Just decide that it’s not priceless to begin with. Then say it costs too much.
That’s how Jeb Bush handled it when it was time to put a price on our country’s history — as stored in the Florida State Library.
I am mad as hell about this issue and am ready to do whatever I can about it.
Librarians unite!
If Jeb is allowed to do this, the result could be a domino effect across the country. There is so little of our past preserved as it is. It would be such a shame to lose it all over greed. Greed and disrespect for our country’s heritage and history. Not all of it (or not much of it) is anything to be proud of, admittedly, but it still deserves to be preserved.
How can we ever learn how to not make the same mistakes in the future if there is no record of those mistakes for us to observe and learn from?
It seems ridiculous, but it looks like we’re going to have to fight more than ever for our “right to know“.
Bush winces at price tag on state history
By Diane Roberts for the St. Petersburg Times

There’s a map from 1589, illustrating Sir Francis Drake’s attack on St. Augustine, its colors still bright as summer. There are papers telling how in the early 1970s Disney transformed the groves of Central Florida into the concrete Kingdom of the Mouse. There’s a telegram from civil rights leader Rev. C.K. Steele to Gov. LeRoy Collins, asking him to stop the persecution of black citizens during the Tallahassee bus boycott in 1956. There’s the diary of Gen. Thomas Jesup, who captured Chief Osceola in the Seminole Wars of the 1830s.
It took 150 years to build the collection in the State Library. Jeb Bush, the self-styled “Education Governor,” may destroy it in a few weeks.
Housing and maintaining the library costs around $5-million a year. According to Bush, Florida just can’t afford it. If the governor gets his way, the library will close. The library’s archivists and curators will be fired. The 1-million books and documents that tell the story of Florida from the arrival of Juan Ponce de Leon in 1513 to the disputed presidential election of 2000, will be packed up and sent away.

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SAVE THE FLORIDA STATE LIBRARY and
STOP THE DISMANTLING OF THE FLORIDA STATE ARCHIVES AND MUSEUM

There is also a petition with almost 10,000 signatures on it so far.

The Florida State Genealogical Society, an umbrella organization of more than 80 societies in the state, strongly opposes Gov. Jeb Bush

All in a normal month for Jeb Bush:
First throw a big lavish party atop of Florida State University’s Intramural fields — damaging them beyond repair. Be vague about the details of replacing them.
Next, declare February “Florida Library Appreciation Month” – then lay off the entire staff of the state’s main library and move the collection to FSU — without providing any funds or resources to assist with actually storing the materials.
Bush wants to close book on library flap

Bush, who has said promotion of reading is a top priority of his second term, wants to shut down the state’s main library and move almost 1 million books and historical items, including 16th-century maps, early documents on Walt Disney World and some of the oldest photos of Florida.
The budget-cutting move has drawn fire, and even FSU said it doesn’t have space or money to house the items.
Parts of FSU’s own collection are in warehouses, and the university wouldn’t get any more money or staff to deal with the new collections…
About 4,000 people paid $100 each to crowd into a lavish tent on top of the sports fields to dine, dance and drink on the eve of Bush’s second inaugural.
The next morning, the turf was tapioca…
Meanwhile, Courtney Gallant, 22, an Orlando native and president of FSU’s women’s lacrosse club, has been rescheduling the team’s practices.
She said she has learned a life lesson from the event.
“I didn’t vote in the last election,” Gallant said. “I didn’t think it was going to affect me much. But the next thing you know, something that looked like an aircraft hangar was sitting on top of my intramural field.”

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Salon gives you a teaser:
Florida: The Sequel

…Bush has been dogged by embarrassing family problems, by deep lingering resentment over the 2000 election fiasco — and by Bill McBride, a cash-poor Democratic challenger who refuses to go away. A political novice, McBride will receive some high-profile help Saturday night when former President Bill Clinton arrives to campaign, just a day after President Bush barnstorms in Florida for his brother.
Jeb Bush is having to work hard and spend lavishly in the last few days of the campaign. He holds a modest lead in many polls, but McBride, the folksy Vietnam War hero, has kept the race close and, backed by the national Democratic Party, has rolled out a batch of tough new ads pounding the governor at the close of the campaign.

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Hey Florida! There is an alternative to four more years of this kind of thing!
Here’s a NY Times article by Dana Canedy published August 16, 2002:
New Child Welfare Head in Florida Is Drawing Fire.

The latest controversy at the agency, the Florida Department of Children and Families, involves a 1989 religious essay which carries the name of Mr. Bush’s appointee, Jerry Regier, on its cover. The essay, entitled “The Christian World View of The Family,” supports spanking of children that may cause “temporary and superficial bruises and welts” and denounces abortion, parenting by gays and women in the work force.
Women, the essay says, should work outside the home only if the family is in a financial crisis and should consider such employment as “bondage.”
…The agency’s previous director, Kathleen A. Kearney, resigned on Tuesday, after months of embarrassments, starting with the agency’s admission in April that it had lost a child in its care, 4-year-old Rilya Wilson, without noticing for more than a year…
Child welfare advocates and Mr. Bush’s political foes said the fact that the governor was caught off guard by Mr. Regier’s association with the coalition proved that Mr. Bush had acted too hastily in replacing Ms. Kearney. After her resignation, agency critics urged Mr. Bush to convene a panel to conduct a national search for her replacement.
Instead, Mr. Bush, who is seeking re-election in November, announced Mr. Regier’s appointment two days later, on Thursday. His critics now say he did not sufficiently review Ms. Kearney’s successor and made the appointment for political expediency.

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Whack back on Nov. 5
By Stephen Goldstein for the Florida Sun-Sentinel

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