{"id":11555,"date":"2010-04-21T21:06:52","date_gmt":"2010-04-21T21:06:52","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2010-04-21T21:06:52","modified_gmt":"2010-04-21T21:06:52","slug":"what-could-california-buy-for-the-cost-of-a-predator-drone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/2010\/04\/21\/what-could-california-buy-for-the-cost-of-a-predator-drone\/","title":{"rendered":"What could California buy for the cost of a predator drone?"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/object><\/p>\n

Here’s an interesting factoid from a new white paper from the Consumer Federation of California.<\/a>  With the nearly $38 billion California taxpayers have spent on the war in Afghanistan since 2001, we could have paid for any one of the following:<\/p>\n

\u2022    15.6 million people with health care;
\n
\u2022    5.7 million scholarships and 7 million Pell Grants for university students;
\n
\u2022    4.5 million Head Start placements for children;
\n
\u2022    500,000 new elementary school teachers;
\n
\u2022    676,649 public safety officers;
\n
\u2022    535,058 music and arts teachers;
\n
\u2022    113,373 affordable housing units;
\n
\u2022    And 67.4 million homes with renewable electricity.<\/p>\n

As Californians watch our utility rates spike, our library hours get cut back, our fire stations get pared down, our potholes mushroom and our cities’ bond ratings tank, we might pause to ponder the price of single predator drone in Afghanistan: $4.5 million.  That would fill a lot of potholes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

<\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

Here’s an interesting factoid from a new white paper from the Consumer Federation of California.<\/a>  With the nearly $38 billion California taxpayers have spent on the war in Afghanistan since 2001, we could have paid for any one of the following:<\/p>\n

\u2022    15.6 million people with health care;
\n
\u2022    5.7 million scholarships and 7 million Pell Grants for university students;
\n
\u2022    4.5 million Head Start placements for children;
\n
\u2022    500,000 new elementary school teachers;
\n
\u2022    676,649 public safety officers;
\n
\u2022    535,058 music and arts teachers;
\n
\u2022    113,373 affordable housing units;
\n
\u2022    And 67.4 million homes with renewable electricity.<\/p>\n

As Californians watch our utility rates spike, our library hours get cut back, our fire stations get pared down, our potholes mushroom and our cities’ bond ratings tank, we might pause to ponder the price of single predator drone in Afghanistan: $4.5 million.  That would fill a lot of potholes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":249,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","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":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[],"tags":[2671,4776,8697],"class_list":["post-11555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-2671","tag-4776","tag-8697"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pvhz-30n","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/249"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11555\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}