Your tax dollars at work. Thank goodness the money wasn't wasted on somehting stupid like healthcare, housing for the homeless, school improvement, etc.
In 2002, Blue Springs, Mo., found itself under siege from an insidious force - a force armed with pale skin, black hair, black eyeliner, and a collection of old albums by [a href="vny!://www.thecure.com/"]The Cure[/a]. Yes, goth culture had gained a toehold in the otherwise ordinary hamlet, and there was only one thing to do about it: Stamp it out with the aid of a
$273,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Education. With the funds secured, the Blue Springs Youth Outreach Unit set out to combat the goths, whom the community believed to be involved in activities including animal sacrifice, self-mutilation, and vampire worship. Reportedly, about half of the grant went to staff salaries, staff trips (to conferences on teen drug use and satanic cults), the formation of a little-used counseling program, and a series of never-held town-hall meetings (presumably intended for daylight hours, when vampire infestation wouldn't be a problem). After two years of public criticism, officials made the startling discovery that maybe goths weren't such a problem after all and returned the remaining $132,000 to the government.[/p]
