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Books Government The Almighty Buck

Missouri Reps Vote To Completely Defund State's Public Libraries (vice.com) 337

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Late Tuesday night, the Missouri House of Representatives voted for a state operating budget with a $0 line for public libraries. While the budget still needs to work its way through the Senate and the governor's office, state funding for public libraries is very much on the chopping block in Missouri. This comes after Republican House Budget Chairman Cody Smith proposed a $4.5 million cut to public libraries' state aid last week in the initial House Budget Committee hearing, where Smith cited a lawsuit filed against Missouri by the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri (ACLU-MO) as the reason for the cut.

ACLU-MO filed the suit on behalf of the Missouri Association of School Librarians and the Missouri Library Association (MLA) in an effort to overturn a state law passed in 2022 that bans sexually explicit material from schools. Since it was first enacted in August, librarians and other educators have faced misdemeanor charges punishable by up to a year in jail or a $2,000 fine for giving students access to books the state has deemed sexually explicit. The Missouri law defined (PDF) explicit sexual material as images "showing human masturbation, deviate sexual intercourse," "sexual intercourse, direct physical stimulation of genitals, sadomasochistic abuse," or showing human genitals. The lawsuit claims that school districts have been pulling books from their shelves.

"The house budget committee's choice to retaliate against two private, volunteer-led organizations by punishing the patrons of Missouri's public libraries is abhorrent," Tom Bastian, deputy director for communications for ACLU-MO said in a statement to Motherboard. Like in all ACLU cases, the organization is not charging the two Missouri library groups for services. Both library organizations are also run by volunteers -- every state has an equivalent of these two organizations that serve public and school libraries. In other words, a politician either lied or didn't have his facts straight, and now 160 library districts risk losing state aid in June.
"State Aid helps libraries provide relevant collections, literacy based programming, and technology resources to their communities," Otter Bowman, president of the MLA told Motherboard in a statement. "Our rural libraries rely the most heavily on this funding to serve their communities, and they will be crippled by this drastic budget cut."
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Missouri Reps Vote To Completely Defund State's Public Libraries

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  • It's a red state. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by doubledown00 ( 2767069 ) on Thursday March 30, 2023 @05:47PM (#63412724)

    Punk ass conservative cock suckers don't read anyway.

    • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 30, 2023 @05:50PM (#63412728)

      Can's have educated voters now, that would ruin the party.

      • Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)

        by DrMrLordX ( 559371 )

        Delicious irony here.

        (yes anyone posting on a cell phone will inevitably get some errors to spelling/grammar from unwanted autocorrect behavior, but it's not clear how you wound up with "Can's" in this particular case).

        • by narcc ( 412956 )

          I can think of a few perfectly reasonable things that might have lead to that specific mistake. Think about this from the perspective of a poorly thought-out predictive text feature:

          The 's' character is the most likely to follow an apostrophe. That "Can's" would be a suggestion isn't too surprising.

          The fact that the word was capitalized might have also had an impact. The possessive form of 'can' (the object) is pretty damn unusual, but if the software thought it was someone's name, it would make sense to

        • Iphone typing is nuts. Half the time it has me sounding like a complete mentalist because the 'buttons' are too small and non tactile and my utterly garbage eyesight isnt always catching the errors. Couple that with the lack of edit on this arcane website, and yeah, I've got more than a few posts where I've read back what I've written and it reads like I've just had a stroke, alas.

      • by currently_awake ( 1248758 ) on Thursday March 30, 2023 @08:10PM (#63413030)
        People would have to be stupid to vote for a party dedicated to serving (only) the needs of the Rich. In a related point, downgrading education makes people stupid.
    • Re:It's a red state. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by LostMyBeaver ( 1226054 ) on Thursday March 30, 2023 @10:05PM (#63413154)
      Neither do liberals

      It's my personal observation that people who do read (at least enough, with at least a mix of non-fiction, with a modicum of comprehension and critical thought) are less likely to be conservative or liberal. Rather, they would be educated.

      Here is the root of the problem.

      Educated people are generally independent thinkers and as such tend to have differing opinions which makes it nearly impossible to establish a part of such people.

      Two party politics are for people of generally low intelligence and the inability to rationally consider consequences of actions. Basically, it's populist herd mentality.
      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by mobby_6kl ( 668092 )

        It's my personal observation that people who do read (at least enough, with at least a mix of non-fiction, with a modicum of comprehension and critical thought) are less likely to be conservative or liberal. Rather, they would be educated.

        So, liberal.

      • It's my personal observation that people who do read (at least enough, with at least a mix of non-fiction, with a modicum of comprehension and critical thought) are less likely to be conservative or liberal. Rather, they would be educated.

        That's nonsense.
        First of all, might wanna try a synonym there to grasp what being "educated" means - like saying "instructed" instead.
        Cause that's what education IS - "the process of receiving or giving systematic instruction, especially at a school or university".

        Now... that INSTRUCTION is highly dependent on the source material, direction and the director of said instruction.
        I.e. Inherent ideology. Inherent to the material, to instruction methods, to the instructor, to the instructed, to the entire societ

      • Try again. Your statements could only apply to some silly definition of "liberal".

  • Republicans (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 30, 2023 @05:48PM (#63412726)

    What the fuck is up with Republicans? They refuse to accept a democratic election. They want to ban books. They want to ban web sites. They want to stomp anyone that does not agree with them. All so very un-American.

    • by fermion ( 181285 )
      One hand giving, the other taken. Republicans investigate Amazon and Google to win votes. But the only way to read is to buy an android or kindle and then a subscription.
    • Like 20-30% of them are completely nuts and the rest are ghouls that will exploit it but never stand up to the insanity. Enjoy.

    • Re:Republicans (Score:5, Insightful)

      by DrMrLordX ( 559371 ) on Thursday March 30, 2023 @06:43PM (#63412842)

      It's retaliation for an ACLU lawsuit. The lawsuit is costing the state money, so they're taking it out of the hides of people affiliated with those filing suit. Dirty pool, but also very effective.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by buss_error ( 142273 )

      What the fuck is up with Republicans?
      They are frighted by a world they can no longer even pretend to themselves to understand, therefore, as any savage group, will break it in an effort to restore what they think they understood. They have a lot in common with the Guals, "know nothings" and the luddites.

      All so very un-American.

      I'm sorry to disabuse you of the idea, but ever since the Party Flip (When democrats became republicans and republicans became democrats) they are not Pro America nor are they pro fre

    • Confederates (Score:5, Insightful)

      by KalvinB ( 205500 ) on Thursday March 30, 2023 @07:26PM (#63412946) Homepage

      Frederick Douglass lamented the Confederates coming into the Republican party and hoped they'd go away.

      There are no more Republicans in the Republican party. It's the party of the Klan now.

  • by quonset ( 4839537 )

    At this point Republicans are doing everything they can to penalize people. They are taking their cues from the their dear indicted leader and of course, Russia.

    Look at everything they do. From DeSantis trying (and miserably failing) to take over Disney, cancel culture against any company which doesn't toe their fascist line, to openly admitting they'll do nothing to stop kids from being slaughtered. One of them just said the U.S. isn't a democracy [lgbtqnation.com] (others have said the same thing, but this is the most re

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      By definition of democracy, (such as "A democracy is a society in which the citizens are sovereign and control the government") the U.S. isn't a democracy. Never has been. Holding elections does not make a country a democracy. The key is do the citizens control the government? The fact is we do not. Long before we freed the slaves or gave women the vote, corporations seized control of our institutions.
  • Ignorance is bliss (Score:5, Insightful)

    by presidenteloco ( 659168 ) on Thursday March 30, 2023 @06:08PM (#63412756)
    A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and by simple logic (also dangerous), more knowledge must be even more dangerous.

    Books (and wikipedia) are the work of the devil.

    Trust in the lord and the great state of Missouri.
  • Competition (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TWX ( 665546 ) on Thursday March 30, 2023 @06:08PM (#63412762)

    There's an old joke about two guys being startled by a bear in their camp and one of them bothering to put on his shoes. The punchline is something to the effect of, "I don't have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun you."

    As a parent of a young child, I salute the lawmakers of Missouri for forcibly taking off the shoes of their native sons and daughters. In several years when it's time to compete for college admissions she'll face less competition from her peers from the Show Me State.

    • Ironically, when US citizens hit the job market, the same politicians who hamstrung education say that US workers are lazy as sin and can't compete, using that as an excuse to destroy more social safety nets. Saw it in the 90s with Japan, saw it with India and China.

      • by TWX ( 665546 )

        Mmmhmm.

        There's also a fairly reliable correlation between the dropout rate and the incarceration rate.

        Most institutions are already operated with an eye on trying to get the most return for the expenditure as can be reasonably achieved. Cut costs too far (increases in K-12 class-sizes, reduction in curriculum, reduction in standards, elimination of ancillary services like libraries) in order to achieve short-term savings and long-term the return on the remaining money that was spent is far lower than just

    • Missouri is already number 30 in education.

  • by Revek ( 133289 ) on Thursday March 30, 2023 @06:17PM (#63412776)
    Eventually these people will be unable to work outside of their home state due to other states not accepting their high school diplomas as proof of education. They are determined to regress back to the feudal system but don't realize that people can vote with their feet and leave them to wallow in their self made ignorance.
  • On the one hand, the platonic ideal of state support for a library is content neutral. And while zeroing out the budget is content neutral, it seems to violate the spirit when taken in context.

    On the other hand, throwing pr0n at small children is not something I can get behind. Even if the libertarian in me (and the former teenage boy in me) can't really find a reason to be particularly enthused about any moral panics on the matter.

    On the third hand, there's very much a project out there to push lgbt stuff

    • Re:I'm of two minds (Score:5, Interesting)

      by fazig ( 2909523 ) on Thursday March 30, 2023 @06:42PM (#63412834)
      What's the definition of "pr0n" and where are some concrete examples of that being thrown at small children?

      I've been reading this accusation over and over, and the most "pr0n" imagery I've seen cited as evidence is from the comic Maus, which tells about the horrors of the Holocaust.

      For reference: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FK... [twimg.com] (beware of crudely drawn mouse penises while the mouses are in the shower) that's supposedly what got this book removed.
    • by aergern ( 127031 )

      It's not porn. It's anything to do with LGBTQ themes or anything else they THINK their invisible man in the sky wouldn't approve. Don't believe the hype. GOP are fast becoming the Nazis of 1939. They DON'T and never have had porn in public libraries.

    • I also don't approve of teaching kids that men can get pregnant and women an father children

      What exactly is it you don't approve of? Teaching kids that some people identify with a gender (a social construct) that doesn't match their sex (a biological property)? Even though that's an objectively true fact? Or teaching them that sexual development is complicated, and some people end up with physical features of both sexes? Often involving having the genitals for one sex but the brain structures for the other sex?

      All these things are objective facts. Why don't you approve of teaching them?

    • by dryeo ( 100693 )

      Yep, if kids don't know anything about sex, the preacher can fuck them up the ass while telling them it is normal and Gods will. Child molesters want ignorant kids to molest.

    • " I also don't approve of teaching kids that men can get pregnant and women an father children with their biologically female penises."

      You need to show some real life examples of this, I'm not seeing it in real reality.

      • I'm not seeing it in reality either. But reality turns over slowly. Where I do see and hear it starting to show up is the occasional story on NPR that insists not all women have vaginas (according to Science, dontchaknow), articles in the New York Times or Boston Globe that tie themselves in knots describing House Minority Whip Katherine Clark's anarchist rioter son as an anarchist rioter daughter, and in seemingly normal people in my workplace now feeling the need to put their pronouns in their email sigs

  • by Local ID10T ( 790134 ) <ID10T.L.USER@gmail.com> on Thursday March 30, 2023 @06:29PM (#63412796) Homepage

    Dont need no Readin here. No Ritin, nor Rithmatic neither!

  • Duh! All these dinosaurus with their tree killing ideas.

  • I don't support these fools, but "completely defund" is overstating the case.
    Public libraries have multiple funding sources.
    In my state most of the money comes from counties.
    $4.5 million isn't nothing, but my guess is that's being divided among well over 100 libraries.

    • Re:Bad headline (Score:5, Informative)

      by dgatwood ( 11270 ) on Thursday March 30, 2023 @07:25PM (#63412944) Homepage Journal

      I don't support these fools, but "completely defund" is overstating the case. Public libraries have multiple funding sources. In my state most of the money comes from counties. $4.5 million isn't nothing, but my guess is that's being divided among well over 100 libraries.

      399 [librarytechnology.org].

      This is about $11,300 per library. Basically, the great State of Missouri never funded their public libraries to begin with. In the short term, this will hurt, and some young people, particularly in rural areas, will probably lose access to libraries. In the long term, however, this will make the libraries that still exist more resilient to interference by state bureaucrats throwing their weight around.

  • by fredrated ( 639554 ) on Thursday March 30, 2023 @06:47PM (#63412856) Journal

    that Republican politicians are evil.

  • they only need one book and nobody reads that anyways,
  • by jenningsthecat ( 1525947 ) on Thursday March 30, 2023 @08:25PM (#63413052)

    The politicians who were so gung-ho for the US to go into the Middle East to straighten out those nasty Muslim extremists, are now using the playbook of those same extremists. Not that there's any hypocrisy in evidence here...

    I guess it's a hierarchical thing. Maybe some politicians get resentful when they've spent their lives fearing Magic Sky Daddy and accepting a shabby fairy tale as literal truth. Maybe they then feel the need to have others subjugated to their will so they won't be at the bottom of the hierarchy because they've created a still-lower place for the misery to settle.

    Then again, maybe they're all just shit-stains on the fabric of society.

  • There is a word missing from all the comments: Nazi. [wikipedia.org]
  • The Republicans may come off as sleazy, religious, anti abortion zealots but they still get about 50% of the vote. My theory is that the Democrats have an equilibrium of 50%. As soon as the Democrats cross that boundary and have a chance of winning the toxic side of the party alienates just enough people to push them below 50%. No one is changing their vote because of guns or abortion but there are lots of individual Democrat ideas that permanently alienate a few people. Student loan forgiveness, taking away water rights without compensation, defund the police, wealth taxes are all individually popular with large numbers of Democrat voters, but with each one there is a small segment of the population that are permanently lost to the Democrats. The Democrat candidate doesn't even need to support the issue, they just need to not condemn the crazies in their own party for them to lose the votes.
    • No one is changing their vote because of guns or abortion ...

      That's why political campaigns talk about 'tough on crime', 'small government', 'fiscal responsibility', national security and jobs: Mostly meaningless buzzwords that tell the voter which party is better. "Meaningless" because it can refer to anything, or because there is no plan instructing voters what a party will change. Sometimes the voters don't believe them (eg. 2022), most times, the voters do.

      When every social issue is political, the SJW and megalomaniacs join the party in power: That makes th

  • by jddj ( 1085169 ) on Thursday March 30, 2023 @09:58PM (#63413140) Journal

    I have a Bible for kindling. Git'er done!

  • "Since it was first enacted in August, librarians and other educators have faced misdemeanor charges punishable by up to a year in jail or a $2,000 fine for giving students access to books the state has deemed sexually explicit. "

    So they banned the Bible, which if you ever read it you'll know has many pornographic verses. I am talking about passages like Ezekiel 23:18-21 and plenty of other lewd and sexually explicit/deviant stuff.

  • Things have changed (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Calibax ( 151875 ) on Thursday March 30, 2023 @10:51PM (#63413238)

    When I was a teen (before the internet) I hunted in every local bookstore (and the library) for anything remotely akin to porn and rarely found any. Now it seems it's in every library, so much so that they all must be closed.

  • by larryjoe ( 135075 ) on Friday March 31, 2023 @11:09AM (#63414412)

    Which is sillier or more objectionable, defunding the police or defunding libraries? Both ideas attempt to use government appropriations to destroy an organization that is viewed as immoral. The irony lies in the same scorched-earth initiative being seized upon by polar opposites on the political ideological scale.

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