I will guess that your subject line is trying to point out that Atlas Shrugged may be selling as a perennial. That's true, it may. Dr. Seuss certainly is. However, the preponderance of titles on the Amazon list which appears to indicate that the reading public is reading right-wing titles are not perennial sellers and don't enjoy as wide an audience as the Amazon list implies.

The gentleman from AIG has already received what is coming to him, for years. He got to keep all but the most recent installment, which he might have kept if he had been willing to sit tight and let the courts work, but he wasn't. He doesn't like some of what he got recently, which was public rebuke, worth no more than the paper it was printed on unless that paper is used to set his house on fire. I understand it hurt his feelings. A lot more people have had a lot more hurt than that.

My job and the building I work in is indeed paid for by people who have cash left over, but we don't get funded by the big boys, unless you count the ever-decreasing funding from state and local government. The average donation to our august institution is in the neighborhood of $100/year by many small donors, plus volunteer labor, used book sales, used and reconditioned electonics donated to replace our aging computers, room rentals, and several major fundraisers that require us to stand on our heads. All that amounts to about 60%-70% of our operating budget. The rest comes from government and grants and bequests. The children's programming budget and part of the professional collection are underwritten by me, and have been for years, because I know what kind of services we should deliver to the children of this town and we can't afford it otherwise. My husband wryly refers to part of our house as the Children's Library Annex.

So please don't try to scare me with threats of a decrease in funding because some guy with more than he knows what to do with is in a snit over a bunch of legislators calling him greedy. He and his friends haven't helped us anyway. I'm more concerned about the people for whom that $100 might be out of reach this year: that they won't have it to give, and that we won't have the resources to help them because of it.