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Byrne grants, the anti-stimulus

I'm disappointed to see that the federal Byrne grant program - which gives block grants to the states to pay for hundreds of regional drug task forces across the country like the one in the infamous Tulia drug stings - made it into the version of the stimulus bill approved by the Senate, though at just one-third the funding level proposed by President Obma. Too bad. Perhaps there's still some remote chance that the program will be eliminated in the conference committee, but I'm not holding my breath.Perhaps counterintuitively, it's Democrats who insist on propping up this drug war dinosaur, while the GOP has long supported eliminating it as counterproductive pork.There's nothing stimulating to the economy about the Byrne grant program. It may employ more undercover drug cops, but their job is to disrupt the economy through petty drug arrests, filling up prisons that cost taxpayers instead of bolstering state and local coffers...continue to full post

Full post as published by Grits for Breakfast on February 09, 2009 (boomark / email).