As a retired librarian, I am appalled at that head of the library board. It has always been the job and mission of public libraries to provide access to information, both print and digital. If he doesn't believe in libraries, he needs to step away from that post.
Exactly. My sister and her husband are retired librarians who worked and thrived in rural upstate New York They saw their role as providers of information. My sister, a specialist in children's literacy, and my brother-in-law as a highschool librarian, teaching young people how to navigate the masses of information everyone receives every day. Information: is the librarians turf. Please, let them mind that store.
You are so wrong about democrats not wanting to solve problems. Maybe the dems in Montana dissappoint you, but the dems in Illinois do try to the best of their ability to solve problems. Especially the kind Repubikans make for all of us!!
I wish I was back home in Chicago where I could be proud of my governor and Senators and not in godforsaken Ohio where democracy died years ago, and the nail was hammered in the coffin last November, when the GOP defeated a citizen-driven anti-gerrymandering ballot issue polling above 70% by lying on the ballot and calling it the opposite of what it was.
I generally like our IL Democrats but it’s not long ago that we got rid of Madigan or had a Governor go to jail for selling a Senate seat. We are not immune from electing leaders in it for themselves.
I totally get that you are using the library Internet access story as an example and not the main point of your story, but it is unbelievably infuriating that this person doesn't grasp that Internet access and digital resources are at the absolute center of library science today.
I'm not a librarian myself, but everyone I know who is, whether rounding out their career or just getting their library degree, thinks about databases, digital resources, and related issues all day long -- sure, of course they work with printed books and materials too, but digital access is vital. Their field is connecting people with data. The fact this person parachuted in from the 1980s or 1950s is additionally, infuriatingly, tiresome. Could he not go somewhere fancy that he'd like to go for a long weekend and take maybe a half-day "seminar" to justify the trip on "where is library science today?"
Otherwise, it's like the head of a local health department pooh-poohing this new "germ theory" that some young folks have come up with and their zany idea about washing your hands regularly. SMH.
I am a librarian and every librarian I know is passionate about the idea of openly sharing as much information as possible with their patrons and beyond. They are also passionate about libraries being a hub for, not just information, but for community. This guy can't possibly be a librarian.
I agree with you wholeheartedly. I'm hearing quite a few calls for term limits as (I assume), a reaction to the latest BS from Congress. Looks to me like folks are looking for a simple way to avoid doing their homework. Term limits, in my opinion anyway, aren't necessarily the answer - it's a blanket response that would eliminate the people who actually take the concept of public service to heart as well as the Mike Johnson and Lindsey Graham types. Taking responsibility to fight those like the local head of the library board, to engage them publicly and expose their lack of concern for the public they serve and vote them out seems to me to ultimately be the most effective weapon in our collective arsenal. What think you?
You are 100% right! Please fight back when some well-meaning person on the left proposes that. I call term limits a "sound good" solution that in fact is hugely negative. Everyone thinks "Term limits! We'll get rid of Ted Cruz/Gym Jordan/Margie T. Green." You'll also get rid of all those outstanding people you love who are fighting for you (one of the top progressives in the Senate, Ed Markey of Massachusetts, has been in Congress for 48 years!) and who understand how things work, replaced by people over their heads with no institutional memory who have to rely on lobbyists and "policy" groups such as ALEC for information. Term limits favor extremists backed by the most money, since elections feature parade of unknowns instead of people with roots in the community. We have seen exactly this in Ohio, and hand in hand with gerrymandering, it has been a factor in stripping this state of democracy.
(I should add that when I was an investigative reporter for the alternative weekly here in Cleveland, I did extensive research on this for a cover story. Legislative term limits are a far-right initiative because it gives them the ability to control legislators.)
I'm a Seattle native, transplanted to Florida (don't get me started, did it for the grandkids). "My" Seattle congresswoman (Pramila Jayapal) & senators (Patty Murray & Maria Cantwell) are all true public servants, and if I still lived in WA I would reelect for as long as they can stomach working in DC. NOT SO any of the Republican pols from Florida ... but folks here keep sending them back. I really don't get it
Whose district are you in now? I have two friends who recently left Florida, including one who left her 91 year old father behind and one who moved her 90+ mother up north with her. They were both fed up.
Well actually I don't think librarians in Montana probably make a lot of money. They would be employees of the local government, probably a county. They're not getting rich being a librarian. Maybe that makes them mad too.
Someone tell the librarian you can use a hotspot to download BOOKS. From many libraries…. Probably not his. 😖. Libraries in small towns can and do offer so many related (and unrelated) services. Some hold kids’ book clubs. Story hour, of course. Reading and a related craft. Some have legos, jigsaw puzzles, and board games to play with there or check out. What a horrible person. And board.
It’s not DIRECTLY related to what a library does, so the town hall, county courthouse, police station or any other municipal or county office (parks and rec? What with the porn and all.🙄). But the library has adult employees working at the checkout desk all day. Why not add checking out hotspots? Do the loan out records? Tapes? Books on tape? Some let you check out small tools, I’ve heard. Why not serve your community- especially in any reading-adjacent activity! (Look, here we are, on the internet, reading, writing, practicing critical thinking!)
Someone should ask him: Why is it the government’s job to provide books for people to read? For free! (Some with “bad” words. Some with characters who have sex! You know they did- they have children! Oh, the horror!)
They provide other books that cover historical events, even some that might make you feel sad, knowing that the people who came before us, ancestral to us personally or not at all, living on our continent or on others, once did terrible things to one another. This includes all of the proudly taught flag-waving “patriotic” wars ever waged.
Why are our taxes paying to give us books like that? {sarcasm}
And just LOOK at all the money they’re wasting on that guy’s salary!
(Maybe if they fire him, they can fund the hot soot program again?)
I seriously doubt that equal numbers of Dems and republicans oppose the library providing internet access. And i bet u know that the moron who made comments about library internet users of using it for porn only is a MAGAT.
As someone who has spent a lot of time in Montana, I'm familiar with the people and State. I worked on Tester's campaign and Bullock's when he ran for the Senate. I have never seen so many people vote against their own best interests. Somehow, they've been brainwashed by red hats that "fly in" that anything that benefits them is bad. Under a Republican Govenor, their taxes are now out or control, they are danger of losing cetain public lands but they can't get past their Maga/Republican mentality that causes the problems. Steve Daines and Tim Sheehy are the worst Senators ever, they never respond to emails or answer their phone at the capitol. They work for Trump and pretty much vote against Montana. They're rich, most of their constituents are not. Montana has so many rural areas that benefit from these hotspots, not only for job applications, news, but immenient weather warnings particularly since NOAA has been cut back.I sure home you sent a copy of your article to that "librarian."
You've got to love a "political party" that professes that it hates government, then offers candidates for office who win and proceed to either do nothing (e.g. not governing) or they undo what their Democratic predicessors did to help their neighbors. Again, all in the name of hating and simultaneously not governing.
Why do they waste their time and ours with fruitless objections. I you don't wnat to govern, don't run for office.
Their claim, of course, is that they're saving the republic from "bad actors" and an "alien invasion." The latter of course consists of the labor pool these business owners and fans of business use to process the meat grown in Montana, for example. In other states these "aliens" harvest their crops that otherwise would rot in the fields. A state of affairs we're starting to see across the country.
Reminds me of that old slogan from the sixties, that shouted "America, love it or leave it!" We might say the same for Republican "government": if you don't want to govern, fine. Don't, but please we have lots of adminstration in every local community that requires concerted decision-making and problem solving. If you hate government so much, get out of the way and let others take up the mantle and take care of the people's needs and challenges.
Biden’s infrastructure legislation, which included expanding interact access to rural communities, was in the early stages of being implemented when Trump took office and promised to defund it. Not sure that’s been getting much attention.
I agree with your sentiments. Unfortunately the Montanans voted out Senator Jon Tester who was doing exactly what you express. Unless the voters actually vote FOR the politicians who are trying to do good for their constituents, we will never achieve a government who governs kindly and helpfully.
Just like in Ohio. It really isn't about voting for someone who promises to give a shit a about them; it's about voting for someone who promises to hurt those they don't like.
Agreed. But there is another twist that goes along with the desire to see others harmed. Once you’ve committed yourself to hating government, you can’t abide government programs that actually do good. It’s like a personal insult to see a government function become popular. So that’s at least a partial answer to Mike’s question about why so many Republican office holders seem to want to stymie government. They’re on a personal quest to make sure their beliefs determine everyone else’s reality.
Same here. Substack says my email was imported from an external list, and Mike appears to be a Dem fundraiser so I bet I know where that came from.
Mike, maybe I’m being too cynical, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt that you imported the wrong list from somewhere, but this seemed like spam from my perspective. But since I’m here, I’ll say I appreciate your messaging in this post that politicians should focus on getting things done and serving their communities. I just hope whatever Dem campaign strategy and fundraising machinery you are plugged into, y’all are aware that a LOT of people (myself included) who have donated to campaigns in the past are in a “once bitten, twice shy” mentality when it comes to political campaigns. We have seen a huge rise in, frankly, meaningless spam from funding strategists with market-tested messages aimed at maximizing donations, which is NOT the same thing as building political participation among your potential supporters. Campaigns tend to share all too much in common with commercial advertising, and people will perceive that as fake. It’s been shocking to see, at least from my perspective, how much Dems have slowly forgotten over the past decade the lessons of what made Obama’s campaign innovations successful. The core of a campaign is substantive grassroots effort that digital small-dollar donations can organically build on; the latter is not a stable foundation. It too easily sends the message that it’s the voter’s role to support the candidate (financially and with votes), not that the candidate is running to support the voter. I know this is a societal problem of hollowed-out communities and alienation via digital media, but I hope one lesson Dems learned from 2024 was that relying on the tools of digital marketing and mass texts tends to reduce any articulation of positive-sum community-building politics to the goal of fundraising, and those goals are in tension with each other in a way that the “othering” messages of the GOP don’t have to contend with quite as much. It might give short-term gains and show up in campaign dollars, but it doesn’t necessarily convert to winning elections and worse, it accelerates the cynical social conditions for right-wing propaganda to take hold.
As a retired librarian, I am appalled at that head of the library board. It has always been the job and mission of public libraries to provide access to information, both print and digital. If he doesn't believe in libraries, he needs to step away from that post.
I assume it's some guy who ran for it as a stepping stone. Happens a lot and it sucks.
Really does suck! Can’t this so-called librarian be reported somehow for this behavior?
I was just signing in to say something similar. He sounds like no librarian I've ever met. He should retire and do something else.
Exactly. My sister and her husband are retired librarians who worked and thrived in rural upstate New York They saw their role as providers of information. My sister, a specialist in children's literacy, and my brother-in-law as a highschool librarian, teaching young people how to navigate the masses of information everyone receives every day. Information: is the librarians turf. Please, let them mind that store.
AMEN! And what happened to the Broadband Bill that was passed???!
You are so wrong about democrats not wanting to solve problems. Maybe the dems in Montana dissappoint you, but the dems in Illinois do try to the best of their ability to solve problems. Especially the kind Repubikans make for all of us!!
I live in Illinois and I think we have a lot of great Democrats trying to solve issues here
I wish I was back home in Chicago where I could be proud of my governor and Senators and not in godforsaken Ohio where democracy died years ago, and the nail was hammered in the coffin last November, when the GOP defeated a citizen-driven anti-gerrymandering ballot issue polling above 70% by lying on the ballot and calling it the opposite of what it was.
I generally like our IL Democrats but it’s not long ago that we got rid of Madigan or had a Governor go to jail for selling a Senate seat. We are not immune from electing leaders in it for themselves.
Yep
Between 1973 and 2011, four Illinois governors went to prison. Hopefully that's in the past. Blagojevich was a piece of work!
And to think they were even more corrupt a hundred to a hundred fifty years ago
I totally get that you are using the library Internet access story as an example and not the main point of your story, but it is unbelievably infuriating that this person doesn't grasp that Internet access and digital resources are at the absolute center of library science today.
I'm not a librarian myself, but everyone I know who is, whether rounding out their career or just getting their library degree, thinks about databases, digital resources, and related issues all day long -- sure, of course they work with printed books and materials too, but digital access is vital. Their field is connecting people with data. The fact this person parachuted in from the 1980s or 1950s is additionally, infuriatingly, tiresome. Could he not go somewhere fancy that he'd like to go for a long weekend and take maybe a half-day "seminar" to justify the trip on "where is library science today?"
Otherwise, it's like the head of a local health department pooh-poohing this new "germ theory" that some young folks have come up with and their zany idea about washing your hands regularly. SMH.
I know it was insane to call digital access welfare like that
The whole ethos of "librarianship," which is a word that folks in that field use, is a professional calling for sure.
I am a librarian and every librarian I know is passionate about the idea of openly sharing as much information as possible with their patrons and beyond. They are also passionate about libraries being a hub for, not just information, but for community. This guy can't possibly be a librarian.
Thank you. You are 100% correct. Thanks for your article.
Best rant I've heard in a while. You hit the nail on the head!
Thank you!! I was actually nervous to post this one haha
I agree with you wholeheartedly. I'm hearing quite a few calls for term limits as (I assume), a reaction to the latest BS from Congress. Looks to me like folks are looking for a simple way to avoid doing their homework. Term limits, in my opinion anyway, aren't necessarily the answer - it's a blanket response that would eliminate the people who actually take the concept of public service to heart as well as the Mike Johnson and Lindsey Graham types. Taking responsibility to fight those like the local head of the library board, to engage them publicly and expose their lack of concern for the public they serve and vote them out seems to me to ultimately be the most effective weapon in our collective arsenal. What think you?
You are 100% right! Please fight back when some well-meaning person on the left proposes that. I call term limits a "sound good" solution that in fact is hugely negative. Everyone thinks "Term limits! We'll get rid of Ted Cruz/Gym Jordan/Margie T. Green." You'll also get rid of all those outstanding people you love who are fighting for you (one of the top progressives in the Senate, Ed Markey of Massachusetts, has been in Congress for 48 years!) and who understand how things work, replaced by people over their heads with no institutional memory who have to rely on lobbyists and "policy" groups such as ALEC for information. Term limits favor extremists backed by the most money, since elections feature parade of unknowns instead of people with roots in the community. We have seen exactly this in Ohio, and hand in hand with gerrymandering, it has been a factor in stripping this state of democracy.
(I should add that when I was an investigative reporter for the alternative weekly here in Cleveland, I did extensive research on this for a cover story. Legislative term limits are a far-right initiative because it gives them the ability to control legislators.)
I'm a Seattle native, transplanted to Florida (don't get me started, did it for the grandkids). "My" Seattle congresswoman (Pramila Jayapal) & senators (Patty Murray & Maria Cantwell) are all true public servants, and if I still lived in WA I would reelect for as long as they can stomach working in DC. NOT SO any of the Republican pols from Florida ... but folks here keep sending them back. I really don't get it
Whose district are you in now? I have two friends who recently left Florida, including one who left her 91 year old father behind and one who moved her 90+ mother up north with her. They were both fed up.
more leslie knopes 🫶🏽💙
Maybe a few Ben Wyatts too :)
Wow Mike, Wow. Thank you so much!!
Thank you Pamela!
Great question!
Apparently they do it for all the wrong reasons. Not for the people's benefit but for theirs only
For the money, free healthcare for life, prestige and a very easy job that rakes
in big money they stash away in the caymans and Switzerland.
Well actually I don't think librarians in Montana probably make a lot of money. They would be employees of the local government, probably a county. They're not getting rich being a librarian. Maybe that makes them mad too.
Someone tell the librarian you can use a hotspot to download BOOKS. From many libraries…. Probably not his. 😖. Libraries in small towns can and do offer so many related (and unrelated) services. Some hold kids’ book clubs. Story hour, of course. Reading and a related craft. Some have legos, jigsaw puzzles, and board games to play with there or check out. What a horrible person. And board.
It’s not DIRECTLY related to what a library does, so the town hall, county courthouse, police station or any other municipal or county office (parks and rec? What with the porn and all.🙄). But the library has adult employees working at the checkout desk all day. Why not add checking out hotspots? Do the loan out records? Tapes? Books on tape? Some let you check out small tools, I’ve heard. Why not serve your community- especially in any reading-adjacent activity! (Look, here we are, on the internet, reading, writing, practicing critical thinking!)
Someone should ask him: Why is it the government’s job to provide books for people to read? For free! (Some with “bad” words. Some with characters who have sex! You know they did- they have children! Oh, the horror!)
They provide other books that cover historical events, even some that might make you feel sad, knowing that the people who came before us, ancestral to us personally or not at all, living on our continent or on others, once did terrible things to one another. This includes all of the proudly taught flag-waving “patriotic” wars ever waged.
Why are our taxes paying to give us books like that? {sarcasm}
And just LOOK at all the money they’re wasting on that guy’s salary!
(Maybe if they fire him, they can fund the hot soot program again?)
I seriously doubt that equal numbers of Dems and republicans oppose the library providing internet access. And i bet u know that the moron who made comments about library internet users of using it for porn only is a MAGAT.
It doesn't seem like a controversial issue imho
Why he is so confident is he is using it for porn. Not sure how they take a hotspot up into the woods.
Sounds like that’s what he uses the internet for…
As someone who has spent a lot of time in Montana, I'm familiar with the people and State. I worked on Tester's campaign and Bullock's when he ran for the Senate. I have never seen so many people vote against their own best interests. Somehow, they've been brainwashed by red hats that "fly in" that anything that benefits them is bad. Under a Republican Govenor, their taxes are now out or control, they are danger of losing cetain public lands but they can't get past their Maga/Republican mentality that causes the problems. Steve Daines and Tim Sheehy are the worst Senators ever, they never respond to emails or answer their phone at the capitol. They work for Trump and pretty much vote against Montana. They're rich, most of their constituents are not. Montana has so many rural areas that benefit from these hotspots, not only for job applications, news, but immenient weather warnings particularly since NOAA has been cut back.I sure home you sent a copy of your article to that "librarian."
You've got to love a "political party" that professes that it hates government, then offers candidates for office who win and proceed to either do nothing (e.g. not governing) or they undo what their Democratic predicessors did to help their neighbors. Again, all in the name of hating and simultaneously not governing.
Why do they waste their time and ours with fruitless objections. I you don't wnat to govern, don't run for office.
Their claim, of course, is that they're saving the republic from "bad actors" and an "alien invasion." The latter of course consists of the labor pool these business owners and fans of business use to process the meat grown in Montana, for example. In other states these "aliens" harvest their crops that otherwise would rot in the fields. A state of affairs we're starting to see across the country.
Reminds me of that old slogan from the sixties, that shouted "America, love it or leave it!" We might say the same for Republican "government": if you don't want to govern, fine. Don't, but please we have lots of adminstration in every local community that requires concerted decision-making and problem solving. If you hate government so much, get out of the way and let others take up the mantle and take care of the people's needs and challenges.
Biden’s infrastructure legislation, which included expanding interact access to rural communities, was in the early stages of being implemented when Trump took office and promised to defund it. Not sure that’s been getting much attention.
I agree with your sentiments. Unfortunately the Montanans voted out Senator Jon Tester who was doing exactly what you express. Unless the voters actually vote FOR the politicians who are trying to do good for their constituents, we will never achieve a government who governs kindly and helpfully.
Just like in Ohio. It really isn't about voting for someone who promises to give a shit a about them; it's about voting for someone who promises to hurt those they don't like.
Agreed. But there is another twist that goes along with the desire to see others harmed. Once you’ve committed yourself to hating government, you can’t abide government programs that actually do good. It’s like a personal insult to see a government function become popular. So that’s at least a partial answer to Mike’s question about why so many Republican office holders seem to want to stymie government. They’re on a personal quest to make sure their beliefs determine everyone else’s reality.
why am i getting signed up for posters I've never heard of? how do I stop that?
Might have been an error, I can remove you if you'd like
Same here. Substack says my email was imported from an external list, and Mike appears to be a Dem fundraiser so I bet I know where that came from.
Mike, maybe I’m being too cynical, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt that you imported the wrong list from somewhere, but this seemed like spam from my perspective. But since I’m here, I’ll say I appreciate your messaging in this post that politicians should focus on getting things done and serving their communities. I just hope whatever Dem campaign strategy and fundraising machinery you are plugged into, y’all are aware that a LOT of people (myself included) who have donated to campaigns in the past are in a “once bitten, twice shy” mentality when it comes to political campaigns. We have seen a huge rise in, frankly, meaningless spam from funding strategists with market-tested messages aimed at maximizing donations, which is NOT the same thing as building political participation among your potential supporters. Campaigns tend to share all too much in common with commercial advertising, and people will perceive that as fake. It’s been shocking to see, at least from my perspective, how much Dems have slowly forgotten over the past decade the lessons of what made Obama’s campaign innovations successful. The core of a campaign is substantive grassroots effort that digital small-dollar donations can organically build on; the latter is not a stable foundation. It too easily sends the message that it’s the voter’s role to support the candidate (financially and with votes), not that the candidate is running to support the voter. I know this is a societal problem of hollowed-out communities and alienation via digital media, but I hope one lesson Dems learned from 2024 was that relying on the tools of digital marketing and mass texts tends to reduce any articulation of positive-sum community-building politics to the goal of fundraising, and those goals are in tension with each other in a way that the “othering” messages of the GOP don’t have to contend with quite as much. It might give short-term gains and show up in campaign dollars, but it doesn’t necessarily convert to winning elections and worse, it accelerates the cynical social conditions for right-wing propaganda to take hold.