Rage, Rage Against the Closing of Our LIbrary

It was a close call, but our local library won’t be closing May 1. The Cobb commission’s budget resolution last week “” by keeping the libraries, while furloughing county employees, including public safety employees.

It aggravates me more than a little to hear the spin from some quarters that my public library access comes at the cost of our police and fire protection. How did Cobb County get to the point that we have to furlough my neighbors who work for the county in order for poor people to keep their library internet access?

It’s all part of the national climate of blame for our economic woes recently heaped on school teachers, janitors, and other middle-class government employees. Library supporters are the latest in the line of scapegoats blamed by the plutocracy and their friends in the media for an economy turned sour in fact by the speculative class and their willful dupes parading around in Tea Party costumes. Both are leading the few of us left in the middle class in a race to the bottom in terms of jobs, income, and the quality of our communities.

No one enjoys paying taxes, but the reasonable people among us realize that we all have to pay for public safety, roads, infrastructure, schools, libraries and other public amenities that make Cobb County a great place to live. As a country, state, and county we are taxed at a far lower rate than the rest of the developed world.  Yet every time I turn on the radio, TV or log in to a website I am confronted with another nattering nabob of negativism bellowing about how we are being overtaxed. What about the concept of community? 

Our current tax and corporate laws and policies are designed to make the richest one percent dramatically richer, while the shrinking middle class pays for it all.  Corporations gain stockholder value by dodging taxes and eliminating and off-shoring our jobs. A gamed mortgage system left us with foreclosed neighborhoods, and millions of mortgages upside down nationwide if we can still pay for them at all.  

Republicans campaigned on cutting spending and creating jobs. Instead, they’ve taken control of Congress and are gunning for Planned Parenthood and Public Broadcasting, their proposed budget cuts taking hardly a nibble around the edges of the deficit, avoiding the hard issues of retirement "reform" and endless foreign wars while all the while closing ranks to protect their billionaire funders. 

At the state level, our wise men under the Gold Dome spend their time arguing over immigrants and trying to criminalize miscarriages. Corporate lobbyists wine them and dine them and take them on European vacations. Meanwhile, Rome burns. Or, less metaphorically, public services wither.

How many of my fellow citizens could give back their most recent property tax cuts to help make our county budget whole? It’s probably two SUV tanks full of gas at current prices, or one more night’s stay at Hilton Head. Is that worth keeping our libraries and paying our first responders a full salary? Even if you can’t drum up more than self-interest when it comes to these issues, good public services increase property values, including yours.   

Adequate police and fire protection aren’t less important than good libraries, they are all part of any strong, safe, smart community. So don’t blame me or my library-supporting friends for cuts in public safety or furloughed loved ones. 

Blame the anti-tax obsession driven by many who would prefer to kill off government entirely, except for their entitlements. Me, I’ll take libraries over cruise missiles every day. But I’m willing to pay for both for the sake of my community.