Camden's planned library budget cuts say a lot about budget cutting

[Commentary] From a distance, what's gone so wrong for so long in Camden seems overwhelming. Look closer and most of the city's calamities emerge as the result of individual decisions -- many made by elected officials, often under fiscal duress. For the latest example, consider Mayor Dana Redd's singularly shortsighted plan to eviscerate the modest but well-patronized Camden Free Public Library. There will be those who see any public money spent in Camden as a waste. They will cheer closing city libraries as evidence that the bloodthirsty beastie called government is at long last being tamed. But in the real world, the loss of places to read, or to be read to, or to search online for a job is a practical, not a philosophical, matter. It would mean another loss in a city that's undergone far too many losses.