I see Todd Epp is happy that we are debating the definition of a Nanny State. Here is more that supports my premise that the move to government controlled preschools are the height of nanny-statism:
Last May, just as the academic year was wrapping up, Hillary Clinton stopped by a Miami Beach elementary school to say that she wanted to define school down. "As president, I will establish universal pre-kindergarten education," she promised, so that "every four-year-old child in America" can attend a government-funded preschool.
Her $10 billion proposal essentially would add a whole new grade onto the front end of the K-12 system. It's one of the liberals' hottest policy ideas, pushed by their think tanks and embraced by their politicians. "We expect that all of the presidential candidates will be talking about it," says Libby Doggett, executive director of Pre-K Now, an advocacy organization. Wealthy foundations, such as the $5.6 billion Pew Charitable Trusts, are bankrolling the concept. Democratic governors also have made it a priority: Eliot Spitzer of New York has promised universal preschool by 2011, and Rod Blagojevich of Illinois wants public preschool not only for four-year-olds but for three-year-olds as well. In the last two years, states have boosted their preschool budgets by more than $1 billion.
The author Robert Fulghum has built a career on the motto "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten." Yet the supporters of universal preschool worry that kindergarten comes too late--and believe that shunting children into government-run nursery schools around the time that they're potty training is a key to success in life. They say it leads to academic achievement, economic productivity, and law-abiding lifestyles. "There's a lot of evidence that this saves money over the long run," claimed Senator Clinton on the Today show.
Unfortunately for the nanny-statists, almost none of this is true.
So why are so many of the Senate Republicans pushing this Democratic liberal agenda? And why is Pat Powers refusing to admit that this agenda is nanny-statism and join in with us conservative in opposition to those who want to turn South Dakota into a blue state. Speaking of that, I noticed Badlands Blue is happy when Republicans go after Governor Rounds. Why doesn’t Lowell thank Governor Rounds for his work to make Hillary’s dream come true in South Dakota?
