Libraries and the First Amendment

"Libraries need to be more strict about who we borrow books and other media to."

Have you ever been to a bad Library?  By that I mean one that would not allow you to check out any items?  They exist, I can assure you.  They intend for their qualification process to exclude 'the undocumented', those who lack photo ID's or other identification paperwork.  Some even require call references, and forced annual patronage under the threat of losing access to some media.  I've personally seen policies in public libraries that bar anyone from under 21 from checking out movies.

These actions do not embody the best of Public Libraries are or could be.  

Information is THE thing that lifts people up, affords actual equality, and provides a path to a better life.  Public Libraries are literally the gateway into our society.  Therein you can learn our language, stories, and sciences or almost anything else you can imagine.  This portal is open to EVERYONE because therein lie the tools of inclusion, understanding, and assimilation into what who we are.  Requiring anything more than a name and a written promise to return the material in a timely manner is creating a barrier to speech, a clear violation of the First Amendment. Enacting 'paperwork policies' including requiring bills or even a picture ID keeps some people from 'qualifying'.  Like the laws requiring a picture ID to vote, along with your voter's registration card, this amounts to a poll tax. We know it's wrong to charge someone for something that is supposed to be 'free' to everyone.  

Now imagine an 11 year old child, who is VERY sheltered by overbearing restrictive parents.  They are only allowed to read the Bible...over and over again, no TV, music, or literature of any kind.  He/she has no ID, no bills with his/her name on it, and no guardians who would provide such documentation.  As a Public Library, OUR JOB is to offer unrestricted access to any information he/she might request, in a completely private manner, period.  By refusing information to a child seeking without their parent's permission...we keep them locked in an intellectual prison, utterly denied the only keys available to their liberation.  

Information is more than power...it's mental liberation...the thing that brings awareness of individual freedom and spurs further insight and ability.  We can not and should not run Public Libraries like impenetrable fortresses or shrinkage proof storehouses, but rather as open welcoming free flowing avenues of free information.  The better more informed more people are, the better and more informed society might be.  

Library Rights are something I am very passionate about.  If you see them abridged or denied, I urge you to fight to change it.

No One Wants Your Guns

"President Obama is coming for our guns!"

What I personally want is for the United States to realize that we need to stop the crazy, not follow the guns.  This is really what 'they' have in mind.  Under the guise of Universal background checks, they intend to end the person to person private sale or transfer of firearms, the "gun show loophole"...

A lot of the people I know claim that if this ever happened, they would suddenly lose their guns in a lake somewhere.  Their fear is that by creating a database of who has the guns, they government could one day attempt to confiscate them.  This was or is in fact the way about one-third of all gun transactions occur, maybe more, there's literally no way to know...there are no records.

In fact, the law required that registered dealers destroy their records and only do 'yearly' inventory checks.  Moreover, that they were under no legal obligation to not sell to 'crazy' or 'disturbed' people, but that they could if they felt it necessary.  These are recommendations that come directly from the ATF, which even now operates sans a full time Director.  So, we've never really been all that interested in knowing who has guns, or who they are selling and trading them to.

I have bought guns both through the background check system and sold or traded them on and off the market to friends and family.  I am guessing that such actions now, would be considered criminal, including the inherited arms?

I do not see this as having much affect keeping guns out of the hands of criminal and the mentally deranged.  MOST of those people are likely not going to take the time to inquire as to what are the full background check requirements within his specific state before he steals one.  So I really see these as half measures.

What we really need is a health care system capable of identifying and treating sociopaths...

Fiscal Cliff, Averted

"Democrats are being unreasonable..."

Is it really unreasonable to raise taxes enough to pay for current expenditures?  Right now, we spend more than we take in, by over a trillion dollars, even with spending overall cut by almost 7%, and revenues increasing by 6%, last year.  We still NEED to raise taxes and begin to pay down the debt.

The markets responded positively when news of a deal was announced.  It is the uncertainty that is stifling growth, not any fundamental marketplace flaw.  Set the tax rates to balance the budget and pay down the debt.  The market will reconfigure and go forward.

That a solid year long rate wasn't affixed, and this debt ceiling was just prolonged for another few months is completely moronic.  We've got to stop this non-sense and offer better, faster, more responsive government.  The days of do-nothing stalemate congresses and senates has to end.

What we know now is that even with known tax increases coming, the market responded positively, simply out of the certainty offered.  From this we can conclude that markets want for stability and certainty, rates are irrelevant.

The Age of Aquarius

"We must stay true to the old ways, tradition, and hold back the tide of progress."

On the contrary, let us do away with the old ways, the days of Hate and Disagreement.  Let us herald in Harmony and Understanding, Sympathy and Trust.  Let us be led into no more Falsehoods or Derisions.  Each of us living golden dreams of visions, mystic revelations, allowing everyone the mind's true liberation...

By that I mean that each of us should be granted a renewed sense of freedom and liberty by truly embracing what these words mean.  We should begin to truly hold a solemn duty to the Health and Security of one another.  There are individuals aplenty in this world, without proper food, clothes, shelter, or health care.  This new age affords us the opportunity to accept new levels of equality and security for all.  This is our future.  We need but step forward and embrace it.

Let us end the old world's grasp on our society.  Let us loose the chains of traditional oppression.  Let us embrace the idea of better days through better ways.  Let us shed these skins of old and become a new version of ourselves.  

Our time to become more is now.

"It is not about guns, it is about the COMPLETE lack of Health (mental) Care, in this country!"

The SOURCE of the Violence

"Guns don't kill people, people, kill people."

As a born and bred Texan, I am a liberal who believes in a strong second amendment.  I have owned, bought, and sold arms both with and without background checks through the "gun show loophole."  Basically, it is perfectly legal to buy and gun from a private citizen, sans a background check.  I have done so maybe half a dozen times, for weapons that held high capacity clips, capable of 'assaulting & defending' any given position.  I also equipped these weapons with long and short range capabilities.  Never have I used ANY of them to cause harm to another's life, liberty, property, or pursuit of happiness.

If you made "guns" illegal, I would likely expand my collection of blades and sling shots.  I would spend time learning the trade of knife and sword making, and how to launch deadly projectiles.  My point here is that there are many ways to cause harm to human homeostasis.  What we are NOT talking about right now, is the SOURCE for these violent outbursts toward society!?

So, are there 'commonalities' between these whackos?  I use that as a strictly clinical term, but I guess a more accurate term would be anti-social or psychotic bi-polar blah blah blah.  In any case they were disturbed, NOT normal, outcasts of the social order, people who found themselves on the outside looking in.  Now, while we have all felt that way, most of us don't take an uzi to school and begin to mow people down.

Rather than turn our high schools into the TSA airport, we must begin to ask ourselves if it is worth the risk to continue to build, bolster, and beautify this "have's and have not's" mentality.  We've got to embrace a more inclusive attitude, period.  We've got to reach out to one another.  We've got to see and identify social misfits and give them a path to normality.  Even the last and least among us needs to feel as though they have worth herein.  This has to become the conversation...

But We Are Morally Right

"We are right, we don't have to change, we have to change their minds, back."

I hope conservatives go right back to these old ways, and continue to lose elections.  Times, they are a changing.  Liberals now need to embrace the fact that conservatives were wrong, and that they need to change.  It was once not morally wrong to allow a woman out at night un-escorted, in some countries it still is.

We should step boldly into the future and embrace equal rights for all, fully and willingly.  Traditionalism belongs in yesterday, and is but the anchor holding us back.  One must wonder why some cling so mightily to the past?  So Leviticus says men laying with men is bad, but it says the same thing about eating shellfish.

There are groups of protesters harassing the family of fallen troops over homosexuality, but how many placard pacers do you see pivoting about pork partakers?  It is in the same book, why aren't both rules of equal weight and value?  Do you remember the last time you left the corners of your field for the weird?

These books are thousands of years old.  Trying to legislate them into today's society is beyond unreasonable.  Claiming some moral high ground based on some interpretation of a text more than a century old would be a subjective endeavor, if ever there was one.  However, the greater sin against civility and the future is to apply text millennia old to today...

The world around us changes, and if we can not change to adapt to it, we will perish.  Languish not in the mores of yesterday, but look to the liberation and equality for all, in spite of the past.  Embrace tomorrow and we will all be better for it.

Don't Harsh the Mello

"States will face stiff penalties from federal authorities over their outright legalization of marijuana."

Why on Earth would the federal government, this executive branch, want in any way to punish the very liberals that re-elected him?  These are not violent criminals, these are modern adults who accept the reality that most people smoke weed, or knows someone who does.  They are far less violent and as long as they have coffee far more productive alcoholics, and far less dangerous on the road.

Both of these steps took the initial pre-requisite actions, by going through the 'medical provision' initiatives, while other states languish under ignorant and arcane law.  Marijuana is a medicine.  It may not be pretty, but facts are facts, people get relief from pain, nausea, and spasms from its consumption.  Threatening people with federal prosecution for providing medicine to sick people is NUTS.

The prohibition of alcohol did not keep people from consuming it, it only made a bunch of really bad people really rich.  Why in the world would we want to continue to miss out on the tax revenue, and instead pass that along to criminals.  Then at the same time turn around and PAY to jail non-violent offenders.

Spending money punishing people for taking an herb that hurts no one, and helps the patient, rather than making money from a legitimate marketplace good just seems wrong-headed.

Come on President Obama, you've inhaled, you KNOW this stuff isn't the demon weed straight from hell.  Marijuana is medicine, tax it, and allow people to live their lives without fear of federal prosecution.