>Paying for 4 year college would be great but I don't think it's going to happen any time soon. Government is broke at every level. The states are actually more broke than the feds because they can't print money.

Feds can't print money either. Sorry to break the news to you, but it's so since 1913: the federal government borrows from The Fed (the well fed, I'd say), who invent money out of thin air.

> I just read in the paper earlier this week that things are getting even worse for states because so many troubled cities are putting the arm on them.

AFAIR, it was during the more-or-less simultaneous onset of tax breaks and Middle East wars, that the federal coffers were getting deeper in the red, so they started reducing the amount of tax money that was going back to the states; the states then, in turn, started reducing the amount going down to the cities and counties. As with any liquid in connected vessels, you don't see effects immediately, because of the density. Which is why I had to drive my daughter to school only the last year, when they reduced the number of school bus rides for the magnet program, so it would take the bus about 90 minutes to cover the 9 miles distance. Of course, the kids from richer parts of town would embark the last in the morning and disembark first in the afternoon, because of the way the two old bus lines were put into one. I guess their time was more appreciated, or the voice of their parents would carry more weight at the meetings of the board of education.