{"id":3353,"date":"2005-06-13T16:40:52","date_gmt":"2005-06-14T00:40:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/index.php\/archives\/2005\/06\/13\/californians-are-stupid\/"},"modified":"2005-06-13T16:40:52","modified_gmt":"2005-06-14T00:40:52","slug":"californians-are-stupid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/2005\/06\/13\/californians-are-stupid\/","title":{"rendered":"Californians are stupid"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tHere’s a good example of why politicians need to lie to voters:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

As a wonderfully sneaky test of awareness, PPIC asked Californians in a recent survey how much of the state budget is spent on public schools. They were clueless. Only one in three knew that public education is by far the biggest item, sucking up half the budget–very roughly, $50 billion of $100 billion.<\/p>\n

Ignorant voters insist more money pour into the schools, not knowing California spends more on schools than the entire operating budgets of each of the 49 other states, including New York.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s reality: The National Education Association (NEA) and National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) rank California in the middle on per-pupil-spending. We\u2019re at the comfy median. We do not \u201cunder-fund\u201d our schools despite our many troubles.<\/p>\n

Why doesn\u2019t everybody know this?<\/p>\n

The PPIC poll shows how misconceptions are driven by partisanship in California. Democrats tend to believe (ridiculously) that California\u2019s prisons get the most state money. Republicans tend to believe (absurdly) that social welfare gets the most state money.<\/p>\n

People are ignorant in part because our crisis-driven media often lazily push the myth that California is near \u201cthe bottom\u201d in school funding. That myth is a product of the education lobby, led by the California Teachers Association, which makes sure California teachers earn the highest salaries in the nation, yet constantly whines that schools are under-funded.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That’s right, stupid.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s a good example of why politicians need to lie to voters: As a wonderfully sneaky test of awareness, PPIC asked Californians in a recent survey how much of the state budget is spent on public schools. They were clueless. Only one in three knew that public education is by far the biggest item, sucking … Continue reading “Californians are stupid”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbifyw-S5","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3353\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}