Dumb & Dumber
Yet another teaser from Drudge, this one in red (literally and figuratively) ink:
BUSH TO SEEK BIG BUDGET INCREASE FOR NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS… Laura Bush plans to announce the request — for the largest increase in two decades — on Thursday… Developing…
That’s it — this guy is determined to try to buy votes from the left, just like G.H.W. Bush tried to do 12 years ago. Didn’t work then, won’t work now, will piss off fiscal conservatives like myself.
UPDATE: For those knee-jerk Bush supporters who doubt the veracity of the Drudge teaser, here’s the story from the New York Times:
President Bush will seek a big increase in the budget of the National Endowment for the Arts, the largest single source of support for the arts in the United States, administration officials said on Wednesday.
The proposal is part of a turnaround for the agency, which was once fighting for its life, attacked by some Republicans as a threat to the nation’s moral standards.
Laura Bush plans to announce the request on Thursday, in remarks intended to show the administration’s commitment to the arts, aides said.
Administration officials, including White House budget experts, said that Mr. Bush would propose an increase of $15 million to $20 million for the coming fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. That would be the largest rise in two decades and far more than the most recent increases, about $500,000 for 2003 and $5 million for this year.
A billion here, a billion there — pretty soon you’re a Me-Too Republican.
Hell, I’m an artist and it pisses me off.
Let me say this, though: we shouldn’t be so surprised. He’s shown a consistent love and support for government social programs. I don’t see a dem that I would vote for in his place, but if, in 2008, the GOP doesn’t run someone who is a true fiscal conservative, I will vote libertarian.
Great, now moveon.org can get a federal grant to produce their next “Bush is Hitler” commercial as long as they call it performance art.
Of course, with as crude and pathetic as those commercials are I suspect Karl Rove is behind it. Every time one of those laughers runs it probably means another dozen voters abandoning the Democrats.
Well, to be honest, I have noticed an appalling lack of homoerotic, sacrilegious art featuring urine. If the government doesn’t fund that need, who will?
Drudge has also been wrong on a couple of issues this week, and quite misleading on a few others. I’ll wait until I see the actual news story before I get ticked off.
This is the straw that broke the camel’s back. I can’t vote for this man. I’m all for triangulation, but this administration is simply dreadful at it.
adkj,
Yeah, except the Republican Congress won’t go for it, just as they won’t go for the illegal alien worker program or the Moon/Mars missions.
So Bush proposes an exceptionally dubious program, maybe even speaks on it a few times, and then it gets lost in the congressional morass and never happens.
Few will remember except those who really care, and by November most of those will be the prospective beneficiaries and patrons. Is it likely to peel voters from the Dem nominee? Probably not many, but if the race is tight (not likely, but who knows?) it might make a difference in a key state or two.
Do I like it? No. It is unseemly cynical? Sure. Is it competely irresponsible? Not when you overlay the political calculus. My guess is that Rove & Co. has a matrix of four years worth of voter cross-tabs, and has probably got a pretty good sense of this.
Or Laura wanted to throw a bunch of money at the arts…
Why do we have a national endowment for the arts? Government and art corrupt each other. This agency should be abolished along with NPR, CPB and NEH.
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If it weren’t for the fact that there’s a war on and all, and the Dems are utterly clueless about it, I’d be with adkj.
As it is, he can jerk my chain on things like this. But I won’t forget.
Let me guess… all the money will go coloring the Reflecting Pool in DC a bright red, and then they’ll float a boat with a gigantic picture of Mohammed Atta in the middle?
Have I mentioned how much I’ve really come to dislike Bush over the past few months? How about how much I loathe the Democrats for making me vote for him in November?
Laurence – I could go for that, as long as they don’t charge more than say $2 for 5 shots and the prizes are good. (Sink the terrorist, get a kewpie doll!)
Whatever happened to the three source rule? This is nothing more than a headline at the moment, and already people are whining.
I don’t see Bush doing this, and I certainly don’t see it getting through Congress. No way in hell.
To those who seem to be looking for an excuse not to vote for Bush: Go over to the other side already, and stop trying to convince anyone you have a grasp on the priorities which concern the nation.
What? The NEA has been a turkey for years now. It gives money to established artists so they can pay their taxes. Mapplethorpe was known in photography circles before Meese made him a household name. Ms. Yambutt wasn’t starving (and thank goodness, I’d hate to meet her in the produce aisle). And those big orchestras, theatre companies, and galleries should make us care to see them, or they should die. Oh, and I’ve voted Democrat for as long as I could.
Government funding for the arts should end after college. Then the artists might learn to make products that people care about, rather than have us pay to tell us how awful and uncaring we are.
For some reason this reminds me of the climactic scene in “Tin Cup” where Costner’s character keeps trying to hit the ball on the green and it keeps landing in the water. He could take a drop way closer to the green but keeps insisting on hitting it from that one spot. And the guys in the TV trailer are shouting at the screen “will somebody tell him he doesn’t have to hit it from there.”
Will somebody tell Bush he doesn’t have to buy off the left to win the frickin election. For God’s sake, somebody tackle him.
Is there something in the Bush genes that forces them to follow up brilliance with stupidity?
Dammit!
And to think, when I read Phil Gramm’s comments from Davos to the effect that Bush was right now getting wise to the grumblings over his poet-on-payday spending sprees, I believed it!
I’ll say this much for Bill Clinton: I never personally felt like such a sucker during his run.
If he’s really planning this, I am severely annoyed. I’ll be much more annoyed if Congress passes it.
But I seriously doubt that these moves are really meant to curry favor with the left. Take the steel tariffs for example. Bush did the steelworkers’ unions a huge favor and they still hate his guts. So it’s a failure, right?
No — there’s nothing he can do to gain their support, but with high-profile moves like this, he can at least blunt the criticisms that the left will voice ever more loudly during the campaign.
The #1 theme you hear from them is “Bush said he would be a moderate, but he is actually an extremist conservative.” Due to the baroque political rhetoric of our time, this kind of symbolic act (e.g., Sister Souljah, welfare reform, steel tariffs, NEA funding) resides in the average swing voter’s mind as an inoculant against that kind of attack.
I hate the whole idea of government-funded ‘art’. To my mind, it smacks too much of ‘entartete Kunst’ or Stalin’s State-sanctioned composers. Art can flourish under the most oppressive of regimes, but woe betide if the State (no matter how benign) becomes your patron.
I agree with this thread in general – government sponsored art in a democracy seems to encourage art that no one would actually pay their own money to see. But about the only heartening and pleasant Fresh Air I’ve heard in the last few months was the interview with Goia – who described one of his first goals to be taken art to the military bases in this country. (His sister is career military and he actually seemed to see the NEA as something designed not to sponsor offensive art but to bring pleasure to the public.) The textbook he edited that is widely used in freshmen English is a model of depth and clearly the works are chosen by someone with more of a Great Books vision than a lrt’s throw some dung on a madonna one. Needless to say, Terri Gross appeared to be conducting the interview with her jaw dropped.
I look at as the political filly sweepstakes, we have Laura Bush pushing funding for the Arts, or we have Hillary Clinton pushing for socialized medicine.
Laura by three lengths.
Let me know when the windows open for the next feature race for first ladies personal projects.
The only one that was a winner IMO was LadyBirds drive against litter.
Every first lady has a pet project, that’s a gimme. Laura’s is at least digestible, if not a clear winner.
This is how well I reacted on my blog when I saw this bit of news.
This is sheer arrogance on Bush’s part. He actually believes he can crap on his base and we will lap it up. Nuts. He blows making the connections between Saddam and Al Queda to appease State, he blows the immigration plan to pander to the Hispanic voter, he blows the Medicar Prescription drug plan pandering to Senior Citizens and he is doing it all with my money and safety. Is it too late for a Republican Primary?
execute everyone that doesn’t work for doj, dod (to be renamed dow) and (ugh i hate the name) dohs.
eliminate all programs (and even most of dohs and doj) that don’t fall under these departments.
budget/deficit problem solved..
[Shrugs].
I regard the NEA as the spawn of Cthulhu but I will continue to make allowances for the fact that in time of war some patronage spending to keep the Home Front happy is a necessary evil. Likewise, I will make further allowances for the fact that the Maureen Dowd Times doesn’t always get it right either. So I’ll continue to wait and see.
Republican Wingnuts… Nostalgic for Clinton?
http://www.vodkapundit.com/archives/005093.php And to think, when I read Phil Gramm’s comments from Davos to the effect that Bush was right now getting wise to the grumblings over his poet-on-payday spending sprees, I believed it! I’ll say this much fo…
Tim,
Yeah, the Republican congress won’t go for it like Campaign Finance Reform…and of course, the President won’t sign it…Wake up and get a grip!
I’m as far right as there comes, and this doesn’t bother me.
It’s $15 to $20 million folks, that’s nothing by government standards. And it isn’t going to stuff like the “Piss Christ”, it’s going to go to good, decent, stuff.
Now, admittedly, I’ve been accused of having aristocratic tendencies. But there are worse things that can be said.
Again, folks, $20 million. At the most. That’s million with an ‘M’. It would have to rise at that rate for fifty years to equal a billion dollars.
Now, shut up.
I was about to lecture you all for having no vision, but I see Adam did first. Good job, adam!
Art and certain other things like fundamental R&D (NASA, nanotech) are often not economically feasible so should come out of the taxes. Lets just make art in the community interest. Can’t be that hard to fix…
I agree with Adam and keif. Lighten up folks, this isn’t a big wad o’ cash anyway. Free expression through the arts is a good thing for humanity and isn’t the type of thing that markets handle well. After all, the ‘good stuff’ isn’t even recognized ’til the artist is usually dead and beyond monetary reward.
As for the junk that often shows up, it just gives us something to laugh at…nothing wrong with that.
I’m all for keeping people busy at home with fingerpaints while our special forces tackle the real problems we face.
You know, the NEH as opposed to the NEA actually funds a lot of cool stuff, practically none of which involves urine. A lot of it goes to those small arty towns which us big city folks like to visit precisely because when you do go there, the art doesn’t go out of its way to annoy you. So if Bush had wanted to draw a nice distinction between, say, Karen Finley and the Winfield Bluegrass Festival, he could have done that.
Even so, and even though I know this is a drop in the bucket budgetwise (remember that the NEA/NEH support has always been smaller in total than the military’s budget for marching bands), considering the Bush deficit– and I can’t think of anything else to call it– this is sort of like the husband who comes home in the middle of the bankruptcy proceeding and announces he’s just signed us up to get fresh flowers delivered every week. When does the Perot constituency get a gesture of fiscal responsibility thrown at them? When Perot announces he’s running again?
Back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests the increase, at $15 million, involves an amount of money that the US government spends every 4 minutes and 12 seconds day and night, every day of the year.
Aren’t there bigger fish to fry?
I see some commenters have come in with the sad notion that art could never exist without government subsidy.
I gather that means that sometime back in caveman days it was the Neanderthal-in-Chief who came up with the idea of making pictures on cave walls, and started taxing the other cavemen to pay for it.
Come to think of it, that would explain a lot.
The news hasn’t even become official and already Michael Moore is withdrawing his support for Clark and endorsing Bush and the Republicans. His next documentary is to be entitled “Pain in the Arts”, rumored to be a patronizing and sappy look at the Bush Presidency. He’s also promising to shave, bathe and reduce to a less revolting 290 lb. (Michael Moore that is, not George Bush). It’s amazing what you can buy with a well placed $15-20M, which when you think about it, won’t even buy you a decent major league starting pitcher. Mark this up as another coup for compassionate conservatism.
What the….
Hard to believe? The sad thing is that it isn’t hard to believe at all, but it’s damn sure hard…
Bush Tosses $20 Million In NEA’s Guitar Case
One has to wonder what this madness is all about.WASHINGTON, Jan. 28
The arts should not be funded by government, no matter how small the cost, nor the social standards applied to the arts. It’s a simple matter of the free market, folks. If there is a market for the product, it doesn’t matter if the government supports it or declares war on it, it will thrive. The illegal drug market in America proves that.
It’s not the amount of money he is planning to spend on it that pisses me off, it’s that he is spending money on it at all. The only sentence I want to hear from W on the matter is, “Today I am announcing the disbandment of the National Endowment for the Arts.” Then send me my refund check and I’ll go hire my own artists, thank you very much.
Since when do readers of this blog cite the NYT for accuracy?
Let’s cut Bush some slack here. I trust him and will continue to support him even if the MSM continue to bash and trash him and anything he says or does. The coverage of the NH primary results was disgraceful. CBS – 2 seconds on primary results, 10 minutes of quotes and interviews of Bush haters.
Bush is the best hope we have right now. Is he perfect? Far from it. But is there anyone else out there ready, willing and able to do a better job?
No.
Case closed.
Maybe the money will go to Ammo after the NEA is merged into Homeland Security.
BUSH AND THE BASE
Dodd Harris has a good post on the “Bush is betraying the right” meme that’s been circulating of late. Yes, he’s proposing a lot of…
Harry,
Get a grip? I think I have a pretty good grip on what’s what.
You’re pissed about campaign finance reform and gutting the First Amendment – so am I. Easily the biggest mistake this President and Congress ever made.
So what are we going to do? Vote for Kerry? And let us lose the war on terrorism? Or do you think Kerry’s will to submit US security to the UN and France’s veto a good idea?
Or is it such a bad idea that the magnitude of its potential consequences absolutely dwarfs the ill effects of campaign finance reform and a measly $15-20 million increase for arts welfare?
But if you’d rather take that issue off the table and focus just on spending, such as on the NEA, where, exactly, is Kerry or any of the Dems any better than Bush?
Or, absent spending, is it just the deficit that bothers you? How much do you want to increase taxes? Or do you just want to tax the rich (loosely defined as anyone making more than you, no matter how much or how little that might be…)? Look at the EU – they significantly lag US productivity and wealth creation primarily because they penalize success – and the gap is growing. Is that they way we want to go?
Or, do you think the answer is to primary Bush and nominate another Republican? Notwithstanding the fact it is effectively too late for that, who would it be? McCain? He wrote the campaign finance reform bill. Guliani? He’ll spend more than Bush. Some marginal libertarian Republican in Congress or the Senate? Who is going to fund him? Can he beat Kerry, the unions, the trial lawyers, the teachers, the environmentalists, the transnational progressives, the feminists, the homosexuals, the racialists, and major media?
No. Thanks for your suggestion, but I think I have a pretty good grip.
All this bitching over 20 million dollars? Out of how many trillions?
Look, guys. I understand not wanting to involve government in The Arts(tm), but I think we might agree that completely de-funding the NEA would “cost” more than it would “save”, at the moment.
NRO is all over this, and I tend to agree with them, it’s just not a big deal. Like Kimball says (second link above), it’s not the late 80s, and “transgressive” art isn’t what the NEA funds these days.
If we acknowledge that the political costs of pulling government out of the culture business are higher than the pittance the NEA gets, we should really not pretend it’s a big deal to fund frickin’ Shakespeare.
Sigivald — thanks for linking to the NRO article.
Better to improve the NEA through “real” art, and set a standard.
You guys have your hats on too tight. Bush is selling you a $60 billion missile defense, program(which doesn’t work) based on 30 year old radars systems which I worked on for 15 years and the only thing you can find wrong is to complain about a $15 million arts spending increase. Take off those tight hats and start doing some real thinking.