Monday Morning Read

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Read on for nuggets you may have missed, and subscribe to WeeklyPost for a heads up every Sunday.

The editors of Time magazine inveigh against “alarming efforts to politicize and defund libraries,” particularly by right-wing activists.

The Time magazine piece reflects the fears Buffalo and Erie County Public Library Director John Spears spoke of in a recent Buffalo News article, saying “If people think this couldn’t happen here, they’re wrong.”

In an earlier interview with Investigative Post, Spears spoke of the importance of libraries in society, suggesting that they are one of the few remaining community spaces people can use freely.

Time’s editors echoed Spears, writing, “Libraries are often the one place in any community or on any campus where individuals can visit at no cost and without regard to class, education, citizenship, or other demographic characteristics, without justification or need for permission.”

Other good reads:

• The Buffalo News editorial board last week weighed in against permits and tax subsidies for a proposed plastics manufacturing facility in Lockport. Our J. Dale Shoemaker reported on both the plant’s environmental risks and the company’s submission of a fake, AI-generated study in support of its application for tax breaks.
• Everyone has heard how New York State is bungling the rollout of retail licenses for adult-use cannabis. It turns out the state is messing up on testing the merchandise, too. A report from Syracuse.com found popular strains sold at adult-use retail shops contained  “microbial levels 10-250 times higher than what’s allowed under the state’s rules for medical cannabis.”
• New York Focus reports that the state’s plan to license three new casinos in and around New York City is the death knell for a small, underperforming casino in the Catskills town of Thompson, which is a major source of tax revenue and jobs for Thompson and its residents.
• Anita Dunn is a top adviser to Joe Biden. The communications firm she co-founded, SKDK, is a go-to consultancy for a laundry list of big-name Democrats. The firm also has contributed to an effort to aid victims of sexual harassment bring claims against their harassers. Which makes it weird, NPR reports, that Dunn advised the former Speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives when he was being sued by one of these victims, with assistance from SKDK.
• NPR also reported on a lawsuit brought by a conservative group against West Point seeking to end “all racial considerations in the service academy’s admission program.” The U.S. Supreme Court exempted the nation’s military service academies from its June ruling striking down race-based admissions criteria at colleges and universities.
• Sanctioned Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich appears to have divested himself from previous investments in for-profit companies spun off from Roswell Park Cancer Institute, with which he had a longstanding relationship. The Organized Crime and Corruption Project, learned that Abramovich — many of whose assets have been seized or frozen in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — has managed to hold on to his billion-dollar art collection.
• Reader’s Digest dubbed Buffalo “the nicest place in America.” The story describes how residents supported, even saved, one another during last year’s crushing Christmas blizzard, which killed 40 people. Wouldn’t Buffalo be nicer still if we had competent governments that maintained intelligent emergency response systems?
• Meet the late Hank Asher, a colorful former South Florida drug-runner — and “the ghost in the machine” who pioneered digital data-tracking systems that tell corporations and law enforcement an alarming amount about you and your life.

Geoff Kelly