Mr. Schuldt attacks my colleague Prof. Blanchard, and since the good professor is on vacation I shall rise to a defense. Chad has apparently misread a post by Prof. Blanchard on Prop 82 in California, which would have guaranteed access to pre-school to California's four-year-olds. The initiative was defeated on Tuesday, and Prof. Blanchard blogged about it here. He had previously blogged about it here. Chad takes Prof. Blanchard to task for opposing guaranteed pre-school for the four-year-olds. Actually, Prof. Blanchard never gave an opinion on pre-school access.
He did come out in opposition to Prop 82, which is not the same thing as being against guaranteed pre-school. Prof. Blanchard opposed Prop 82 on two grounds. In the earlier post he mentioned that actor/director Rob Reiner was using public money to campaign for this proposition. In doing so he seemed to be lining the pockets of his political friends with public money. That is not an opposition to pre-school; it's opposition to graft.
In the post that raised Chad's ire, Prof. Blanchard, to the extent he gave any opinion, argued that the initiative process was the wrong method for proposing such a large new program. I don't want to re-fight our war with CCK over whether one can be opposed to the initiative process and still be a good democrat (we say yes, they say no), but I do want to point out that California's budget is in a shambles largely because of the initiative process. In Fareed Zakaria's The Future of Freedom he devotes a whole chapter to how direct democracy has straight-jacketed the California legislature and put them on the road to fiscal ruin (one might recall that only three years ago California had a $35 billion deficit, which is why you have Gov. Arnold instead of Gov. Davis. Its current annual deficit is around $6-$7.5 billion). David Broder makes similar arguments in his Democracy Derailed book. The problem has been that the voters pass initiatives willy-nilly, without having to consider how those initiatives work into a comprehensive budget. The initiative process asks voters to consider bills in isolation, not as they relate with all the other state priorities. Thus the lack of planning and "big-picture" thinking has led to a situation where California is almost ungovernable. Opposition to Prop 82 is not opposition to guaranteed pre-school. It may be that this particular method of starting and funding such a program represents unwise policy making.
Mr. Schuldt is reading things into Prof. Blanchard's post that are not there. I know Prof. Blanchard well, but I have no idea where he stands on guaranteed pre-school. Based on his public comments, neither does anyone else. We do know that he is opposed to Prop 82. Perhaps Mr. Schuldt thinks that is an unjustifiable position. Perhaps. But it is one also held by the editorial boards of the Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Sacramento Bee, The San Jose Mercury News, The San Diego Union Tribune, and so on. In other words, the editorial boards of every single major newspaper in California opposed this proposition. And so did 61% of Californians. There certainly are a lot of people holding the same position as Prof. Blanchard.
Update: Chad responds. It is disappointing that Chad is so consistently angry. It makes his site difficult to take seriously. Again, I don't know where Ken Blanchard stands on pre-school. Will Chad please point to the line where Ken opposed guaranteed pre-school. He never did. All he did was oppose Prop 82. Apparently that makes Ken a "freak." If so, then the editorial boards of every newspaper I listed above are dominated by freaks. Most of these boards, in particular the LA Times and the San Francisco Chronicle, are solidly liberal editorial boards. In Chad's view, 61% of Californians are freaks. Is it just possible that people might have good reasons to oppose a particular proposition on pre-school? This doesn't mean they are right. It just means that they are ruled by reason, not emotion. In Chad's world there are his views and then the views of very bad people. Chad Schuldt is second to none in the South Dakota Blogosphere in demonizing people based simply on policy difference and measuring the decency, and even the sanity, of people based on their agreement with his politics. And if it makes Chad happy, I think Ann Coulter is a fool, and said so some time ago in this post and this post, while at the same time defending her right to speak.
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