This, no shareholder controlled board would ever authorize taking out debt to pay dividends, unless there's some special circumstances for which this makes sense (i can't think of any atm).
The difference with buybacks using debt is that buybacks changes the capital structure. I suppose if the debt is artificially cheap (say, the gov't is forcing interest rates down to lower than what the market rate _would_ be), then it makes sense from a financial perspective, to borrow money, and pay (to the shareholders) the difference between the "real" market rate and the artificial rate. But this predicates that the real rate is much higher (transactional costs, and other overheads might easily dwarf this difference in rate).
Energy (oil & gas) companies certainly did last year. Those stocks are a little different than the broader market, in that investors in them generally aren't looking for appreciation in share price, they want consistently high dividends. Exxon is a good example of this.
Sorry, but this is nonsense. Increasing debt and giving the proceeds away to shareholders definitely alters the debt ratio of a company ... basic financial accounting concept.
you can try to convince people that buybacks are evil, and if enough concensus is reached, it will be outlawed.
The problem is that there's no good evidence that it's evil in the general case, and it's hard to convince large portions of shareholders that it is.