Access to publically funded research

In her Library Babel Fish blog post this morning, Barbara Fister points out the many disingenuous--actually self-serving and downright dishonest--remarks made in support of the current scholarly publishing system. She concludes, "I find these logic-defying arguments based on faulty reasoning, misrepresentation of how the process works, and appeals to anxiety about foreigners even more angering than the fact that in 2009 Elsevier made a billion dollars in profits with a tidy 35% profit margin. Wasn't that the very same year that saw enormous hardship in higher education, with layoffs, rising tuition, and libraries scrambling to manage huge budget cuts? What a weird coincidence.
But don't worry about it. There is no crisis. You whiners have plenty of access to information. All you have to do is buy it."