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California Library's Plan: Get Rid of Books
HansonMB writes "Facing the likelihood of state budget cuts that would eliminate $15 million for library and reading programs – and, apparently, create a future in which people no longer read things on paper – the city of Newport Beach is considering turning its first library into a community center that would host all the same amenities – except for the books."
The library has been inundated with hate-mail as people around the country have learned of their idea, and they hastened to clarify that no final decision has been made; carting books in as needed from other locations was always part of the plan. Whether or not they go through with it, efforts are underway elsewhere to create a massive, public digital library, spurred in part by the recent ruling against Google Books.
There's a great fictional story about this- pick up a copy of Vinge's 'Rainbows End' at your local libr... oops.
Except in that case, if i remember correctly at least, the library was giving into bribes from a megacorp that wanted to (destructively) digitize the books as part of their business plan. So it was due to corporate greed and stupidity.
In this case the public doesn't want to pay taxes to fund the library, but they get outraged when the library tries to make cuts to deal with the reduced amount of funding. So it's due to public greed and stupidity.
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I'm sorry, but anyone who lives in LA knows that Newport Beach is not exactly "poor" or "cash-strapped" by any stretch of the imagination. It's a VERY affluent city, although being in the traditionally Republican stronghold of Orange County, maybe the taxpayers aren't willing to look under their suede leather sofa cushions to fund basic public services. This smells more like a scheme to do something trendy, rather than some sincere attempt to reduce spending.
I know. It's those greedy, bottom-feeding librarians, and schoolteachers and cops and firemen and garbage collectors who have brought this great nation to its knees.
We've got to stop those people before they wipe out the good common folk, who work for a living and pay their taxes, like the hedge fund managers and investment bankers.
Public employee pensions make up an average 2-3% of state budgets nationwide.
Since it's clear that your anger at having to trim the tree on your own goddamn property, along with your greed and stupidity, lgw, have so corrupted your thinking that you're unable to accept the fact that the average public employee makes about $65k and the average employee nationwide about $43k. But see, private employees tend to skew much more to the blue collar. You've got to average in all those people working at Wal-Mart and McDonalds for minimum wage, whereas most public employees are the educated, blue collar variety.
When you figure in level of education, there really isn't a discrepancy between public and private employees. It's been fabricated to make people like you, who lack the analytic ability to understand why you should be worrying about why your company has screwed you out of a pension instead of why someone else has managed to keep their pension (hint: unions are good for workers), get all pissed off and shake your fist at the teevee and completely miss the reason why your income and benefits and working conditions continue to deteriorate to the point that if you had a wife she's probably wishing she married that nice guy who became a lawyer with a nice practice (and who was a much better lay). And most important, you'll forget who you really ought to be blaming in this whole mess.
People like you, who get played like violins by the people who are screwing you right into the ground and end up blaming everyone who has got something that you don't, disgust me. The only thing that attenuates my disgust is the knowledge that you have to live with your impotent anger like bad case of the piles.
Just don't fuck up our country any more. OK? I don't want my kid to have to grow up in a third-world shithole because people like you were pissed off that some college professor (yes, they're counted as "public employees") gets a six figure salary.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Education is a weapon, whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.
– Joseph Stalin
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.