comment no. O

Admittedly it's refreshing to see President Obama cast as The Man, but some pundits have been starry-eyed enough to think his re-election is assured. How can they be so short-sighted? Have they forgotten Poppy Bush after Gulf War I? His approval ratings shot up far higher than Obama's, yet he lost the next election without any dramatic reversals of events. The economy dragged him down, I think, as it could drag Obama down, but also remember that approval is not indivisible. Had I been polled immediately after Gulf War I, I'd have had to say that yes, right then I thought that President Bush was doing an excellent job. But if they'd asked the next question, "And do you intend to vote for him next year?" I'd have replied, hell no. Why? I disapproved of his domestic policies. So I don't see why anyone who dislikes Obama's policies today is likelier to vote for him next year just because he can get the bad guy.

comment no. C

jpmassar has some comments on the Canadian election. Here's some more.

a) This is the Conservative Party's first absolute majority since its predecessor, the so-called Progressive Conservatives, in the Mulroney days in the 80s. It's also only the third time in federal history that the Conservatives under any label have been the largest party for as many as three elections in a row.

b) While the national trend of seats away from the Liberals and towards the Conservatives and NDP appeared in the Atlantic and Western provinces, it wasn't dramatic there. The famous volatility of Canadian politics expressed itself entirely in Ontario, where the Conservatives gained a net 22 out of the total 106 seats, and were thus responsible for tipping it over into a majority, and in Quebec, where the Conservatives actually lost seats, but the Bloc was virtually demolished in favor of the NDP, which now has 3/4 of the province's seats after having previously won only two there in its entire history. Once before, a party born in Western Canada found the bulk of its support transferred to Quebec; this was Social Credit, which has not been heard of in twenty years.

c) NDP becoming the official opposition, which it never has been before, may aid the Conservatives in positioning themselves as the only "moderate" choice (not that today's Conservatives are as moderate as their predecessors), which would not be good for the NDP's cause. On the other hand, if the NDP are seen as the only alternative to the Conservatives, they'll be the ones to pick up the pieces when the Conservatives inevitably fall. On the third hand, exposure to power or even Official Opposition could cause the inexperienced NDP to implode; it's done so on the provincial level before. And don't count the Liberals out: they've been nearly wiped out before (1958 and 1984) and have come back; they're arrogant and Canadians think humiliation does them good, but they're also less incompetent.

comment no. L

Local budget crises hereabouts have generated a new idea: fees for public library cards for patrons who reside in some other public library's service area. (At the moment there are none, and I have cards for five of the seven public library systems in the county.) The logic is that libraries are supported by local taxes as well as state and federal funds, and people from outside the geographic tax base are getting a discounted ride.

Surprisingly, perhaps, I'm not necessarily opposed to such an idea. I wrote a detailed report on library fee policies when I was in library school many years ago. At that time the issue was mostly over special services like inter-library loan and computer access (no web then; public library computer services of the day were mostly mediated searches in expensive proprietary scientific databases), though non-resident fees were also discussed, albeit rarely implemented. Everybody allowed late fees, but there was strong distaste for any other fees, and one principal argument against them: that library services were important enough that they ought to be supported by the community at large, rather than dinging the individuals who happened to need them.

Now, I am not a libertarian, and I'm all in favor of services being supported by the community at large. But I didn't consider this a very strong argument, for several reasons. First (and least relevant to the current case), this wasn't general services, but unusual, special-purpose ones. Second, I think you can draw a philosophical distinction between supplying your own tax base free of individual charges, and charging outside your tax base. (State colleges have differential in-state and out-of-state tuition.) And thirdly: if libraries are that important, isn't public transit? The poor or handicapped may not even be able to get to the library without a bus. Yet transit, though massively publicly subsidized, charges user fees every time you get on it, and there's no discount for people in living in the service area. If you can charge bus fares, you can charge public library fees.

However. In economic history, I was taught the difference between a revenue tariff, which is designed to raise money, and a prohibitive tariff, which is designed to discourage trade in the item. The $80 fee being enacted here is a prohibitive tariff, not a revenue one, and I think that's bad news. They estimate a near-total disappearance of out-of-service-area users. But considering the extent the libraries are used (and this library system's parking lots are the most notoriously crowded in the county), that will only put greater pressure on the other libraries, and they may be forced to do the same thing, which will lead to a bunch of libraries that aren't getting more money - prohibitive tariffs are not intended to raise money - but that are glaring at each other with hostility and making life more difficult for their users.

It may be, though, that even a small fee would wind up being prohibitive rather than revenue-raising. The library enacting the fee is not part of the big and staggeringly convenient automated patron-operable ILL system that covers much of the state, but five of the six other library systems in the county are members, and their patrons who need to borrow books their own library doesn't have may be content with that. On the other hand, ILL is not always a convenient answer, and patrons have other needs. That this library's branches are open more hours and have more computers than other local libraries is a big selling point.

B. and I, however, don't need a library's computers. What we need is lots of books, and it's the opportunity for diminished patronage to be an excuse for fewer book purchases that worries me. We use this system a lot - its nearest branch is actually closer to our home than our own city library is - so I expect we'll pay the annual fee for one account to share (if we can get away with that), and then watch to make sure they still have the new books we need.