Well, of course you would know the true history of the DOE. But if I were to pull fifty citizens off the street and ask them when the Department of Education was founded, what do you think THEY would say?

I'm continously amazed by how quickly a government program or spending level that has never existed until recently suddenly becomes essential to existence and cannot possibly be cut in any way without causing horrible pain and suffering.

If California had simply kept its spending in line with population increase and inflation over Davis' adminstration, we would be sitting on a surplus right now. The big dot.com revenues made them greedy, and they figured they would never end. Now every new program, allocation, and special interest is totally essential, despite the fact that we did pretty good without them five years ago.