Every day junkies, crack-heads, dope-fiends and drunks continue to amaze me, as I watch them at bus stops sucking on their one shared addiction, the cigarette. More and more they recede into my mind’s eye as an alien species, some un-consumable prey animal, perhaps an invasive species like a stink bug. What is more they are reproducing.

Last night I was on a 10:45 bus when two late night regulars got on, with one of their four small children—the infant. I can only hope that the other three, who generally supervise themselves, were in better care. But really, what is the point? They are doomed with parents like this. The 25-year-old father is a grungy little dude with a cigarette perpetually behind his ear. He carries a heavy backpack, and wheels two strollers, a large one loaded with groceries, the other a small model loaded with their tiny red-headed baby. The mother is a tall heroin addict, incapable of holding the baby, forever nodding out. She appears to be knocked up again. Their ponderous presence on the bus is always an irritant. They are, by the way, subsidized by your tax dollars, hauling enormous loads of groceries on food stamp week.

This morning I was standing at a bus stop where three people were gunned down this past winter, a half mile from the scene of a home-invasion/double-shooting three nights ago. I was standing off, avoiding the cigarette smoke. A cop was idling at the traffic stop. A drug dealer was dispensing ‘perks’ and ‘oxys’, to some middle-aged dope-fiends, folding his bills neatly, making change like a seasoned carnival hand.

The fastest growing crime in Europe is ‘metal theft’. This is the surest sign of a growing population of drug addicts. In Portugal farmers are forming militias to guard irrigation valves.

California State handles about 150,000 prisoners per year, farming out about 20,000 of these inmates to Correction Corporation of America [215 million per year] and GEO Group [150 million per year]. The state's unholy prison guard union, the CCPOA, has bribed Governor Brown with one check for $196,770 and, before him, The Governator with $22,300. The State prison budget is around 8 billion.

Nationwide, prison corporations are awarded contracts that guarantee 90% to 100% occupancy! Think about that.

If you think that is bad, consider that it costs New York City $167,731 per year to house an inmate! It would be cheaper to send these guys to Yale—and a lot more fun too!