despair, or even a quivering portion of hysteria. Opinions can be picked up cheap in the market place while such commodities as courage and fortitude and faith are in alarmingly short supply.”

Thom Carnevale may be reached at http://sanjuansentinel.blogspot.com.