Missouri Reps Vote To Completely Defund State's Public Libraries - Slashdot
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Missouri Reps Vote To Completely Defund State's Public Libraries
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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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Punk ass conservative cock suckers don't read anyway.
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by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 30, 2023 @06:50PM (#63412728)
Can's have educated voters now, that would ruin the party.
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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).
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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
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Who the hell types one letter at a time on a phone in 2023?
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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.
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it's why they keep coming out against critical thinking. It's why Trump said "I love the uneducated". It's why they keep attacking college education as unnecessary.
Give them enough time and power and they'll be rounding up people who wear glasses.-
Oh they love college in Missouri though. For the football!
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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.
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Should I mod you insightful, funny, or flamebait? I mean: all apply, not one or t'other.
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by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 30, 2023 @06:48PM (#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.
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Well, a republican might say similar things of a democrat.
They would. They just wouldn't have many actual, non-made-up, examples to point to.
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The bill to ban TikTok has lots of support from both sides of the aisle, it's the one thing they sort of agree upon.
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Billy, my boy (or my girl, depending on your bias), some people like to role play so much they do it all the time, even at work and social functions. Some of them are so enthusiastic that they get surgery to make their body more reflect the fantasy. Itâ(TM)s not very common, but if you happen to run across one, and you donâ(TM)t correctly guess their pronouns and use them in conversation, they may react very poorly to your otherwise polite dialogue. Donâ(TM)t sweat it too much if that happens
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It used to be sex, not gender. Gender was a grammatical term used for languages that have genders. Thus a female dog in France still has masculine gender. Says nothing about their proclivities or self identity. However, oddly enough, their preferred pronouns do intersect nicely with grammatical gender!
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I don't support the cut, but we're talking about less than a dollar per person. Every dollar is useful for any library, but this is more showboating than anything else.
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Politics has always been about showboating. However the trend to use politics or bills as forms of revenge or to get even is nuts.
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Both sides have become polarized to hell. When things go to the extremes you get things like fascism or communism.
Oh do fuck off. You lot didn't stand up to the bullshit from your party so now you're stuck trying to equate an attempted insurrection to wanting to fix health care in this country.
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The Democrats have moved so far to the right they are essentially Republicans. When the voters can't tell the major parties apart, they start looking for another choice (third party). The two parties can either distance themselves from the other party, or they can put on a "show for the voters" (Style over substance).
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Most of the movement has been from the right. Don't forget we're discussing this well after January 6th.
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It's not really the "right". It's populism. Trump didn't really do much things that were conservative or right wing. He appointed judges that appealed to social conservatives but he completely threw away social economic ideas. Populism is about saying what makes the crowd cheer the most, which means what the speaker stands for can change daily.
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I accept the correction. Thank you.
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Politics is like sports. Paint your face in team colors, rip your shirt off, and drink too much while cheering for your team and demanding that the other team be kicked off the field.
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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.
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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.
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Nuts are now banned in many states. Unless there's a fig leaf.
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The right wants to ban books while the left wants to cancel speech. If they both get their way the US is going to be in real trouble.
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In fairness, the right wants to ban sexually explicit or inappropriate books to minors. The left wants to cancel everyone's speech.
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However the powers on the right define "sexually explicit" extremely broadly, and think many classics are inappropriate. Few on the left in power want to ban free speech, ignore the few college kids demanding it because being stupid in college is a right of passage.
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This "both sides" nonsense is intellectually lazy and deeply dishonest. Take a minute to refresh yourself on the First Amendment and tell me if you still think both sides are the same:
The right is trying to use the power of government to ban books that contain ideas they don't like. This is about as anti-American as it gets.
The left is using the power of the free market to influence the choices made by private organizations in who they choose to platform. To petition, protest, and to freely compete in th
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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.
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Nobody on the Left wants to show children sexually explicit materials while in fact politicians on the Right are having sex with children.
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by aergern ( 127031 ) on Thursday March 30, 2023 @08:11PM (#63412908)
No one is showing sexual explicit material to children. When they say sexual explicit... it can be deciphered to mean anything LGBTQ so don't fool yourself. I've never seen a Juggs mag in a library.
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These same people don’t have any problems with the bible. No shortage of filth in that book. Daughters getting their father drunk to have sex. Women describing genitals like those of a donkey with emissions to match.
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What do you think he is? A Republican?
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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
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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.
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Let's own it. Once >50% of the country vote for something it's not un-American any more
Instead of rolling eyes at "them crazy frightened panic-spreaders", realize that they represent us and to an extent define us even if we did not vote for them
organize, knock on doors, drum up support and get them voted out
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> Once >50% of the country vote for something it's not un-American any more
I have to disagree here. Anytime you have >50% of the *country* voting for something there are voters in there voting *against* something else more than *for* anything. Most people are holding their noses in National elections and voting for whatever they think is the least shitty option, and all of the options are shitty and no one is happy with every outcome/consequence of voting for someone.
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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 recent instance).
The big point is, Republicans don't care if you die. Not whether you're slaughtered while shopping for groceries, your kids slaughtered at their school, or some white supremacist just up and shoots you. The more of you who die, the happier they are. After all, they have embraced the death cult. If they don't care about you being killed, why would you think they care about banning books?
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how many times have you visited a public library in say the last 20 years,
Hundreds of times! Which is one of the reasons that I am not an ignoramus like the Missouri Republicans.
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Also access to paid library resources such as Morningstar financial analysis with your public library card.
Missouri/Misery? I doubt that's coincidence, but I've never been.
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Today. Nothing like using both physical and electronic book subscriptions.
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Like 20 times a year? But I live in Germany, so I don't really know how public libraries in the US are from first hand experience.
In Germany going to the library is my way of "demoing" a book, before I spend money on it so I can soothe my conscious when I use the information contained in there commercially. Because while I do not believe copyright infringement to be theft or something equally severe I still mostly respect it (exceptions are stuff that's funded with tax payer money and then still being hidd -
I go several times a year and I live in a rural area that's mostly "red". I borrow movies every week. Borrowing is like renting, except for free. I can see First Blood and Sopranos and all the Fasts and Riddicks and I can get Birth of a Nation and all the Treks and Star Warses and Mad Maxes--even the old lady one. Now you might see Transamerica in there to the left of Transformers since you're looking pre-e-e-e-etty hard. But the librarians are still keeping secrets--here anyway.
Those drag queens are taki
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Go visit a public library. There’ll actually be a bunch of people there.
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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.
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Where do you think that is happening? Also, have you heard of the internet?
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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. -
by TWX ( 665546 ) on Thursday March 30, 2023 @07:08PM (#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.
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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.
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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
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Missouri is already number 30 in education.
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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.
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by fazig ( 2909523 ) on Thursday March 30, 2023 @07:42PM (#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. -
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.
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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?
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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.
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" 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.
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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
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Dont need no Readin here. No Ritin, nor Rithmatic neither!
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Duh! All these dinosaurus with their tree killing ideas.
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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.-
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.
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Rather than fight what might be in libraries. Just defund them. Worked for Democrats for the wall they voted for. And then chose not to pay for.
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they only need one book and nobody reads that anyways,
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Some quotes:
* Genesis 38:9 And Onan knew that the seed should not be his; and it came to pass, when he went in unto his brother's wife, that he spilled it on the ground, lest that he should give seed to his brother.
* Genesis 19:4 Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom—both young and old—surrounded the house. 5 They called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them.”
6 Lot went outsi
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Given the very small proportion of the population that ever picks up a book (Harlan Ellison in 'Strange wine' in 1975 quotes figures of 6% buying one book a year and only a further 2% buying more than one book a year), we need to think harder about what role libraries play. Many of the historic roles have been replaced by the internet; reference books, magazines, classic texts etc. The free provision of the latest best seller doesn't seem a great use of taxpayers' money.
This is one of those occasions the ea
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You sure there is a problem here?
Libraries don't loan books anymore, they're just multimedia loaners and viewing place, and people also get free PC access and wifi there.
I'm a voracious reader and even I don't go to the library any more, haven't used my library card in ten years. I can borrow a book with ereader, or buy it, or read old books for free online.
why waste the money?
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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
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There is a word missing from all the comments: Nazi. [wikipedia.org]
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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
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