Great comments....it does appear we all believe that a free market system would take care of much of what ails the education system.....when Reagan tried to get rid of the Ed dept..it had about 250 people in it and spent in the millions...today it has 3000 people and spends 60B not including the 100B for ed loans which a recent study says inflates the cost of colleges and about 35B never gets repaid....the fed now has taken over the ed loan system and will run it instead of supplying loans via local and state banks....this is in the recent finreg bill......so you can say we now have a federal ed dept that will lose about 100B per year....almost none of the money ends up in the K-12 school systems...its pennies per student....what the hell do they do with it? This dept is growing massively under the current Obummer admin......how the hell did we get here? The data that supports privatization is everywhere and the proof of efficiency and productivity vs. the fed or any gov...CA is abysmal.....! So the only thing I can say again...is 50% don't pay any taxes, a large % of the remaining 50% don't know anything about why more gov. handouts isn't helping society as a whole.....so since most of the public has an insatiable appetite for anything the gov will hand them....we get Obummer! Hillary Clinton made this comment; " I don't have time to think about small under capitalized businesses" ...the recently departed secretary of commerce said in an email to the US Chamber of Commerce; " we'd be happy to take input on our economic policies, even from the business community" !!!!! Huh!??? I would disagree with one thing said here...we don't have a cadre of great teachers...the system breeds mediocrity just like union car manufacturers and gov employees.....all gov employees should be fired, then let them reapply for non-union jobs with 401Ks and lower pay.....let us hire the good ones back.....the only place where you can legally get rid of unions is the government....why do they almost solely exist there now? Unions pay ploiticinas and politicians pay unions and the pay and benefits keep going up up up......gov employees pay on average is now 30% higher for a comparative private job, their retirements are 40% higher and they retire 10 to 15 years earlier. In CA, the budget rose from 62B in 1996 to 114B when Arnold entered the office in 2006 while inflation was near zero.....now the fed is following CA.....technology jobs are leaving CA in droves because of taxes and regulations. The biggest loss is in manufacturing...its not labor costs its taxes .....fed and state. Tech is the engine of the US economy.....its the basis for progress in nearly every other industry....whether you build cars or airplanes or make steel.....you need advanced technology and automation etc.....the middle class will suffer most from this departure of industries....it doesn't matter what the rich make.......money and jobs go where the biz is most profitable....and that makes the middle class.