A spoils system also accommodates those GOP shibboleths that represent LBJ’s Great Society beyond their usual attack on civil rights, so anything else remotely undermining the US ruling class becomes fair game. Maybe this time around the fiscal hawks get to catch the car they’ve been chasing and eliminate the NEA and NEH. Because obscenity is best left to the White House (MakeAmericaGropeAgain).
“Grandiose oil portraits of former government agency heads continue to cost taxpayers roughly $20,000 for each new painting.” (Heritage Foundation)
Here’s the giant portrait Donald Trump commissioned of himself with charity money (only $10,000) … but not Grandiose! SAD!
Yet there will be no “budget balancing”, probably another MIC war or something resembling it, and expecting arts investment from POTUS45* will be much like the financing of auction art. And more will still be spent on military bands.
But wait, how is it that the Heritage foundation gets to write government policy… see ALEC, as if overwhelming force was the same as choosing easy targets. Like cutting .009% of the Federal Budget does … what?
Corp for Public Broadcasting would be privatized, National Endowment for the Arts would be eliminated entirely https://t.co/4kRG3iUcNL
The Heritage blueprint used as a basis for Trump’s proposed cuts calls for eliminating several programs that conservatives label corporate welfare programs: the Minority Business Development Agency, the Economic Development Administration, the International Trade Administration and the Manufacturing Extension Partnership. The total savings from cutting these four programs would amount to nearly $900 million in 2017.
At the Department of Justice, the blueprint calls for eliminating the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, Violence Against Women Grants and the Legal Services Corporation and for reducing funding for its Civil Rights and its Environment and Natural Resources divisions.
At the Department of Energy, it would roll back funding for nuclear physics and advanced scientific computing research to 2008 levels, eliminate the Office of Electricity, eliminate the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and scrap the Office of Fossil Energy, which focuses on technologies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
Conservatives allied with fiscal hawks such as Pence, Paul and the Heritage Foundation say the time is long past due to get serious about cutting the federal deficit.Under the State Department’s jurisdiction, funding for the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, the Paris Climate Change Agreement and the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are candidates for elimination.
The National Endowment for the Humanities provided $47,000 for undergraduate classes that teach students about laughing and the nature of humor. The classes will focus on how humor differs between cultures and how it can be used to deal with tragedies. (Heritage Foundation)
“The Trump Administration needs to reform and cut spending dramatically, and targeting waste like the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities would be a good first step in showing that the Trump Administration is serious about radically reforming the federal budget,” said Brian Darling, a former aide to Paul and a former staffer at the Heritage Foundation.
”…the administration’s craven response was to dump Frohnmayer from his job as head of the arts-funding agency” (1992)
‘Craven’
David Broder (1992) When Patrick J. Buchanan decided to steal a leaf from Jesse Helms’s playbook and add the anti-pornography theme to his know-nothing campaign against President Bush, the administration’s craven response was to dump Frohnmayer from his job as head of the arts-funding agency. Predictably, the capitulation only encouraged Buchanan to step up his attack on the NEA. And on television last Sunday Republican National Chairman Richard Bond said he might urge the president just to abolish the agency.
Other usually sensible people are saying the same thing. But it’s a bad idea, and if the politicians won`t speak up in behalf of the arts, then maybe a newspaperman has to try.
The NEA spent $175 million last year. That is less than two one-hundredths of 1 percent of the federal budget. Of that sum-which is the most Rep. Sidney Yates of Illinois, the appropriations subcommittee chairman, can get for his favorite agency-only a handful of grants involving a pitiably few thousand dollars have come under fire from NEA`s critics.
(2005) An advisory panel composed of over 100 Republican members of the House of Representatives has recommended ending all funding for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). The NEA is the federal government’s chief source of funding for nonprofit theatre groups, dance companies, and arts presenters. The CPB is a major funder of noncommercial broadcast programming of the performing arts.
The Republican Study Committee recommended that the two agencies be eliminated as part of its “RSC Budget Options 2005” report. The 23-page analysis offers cuts in nearly every area of the federal budget, leading to savings of $102.1 billion in fiscal year 2006, five-year savings of $369.9 billion, and a decade’s savings of $949.7 billion.
Presented by Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), the RSC’s chairman, and Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), the committee’s budget and spending task force chairman, the study indicates that the lost federal funds could be made up through private sources.
Miss Cleo is the only Medium the GOP cares about…
WASHINGTON (June 21, 2016) – The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), a federal grantmaking agency, is committed to suppressing an ongoing scam being perpetrated through Facebook, texting, and other mediums. This scam involves someone claiming to be an NEH employee contacting you through Facebook Messenger or text telling you that you are “on a list for a grant,” and instructing you to send payment before they will send you the grant funds. Please be advised that this is a scam.
“A single Air Force F-35A costs a whopping $148 million. One Marine Corps F-35B costs an unbelievable $251 million. A lone Navy F-35C costs a mind-boggling $337 million. Average the three models together, and a ‘generic’ F-35 costs $178 million,”
Though the current $437 million price tag would barely qualify as a drop in the defense budget bucket of about $600 billion, Military Bands still dwarf all other federal spending on music. GOP proposals to limit spending still exceed current NEA budget. www.google.com/…
I am so sick of the Big Lie about the Arts and Humanities – they have always given back so much more than they cost.
And if NASA had received even a tiny royalty from all the products that their contractors were so well paid to develop, the agency would have been self-funding, and we’d never have stopped going to the moon, and then so far beyond it.
The truth is that these are the programs that inspire people, the ones that make them THINK and FEEL and IMAGINE NEW POSSIBILITIES, and that’s always been dangerous for the Oligarchs. They are also what could make America great again.
Just read that the National Park Service stated that there were many less at trumps inauguration than at Obamas. They stated a number but I forget it, in as much the Parl Service was scolded by the White House and they were told to take it down as reporting numbers was not within there purview.
I guess I grew up with the Park Service keeping track of the number of visitors at all National Parks. I guess this is Trumps new way of accounting.
Then I recalled something Zappa said many years ago, although he is strange I still like Zappa. I think he said something like this, “Politcs is the entertainment division of the Military Industrial Complex.” Frank Zappa
If I am incorrect please correct the above statement.
One last question, is Trump channeling North Koreas’ Dictator or Putins power grab? I think they are all three very dangerous and psychologically challenged. I wonder if Trump has a clue of the power of the Military Industrial Complex!
I wonder if anyone on his team has read Washingtons farewell address? Though not a supporter of Obama, he certainly was a class act after the election and his various speeches as well as his last TV address. You have to give him that he became a good diplomat.
Did I read that the disgusting and disgraced Newt Gingrich is going to be in Trumps inner circle somehow…
To respond to Russell and others. Just got a note from randyjet a little while ago. He went to the Houston, TX event. Said there were more than 22,000. I think he about walked himself into the ground.
The Women’s March today broke all records in the US for protests. Numbers are still dribbling in, but the number of people protesting is unlike anything anyone has ever seen before. All protests that have gone before, even those about Vietnam, pale in comparison.
As for numbers, some are gloating that press secretary Spicer really gave the media an old fashioned ass whooping. I am afraid he is the Republican version of Baghdad Bob. He not only lied, he made his escape from the press room without taking questions. Cut and run is the latest tactic in politics I suppose.
The problem isn’t that what he’s doing can’t be undone. The problem is inertia. Many of the programs the hooligans are looking to dismantle took a long time and a lot of political will to get off the ground in the first place. Reviving them will probably be a similar exercise. This presents problems on several fronts, not the least of which is his successor may catch blame – rightly or wrongly – for not fixing what is broken and for not fixing it quick enough. Structures in place a long time are historically more expensive to rebuild as a function of valuation and can be a difficult economic proposition.
I’m kinda just waiting for the House and/or Senate to burn down under mysterious circumstances.
Or war to be declared against China.
Or internment camps to become the norm.
Or a false flag attack.
Or a market collapse.
Or martyrdom and an even greater disaster in succession.
Or . . . you get the idea.
However, I am pleased to note that Irish bookmakers are placing his odds at getting impeached at 4:1 for and his odds of doing so in the first six months at 7:4 for.
Nicole Plyler Fisk
Gene Howington
FFS Guest Blogger
Joy of Fishes
Chuck Stanley
shortfinals
Terry Welshans
ann li-summers
wordcloud9
Flowers For Socrates 
I am scared
more problematic will be that provoked or pre-emptive military action in the next six months
Describing the Arts and Humanities as “waste” is so politically correct in the GOP mind.
I am so sick of the Big Lie about the Arts and Humanities – they have always given back so much more than they cost.
And if NASA had received even a tiny royalty from all the products that their contractors were so well paid to develop, the agency would have been self-funding, and we’d never have stopped going to the moon, and then so far beyond it.
The truth is that these are the programs that inspire people, the ones that make them THINK and FEEL and IMAGINE NEW POSSIBILITIES, and that’s always been dangerous for the Oligarchs. They are also what could make America great again.
Just read that the National Park Service stated that there were many less at trumps inauguration than at Obamas. They stated a number but I forget it, in as much the Parl Service was scolded by the White House and they were told to take it down as reporting numbers was not within there purview.
I guess I grew up with the Park Service keeping track of the number of visitors at all National Parks. I guess this is Trumps new way of accounting.
Then I recalled something Zappa said many years ago, although he is strange I still like Zappa. I think he said something like this, “Politcs is the entertainment division of the Military Industrial Complex.” Frank Zappa
If I am incorrect please correct the above statement.
One last question, is Trump channeling North Koreas’ Dictator or Putins power grab? I think they are all three very dangerous and psychologically challenged. I wonder if Trump has a clue of the power of the Military Industrial Complex!
I wonder if anyone on his team has read Washingtons farewell address? Though not a supporter of Obama, he certainly was a class act after the election and his various speeches as well as his last TV address. You have to give him that he became a good diplomat.
Did I read that the disgusting and disgraced Newt Gingrich is going to be in Trumps inner circle somehow…
To respond to Russell and others. Just got a note from randyjet a little while ago. He went to the Houston, TX event. Said there were more than 22,000. I think he about walked himself into the ground.
The Women’s March today broke all records in the US for protests. Numbers are still dribbling in, but the number of people protesting is unlike anything anyone has ever seen before. All protests that have gone before, even those about Vietnam, pale in comparison.
As for numbers, some are gloating that press secretary Spicer really gave the media an old fashioned ass whooping. I am afraid he is the Republican version of Baghdad Bob. He not only lied, he made his escape from the press room without taking questions. Cut and run is the latest tactic in politics I suppose.
This link has a pair of photos, with some commentary, that will set the record straight.
Going to believe Baghdad Spicer or your lying eyes?
The problem isn’t that what he’s doing can’t be undone. The problem is inertia. Many of the programs the hooligans are looking to dismantle took a long time and a lot of political will to get off the ground in the first place. Reviving them will probably be a similar exercise. This presents problems on several fronts, not the least of which is his successor may catch blame – rightly or wrongly – for not fixing what is broken and for not fixing it quick enough. Structures in place a long time are historically more expensive to rebuild as a function of valuation and can be a difficult economic proposition.
I’m kinda just waiting for the House and/or Senate to burn down under mysterious circumstances.
Or war to be declared against China.
Or internment camps to become the norm.
Or a false flag attack.
Or a market collapse.
Or martyrdom and an even greater disaster in succession.
Or . . . you get the idea.
However, I am pleased to note that Irish bookmakers are placing his odds at getting impeached at 4:1 for and his odds of doing so in the first six months at 7:4 for.
There’s that silver lining.