The U.S. is among the most illiterate counties in the develop world for people ages 16 to 19 according to the latest rankings from the OECD.
U.S. is ranked 21st; behind South Korea, Poland, Germany and Italy among sixteen others.
And our goal is “free” college 😕 Go Bernie.
QUINNSCOMMENTARY 
I am 60 and everything I have ever received for FREE has been total crap. FREE College will be no different. The same with FREE Healthcare.
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Don’t worry. President Cruz will eliminate the Department of Education and give the southern states the power to stop teaching all of this “Commie evolution and climate change stuff”
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It won’t matter, college will be “free” under Old Bernie and no one will care about the product we produce out of college.
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Maybe I missed it? – Did Bernie say graduation requirements would be reduced? JRATT – you are sadly misinformed – no surprise to me – the PPACA is NOT free healthcare – how can you be so ignorant of facts after 60 years?
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I think he was referring to Sanders “free” Medicare for all plan.
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FREE education and FREE Medical care is not free, someone has to pay for it. Is that clear enough for you, Wilson.
Education standards have already been reduced in this country, it is called the Dumbing down of America.
Look back at the education standards that were required when the greatest generation graduated high school. Many colleges just meet what used to be high school standards.
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After 45+ years of building materials commodities trading, I clearly understand that “there is no free lunch” – however, you naïve bystanders have no perception or understanding of who really pays the bills and why – for all of his faults, Trump, at the very least, understands that – he is unfit to govern, but he certainly knows the game much better than you do and so do IWhen your hero Ted Cruz eliminates the Department of Education, that will eliminate the “Dumbing Down” of America – is that your belief?Reading your comments helps me to understand why complete morons such as Michelle Bachmann and Sarah Palin are still on television
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I could ask the same of HRC, after the mess she created in the middle east as Sec. of state, why would anyone consider her for President.
Mark Twain, “If voting made any real difference they would not let us do it”
“As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in?” – Alexis de Tocqueville, 1835
180 years later and nothing has changed, profit for the networks is why all the clowns in the ruling class are on TV, every election cycle.
None of them are my hero’s. I have been following politics for the last 40 years and it does not matter if you vote for a Dummycrat or a Ripoffagain, I have voted for both, you still get screwed.
If we had a real political class that cared about the average citizen, we would have more than 2 political parties. But they make the rules so no independent politician can run and win in 90% of the races.
Sometimes they do not even back their own party guy that wins the primary.
The Congress – both parties have allowed Presidents to get us into wars without requiring a declaration of war, or limiting the cost of the wars or paying for them outright. No Congress has fixed the shortage coming in the Social Security system, they will wait until the last minute and make matters worse.
For once I would like to see a politician cut government spending and start paying down the debt, but I know it is not going to happen.
As far as the Department of Education, we should get rid of it. How did we manage without it for 204 years? Very well, I know I received a better education from 1962 to 1974 than my children received after me. We had shop classes that taught skills that I still use today, most schools have no shop classes at all today.
If a college education is such a great thing, why are 52% of the 2014 college graduates now working in jobs that do not require a degree. A college degree does not guarantee success, hard work and taking advantage of opportunities where you find them is a greater indicator of where someone will be in 10 to 20 years.
My 30 year old son with a high school education, started working at Walmart, learned to drive a forklift, got a job with Georgia Pacific paper mill, and in 6 years with them is making $60,000 per year, no college debt.
There are still plenty of jobs that new workers can start out of high school, work hard, move up in the company and make a good income, without a college education. This one size fits all, road to college, then a job has resulted in over a trillion dollars in debt that may never be paid back. But it has made millions for the College Industrial Complex and the banks. Is there another bailout coming?
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Thanks – a lot of that makes sense – with the exception of your denial that Bush and Cheney forever eff’ed up the Middle East and left a vacuum for ISIS – Bush agreed to completely pull out of Iraq – not Obama
Obama inherited a deep recession and chaos in Iraq and Afghanistan – the criticism of our president has always been that he has not been able to clean up the Republican created mess quickly enough in the face of Republican obstructionism in congress on every issue – congressional Teapublikkkans have opposed all of our president’s attempts to improve our economy and still he has prevailed with good economic progress – the Teapublikkkan’s 7-year strategy has been to obstruct and defeat every attempt that our president has made to improve our domestic economy and blame our president for not achieving a more rapid recovery from the economic disaster that their own party created – a great many Americans are so much consumed working two or three jobs at 7.25 / hour that they have no time to read and understand what the oligarchy is doing to them – the top 1% outsourced their jobs to enhance corporate profits and are stashing those profits overseas to avoid paying taxes – they will again vote against their own interests out of pure ignorance and propaganda from Crox Nuz and other sources – if elected, Teapublikkkans will once again institute trickle-down economic policies that have never worked and never will succeed – given Teapublikkkan tax breaks, the corporate moguls do not create domestic jobs – rather they stash their political wind-fall profits overseas to avoid paying taxes – Bill Clinton understood that the only way to inspire these greedy bastards to contribute to the American economy was to tax them heavily – then they would produce – Bill Clinton balanced the federal budget for four years with “simple arithmetic”
With regard to foreign policy, Ted Cruz doesn’t understand “carpet bombing” and Marco Rubio doesn’t know what he wants to do when he grows up – both of them (to name only two of the Teapublikkkan clowns) have promised to “tear up” the agreement to end nuclear proliferation by Iran – this is an agreement signed by Great Britain, Germany, France, Russia, China and the US – aside from the simple fact that they cannot “tear up” an agreement signed by the five greatest western powers in this world, do these two ignorant half or all Cuban neophytes really believe that they are more knowledgeable than the leaders of five of the greatest powers on this earth? – will any voters believe them? – in South Carolina, maybe – American voters are so repulsively ignorant that it makes me nauseous, but it explains the mind boggling support for Donald Trump
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Wilson, Why are you always trying to put words on my mouth or assume that I give anyone a pass. GWB and BHO will both go down as the two worst Presidents we have had in the history of our country. They are both part of a ruling class that is for sale to the highest bidder. BHO is the one who puled all of our troops out of IRAQ, against the advice of the military leadership.
You need to stop defending the Ds they are just as corrupt as the Rs. We have men of principle in both parties, just no party of principle.
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You said that HRC messed up the Middle East and that is totally false – GWB signed the agreement to pull all of our troops out of Iraq so they would never be subjugated to Iraqi laws – that is a factual matter of record so don’t deny itIf you believe that both GWB and BHO are for sale to the highest bidder, then you must support Trump and Sanders – am I right?
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You are wrong again Wilson, it was BHO BOZO knew that letting the agreement that GWB signed stay in place would harm the IRAQ people and government, he did nothing to stop it. Neither did HRC, it gave them cover to blame GWB. BHO and HRC knew they could make a different agreement with the IRAQ government, but chose not to. BHO and HRC did nothing but lead from behind in Syria and Libya.
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So you agree that GWB screwed it up – and, you postulate that BHO and HRC didn’t try hard enough to get Iraq to cave in to them – everyone is entitled to their own opinion – you could also say that congressional Teapublikkkans didn’t support BHO’s infra-structure jobs bill because BHO didn’t try hard enough – using that assignment of blame, you can criticize BHO for everything obstructionist Teapublikkkans did for seven years – good luck selling that BS
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What is it with the left they are still blaming GWB 7 years after he left office? They never blame BHO or the Dummycrat leadership when they had both houses of congress and did nothing for the middle class. They blame The Rs when they are in power or out of power, but it is never the Ds fault, Good Luck with selling that, the next President will be a R, because the nation is sick and tired of BHO BOZOs and the Ds lies, You can keep your doctor, you can keep your insurance, your family will save $$$$ on healthcare. Not if you make over $60,000, no help for you. You will pay, pay, pay for everyone else.
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You are beyond help – no one can be reasoned out of a position that they have not been reasoned into
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So are you, kind of like the pot calling the kettle black.
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