AlterNet: Whacking Libraries

Anonymous Patron writes “In this Alternet Article, Whacking Libraries, Jim Hightower says public officials todayâ€”from George W. Bush to city council membersâ€” are reaching for the budget axe to whack library funding, forcing branches to close, valuable services to be eliminated, and hours to be cut.”

February 9, 2005 by Blake Uncategorized 6

AshtabulaGuy says:

February 9, 2005 at 1:29 am

It is not all President Bush’s fault
One must wonder what is an overly major cause of the financial crunch at the state and local levels such as in Ohio? Indeed, such levels are more of where the bulk of library funding comes from rather than dollars from D.C. Regrettably it is a dramatically increasing population of retired elderly persons combined with an increasing outward migration of young persons. In today’s State of the State address Governor Bob Taft recognized that one of the most crushing parts of the state’s budget is Medicare/Medicaid and in doing so echoed something stated by the Ohio Library Council about a slew of additional problems as well. With human beings living longer while the retirement age often remains fixed at age 65, more people are winding up on public support while there are fewer people working and paying taxes to support them. Such a crazy economic scenario in this state (as well as elsewhere) is not being corrected by trying to even out age distribution disparity. Far from it! The disparity of a population graying out is just being accepted as being “good” notwithstanding possible economic dangers.

Medicare/Medicaid provide more budget woes at all levels of government compared to funding the use of the military abroad. Considering the number of times I have almost been run over by senior citizens (regrettably I have been able to see the heads of such speeders but not their license plates) while attempting to deliver newspapers in the morning, I can say things are graying out and otherwise dying. We are not being too militaristic but rather are becoming too geriatric as a society.

Granted, this is a problem that afflicts my region of the United States. Other areas like the sunbelt are doing better in this regard. I seemingly just live in a waiting room for graveyards where people pride themselves in terms of how flagrantly ignorant they can be.

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Eli says:

February 9, 2005 at 1:46 am

Information Missing
The article seems to focus on how public officials are cutting allocations to libraries. Unless you are talking about the Library of Congress, I don’t see the connection with President Bush. When the mayor of a city has misplaced priorities and cuts budgets it is not always a ripple effect from government funding. I have referred in the past to Mayor Street of Philadelphia who committed $30 million to a remodeling of the main branch of the Free Library yet cutails services in branch libraries. I also wonder how the depression era libraries functioned during the depression. Did they serve the public or promote agendas? Did they give the people the ability to educate themselves? Did the library staff’s try to provide the best they could with severely restricted budgets? These bits of information along with others would porve that linkage between that time and this era are not valid. I wonder if this is just another way to show how the President dosen’t care about libraries and education.

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keith says:

February 9, 2005 at 4:16 am

just because it’s on the “AlterNet”….
….doesn’t mean it’s true:

http://www.ala.org/Template.cfm?Section=News&templ ate=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentI D=86466

The reason why Ohio libraries are suffering and those in the sunbelt are doing so well is because of population. I, like many others, left NE Ohio for the sunbelt, precisely because the job opportunities are so much greater here than there.

BTW, since we’re discussing population/politics, does everyone know that Kerry lost 97 of the 100 fastest-growing counties? There’s gotta be a “Move On” joke in there somewhere…

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deborah says:

February 9, 2005 at 4:48 am

perhaps incomplete, but there is that of truth

In my town, at least, federal cuts in state aid led to state cuts in local aid led to drastically cut library services. And the library staff does do the best it can, and it’s very involved with the town. In fact, the Friends are so active that one of our branch libraries that the town can only afford to keep open one afternoon a week is being funded for two more days by Friends money. It’s not that the town doesn’t value library services, it’s that we’re broke. Even I, regretfully, have to choose not firing primary school special ed teachers and providing meals on wheels to the elderly over fully staffing branch libraries.

Rassenfrassen Proposition 2 1/2 grumble mumble growl

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AshtabulaGuy says:

February 9, 2005 at 8:02 am

Re:just because it’s on the “AlterNet”….
The link to ALA seems malformed. Trying to fix it resulted in “connection failure”.

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kylere says:

February 9, 2005 at 7:35 pm

What slays me…
What really slays me is that anyone older than 12 believes that the economic state TODAY has anthing to do with who the president was YESTERDAY.

It actually looks like it takes 4-6 years for a President to have an effect on the economy, and prior to that they can only do political moves like quickie tax rebates.

For those that missed it, the current economic crash occured before 911, before the first Bush election and during the Clinton presidency. I was acutely aware of this since I lost a great job at an Investment firm as a result of it.

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