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
AY;
Bush is an imbecile and I am not a Republican. Thank you for reminding me.
Tootie 1, August 10, 2010 at 1:59 pm
lottakatz:
These people already have health insurance. No one forced them to do what they did. They are going to get government health care for the rest of their lives.
What cruelty is there here except what you are inventing about me?
——————
YIKES!!!!
Tootie you are wrong. And I’m guessing that someday you may be very glad you were….Firefighters, like Nurses, can be held legally liable for leaving their posts or not answering the call. That is pretty strong indication of force. It doesn’t usually hinder Firefighters or Nurses or others who work in these types of environments or even enter our minds because we would never think of abandoning those in need, and most don’t enter into these fields because of force, or money, or intimidation, or lack of whatever it is you are lacking that forces you to look through those strange glasses that you wear. Buddah is right in what he said, though a tad unkind in his manner of saying it…you could brush up on the Christ in Christianity…
Byron,
No public money. So is your contention when you pay for a beer, it isn’t the bar’s money? You pay taxes in exchange for having a working government. Or do we have to go over the whole “Social Contract” theory of governance again?
By the way, one of my favorite novels by Orwell is about a struggling poet working in a private library, “Keep the Aspidista Flying.” I bring it up because, well Private libraries were given a shot in the free market. They didn’t work.
“Instead, they will probably have to resort to their old favorite method of sticking a gun in my face and forcing me to be “charitable” and “compassionate”.”
Or you could learn to walk that “Christian” talk you spew so regularly about what Jesus wants, Tootles.
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.” – Galatians 5:22-23
“‘The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: ‘If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?’ But … the good Samaritan reversed the question: ‘If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?'” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
There is no law against being charitable or compassionate. Just the twisted hate you carry inside you dictating that you got yours so to Hell with everyone else, Tootles. You are a seriously screwed up individual . . . and I’m pretty sure Jesus wouldn’t like you. He’d love you and treat you with compassion, but he’d also be sending you a cease and desist letter in re using his name to justify your petty hatreds and greed.
Oh wait tooties,
Did you say dunce? Where’s W when you say that?
From the: Since Lottakatz brought it up department.
Plunder, by Steven Greenhut
“More than 70 percent of the nation’s fire departments are volunteer departments. There’s no evidence they provide less-quality service than the costly government alternatives. Yet firefighter unions and their legislative allies impose artificial impediments on these volunteers as a way to cut down on the competition. For instance, they always impose more training requirements–many of these are dubious and serve as a cartel to make it tough for volunteers (working at other jobs to pay the bills) to compete with government workers who are paid for their training time. Unions have crushed private paramedic services also.” page 231
“Of the 118 U.S. firefighters who died in the line of duty in 2007, 68 were volunteers.” page 28
These volunteers do not benefit from the “plunder” union fire-fighters enjoy most of their lives, of course.
“I’ve often heard firefighter unions complain that they don’t have enough money for necessary equipment or to replace aging fire trucks…Often, it’s true that such equipment is badly in need of replacement, but no ones likes to explain the reason why: Fire authorities already have BLOWN THE BULK OF THEIR BUDGETS ON SALARY AND BENEFIT PAYMENTS.” (my emphasis) page 28
“Fire departments receive thousands of applications for every spot that becomes available….sometimes hold recruiting sessions at auditoriums to deal with the large number of people who want to get on that gravy train. If firefighter salaries better matched true market demand…more people deeply committed to this career would pursue it…” page 29
“…for years now politicians have been dramatically increasing the pay and especially the benefits for all categories of government workers….public-safety workers are encouraged to retire at an early age, thus leading to ‘shortages’ in law enforcement in particular. The taxpayer gets hammered twice, as he pays nearly full freight for retired employees and then has to pay for a full-time replacement.” page 29
This is also how we pay for one loafer and the fire-fighter who fills his previous slot.
Leftists are such compassionate persons, far more compassionate than evil right-wingers like me. So I trust they will be generous and open their wallets and provide the contributions requested by the first-responders in question.
Oh wait. Never mind. There is an election coming up, Democrats might need a billion dollars again from their donors (like the billion they shelled out to one not so bright Harvard grad, Obama).
Instead, they will probably have to resort to their old favorite method of sticking a gun in my face and forcing me to be “charitable” and “compassionate”.
Some things never change.
I thought gubermint health care was wunnerful?
Obomber said so.
lottakatz:
These people already have health insurance. No one forced them to do what they did. They are going to get government health care for the rest of their lives.
What cruelty is there here except what you are inventing about me?
So sad, because Congress seems to agree with her…
You can add timeliness of Government response to real time events to the list of reasons for Societal decay and collapse(IMHO of course…)
http://www.firerescue1.com/health/articles/860696-House-rejects-bill-to-aid-sick-9-11-responders/
“…supporters of the deal have been saying the court settlement is the only realistic option for the sick, because Congress will never act.”
“Ladies and gentlemen, you can wait and wait and wait for that legislation … it’s not passing,” Kenneth Feinberg
This is all you need to know about Tootie’s point of view.
Keep in mind as you give her postings the honor of a response is that on a thread regarding the failure of the Congress to set aside money for treatment for 9-11 first responders she used as a rationale for their lack of deserving aid:
“No one twisted the arms of the rescuers to rescue,…”
http://jonathanturley.org/2010/07/31/youtube-hit-weiner-confronts-gop-on-health-care/
I bring it up because I’m a self admitted bit*h (and said some pretty callous things) but some posters just need to be haunted by their own radioactive words.
Tootie;”Many of the things he says are collapsing did not even exist here for a very long time. How is it that we were not in a state of collapse when we once did not have these things, but now we are collapsed if we lose them?
We once didn’t have a public transit system or universal public education for all children. I still live in an area that is basically without a public transit system and my area was (before this economic crash) one of the fastest growing areas in the country. To be without one isn’t necessarily a state of decline. ”
So wrong dear…these ‘things’ you refer to are indicative of a healthy expanding society in a growth phase. Each step has a concording societal adaptation that is dependant on the industrial or structural component that made it possible. When things stop progrssing in a healthy constructive and sustainable fashion they collapse leaving many who had adapted to the norms either stranded or scrambling to survive. There are healthy ways to move forward when society stalls….the level of internal attack in this country is indicative of not yet finding it…
Philanthropy is not equitable with privatization. And how any are going to give by say, building schools, hospitals or libraries if those things will just be allowed to be taken over by private interest?
Deconstruction in the wrong hands is harmful and dangerous. There is a way to deconstruct and it goes hand in hand with rebuilding(think infrastructure…)…but to deconstruct for the simple purpose of shifting ownership from the public to privateers is parasitism.
Especially when those entities then out shore or ground the wealth to keep it out of circulation. It is economic death…a dead end.
“Just to be fair, there is no “public” money, it was at one time in the pockets of individuals. ”
money provided by the labour of the people and given to the government for the public welfare in the form of taxes. Better?
No Byron, I disagree that privately owned or run libraries would be better. I think there are enough country clubs already. Public libraries are free for a reason.Privatization and outsourcing do nothing more than shift $$$ away fromthose who laboured for it and into corporate pockets….that takes it OUT of circulation and either parks it in some ceo’s back pocket or off shores it altogether. Once again the American labourer is getting shafted and scapegoated for moldy white bread.
anon nurse:
I went to the Salon link you provided hoping to see the usual detailed and/or impeccable comments Greenwald is famous for. I was disappointed.
Usually thoroughly meticulous about everything he comments on, Greenwald uses the lame examples from a New York Times article about our collapsing civilization.
But Greenwald is approaching the symptoms of collapse as if they were the actual disease. He doesn’t discuss the cause of the collapse. It isn’t just about not spending or having money for public works programs. It is also about the morality of them. And more.
Many of the things he says are collapsing did not even exist here for a very long time. How is it that we were not in a state of collapse when we once did not have these things, but now we are collapsed if we lose them?
We once didn’t have a public transit system or universal public education for all children. I still live in an area that is basically without a public transit system and my area was (before this economic crash) one of the fastest growing areas in the country. To be without one isn’t necessarily a state of decline.
On education, one might be able to argue that compulsory universal education has likely contributed more to our collapse than our preservation. It is only after nearly a half-century of universal compulsory education that we find ourselves “collapsing”. It was when we didn’t have compulsory universal education, that we became a great people and entered modern times with astounding vigor and sustained growth.
My husband’s grandmother could walk to her one room school house in her bare feet but studied Latin once she got there! Lucky her! You could not beat this woman at the Wheel of Fortune game, she often had the puzzle figured out BEFORE Vanna turned a tile. There was no electricity at her school, no fascist cops, and no thuggish union members teaching other peoples’ kids about sex. The government schools are a tragedy, not a blessing. They are prisons that indoctrinate children, kids hate them, and if they collapsed it would likely be a good thing.
There is a large body of scholarly work done on the subject of collapsed civilizations. Greenwald didn’t seem to indicate he knew there was. People like J.D. Unwin (Cambridge/Social Archeologist), Arnold Toynbee (British Historian–like him or not), Edward Gibbons (British Historian), Friedrich Hayek (Economist–Professor of Social and Moral Science–University of Chicago), and Peter Sorokin (Sociology Harvard) studied the social end of this subject in great depth.
They looked at things like sexual morality, multiculturalism (hostile foreigners, invaders), high taxation, war-mongering, and political, moral corruption and how they may have played out in the decline pf civilization.
The social conditions during the collapse of civilizations generally looks the same. They often look like Rome: sexual corruption of society on the whole, sexual corruption of leaders, political corruption of government officials, endless wars, punishing taxes, foreign invaders.
We are Rome only with more gadgets.
Many folks who study collapses attribute them to great ecological disasters like famine caused by drought.
But ecological disaster is not our problem. We are not deforested. We haven’t had a Mount Vesuvius. We are not Easter Island. There is no continent-wide drought or lack of water to drink. Nor is there a continent-wide pandemic. The civilization is not collapsing because of those classic reasons.
The civilization is collapsing ONLY because of what is going on in the minds of our people and government. The agent of collapse is us. Nature is not destroying us. Instead, we are stealing from each other as a way of life (welfare). We are slaughtering our progeny in the womb and bringing in foreign hostiles to replace them who have no affectionate attachment to us, our way of life, and our cherished beliefs.
We are committing genocide on ourselves. No wonder we are collapsing!
We are printing funny money and spending it like it had real value. Why didn’t Glenn mention that a fiat monetary system ALWAYS collapses? At the least, we collapsing ourselves by some of the things Glenn is saying we OUGHT to maintain. Government cannot be all that some want it to be. It is just impossible. It is deluded and Utopian. It leads to tragedy.
I greatly appreciate Greenwald’s efforts to resist the rise of the totalitarian police-state perpetuated by both parties. But he hasn’t even begun to think about or study the reasons why civilizations collapse and why in particular, the lights are being turned off here.
Woosty:
Just to be fair, there is no “public” money, it was at one time in the pockets of individuals.
Private libraries would be a good idea in my opinion, but then I think quite a bit ought to be private. Weren’t the original libraries funded by Andrew Carnegie through his private philanthropy?
Libraries don’t just provide a place for “noisy low-life types to sit at all day long while they collect welfare checks and game the system for more public dollars.”, they do amazing outreach for our elderly shutins. Toots, are you considering that those noisy nasties (otherwise known as ‘latchkey kids’)are one of the reasons the libraries exist in the first place. I spent many an hour in the safety of the public library rather than go home to an empty and unsupervised house. And those computers that you seem to resent being purchased are the primary source of job listings these days.
But thanks for reminding that as soon as times get tough there is always a greedy gentrified self agrandizing class ready to take over what was purchased with public money for the good of the general public and with the wisdom and knowledge that a healthy and knowledgeable public is foundational to a healthy and prosperous society.
One of the first steps to deconstructing the health care system [and running up the costs and shunting them to the victims ,er, I mean insured…]was the hostile corporate takeover of publicly built and publicly funded non-profit hospitals. I really don’t see the compulsion to retreat back to the dark ages as being terribly healthy in any regard. Oh I get it now….Toots are you a corporate shill?
Excellent! The fewer government workers (moochers and leeches)the better. It appears the vicious library Nazis are getting their due. My local ones are positively depressed.
Private libraries are the way to go. Keeps out the riff-raff too.
I’m sick of libraries obtaining fewer and fewer excellent books and more and more computers for noisy low-life types to sit at all day long while they collect welfare checks and game the system for more public dollars.
It used to be that libraries were quiet places to read books and study. Now they are noisy zoos.
This is what government workers have made of them.
http://www.milibrary.org/library
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/libraries.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/08/underwater-mortgages-near_n_674950.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-kuttner/who-are-you-going-to-beli_b_675296.html
Now I must say something that I think many of you will find distasteful, being the all lawyered up and everything…I don’t believe things would be this bad if our courts and legal system were doing the job that they purport to do. You can blast joe citizen for being ‘dumbed down’ all you like, but ultimately….he is a reflection of what is going on in the hallowed halls…and lawyers have dropped the ball as much as politicians, as much as judges, as much as the creepybanks and police and other ‘law enforcement’ types.
there…thats the major part of my morning rant for the day.
Following the formula so many current policy makers adhere to I should feel muuuuuuuch better and you all should feel like shite……..
……did it work ?
Fourteen out of every relevant Fifteen dollars spent goes abroad, primarily to fight mysto wars.
Meanwhile, the traditional way of fixing problems, elections, have turned into a pig circus.
http://blogdredd.blogspot.com/2010/08/crazies-are-seeking-to-be-elected.html
Anon Nurse.
That Greenwald “Collapsing Empire” article is indeed great.