Reply #78: No, they're not.

[Capitalocracy]

The Dept. of Education - Actually, it was doing pretty damn well until Nixon defunded it. That's when it started going downhill. And it didn't control the education system or micromanage it, it just provided a base standard for states to build on. A gold standard, if you will. ;)

And by the way, about that gold standard - I'm against the Fed, because it's against me. It's just a mechanism for moving wealth from my hands into the hands of banking executives. I guess that's what happens when your money supply is run by banking executives. But a gold standard is equally ridiculous. We might as well look into a crystal ball to determine how much money to print. Gold is just a commodity like any other commodity... and setting the value of our currency against a single commodity makes it extremely volatile, and does not reflect the actual economy, in which all kinds of other Stuff is produced, not just gold. Ridiculous.