Star -- Great idea. Let's go back to basics. Let's give up clean air, clean water, safety inspections for kids toys, safety inspections for the meat industry, no more FDA to interfere with profits for pharmaceutical companies, health insurance can go away, Social Security and Medicare for sure. While we're at it let's get rid of public education and make everybody pay for private schools. Let's get rid of all the unnecessary OSHA and worker safety and hour and wage issues. Take away minimum wage and 40 hour work week limits.

We can do without the FAA and airports. We can let the bridges and highway systems just fall apart. The railroads are pretty useless except along the Northeastern corridor.

Get a horse, get a gun and get a life. Come on Star, let's get moving.

Pontificating about getting back to basics and then not even defining those basics or providing any direction about how to get back to those mythical basics, now thats good writing!! Much like the leadership of republicans, all bluster and brimstone, no solutions.

Getting back to basics also would mean getting rid of television, cars, eliminating the advancements we've made in education, medicine, etc. etc. What a stupid idea.

How about we go forward and build on the good things we have.

It's too easy to jump on the 'governemnt is the enemy' bandwagon. There's no reason programmes like social security and medicare can't work. They're unfunded liabilities because we let our elected officials do that to them. No private pension fund could survive unfunded. It's illegal. We should start to fix them. We found the money to invade and occupy Iraq, for whatever reason, with no problems. Could this funding have gone a long way to fix social security or medicare?

The role of government is enumerated in the Constitution. When government ignores that role and when We The People allow government to ignore that role, we get the problems that we have today.

Liberals, whose intent was to solve America's problems, have become America's greatest problem.

A company's Stock price being "down" does not mean the company "failed". It just means investor confidence is down (and confidence is obviously down lately). But that doesn't neccesarily mean the companies are doing any worse than they were before the stock owners decided to bail.

You may have meant that companies who were successful in the past are now failing, but that's different. Just because a company, stock or any investment is successful in the past doesn't guarantee it will continue to be successful.

Successful companies aren't failing. That goes against the definition of the two words. They've either changed from being "Successful" to "Failed" or they are just getting beaten up in a stock market that is running on irrational panic.

Companies that are actually "failing" (and not just seeing low stock prices in a crazy market) should not be considered "Successful" just because they were successful in the past.

"The American people have little interest in liberty. Instead, they want the impossible: home ownership for those who cannot afford homes, credit for those who are not creditworthy, old-age pensions for those who have not saved, health care for those who make no attempt to keep themselves healthy, and college educations for those who lack the wit to finish high school. Moreover, they want it now, and they want somebody else to pay for it. … "

Mike Richards is why our government is failing. Nothing but divisive drivel. Little children who know nothing but "mine", like a two year old.

Mike,

Have you even noticed that liberals (like Anonymous) bristle at the mention of the "roll of government" as documented in the Constitution?

I think it's because that document and it's traditional values are stifling to their agenda of "change at all cost".

It's hard to be "Progressive" with a static document like the Constitution in the way (unless you can get the courts to wave the Constitution or twist it's meaning).