Hi, Here is the actual article on the meth labs...it really came out Friday--am still trying to catch up on things here. I need to look carefully at my cynicism towards Bush & Co. I had the same feeling when it was stated that they were cutting the DARE programs around the country. I just wonder if they are raking in $$ from meth labs and so that is why they are cutting money to deal with those. (Along with the foster care money which is often, in Missouri, helping to deal with the kids who are raising themselves in the meth labs--Irene/Andy's skin would fall off if she heard some of the stories that I hear about the kids they find in them...both from police, social workers, foster care people, and school officials...) I'd march if there was actually a decent march set to deal with some of these issues. I think I'd rather go back to figuring out how we are going to replace Gerald Dickens who won't be coming back to the USA on his Dickens Tour in December. Anyone have any ideas? He's been coming for 12 years to do a one-man show of A Christmas Carol...it's been one of our most successful programs--over 400 (we have to select the branch so as to to not break firecodes...) Best, Marlena Posted on Fri, Mar. 24, 2006 Missouri among states shorted on anti-meth funds The Associated Press WASHINGTON - Some states with significant methamphetamine problems have not received their share of federal money because lawmakers have directed most of a grant program to favored projects in their districts. Missouri was cited Thursday by the Justice Department's inspector general as one example of a shortchanged state. Missouri ranked second, behind California, in seizing 11,859 meth labs between 1998 and 2004. But it was 10th in grants received, with $3.7 million. Texas and Illinois were 10th and 11th in the number of labs seized, but 23rd and 25th, respectively, in money from the meth initiative. Meanwhile, the Sioux City Police Department in Iowa was given $10 million for a training program that Inspector General Glenn A. Fine said was not focused on meth or any drug. In Vermont, the State Police used more than half of their $2.4 million grant for a task force to fight heroin. In Hawaii, where police seized 76 meth labs over seven years, a nonprofit group used $8.4 million in money aimed at meth for a variety of anti-drug programs. More than $179 million in anti-meth money administered by the department - 84 percent of the grant funds - has been earmarked, as the practice is known, by members of Congress for programs in their states and districts, Fine said. "As a result of the significant use of congressional earmarks in this program, funding is not always directed to the areas of the country with the most significant meth problem," Fine said in the report that examined the grant program from 1998 to 2005. The Bush administration has proposed ending most meth-related earmarks in the budget for 2007. Lawmakers have indicated that they are unlikely to go along.