ObamaCare Pushing Librarians Out of Work; What Goes Around Comes Around

As a direct result of ObamaCare, librarians in Brevard County, FL, may be losing their hours:

• "Brevard County to Cut Back Hours for Some Part-Time Employees," by Bob Opsahl and Melonie Holt, WFTV 9, 23 July 2013 (hyperlink omitted):

  Brevard County has over 300 part-time workers, many of whom are in the library and parks systems.
  
  While officials don't necessarily want to reduce hours for those employees, they'll be forced to unless the county wants to pay for full-time health benefits.

Librarians had been ordered by the American Library Association [ALA] to push ObamaCare, that is until it cut back on the severity of its message to make it appear optional after librarian push back, as only I reported, and the self-arrogated censorship police voluntarily agreed to suppress President Obama's speech to #ALA2013 and the video has not yet been made available:

• "Librarians Refuse ALA Obamacare Push; Wanted: Video of President Obama Speech at ALA Conference; Lenny Kravitz's Message for Librarians," by Dan Kleinman, SafeLibraries, 5 July 2013.

ObamaCare is a larger invasion of privacy than the National Security Agency [NSA] scandal:

• "Obamacare Data Hub a 'Honey Pot' for ID Thieves, Warn Critics," by Paul Bedard, The Washington Examiner, 22 July 2013.

• "Obamacare's Branch of the NSA; Community Organizers Will Use a Federal Data Hub to Sign Up People for Subsidies — and Even Ballots," by John Fund, National Review Online, 22 July 2013.
• "The NSA Programs and the Federal Data Hub," by Andrew C. McCarthy, National Review Online, 22 July 2013.

Although ObamaCare is a worse invader of privacy than the NSA, ALA is exhorting people to oppose NSA on privacy grounds:

• "Ask Your Representative to Vote YES on Amash Amendment," by Action Alert, American Library Association, 23 July 2013:

  On Wednesday, July 24, the U.S. House of Representatives will vote on the Defense Appropriations Bill (H.R. 2397).
  
  Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) has introduced an amendment to the bill that would stop funding for the NSA's warrantless surveillance programs.
  
  Please ask your Representative to vote YES on the Amash amendment.  This amendment is a strong vote against the NSA's warrantless surveillance programs and bulk metadata collection.
  
  Click "Call Now" for calling information and talking points.

• "Act Now: Support the Amash Amendment to Stop Funding NSA Surveillance," by Jazzy Wright, American Library Association, 23 July 2013.
• "Act Now: Support the Amash Amendment to Stop Funding NSA Surveillance," by Choose Privacy Week, American Library Association, 23 July 2013.   [In full disclosure, Choose Privacy Week has a single major donor who paid for and enabled the work the ALA does to give the impression ALA cares about privacy while promoting Open Society Institute messages the public would not otherwise accept.  That person is George Soros.  See "Know the ALA" for details.  The Choose Privacy Week site is basically a wholly owned subsidiary of the Open Society Institute, though it is not promoted as such.]
• "FTRF, ALA Join Efforts to Protect Privacy and Increase Transparency Around Surveillance," by American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom, OIF Blog, 18 July 2013.

As to Brevard County, its library already bowed down to the ALA's demand to allow pornography into its public libraries:

• "NCAC Pushes Porn on Libraries; Fifty Shades of Grey Propaganda: Brevard Buckles, Harford Holds," by Dan Kleinman, SafeLibraries, 13 June 2012.

Now it is bowing to the ALA again, this time on ObamaCare:

• "Local Libraries To Help Feds in ObamaCare Outreach," by Charles Parker, Brevard Times, 4 July 2013.

So librarian hours are being shrunk by ObamaCare, the so-named Affordable Care Act.  Not for Brevard County librarians it's not affordable.  They supported ALA's porn push and more recently ALA's ObamaCare push, and now they may lose work and medical benefits as a direct result.  Sad to say, but what goes around comes around.

URL of this page:  safelibraries.blogspot.com/2013/07/ObamaCareHurtsLibrarians.html

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Librarian May Lose Job for Stopping Child from Viewing Porn in Salinas Public Library

You can't make this stuff up.  A librarian in the Salinas Public Library may lose her job for stopping a 10 year old boy from viewing pornography on the library's unfiltered computers.  See "10-Year-Old Caught Surfing Porn At Library; Librarian Reprimanded For Reaction," by Action News 8, KSBW-TV, 14 May 2010.

Notice the library director spouting the usual misleading statements:

Library director Elizabeth Martinez said patrons have right to information and the filters would block out more than just the bad stuff.

"That's part of the complexity of the issue.  (If) you want to do research on a certain body part you might not get those sites because it blocks the whole thing.  A computer can't think," Martinez said.

How misleading.  The US Supreme Court already asked and answered that overblocking concern in US v. American Library Association.  All you do is ask for the filter to be temporarily disabled.  Yet the library director misleads the community by reraising the issue as if it were new and as if no solution were available.

However, notice people are starting to get wise to library propaganda.  Most encouragingly, it was the threatened librarian herself who spoke up:

But [librarian Elizabeth] McKeighen said filters have advanced in recent years.

"This is an issue.  It happens all the time, every day.  And while the solution is very challenging, to ignore the problem is only going to exacerbate it and make it worse," she said.

Indeed, filters have advanced so much even the ACLU now argues filters are 95% effective and no longer block health-related information.  The library director's not mentioning this is another way she is misleading the community.

I hereby request librarian Elizabeth McKeighen be publicly recognized for her common sense, and the community should consider using Internet filters, especially where library director Elizabeth Martinez misleads the public so seriously, leaving children open to harm.  If the library director continues to obfuscate, remove her.

Hat tip: "Librarian Reprimanded For Reaction," by Bibliofuture, LISNews, 14 May 2010.

Let me add that this story reminds me of the

• mother kicked out for complaining about child porn, or the
• librarian fired for writing anonymously about library porn viewing, or the
• library employee fired for reporting child porn to the police, or the
• mother banned for six months then beaten for complaining about children violating library policy, or the
• Roswell Public Library director saying children may access porn, or the
• Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library saying children should access Playboy, or the
• San Jose Public Library commissioner flat out lying about Internet filters, or
• libraries generally thwarting child porn investigations, or the
• librarian blowing the whistle on orders to cover up child porn viewing, or
• Sonoma County wanting filters but the library director refusing to comply, etc. 

This is directly relevant:

"On First Amendment grounds, library officials refused to intervene when patrons used library Internet stations to display sexually explicit material."  "[T]he administration's laissez-faire attitude led to overt acts of harassment, such as catcalls, masturbation, physical threats and stalking by patrons."  "[T]he issue of whether a library can put restrictions on its patrons' choice of Internet material has largely been rendered moot by the U.S. Supreme Court's June decision in U.S. v. [ALA:]  A library's need to exercise judgment in making collection decisions depends on its traditional role in identifying suitable and worthwhile material; it is no less entitled to play that role when it collects material from the Internet than when it collects material from any other source."  "[T]he administration was so loath to interfere with the viewing choices of its patrons that it chastised a security guard for telling a 6-year-old boy that he shouldn't be looking at pornography."  "[T]he library fell under occupation by about 25 'sex addicts' who came in every day to use the terminals, deliberately tried to embarrass and intimidate the staff, lured children into viewing pornography and made violent threats."  "[Librarians were] chastise[d] by the administration 'for daring to think that they had rights in this area.'"  "The pornography that came into the librarians' workplace via the internet created a hostile environment for their work because they were women. This is sex-based abuse, not protected freedom."

Source: "No Smut At Work, Please," by Gary Young and Staff Reporter, The National Law Journal, 15 September 2003.

Elizabeth McKeighen was daring to think.  Elizabeth Martinez is misleading the community so it doesn't think.  See the difference?  Is that acceptable to Salinas, CA, residents?  Please comment below.

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