Rick Perry, governor of Texas

Not long ago when Governor Rick Perry was doing the publicity rounds for his book Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America from Washington, he was bragging to everyone who would listen about how much he hated the bailouts and the stimulus law.  He even held up his state as an antidote to the budget woes gripping the nation and other states.

Well, time has not been kind to Perry’s assessment of his efforts. As CNN Money reports, though Perry spent most of last year railing against the federal government, stimulus, taxes, and bailouts, his state was accruing a deficit that rivals that of California. Not only that, even though he railed against stimulus, he was happy enough to use the funds afforded to his state in the stimulus package to plug the hole in the budget so lawmakers wouldn’t have to dip into the state’s rainy day fund. Now, according to the CNN report, Texas is facing a reckoning of sorts and faces record deficits this year.

So will Texas raise taxes and dip into their rainy day fund in order to avoid harsh austerity measures that will put people out of work? Not likely.

In this report by Michael Kelley in Library Journal, Texas is poised to follow California’s lead and cut library funding to zero. As Texas Library Association (TLA) president Maribel Castro told Kelley, “”We knew it was going to be a tough battle-it always is-but this is something just completely shocking.”

State librarian Peggy Rudd put it a bit more bluntly to Kelley: “It’s a wholesale slaughter.”

Just how bad is it? Here’s what’s getting cut (quoting from the LJ story):

• direct aid grants to public libraries statewide by reducing the Loan Star Libraries program’s funding from $16.2 million in FY10/11 to $100,000 in FY12/13;

• all state funding for TexShare, a collaboration established in the early 1980s among public and academic libraries administered by the Texas State Library and Archives Commission that provides access at a reduced price to online resources, from $9.5 million to $600,000. This also would eliminate the K-12 database program for Texas public schools and their libraries.

• eliminate the state law library and put at risk about $8 million in Institute of Museum and Library Services funds, which are the sole funding source for the state’s regional library systems and interlibrary loan (ILL)

With so much at stake–lives set to be drastically changed, people forced out of jobs, resources available to all citizens regardless of their educational or economic background on the verge of disappearing–how is it that there’s not more outrage? Why are there not riots in the streets in Texas and California like there were in Greece earlier last year? Sadly, it seems the attitude of this commenter to the story on LJ’s website  sums up the prevailing mood in this country:

With as much online content available these days and with the proliferation of e-book-enabled devises, I’m wondering why we need to spend so much on libraries very few visit? … I’m a voracious reader, but I haven’t been in a library since 2002, and that was to access the Internet when I was traveling — the hotel’s connection was down. I shop at Half Price Books and I can usually find my research material online. Let’s not forget that this money isn’t going to buy books, but to pay salaries, administrative costs, and overhead.

The mind reels. (Why is this person even hanging out on a librarian website??)

For my part, I hope Texas librarians are getting ready to show Rick Perry what it’s really like to be fed up.