Yeah, apart from our award winning blog* I know we’re supposed to put out a magazine called “Synthesis,” either on news stands or distributed digitally. Sorry about that. We’ve been too busy drinking beer and playing with toys.

I mean, breaking collectible action figures while improv-ing skits about economic stimulus checks and kosher giraffes is important work and all, but…

*If you call your blog “award winning” enough times, it starts to actually become so. Or at least move into the gray area between fiction and fact.

I haven’t gotten mine yet BUT ALL OF OUR FUCKING SWEET ACTION FIGURES DID!11111111111 Yeah we actually made this video. At work. While we got paid. Look at it a few times and click on a bunch of banners or whatever so we can start doing this every day KTHNX

Me? Like everyone else who filed paper returns instead of online and has a social security number ending in 39 and above, I’m still waiting form my mad money….money which I plan on investing in Eastern European economy. But if you want to find out how others are helping to, uh, rebuild our economy, check out HowISpentMyStimulus.com.

[The following submission was penned by Synthesis Weekly columnist Julia Murphy. She can be reached at ninjatreehugger@gmail.com]

Addiction, The Economy and Environmentalism

What does Rehab have to do with sustainability? It’s like a personalized Superfund site. We don’t have any money in the not-so-Superfund, either, just like we don’t have funding for rehabs.
If you’re a wanton garbagehead, something probably will fall apart to the point where you at least end up with a DUI. And that, my friends, is a long hard row to hoe, costing you an ass-pile of money and the humiliation of DrunkSchool. I’m not talking about some Jäger in your Kleen Kanteen in that boring evening class. You know what I mean. Money or time is what you’ll be out, and probably both.
Economy: Ever seen Rich’s crew on Saturdays and Sundays? Skulking, chastened youths and insouciant fun-loving criminals alike, sweeping up the cigarette butts of the previous night’s revelers? How much money would the City of Chico have to pay fools to do that work? [Ed note: Rich's Crew is a local organization where those arrested for misdemeanors like Drunk In Public, Minor In Possession, etc, clean the streets of Chico weekend mornings.]
How much do people make in California prisons? Well, from www.pia.ca.gov:
“Court-ordered restitution/fines are deducted from the wages earned by CALPIA inmates and are transferred to the Crime Victims’ Restitution Fund. CALPIA inmates receive wages between $.30 to $.95 per hour, before deductions.”
Companies get a 10 percent discount on taxes for using prison labor — plus, they get to put that awesome “Made in the USA” tag on their product! Yay!
Good for PIA for creating a reparations fund (speaking of which, when are black Americans to get theirs?) — but I bet they don’t exempt the prisoners who committed “victimless” crimes.
How many people are in jail on drug charges?
“Drug arrests have more than tripled in the last 25 years, totaling a record 1.8 million arrests in 2005. Drug offenders in prisons and jails have increased 1100 percent since 1980. Nearly a half-million (493,800) persons are in state or federal prison or local jail for a drug offense, compared to an estimated 41,100 in 1980. Nearly 6 in 10 persons in prison for a drug offense have no history of violence or high-level drug selling activity.”
Please — I mean it — check this Web site out: www.november.org/graphs. It’s extensive.
“In 1985, our incarceration rate was 313 per 100,000 population. As of December 2006 it was 751 per 100,000. The largest single factor contributing to this imprisonment wave is a ten-fold rise in drug convictions.”

More after the jump. (more…)