Vouchers provide parents with educational options
Re: “School vouchers are different from GI Bills,” From Readers, Aug. 7
Edd Doerr claims that there is a difference between the GI Bill and school vouchers. Did he ask why private schools are the overwhelming recipients of vouchers?
More importantly, he does not understand the late Milton Friedman’s support of vouchers. They are given to parents, who are then free to choose where to send their children. Readers may recall that Rose and Milton Friedman wrote a book by that same name.
Mr. Doerr apparently does not believe in individual freedom, but prefers to doom more children to inadequate education.
Vouchers are not a tax. They are the ultimate expression of providing the freedom to choose.
Walter Graf
Falls Church
Unlike Lewis, Bolt actually won his two gold medals
Re: “Usian Bolt repeats as fastest athlete,” Aug. 6
Carl Lewis did not cross the finish line to win consecutive gold medals in any 100-meter event in any Olympics, but Usian Bolt gets that distinction as the only man to cross the finish line first in back-to-back dash finals because he crossed the finish lines towin the 100-meterraces in the 2008 and 2012 Olympics.
Lewis did cross the finish line for the 100-meter dash in the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles to win the gold medal, but it was Canada’s Ben Johnson who crossed the finish line in the 100-meter dash in the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, to win the gold medal.
However, Johnson was disqualified after he tested positive for stanozolol. Lewis was subsequently awarded the gold medal, but only after Johnson, the reigning champion, was stripped of his medal for failing a drug test.
Cargill Kelly
Manassas
Obama mischaracterizes tale of Robin Hood
President Obama claims that Mitt Romney’s tax plan would benefit wealthy people at the expense of the middle class and with sneering condescension derides it as “Robin Hood in reverse. It’s Romney Hood.”
In doing so, he demonstrates a profound, though not uncommon misunderstanding of the Robin Hood tale.
Robin Hood’s rebellion was directed against the greedy Norman usurper, King John, who levied exorbitant taxes on the Saxon yeomanry, presumably to ransom the just King Richard, but actually to increase his own power.
Robin’s band of merry men essentially wanted to restore the old older and to return to the people what the remote, power-grabbing central government had unjustly taken from them.
The “rich” from whom Robin took the money was the overreaching government; The “poor” were the taxpayers who received their own money back.
Seen in proper historical context, Robin Hood had much more in common with the Tea Party than with Occupy Wall Street.
Bob Foys
Chicago, Ill.
