U.S. News

In a year in which there are dozens of anti-library, pro-book banning bills being floated in state legislatures across the country, including several intended to criminalize librarianship, Iowa has advanced their own bill targeting public librarians in a matter of days. Iowa House File 274 (HF 274) was introduced on Monday, February 10, and has already made its way out of the House Education Committee. This means that it is now eligible to be discussed and advanced by the full House.

It is not common for bills to move at such a fast speed. But bills like HF 274 are wildly unpopular with most citizens. The speed at which it has moved through the Iowa House is indicative of its partisan nature.

HF 274 was introduced by Helena Hayes (IA District 88). The bill would erase protections that public libraries and educational institutions have related to “obscene” materials. The bill would also restrict where and how minors could access the public library. As the obscenity laws are written now, minors are permitted to attend any event at a public library or public school, as well as access any materials available therein. HF 274 would kick open the door of barring anyone under the age of 18 from utilizing the library or its materials were it believed so-called “obscene” material were available.

The official White House social media accounts on X, Instagram and Facebook soon quoted his post, all sharing a fake magazine cover depicting an illustration of Trump smiling in a suit — and wearing a bejeweled golden crown.

https://archive.ph/btyqh

“Our farmers simply cannot afford the uncertainty of a potential trade war. Farm income has declined for a second straight year,” Brian Duncan, Illinois Farm Bureau president, said in a statement last week. “Uncertainty surrounding tariffs and the potential for retaliation makes it difficult to plan for the future.”

Zippy Duvall, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation in Washington, D.C., said earlier this month: “Tariffs and tariff retaliation often hit farmers and ranchers hard, which make it more difficult for them to pay their bills and grow the food America’s families rely on.”

“Yes, there will be long lines at the parks’ fee booths, closed visitor centers, overflowing toilets, and poop on the trails, but there will also be severely impaired natural and cultural resources.”

... sigh

The Triplex, the only theater in town, was a much-loved fixture, attracting moviegoers from all around the Berkshires, even on winter nights when not much else was open, Ms. Wilson said.

“I couldn’t imagine living in a town without a movie theater,” she said.

Ms. Wilson wasn’t the only one who felt this way, and after a communitywide campaign the Triplex reopened in November 2023 in a much different form. No longer is it dependent on ticket and popcorn sales. The Triplex has become a nonprofit organization relying on donations, grants and plenty of volunteer labor. And instead of leaning on the next Hollywood blockbuster, the Triplex focuses on what the community wants to see.

“In an independent theater, you can show what you want,” said Gail Lansky, vice president of the Triplex’s board. “You can show retrospectives. You can show foreign films. You can do film festivals. Free Saturdays for kids”

Certainly not all nonprofit theaters are doing well, but the model has worked, at least so far, in places like the Berkshires, where a devoted and well-heeled clientele is willing and able to support the arts. Two nearby nonprofit movie theaters in New York, the Moviehouse in Millerton and the Crandell Theater in Chatham, have attracted sizable fan bases. Across the country, more than 250 movie theaters are nonprofits, said Bryan Braunlich, executive director of the Cinema Foundation, a movie-industry group that provides research for cinemas.

Make America the late '70s again!

And this is what we voted for, somehow. Make America Crash Again!

My career covering federal grants for green energy ended on inauguration day, but at least I got my solar and batteries installed well ahead of time so I'm not paying usurious electric rates.

With base fees, I was paying $3 per kWh. Not three cents or 30 cents, three fucking dollars. $60 for 20 kWh most months. There really wasn't any reason to worry about conservation since the portion of my bill related to actual use was under 25%, and Austin Energy is a public service, not privately owned.

And there have been four residential rate increases since I moved into my van so that commercial and industrial rates could be cut. People are pissed about this.

You know what's better than $3/kWh? Zero.

Not that this is a surprise to anyone, but this is a pretty decent analysis.

A German researcher captured the contents of the White House’s “DEI.gov” during a brief period when it was not password protected.

The capture shows that the site contains a list of vague, alleged government-funded tasks and their costs, without sources or context, like “$1.3 million to Arab and Jewish photographers," “$1.5 million for ‘art for inclusion of people with disabilities,’” and "$3.4 million for Malaysian drug-fueled gay sex app.”

Trump said Thursday at the White House the U.S. could cut defense spending in half at some point in the future. The comments came in the context of Trump discussing a potential conference on defense spending with China and Russia.

Yea. Guess he's coming back for those boxes he illegally took.

Passive aggressive questioning.

lol "Man"

Others will decide to cooperate with the new regime—collaborating, in effect, with an illegal assault, but out of patriotism. Much like the Ukrainian scientists who have kept the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant going under Russian occupation because they fear catastrophe if they leave, some tech experts who work on America’s payment systems and databases have stayed in place even as Musk’s team of very young, very inexperienced engineers has demanded illegitimate access. “Going into these systems without an in-depth understanding of how they work both individually and interconnectedly is a recipe for disaster that will result in death and economic harm to our nation,” one government employee told my Atlantic colleagues Charlie Warzel and Ian Bogost.

Eventually, though, if the assault on the civil service is not blocked, the heroes and the patriots will disappear. They will be fired, or denied access to the tools they need to work, or frightened by the smear campaigns. They will be replaced by people who can pass the purity tests now required to get government jobs. Some will seem silly—are you willing to say “Gulf of America” instead of “Gulf of Mexico”?—and some will be deadly serious. Already, the Post reports, candidates for national-security posts in the new administration are being asked whether they accept Trump’s false claim to have won the 2020 election. At least two candidates for higher positions at the FBI were also asked to state who the “real patriots” were on January 6, 2021. This particular purity test is significant because it measures not just loyalty to Trump, but also whether federal employees are willing to repeat outright falsehoods—whether they are willing, in other words, to break the old civil-service ethos, which required people to make decisions based on objective realities, not myths or fictions.

Since the democratic leadership are being vocally angry at MoveOn et al. Maybe we should hear what the organizers have to say.