Forget ads, think of how much loot we can save if we make the kids take themselves to school, Fred Flintstone-style.If there’s any advantage to being broke, it’s that your lawmakers will come up with creative ways to stay out of the poorhouse. Like State Senator Paull Shin, who thinks ads on school buses could take some of the sting out of nearly $400 million in education cuts.School bus ads have been done before. As The Seattle Times

points out, the Colorado Springs School District takes in almost $180,000 a year by pimping out their yellow wee-one wagons. And Metro has had ads for almost 30 years without incident.But there’s something fundamentally upsetting about little Johnny’s ride to school being sponsored by the latest Droid phone. Especially in light of last week’s monumental court ruling that the Legislature is failing kids by not providing enough funding already. Or that, as last week’s cover story from Rick Anderson pointed out, pols actually have 15 billion ways to bridge the budget gap, if only they had the stones to do it.