As you may have heard, some eager education reformers got together under the auspice of the son of a political dynasty attempting to claw his way back into relevance to brainstorm ways to bring the financial market's triumphs to public education.

While there, Mitch Daniels explained why he has a mandate to ignore the will of Hoosier voters.  There's nary a fact in his diatribe, which makes it all the easier to read the subtext:

Jeb, thanks for inviting me.  I'm honored to be sharing ideas with such an accomplished audience of educators.  While no one in this room ever taught - or indeed has ever set foot in a public school - the size of our wallets is all the proof needed to show we're far smarter than teachers.

You may have heard that Indiana voters elected a former teacher - and union member - to the state's highest education office.  You may have heard they did so resoundingly, tossing out my hand-picked corporateer and his plans for vouchers, more testing, more sticks for teachers and more carrots for Goldman Sachs.

And indeed, they did.  We're trying to convince voters it's because they cheated, but in the end, it doesn't matter whether the voters believe the evidence or us just like it doesn't matter what the vote was.

We're going to do exactly what we want anyway.

That's right.  For years, you reformers have used false data, outright lies, and open access to private capital to sway the voters.  It hasn't worked.

BUT HAS THAT STOPPED YOU?

Of course not.

And Indiana's voters won't stop us, either.

By refusing to do what we demand, they've proven they can't be trusted with our money's future.  They're too concerned with their children's.  It's up to us to make sure every last taxpayer dollar flows into our pockets.

Because after a couple generations of that, the voters won't be smart enough to try to stop us.