You know, there's a lot of statstics and common sense anecdotes of how much money the drug war has siphoned off taxpayer funds. I don't think the average American really noticed the wa$te that goes into our wars - both abroad and at home (drug war).
Until the Recession.
Now, when you turn on the not-so-balanced local news affiliates here in Socal, you notice folks actually being allowed to say the obvious on camera: why waste money chasing weed?
Then a story like this out of New Mexico.
http://www.santafenewmexican.com/...
Police last month raided an Española-area school looking for marijuana growing in a greenhouse, but all they found there were tomatoes.
Patricia Pantano, education director of the Camino de Paz Montessori School and Farm in Cuarteles, between Española and Chimayó on N.M. 76, said the raid occurred Sept. 21 during the lunch hour.
"We were all as a group eating outside as we usually do, and this unmarked drab-green helicopter kept flying over and dropping lower," she said. "Of course, the kids got all excited. They were telling me that they could see gun barrels outside the helicopter. I was telling them they were exaggerating."
I'm not a parent. But I'd be displeased to have my 12-year old in a local Montessori school get greeted by guns and helicopters during a school day. Those dirty fu*king hippie kids! I mean, wtf? Raiding a kids' school and greenhouses?
But what about the $ ? States are hurting. Cities are hurting. And a teacher makes an observation that I hope a lot of mothers ponder here in California next month when we vote on prop 19:
The nine-acre Camino de Paz Montessori School and Farm in Cuarteles is about eight years old and this year has 12 students, ages 11 to 14, who participate in farming as a context for learning mathematics and science.
Some parents, who did not want to be named, said they, too, were concerned about the raid on their children's school.
Pantano said she did not want to make too big an issue out of the raid, but questioned why such a commotion was necessary when anyone who asked would have been given a tour of the greenhouses.
"We're sitting here as a teaching staff, always short on money, and we're thinking, 'Gosh, all the money it takes to fly that helicopter and hire all those people, it would be great to have this for education.' "
'Gosh' , indeed.