Where Your Tax Dollars Go

So it turns out the fine folks at the St. Paul Sheriff's department spent over $300,000 spying on people in the run-up to the RNC.

Even ignoring the horrible things this says about our democracy, is there not something better we could be doing with a third of a million dollars in the Twin Cities? Last time I checked, we've got a bunch of homeless people who need places to sleep and food to eat, bridges that keep falling down, rising tuition costs at our universities...I could pretty much keep that list going all day. And everything on it would be a better use of a giant chunk of money than is spying on our citizenry who are doing nothing more than exercising their constitutionally-protected right to organize.

And really, what did this horrible breach of legality get us? It was already clear this small group was not going to be able to shut down the convention. All of the "intelligence" suggesting there was going to be violence was either made-up or based on a laughable and clearly incorrect informants (do we all remember how Mike Whalen's house was raided for shipments of weapons that turned out to be pamphlets about vegetarian recipes?).

For me, the timing of such a story couldn't be more perfect, as tomorrow morning I defend a prelim on how the police, both historically and contemporary, have existed far more to preserve the existing status quo than to protect the citizenry or prevent crime. I think any question I get about my central thesis can simply be directed to the reports of the police spending a third of a million dollars to spy on the anarchists based on the fact that people who look different are surely up to something...