The article lists some newyl funded maintenance plans for the main branch, plans that are only news because they have now been funded after waiting in line for several years, but the comments reveal that there is a perception that the library’s main use is as a day shelter for Boulder’s homeless population. The apparently homeless certainly do frequent the library and their presence doubtless keeps others away, but others (homefull? homed?) predominate. But the perception is real (although wrong, at least so far), library support is a political matter, and in politics, perception is everything.

If the conventional thinking ever becomes that libray funding is charity for the poor and indigent rather than an integral part of the social/intellectual/cultural life of the municipality, then it will just be a matter of time, and probably a short time, before we decide to lock the doors and find another use for the land–more million-dollar condos maybe.

On the surface that seems smart: those of us of such “modest means” that the $6.50 entance fee for the rec. center is a budget buster (and there are a lot of us, especially if you include the ones who think it simply prudent to keep that $6.50 in their pocket right now) probably shouldn’t subsidize those who can already spring for the fee for a money-losing class, like drop-in Yoga.

But then, every city recreation facility, with the exception of the rez, competes with commercial recreation facilities, so it’s hard to see why we shouldn’t just privatize them completely if they’re going to be run as businesses anyway.

The idea should be to combine our tax money to provide opportunities that we can not afford individually, which is the way it works with parks and tennis and basketball courts. It is plain wrong to do that, combine our money to provide an otherwise unavailable opportunity, but then deliver that opportunity only to people of means.

In a private meeting with White House officials this weekend, Democratic governors voiced deep anxiety about the Obama administration’s suit against Arizona’s new law, worrying that it could cost a vulnerable Democratic Party in the fall elections.

Absent from the Governor’s complaints,I notice, are both concerns about federal inaction on immigration reform and concerns about a state’s usurping of the federal government’s constitutional prerogitives. But then, it is an election year, and you can’t run next time as an incumbant if you don’t win this one. And there’s no future in being out of office.

It turns out that may not be the case. On NextGov.com, Aliya Sternstein cites research by Foreign Policy blogger Evgeny Morozov, who reports that he has grown skeptical of the Internets ability to foster democracy, noting that totalitarian regimes have used social networking sites to increase censorship: “The Web has given dictators the ability to mine contents of social networking sites to identify dissidents and to pay bloggers for spreading propaganda.”

Yesterday I read “Crisis of Legitimacy” on Talking Points Memo, which ascribes citizen anger at the federal government to a sense, clearly exemplified by the Tea-Partiers but widespread, that we are wallets-and-votes only, existing only to enable the will of the pow that be, without a voice of our own–at least not one being listened to.

For several years I’ve been tracking and trying to articulate my feeling, arounsed as much in local politics as in national, that the common interest of the citizens is no longer a category of thought in politics, that politicians cannot conceive of a political arena not constituted by competing interests. So their “difficulties”, the scorn with which we view them, stem from their view of life as a content of competing purposes rather than a collaborative effort of common purpose, which is more like how the rest of us see the world.

As Ruskin said: “Beware the fury of a patient man.”

Our politicians are doing that now related to movement on the previously stalled bill to overhaul financial regulation.  Acording to a N.Y. Times article:

“Republicans said that they had forced Democrats back to the bargaining table to negotiate a bipartisan accord, while Democrats said that Republicans were hastily abandoning their opposition in fear of a public outcry.”

The parties’ posings are ex-post-facto rain dances, I suspect. What’s really happening is that lawmakers are feeling the public’s outrage at the looting of the economy by the investment houses and the cowardice keeping our government from doing anything about it. And about time.

Republicans this session have engaged in “bipartisan” deliberations (which aren’t that at all but are rather negotiations over what interests will be privileged) thereby revising legislation which will pass with or without their support more to their liking, then they don’t vote for it.

There’s no such thing as one-way bipartisanship–it’s plain crazy to propose “You do what I want in the interests of bipartisanship”–so from a practical political standpoint Democrat lawmakers should just ignore their Republican counterparts as irrelevant and take the inevitable attacks on their lack of bipartisanship.

They’re going to get attacked for something no matter what they do, that’s the current M.O. of the Republican Party, and with congress’ approval ratings hovering a little south of 25% it’s hard to imagine how those attacks would do any additional damage.

“Classical music is being used increasingly in Great Britain as a tool for social control and a deterrent to bad behavior. One school district subjects badly behaving children to hours of Mozart in special detention. Unsurprisingly, some of these youth now find classical music unbearable. Recorded classical music is blared through speakers at bus stops, outside stores, train stations and elsewhere to drive away loitering youth. Apparently it works. Detentions are down, graffiti is reduced, and naughty youth flee because they find classical music repugnant.”

I don’t need any convincing– the local Sprouts market has been playing loud ’60s rock and roll to get me to shop at Sunflower since they opened. Face it–Freddy and the Dreamers, bad then (IMO), haven’t aged all that well.

France officially does not recognize race or ethnicity, holding that citizens are simply and completely French. The argument against the veil, presumably, is that requiring the veil deprives a woman of rights and so violates the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity, on which the republic is founded.

Although their refusal to recognize ethnicity seems to have caused them some problems, notably in their official inability to treat a poorly assimilated group differently from a well assimilated one and so tend to their specific integration needs, the general attitude is laudable: We are French, not hyphenated-French.

We think, or we thought, that the U.S.A. had been better at integrating our immigrant population into mainstream culture than most of Europe, but recent acts of home-grown terrorists should cause us to reconsider how good we are at it.

And we should also wonder if the conflict between the values of a liberal, secular culture and fundamentalist, religious one aren’t just intractable.