15,000 And Counting

That is the total amount of books that have been pulled from the shelves of libraries in the first part of 2023.

GOP led states is rushing to ban books and limit the excess to us mere peons.

New laws imposed by right-wing state legislatures have been a driving force behind a rise in book bans since the beginning of the 2022-23 school year, a national free expression group reported Thursday.

PEN America’s new report, Banned in the USA: State Laws Supercharge Book Suppression in Schools, reveals that 874 unique titles were pulled from public school library shelves from July-December 2022, the result of 1,477 individual book bans.

That represents a 28% rise from the first half of 2022, and the group said the escalation is largely due to state-level “stringent policies that schools must abide by when reviewing existing library collections.”

The states that have banned the most books include Texas and Florida—where Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has pushed legislation to restrict teachers from discussing LGBTQ+ issues in classrooms and where some schools were directed to empty or cover bookshelves in order to comply with the new laws.

Just seven districts in Texas were behind 438 individual book bans and 13 school districts in Florida were responsible for 357 bans.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/gop-book-bans-schools

I find this intolerable….I mean my mother never told me what I could read so why should the Nanny State GOP governments?

I mean she found my Playboy when I was 14 or 15….after looking through the pages she had one question….are those tits fir real?  Tossed the Playboy onto my bed and nothing more was ever said.

I had a very cool mother.

How far will these demented toads go?

I really do not want to find out…..do you?

All this makes me think of a term from the not so distant past….Nanny State (warning:  post will be forthcoming)

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Money Well Spent? (Again)

Since the invasion and the US throwing money at Ukraine I have been concerned with the amount of money we throw….most people just parrot the talking points in the news…..no one cares….but try to spend money the help the poor and the screams are deafening.

I can remember back when corruption was rampant in Ukraine and the US was concerned…..but those days are gone.

Looks like even the IG has his doubts on where the money goes…..

The watchdog for US spending on Afghanistan told Responsible Statecraft in an interview that he expects “pilferage” of US aid to Ukraine.

John Sopko, who has served as the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) since 2012, said that he personally favored creating a similar position for US spending on the war in Ukraine.

Explaining why more oversight on the Ukraine policy is needed, Sopko pointed to the fact that the US has already authorized $113 billion in spending. “That money is flowing like manna from the sky. If you don’t get in there soon, you’re gonna see pilferage,” he said.

Sopko said he was not just concerned about military assistance to Ukraine but also aid disbursed by the US Agency for International Development (USAID). “We’ve always had more problems with AID. In Afghanistan, my experience with them is they have not been a very well-run organization,” he said.

Sopko pointed to the fact that USAID was overseeing aid that’s paying the salaries of Ukrainian government workers. In Afghanistan, Sopko said the Pentagon directed the paying of government salaries and could never come up with a system to make sure the US was paying the salaries of real Afghans.

“Well, have you heard anybody saying, ‘what’s the system they have in place to ensure that they’re not paying ghost Ukrainian civil servants, ghost Ukrainian police, ghost Ukrainian soldiers?’” he said.

Sopko said USAID has “had a poor track record on ghosts and on oversight” and added that the State Department is “even worse.” The US has provided Ukraine with tens of billions in “budgetary aid,” funds that go directly to the Ukrainian government.

Sopko said he was worried about after the war when the US and its allies fund Ukraine’s reconstruction. “The real crisis is going to happen once the shooting stops, and they start laying concrete, and they start rebuilding things … We’re going to be buying horribly overpriced steel and cement and other products,” he said.

US government agencies have assigned their own inspector generals to oversee Ukraine aid but have resisted efforts to establish a position similar to Sopko’s. He said a “whole of government” approach was necessary for the oversight. The Senate recently voted down an amendment introduced by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) that would have created a special inspector general for Ukraine.

Earlier this month, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published a report that alleged the CIA is aware of rampant corruption in Ukraine and estimated that Ukrainian officials have skimmed at least $400 million in US-provided funds earmarked for diesel purchases.

Before Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Ukraine’s notorious corruption was commonly cited by Western governments. In June 2021, President Biden said Kyiv must “clean up corruption” before it can join NATO. But since the US began flooding Ukraine with weapons and money, the corruption concerns have barely been mentioned.

(antiwar.com)

Why does no one care?

But let some old woman get $500 too much on her welfare check and you idiots go batcrap crazy.

The whole population cannot be on the payroll of the ‘security consultants’….so why is the funds being thrown away acceptable?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”