It's time to start de-funding public education, universities in particular. An educational system funded and administered by politicians, teaching false theories of history, science and economics to support their political ideas is destroying the country. A nation of misinformed, maleducated people (certain that they're right, because this is what they've been taught all their lives), will make the wrong decisions about nearly everything. Freedom and prosperity cannot survive without diversity of thought and questioning of accepted dogma. Uniformity of thought would not be good, even if it were accurate.

Actually, I think Biden's show did work, with people uninformed enough to take him at his word. For those who haven't read enough to know that most of what he said was outright lies, his presentation wasn't all that bad; he has, at least, learned to lie with conviction and style. He'd probably do better in movies than politics.

You're right that the VA medical system sucks (there are many highly competent and dedicated people working there, but more of the sort who look at patients as an irritant, to be sent to bother someone else, or delayed until their shift is over and others have to deal with them). You're wrong that we "Tea Party" types want to preserve this system in its present form. A good many of us are vets and have first-hand knowledge of how screwed-up the VA is, which makes us even more opposed to government health care (having had a foretaste of it). Ignorant Troll

French is right, but there is more to it. Much of what is taught in business schools today is based on Keynesian economics and various other theories that have little connection to reality. Graduates of these schools fit right in with an office full of people who have been similarly misinformed and maleducated, but outside the corporate setting, their "education" is a detriment because, if they cling to what they were taught, they really don't know what they're doing.

While deficit spending is certainly a major problem and will destroy the currency and financial system if it isn't stopped, a spending freeze, maintaining the present level of government, isn't the answer. We can't afford the existing structure of government, even if it was free. Our present system of laws, regulation, taxes, licensing requirements, subsidies, price supports, etc. has already destroyed much of our personal liberty and property rights and makes it increasingly more difficult and expensive to survive in any sort of business. Government must be drastically reduced in size, expense, scope and power, if this country is to be free and prosperous.

As another comparison with the 1960 debate, it was widely proclaimed at the time that those who heard the debate on radio (without the visuals), thought Nixon won handily. I listened to Obama-Romney on the radio and as much as I despise Obama and despite his continuous stream of lies, his presentation (in audio) was much better.

This applies equally to Greece, Spain, the US and nearly every other country. Unless a different sort of people, who are actually concerned about freedom and prosperity in their nation, rather than their personal power, position and wealth, gain control of governments, we are all on a downhill slide to tyranny, poverty and financial disaster. Most of the present "leadership" around the world are too stupid to recognize that there is a problem, or that the structures of government they have created are the problem and few of the ones that do would undermine their own and their party's power, to deal with it.

Government handouts, contracts and jobs, regulatory agencies, Byzantine tax codes, laws giving one group preference over another (at the public's expense), etc.; these are the politician's power base, that allows them to buy political support and punish their enemies with public funds. Politicians, in general, are not going to defund their source of power, until it self-defunds by impoverishing the tax base through over-taxation and over-regulation and destroys their ability to borrow.

We need a national "right to work" law and repeal of the laws requiring any employer to recognize, or bargain with any union. There is no good reason why employees should be forced to join, or pay dues to a union, in order to work, or that employers should be forced to negotiate, or contract with a union for labor, unless they choose to. The NLRB shouldn't exist.

The stockholders in companies like Duke and the pharmaceutical outfits, whose execs sold sold them down the river by backing Obamacare for a temporary financial advantage, need to fire their management. The policies these people have supported, in a few years, will obliterate whatever they got in short-term gains (and maybe their companies, as well).

The punch-card ballots were cheap, simple, secure, easy to count and provided a hard copy, in case of recount; the best system so far devised. Electronic voting is open to all sorts of technical problems and is an invitation to fraud and manipulation. We need to go back to what works.