[Publib] Needing Librarians

[Fred Beisser]

It's not my job, but here is something useful to consider the health 
care reform issue.It's a ten-point checklist I ran across to help folks 
assess topics arising in the President's speech tonight.

   1. In his proposals for reform, *does the President include
      litigation reform*, which 84% of Americans believe will help
      reduce costs and which is the number one goal of doctors in any
      health reform
      <http://paracom.paramountcommunication.com/ct/3370198:4741390622:m:1:146742321:2CAF2F6EA860306FB42237685217F345>?

   2. *Does he include a section on**saving money by stopping payments
      to crooks* who are bilking the taxpayers for $70-120 billion each
      year in Medicare and Medicaid fraud? For 88 percent of Americans
      <http://paracom.paramountcommunication.com/ct/3370199:4741390622:m:1:146742321:2CAF2F6EA860306FB42237685217F345>,
      this is the first place they would look to find savings in our
      health care system
      <http://paracom.paramountcommunication.com/ct/3370200:4741390622:m:1:146742321:2CAF2F6EA860306FB42237685217F345>.
      Is President Obama willing to look there?

   3. *Does his speech reject higher taxes*, which the vast majority of
      Americans believe will make the current economy even worse and
      increase unemployment even more
      <http://paracom.paramountcommunication.com/ct/3370201:4741390622:m:1:146742321:2CAF2F6EA860306FB42237685217F345>?

   4. *Does it reject all government rationing of health services *which
      the American people have vocally opposed at town hall meetings
      across the country
      <http://paracom.paramountcommunication.com/ct/3370202:4741390622:m:1:146742321:2CAF2F6EA860306FB42237685217F345>?


   5. * Does it reject any government run, bureaucratic health plan
      <http://paracom.paramountcommunication.com/ct/3370203:4741390622:m:1:146742321:2CAF2F6EA860306FB42237685217F345>?*


   6. Is* President Obama open to four or five bipartisan bills* which
      could pass with big bipartisan majorities? Or does he insist on a
      single omnibus bill of 1000-plus pages like the one that failed
      when Mrs. Clinton tried to pass it in 1993-1994
      <http://paracom.paramountcommunication.com/ct/3370204:4741390622:m:1:146742321:2CAF2F6EA860306FB42237685217F345>?

   7. *Is he for sustaining the Senate rule of 60 votes to ensure a bill
      that has wide, bipartisan support?* Or is he prepared to destroy
      long-standing Senate tradition and ram through a radical bill with
      51 votes?

   8. *Does President Obama give any indication he is for**increasing
      the power, information and choice of the individual* and their
      doctor or is he giving more power to the government?

   9. * Does he focus on health, wellness, prevention, early detection*
      and health management to avoid or control the severity of chronic
      diseases? Or does he spend his time talking only about acute care
      <http://paracom.paramountcommunication.com/ct/3370205:4741390622:m:1:146742321:2CAF2F6EA860306FB42237685217F345>?


  10. * Does his plan invest in science and technology* in order to
      increase innovation and accelerate the discovery and adoption of
      new discoveries and breakthroughs in diseases such as Alzheimer's,
      cancer and diabetes?

Fred Beisser

Backwage at aol.com wrote:
>
> At the present time the nation is engaged in a series of policy 
> debates over the future of health care reform.  If you watch the news, 
> you have seen politicians convene what are known as town hall 
> meetings—gatherings of the community which are intended to permit 
> questioning and the expression of viewpoints.  Instead of rational 
> discourse, what has occurred is a series of shouting matches and wild 
> demonstrations with occasional fisticuffs.  Nothing like genuine 
> debate, which of course requires two preconditions:  that the 
> participant have a genuine desire to be convinced of another 
> viewpoint, and that he arrive in possession of at least the bare 
> outline of the matter at hand.
>
>  
>
> It might seem that the asylums of the nation had been emptied to fill 
> these meetings, but your intelligent observer knows otherwise—that 
> these people really are a slice right out of the middle of the 
> American pie.  You hear them talking on the train and cringe; their 
> sources of information tilt toward rumor and the internet legend.  
> Obama is going to kill off old people; Obama is going to make 
> insurance free for everybody.  We are headed for fascism and 
> socialism, simultaneously, while also being left completely without 
> leadership. 
>
>  
>
> As librarians you are in for no surprise if you ask these folks where 
> they get their information.  And the folks on the train would be in 
> for a surprise if they were told that they (1) had no idea what they 
> were talking about, and (2) that they could very easily find out the 
> history, current prospects and likely outcomes of the health care 
> debate by visiting their local library. 
>
>  
>
> I am not one of those folks who believes that the internet is God.  In 
> fact, I regard it as a failure.  The only previously occurring failure 
> of similar magnitude was television, and the internet is worse.  You 
> see, television could have been something other than the “vast 
> wasteland” but that it didn’t do better has to do with its owners as 
> much as its consumers.  After all, ordinary folk didn’t write Congress 
> asking for reruns of the Beverly Hillbillies any more than they asked 
> for the original broadcast, and it wouldn’t have made much difference 
> anyhow—the folks at home are only responsible for having made such 
> shows an unfortunate part of our shared heritage.  
>
>  
>
> The internet on the other hand is terrifically varied, in effect 
> millions of television channels broadcasting all at once.  Certainly 
> 90% of what is there is trash but the viewer has a choice, and some of 
> the choices are superb—far better than the best stuff of television at 
> any time in its history.
>
>  
>
> The sin and crime of the internet comes from the failure of its users 
> to employ the thing to its highest and best uses.  Given a sort of 
> universal channel changer, they stick to the same sort of stuff that 
> appears on television.  And consider themselves “informed” because 
> they spend hours a day looking up movie stars’ profiles. 
>
>  
>
> If you suppose that I consider the average person an idiot, you are 
> wrong.  The average person is average—by which figuring idiocy is 
> rendered normal and commonplace.
>
> The ordinary person needs a guide to information.  It is not and has 
> not ever been true that most folks will on their own seek out the 
> right way to live, the better sort of entertainments or food worthy of 
> the name.  In fact, they will not even bother to find out whom to vote 
> for.  Though they certainly will vote.  And eat, and everything else 
> (and with what discernment!)
>
>  
>
> The librarian can be a guide, and should be.  At the very least to 
> sources of genuine information, which as we all learned in library 
> school (before it became information science, a science fiction term 
> if ever there was one) possess something called /authority./  It is 
> authority they need, and authority we have—in ourselves and in the 
> sound references we can provide.
>
>  
>
> Mind you, not very many will approach.  Here we see that the idea of 
> the passive librarian is simply wrong and moreover harmful.  
> Librarians need to advertise their availability and the strength of 
> their resources.  What could be a better remedy for the current fracas 
> than for a local library to advertise itself as the place to find the 
> answers, the information, the past of the whole ball of wax?
>
>  
>
> The librarian is the only reliable human guide to the internet.  The 
> librarian is the one person in town who can dig up print sources.  The 
> librarian is, bless her heart, largely impartial, generally genial, 
> and bound by profession to serve.  Who better to dust off Clinton’s 
> old plan so that it may be compared to Obama’s formulations? 
>
>  
>
> We gave them the Federalist Papers and the Pentagon Papers and 
> everything in between.  We gave them Billy Mitchell’s reports and John 
> Hersey’s _Hiroshima_.  We can give them health care in all its hideous 
> and expensive complexity.  They are waiting for the truth.  We should 
> be ready to throw it at them.   Don’t sit back and wait for the kids 
> to come by with their term papers; don’t let the internet rumor mill 
> determine the course of debate.  Maybe they won’t listen—but if they 
> don’t know the truth when the time comes to decide, don’t let it be 
> because your library didn’t point the way.
>
>  
>
> Tomorrow morning, get off your chair and put together something 
> useful.  That’s our job, isn’t it?
>
>  
>
> M. McGrorty
>
>
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