Baseball pigs vs. libraries
Washington, D.C., has a fifth-rate library system, at least from the perspective of the smarter people in the ‘hoods. Mayor Anthony Williams, alas, is hardly a gung-ho library booster. Now, adding to the insult, the city wants to fritter away a fortune on baseball while the libraries suffer.
Check out Marc Fisher’s column in the Washington Post today. Fisher is a baseball fan but is correctly outraged at the prospect of the city approving what the front page describes as a $440 million financing package. I don’t know what the net costs to the taxpayers would be, but this is clearly a case of socialism for rich baseball types at the expense of library users and the rest of society. Outrages like this are why the residents of D.C.’s Eighth Ward want to bring the scandal-tainted Marion Barry back to City Council. The baseball stadium is simply a more genteel form of scandal.
“‘In his l998 position paper entitled ‘Vision for the D.C. Public Library,’” Ralph Nader has said, “the Mayor stated explicitly that: ‘Libraries are a main source of information and central repositories for community history and for information on programs and places for children to learn, expand their minds, and provide a foundation for their growth.’
“‘How can these visionary ideas be accomplished when the District’s libraries are understaffed, under-stocked and closed during peak usage hours?’” Nader has asked. True.
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