We have another story of how cities are de-evolving due to the economic meltdown as we continue to gush billions of dollars abroad. Camden, New Jersey will now close all public libraries despite the fact that librarians are reporting huge increases in traffic as people search for free places to go due to unemployment and a lack of money.
If you want to read a library book in Camden, make sure you can finish it by Dec. 31st. After that date, the board is considering the donation or destruction of its 187,000 books.
In the meantime, fourteen libraries are planned for shutdowns in Queens.
Of course, we have also been following efforts to cut back on education. The result is that we will be destroying the educational foundation for the next generation — undermining not just their chances in the new economy but the economy itself which actually needs educated people.
Source: Fox
In different countries different concerns determine how the elites of that country allocates funds for education.
In some nations the elite sees their nation in competition with other nations and education as a means of adding value to all their citizens to enhance their nations position in this competition. In other nations such as the USA, the UK and Australia for instance, the elite see the purpose of education as maintaining the current privilege hierarchy and preventing upward social mobility by poor people from putting pressure on positional goods that belong to the elite. One consequence of upward social mobility is relative downward social mobility of those near the top, and the already prosperous have an agenda to destroy free public education as anything better than a preparation for prison.
There are five libraries built by Carnegie in Seattle.
On the bright side of the contemporary scene Bill Gates and Warren Buffet convinced a bunch of other billionaires to donate half their wealth philanthropically and I just heard it is up to $110 billion.
Buffet and Gates also opposed the Bush tax cuts. Someone should tell congress.
None of which can replace the necessary federal stimulus necessary to save all these state and municipal jobs.
This is just too, too sad.
eniobob
1, August 8, 2010 at 1:17 pm
“Blouise
1, August 8, 2010 at 11:28 am
Thank you republicans across the country … what you managed to do to our country in just 8 short years is rather remarkable”
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You know I was being sarcastic … right?
As to Ronnie … it has long been my contention that he provided the cover necessary for all those southern democrats who hated LBJ for giving their “darkies” civil rights to switch parties under the guise of “sound fiscal policies” … something none of those dummies would have been able to understand even if it bit them on the nose. Their mass defection saved the Democratic Party and is still in the process of destroying the Republican Party … bit by bit, year after year.
At least Caesar had the “decency” to “accidentally” burn down the Library of Alexandria.
But way to go bailing out those Pozni schemes that pass for banks and funding perpetual wars!
Many people haven’t read a book in years, and, are only on-line. My son, for instance, loves to cook, and I have a box of great cookbooks sitting next to the couch but if he wants a recipe he goes on-line first.
“Blouise
1, August 8, 2010 at 11:28 am
Thank you republicans across the country … what you managed to do to our country in just 8 short years is rather remarkable”
FYI:
Reagan budget director has gone to the other side
Published: Sunday, August 08, 2010, 6:26 AM
John Farmer/The Star-Ledger
There’s a special place in the American heart for the repentant rascal, the sinner saved — Hester Prynne of Scarlet Letter fame, say, or Elmer Gantry, the con man of the 1920s tent show religious circuit, or to invoke a more modern reference, Bill Clinton, that freshly minted father-in-law.
But now comes an even more recent repentant. It’s David Stockman, budget director in the Reagan administration and ramrod of the Reagan era tax cuts so beloved of Republicans living and dead and of the myth that supply-side economics would save us all.
Those tax cuts, Stockman tells all who’ll listen (or read the New York Times), were the trigger for the tax policies that have produced gargantuan federal deficits.
Wait, there’s more. Stockman rebukes Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell for fighting to save George W. Bush’s tax cut giveaway to the wealthy as “unseemly” in a time that cries out for “austerity and sacrifice.” The government’s take from taxes is already near historical lows. In fiscal 2009, Stockman notes, federal revenues were down to 15 percent of gross domestic product — lower than any time since the 1940s.
“More fundamentally,” Stockman goes on, “Mr. McConnell’s stand puts the lie to the Republican pretense that its new monetarist and supply-side doctrines are rooted in its traditional financial philosophy.” Instead, he said, they’ve “led to the serial financial bubbles and Wall Street depredations that have crippled our economy.” None of this is especially new. Anyone who hadn’t been vacationing for an extended period on Mars understood that supply-side economics was a scam by Republican fat cats (today think Club for Growth). It was crafted to cut upper-income taxes and, in the process, starve the federal treasury and cripple Democratic social programs. Nice political two-fer, don’t you think.
What’s new here is that the guy blowing the whistle, Dave Stockman, was the program’s principal salesman all those years ago. Stockman first expressed reservations about the budget impact of the tax cuts — especially as spending continued at a pell-mell pace — in a magazine article during Reagan’s first time. Soon after, then-Sen. Bob Dole, chairman of Senate Finance committee, warned that the revenue bonanza supply-siders claimed the tax cuts would produce was about as real as Bernie Madoff’s investment portfolio.
It’s mostly forgotten now, even denied by some conservatives, but Reagan actually signed three tax increases that took back roughly 40 percent of his famous tax cut and signaled his own suspicion about supply-side claims.
Stockman finds no shortage of guilty Republicans in his tale of GOP fiscal irresponsibility. He even traces the start of the current malaise to economist Milton Friedman, whom he credits with having talked President Nixon in 1971 into abandoning the gold standard in 1971 and igniting a 40- year spree of easy-money and public borrowing.
It’s an $8 trillion error “that Milton Friedman said could never happen,” Stockman added.
The Reagan administration did manage to wipe out inflation, thanks to then-Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, now an adviser to President Obama. But alas, only to have supply-siders claim the tax cuts did the trick. In the process, he said, they “hooked Republicans for good on the delusion that the economy will outgrow the deficit if plied with enough tax cuts.” How true. It was former Vice President Dick Cheney, you’ll recall, who uttered those infamous words “deficits don’t matter. Reagan proved that.” Can’t win ‘em all, Dick.
The neo-cons, a GOP subset determined to rid the world of … well, anyone they don’t like … of those responsible for the current mess because of their role in driving military spending to record heights. And he indicts Republican lawmakers as a whole for reckless spending and for allowing financial institutions to engage in unregulated speculation — protected by government guarantees that make them “not free enterprises (but) rather wards of the state.”
Stockman is not optimistic about the economy in the near future, a time of debt liquidation and downsizing. But he has a cure for both the country and his party — a return to the old-time Republican religion of balanced budgets and financial discipline. Under McConnell and his bunch? Fat chance.
John Farmer is a Star-Ledger columnist.
http://blog.nj.com/njv_john_farmer/2010/08/post.html
In Cleveland, visit the gorgeous, imposing all stone Carnegie donated library in the near west side Ohio City neighborhood. We were lucky to have this and many buildings and parks donated by Rockefeller around the same time. See Forest Hill parks and neighborhood on the east side.
Pittsburgh had this and Frick, too.
Thank you republicans across the country … what you managed to do to our country in just 8 short years is rather remarkable
Camden, New Jersey (NJ) Poverty Rate Data – Information about poor and low income residents.
http://www.city-data.com/poverty/poverty-Camden-New-Jersey.html
“The libraries were generally the nicest building in a town. They had a stairway to get through the front door, to symbolize raising oneself up. There was a lamppost out front, as the light of education.”
Thanks for this information, Carol. Very nice. Sadly, times are very different now.
Carol,
Thank you…I am only familiar with the charitable trust side of the coin……
mespo72,
One thing about the US. There is no right of inheritance. It has become the norm for us to think that we have a right to what was our ancestors…but guess what..when the government comes a calling with a lien against your parents estate…well..its just the governments and that’s all…
Maybe instead of the folks in AZ looking to reduced the immigrant base…if they were concerned about things…they could focus there attention to redistributing there wealth or in this case saving it…there is more of a constitutional right to social security than there is to the right to inherit….I wonder if that scares anyone…
Swarthmore mom,
RWR, did indeed start privatization in a sense. He got rid of Government employees and filled them with Non-Government employees. On paper there were less workers on the government payroll…then look on the other sides GAO ledger and guess what…non classified general expenses costing 1.37 times the amount cut from the employee side. Makes accounting sense if you are the private sector employer….with government money to work for the government…but you are in no way a government employee…
The irony is that just last week Congress approved another $59 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan. Spending our way on foreign entanglements into the Dark Ages — very Christian.
AY, Carnegie helped build over 1,600 libraries in the U.S. over 650 in Briton and Ireland, and plenty more in other countries. The grants paid for 1/2 of the building. Recipients had to provide the land and agree to support the libraries, mostly through taxes.
The libraries were generally the nicest building in a town. They had a stairway to get through the front door, to symbolize raising oneself up. There was a lamppost out front, as the light of education.
Ours was a beautiful building with lots of marble and spacious rooms. Sadly, even though a couple additions were made over the years it outgrew it’s space. The building is used for city offices and storage. A new library was built on the site of the old jail. It’s nice, but lacks the charm of the original.
The changes are not that great in Texas as Bush instituted a privatized economy when he became governor. The people that are revolting are the tea party folks that want more services to be privatized and less government services.
It is a shame that here in New Jersey, the libraries in one of its poorest cities is closing while our governor is giving tax breaks to millionaires.
http://www.deciminyan.org/2010/03/chris-christie-bad-for-new-jersey.html
Friday, Aug 6, 2010
What(a)collapsing empire looks like (by Glenn Greenwald)
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/
From the article:
“Meanwhile, needing to squeeze someone, most emerging-market governments look first to ordinary working folk — at least until the riots grow too large.”
“The real question is whether the American public is too apathetic and trained into submission for that to ever happen.”
And then there’s the 2 trillion dollars for which the DOD allegedly cannot account — money spent in from 2001 to 2006, reportedly.
I am pleased that “No Child Left Behind” is working….it will now translate to the people subject to the unfunded mandate to begin with…why waste money on books to begin with if you can’t read…..
Carol, Carnegie Library Grant…that is interesting…not many people are aware of the magnitude of this industrialist. I believe he too died without issue and left his money to charities much like Mr. Hershey….If I recall it is to be used mainly for education, here and in the UK, as you are aware he is Scottish…..I believe that it is to be used only for the structures….
My grandfather helped get the original Carnegie Library Grant for my hometown. He’s been dead almost 50 years. I’m sure he would be appalled at the way our Society is going backward. He was a school teacher, started teaching in a one room school house in rural Indiana. Education was everything. He genuinely saw it as a way for the underprivileged to work their way to a better position in life.
Libraries closing! I can see cutting back on hours and services, but closing the library and selling off the books? Somebody needs to reconsider their priorities