An interesting tidbit comes from 'The Daily Californian' newspaper from reporter Nick Palmquist and it states, "It costs an estimated $1 million to deploy a soldier to Afghanistan for a year and $49,000 to incarcerate a prisoner for a year in California. The state of California spends less than $10,000 to educate one K-12 student each year. The tradeoff is clear and unjustifiable."

This shows how horribly arranged our priorities are in this country. Obviously our soldiers need to be funded, but one has to wonder what $1 million per student could do for a student, or even half that amount. That really could be something.

The difference, however, that is most appalling is that of the money spent on a prisoner versus a student, and somehow needs to be addressed. That is completely ridiculous that a person that has been convicted of a crime and receives $39,000 more in services than a child trying to get an education. There must be some way to reverse those numbers. If a child only gets $10,000 for an incredible service, there is no way an inmate can't be housed for that same amount, or hopefully less.

Priorities really need to be looked at in this country, for there could be a tremendous upside if we could get them right.