I agree with a good portion of what you said. But in particular I disagree with your disagreement on this particularly:)

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I work in high technology and emerging technology and with one of the top ten research universities in the country (UCSD). I disagree that the majority of Americans are just sitting on their asses eating fast food and watching “Springer”. Our labor forces and the population at large have been let down by our government and its high time Uncle Sugar stepped in and stepped out and started using his muscle in a fashion that helps and not hinders US competitiveness.”
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I would say you won’t find anyone lazy at that particular university you speak of, because the weeding out has already occurred. But I can tell you a more accurate and telling of where this country is headed is just to hang out at any ordinary public high school, and follow around about what your “average” kid is thinking. I can tell you growing up here, a good deal of the kids that I knew valued very little about an education much less any type of technical degrees. I don’t care if folks choice to layaway their life, but utterly hypocritical to come back gripe about pissed away opportunities is another thing after years come back and they get toasted for it. Pain early or pain later, it’s one or the other.

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I also say that we use this stimulus money to retrain American workers, rehab the infrastructure (including vital industries like energy, power and steel) and get us back to building things. There was a point that the entire world was built with American steel. No reason we can’t do it again.
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I would support this sort of “educational credit”. Of course, it remains to be seen how much of we are willing to go back and retrain and retool. Not saying it can’t be done, but has this ever been successfully pulled off in our history?

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We’ve steadily watched our competitive advantage shrink and largely because we haven’t done anything to stop it, but, the story isn’t that simple, either. Those Japanese vehicles that are produced in the US enjoy certain tax, trade and manufacturing advantages that their US counterparts don’t. Combined with the legacy costs of US auto manufacturing, it becomes prohibitively expensive to compete, especially in an industry that is as cutthroat as the auto industry.
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This is a complicated situation. Arguably, for example, GM is profitable in almost all other countries, EXCEPT the US. So this entire unilateral “damage” that we would impose would quite possibly cut off the very balls of the companies that were are trying to save. My gripe is that most of these “patriotists” don’t get this. GM is extremely profitable in China, having invested heavily there over the years. When you have a multinational company that derives income everywhere, it’s not so simple as let’s tax goods/services from foreign companies domestically without necessarily impacting the bottom line of the company from profits overseas.