Tag Archives: books

by - 0 comments

Selling Freedom: The Libertas Institute is Coming to Oregon

Histrionic stories about Prager U, a nonprofit (not a university) which produces and distributes conservative videos and online programming aimed at millions of young people in homes and schools across the country, are commonplace in the media.

“PragerU and its right-wing propaganda machine spreads racist poison,” says Daily Kos. 

“…more than a few (of PragerU’s videos ) function as dog whistles to the extreme right ,” says the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Regardless of such reproval, in September 2023 PragerU won state approval to offer online classes to high school students in New Hampshire, in July 2023, the Florida Department of Education approved PragerU materials for use in classrooms as supplemental resources and recently PragerU became a state licensed vendor in Texas. Oklahoma and Montana are also allowing videos from PragerU in classrooms.

Meanwhile, flying under the radar almost unnoticed by media, there’s another outfit pursuing similar outreach efforts, the Lehi, UT-based Libertas Institute. 

The Libertarian Institute describes itself as “a 501(c)3 non-profit “think tank” and educational organization” with a “mission to change hearts, minds, and laws to build a freer society…” and an “educational media platform dedicated to promoting pro-American values.” 

And now it has set its sights on Oregon.

Founded in 2011, in the policy arena Libertas works on reforming state and local laws in Utah, but it also partners with similar free market-oriented groups and legislators in other states to pursue reforms initiated by Libertas. 

Some of its current policy focus areas are affordable housing, legal services, employing ex-offenders, consumer privacy and portable benefits for gig workers.

Reaching outside Utah, Libertas, like PragerU, produces what it considers “educational materials” aimed at children. This includes a variety of print and audio books and YouTube videos, as well as a free-market curriculum that teaches economics to children. To some extent, Libertas is a provocateur in this space.

It also runs a Children’s Entrepreneur Market program “to provide a direct experience for youth to apply their knowledge and experience the benefits of operating a small business”. The program is described as facilitating “A farmers’ market…run entirely by KIDS!”

In December 2023, Libertas appealed for donations so it could expand The Tuttle Twins’ Children’s Entrepreneur Markets into 11 more states, including Oregon. 

The Institute supplements all this material with free market-focused books such as “Mediocrity: 40 Ways Government Schools are Failing Today’s Students”.

Libertas also supports homeschooling with its Tuttle Twins Free Market Rules! Curriculum, a comprehensive resource for teaching students about money and economics.

And then there’s the Libertas Institute Hoodie for $27.99. “You’ll become an evangelist for freedom as friends ask you what Libertas is all about — be ready to spread the good word!”, says the Libertas website.

Arguing that there’s a rot inside American culture that needs to be confronted and that liberals have made a squalid mess of things, Libertas asks, “Are your children being brainwashed? …most curriculum is dumbed down and leaves out the essential civic truths that children and adults need to know. That’s why we’ve made it our mission to create books and curriculum materials that teach students the values of a free society — ideas that support your family values.”

The Tuttle Twins books are a core element of Libertas’ proselytizing efforts. Libertas says it has sold 4 million copies of the Tuttle Twins books, endorsed by right-wing radio host Glen Beck, that “help you teach your kids how the world really works…” 

                                  The Tuttle Twins Books

Some of the books are available at Oregon libraries. “We had several patron requests for The Tuttle Twins books at our library,” Beka Murcray at the Molalla Public Library told me. “So, we purchased them and they have circulated fairly okay.”

A cartoon on the Tuttle Twins website has a mother wielding a Tuttle Twins shield while protecting her frightened children, absorbing the arrows of socialism, Marxism, collectivism, and media lies.”

In The Tuttle Twins and the Road to Surfdom, the twins “find in their latest adventure, central planning can ruin people’s lives.” In The Tuttle Twins and the Little Pink House, “When a greedy corporation schemes to take over Grandma’s land and push her house into the river, can the twins stop it and come to her rescue?”

According to reports submitted to the IRS, Libertas’ revenue totaled $13,904,104 in 2022 and $14,360,260 in 2021. Of that, $10,841,883 came from “Education Material Sales” in 2022 and $10,638,576 in 2021. “We sell a lot of books and things, but the bulk of the revenue is from our Tuttle Twins books, curricula, and other materials,” Connor Boyak, Libertas’ president, told me in an email. Libertas reported selling1.55 million books in 2021 and 975,000 in 2022.

Some are fulsome in their praise of the books. “The Tuttle Twins is a set of beautiful books that use storytelling to teach about economics, civics, socialism, and entrepreneurship. So basically everything that is NOT taught in public school.” writes Homeschool Curriculum Reviews. “I am learning right along with my kids as we explore how money works, what the free market really is, and what our freedom actually means.”

Others are almost apoplectic in their condemnation of the series. Rob Larson, a professor of economics at Washington’s Tacoma Community College, describes the books in Current Affairs as “…jammed…with pro-market economic vocabulary and stale right-wing life lessons”. 

Larson goes on to acidly condemn them as “…among the most wretchedly contrived, grotesquely unethically indoctrinating, cliché-ridden heaps of steaming garbage I’ve ever had the misfortune to read. Written to bring young people into one of the most disgraceful political tendencies in the world before they have the critical thinking skills to recognize it, it is a hideous fraud and an ugly twisted farce.”

Though not yet a broadly recognized brand, Libertas clearly aspires to be one. Having grown its revenue almost ten-fold since its founding and vastly expanded its products and programs, it has simultaneously extended its presence across the country.  

Whether you see it as a force for good or malignant propaganda, expect to hear more about this crusading Libertarian outfit in Oregon.

by - 0 comments

A truly depressing visit to a Barnes & Noble store

In the 1998 movie “You’ve got mail”, Meg Ryan, the owner of a small, neighborly bookstore, feared the consequences of a new colossal and impersonal big box bookstore opened nearby by Tom Hanks.

Maybe she should have waited a decade.

Then she’d have seen a seen a seismic shift, with big-box book stores threatened on every front. That threat is vividly on display at the Barnes & Noble store at Bridgeport Village in Tigard, which seems to be giving up on the old-fashioned printed word.

On a recent visit to the store, I was first confronted with a brightly lit space featuring not newly-released print books, but the Nook eReader, released in the U.S. in the distant past of November 2009.

After passing through the Nook display, I anticipated racks of books that were there when the store was a Borders superstore. Instead, I encountered a large area that felt like I was back at Woolworth’s, a five-and-dime chain that flourished in the 1900s before succumbing to competition in 1997.

Spread around the space were displays for “greeting cards,” “stylish stationary and groovy gifts,” “quirky and cool gifts,” candles & scents,” and “lunch bags”. No print books in sight.

Surely there would be books around the corner, I thought. Nope. That space is occupied by the Barnes & Noble Café.  How about beyond that? No books there either. That’s occupied by racks of magazines, from Psychology Today, US and Vanity Fair to Comic Heroes, Buddhadharma and Clean Eating.

Rows of print books were only in the middle of the first floor, adjacent to an escalator with a “Temporarily out of order” sign. Prescient perhaps.

I took the elevator up to the second floor expecting an expansive area crammed with books. Again there were rows of print books in the middle of the floor, but also a large space featuring “Building,” “Learning” and “Arts & Crafts”. Filling the space were LEGO kits, kid’s toys, Sparkle Tattoos, Feather Fashions, a Perfume Science Kit and venerable games like Twister, Sorry and Clue.

All of this doesn’t bode well for Barnes & Noble’s once mighty print book and magazine retail stores.

Those stores, which have been generating most of the company’s profits, have been dealing with a slow decline for years. Revenue from retail stores in the third quarter ending Jan. 25, 2014, for example, fell 6 percent to $1.4 billion. Revenue in stores open at least one year, a key retail metric, fell 4.9 percent.

All this despite the bankruptcy of Barnes & Noble’s principal competitor, Borders, in 2011.

This is consistent with the numbers on printed book sales at retail stores across the country. Government statistics show that overall bookstore sales have been treading water since 2003, with printed book sales through retailers taking a big dip in 2011, 2012 and 2013.  Meanwhile, eBook sellers, which offer a wider selection and lower prices, continue to grow.  Even Barnes & Noble’s former CEO William Lynch told a Bloomberg reporter he read his books on a Nook. “I don’t really read physical books that much anymore,” he said.

The market for print magazines, the other big print section of the Barnes & Noble store, isn’t booming either. Single copy sales of print magazines dropped 11, 9, 8, 9 and  8 percent annually during 2008 – 2012.

The economic picture for print magazines is gloomy, too. Total ad pages for the 211 magazines tracked by the Publishers Information Bureau in 2012 fell 8.2 %, to 150,699 for the year – a substantially sharper drop than the 3.1% drop seen in 2011.

 Maybe it won’t be long before Barnes & Noble has to close the book on its retail print book and magazine stores.
ImageImageImageImage