What Would You Do With $30 Million?

Thirty million dollars. That’s what consultants are estimating both sides could spend on Proposition 8, the November ballot initiative that would amend California’s constitution to ban marriage of same-sex couples.

Rather than wasting money trying to stop loving couples from marrying (or having to fight for their right to do the same), here’s a rough list of some other things $30 million could buy:

• Reimbursements for over 12 million school lunches under the National School Lunch Program, or enough for almost 67,000 students per year.
• Funding to cover most of Gov. Schwarzenegger’s proposed $37.1 million in cuts (PDF link) to L.A. County health-care providers.
• Enough to cover the $29 million in Stage 1 childcare expenditures (when childcare needs are unstable; PDF link) paid to families in CalWORKs (the state welfare system) during April 2008.
• Over 3.3 million copies of The Cat in the Hat, enough to give one to each of California’s 2.8 million K-5 students, with some left over for preschoolers.
• 143,000 laptops through the One Laptop per Child program.
• 833,000 boxes of Costco (Kirkland) brand diapers, equivalent to 195 million diapers in size 1-2, enough to cover nearly 67,000 babies at 8 diapers/day for a year.

These aren’t necessarily the most important or only things one could do with this money. I also realize that if the marriage battle ended now the money wouldn’t automatically go to any of the above items. I mean to give a sense of what we’re wasting here, not to set actual priorities or assume apples will transform to oranges.

But still . . .

What would you do for the public good with $30 million?