You really need to make up your mind if the government is a mass of corruption in the pocket of Big Money, or a benevolent entity with only the best interests of the American citizen on its mind.

If it were that benevolent, we wouldn't have 11 million uninsured children. The children are pawns, trotted out to win elections with promises of action, only to be shooed away afterward because the real paymasters consider them too much of an expense.

If all corporations were that benevolent, or even had an ounce of enlightened self-interest and a sense of responsibility for the community that supports them, they would offer affordable insurance to working parents at the risk of not having mahogany desks in their corporate headquarters. The number of uninsured children would not reach zero, but would be substantially reduced.

As just one of many examples, we somehow put a man on the Moon without a Federal Department of Education. Now, if you suggest that it might not have been necessary, well obviously you just don't want little kids to have an education AT ALL, do you!

You know, I always wondered, since the Department of Education is such a waste of space, why Reagan didn't get rid of it. (I do agree with you there: the Federal government has essentially zero control over education funding, which is local, so it's busy killing public schools with unfunded mandates... oh, wait... Public Schools Bad. I forgot.) Instead he gave it to Bill Bennett so that illustrious gambler, smoker and all-around round guy could preach to the American people about our lack of discipline and our sinful excesses. Now the cynical view might be...