Published in the Los Angeles Times
April 9, 2005 - lead letter of three letters

Re: "Cheapskate Conservatives Cheat Students"
By Richard Rothstein
L.A. Times Opinion April 3, 2005

About the author: Richard Rothstein, a researcher at the Economic Policy Institute and visiting professor of Teachers College, Columbia University, is the author of "Class and Schools: Using Social, Economic and Educational Reform to Close the Black-White Achievement Gap."

Where Do the School Bucks Stop?

Richard Rothstein is hardly in a position to criticize when his views and suggestions are integral parts of the problems affecting education and society. History has proven that, in the balance, liberal reformers and progressives more often harm those they intend to help.

Pouring public funds into pre-school would only serve to exacerbate the irresponsibility of parents who are the products of an ideology that branded classes of people as perpetual victims, and robbed generations of students of their education by careless experimentation and the failures of good intentions.

The primary problems facing our nation are the results of the reckless reinvention of society, thrust upon unsuspecting generations of people, by the superficial selfish interests and extremes of the boomer generation on a mission to change the world.

Money simply cannot buy cures for the nonsense that ails America. The rehabilitation of education, common sense, self determination and accepting responsibility, can.

Daniel B. Jeffs, founder
The Direct Democracy Center