More or less. Sergant, for those who were wondering, was the NEA communications director who had been involved in a conference call last month that – depending on who you asked – was either a perfectly innocent conversation with various artists, or a recruitment drive for commissioned artwork in the Obamaist Realist style. This is being scored as another win for Glenn Beck, although I’m not sure but that Big Hollywood should get the goal, and Beck the assist: at any rate, Sergant has since been reassigned.
(H/T: Amanda Carpenter)
My response to this would have probably been a snarky offer to let Sergant keep his old job and fund the artists – provided that they agreed to limit their artistic medium to black velvet paintings – except that there may have been a quid pro quo involving the Obamacare bill.
On August 12, a group of 21 arts organizations endorsed President Barack Obama’s health reform plan only 48 hours after a conference call in which a top National Endowment for the Arts official asked arts groups for help in advancing the administration’s policy agenda, including health care.
One reason the arts organizations may have been so swift to follow the administration’s suggestion is that 16 of the groups and affiliated organizations received nearly $2 million in grants from the National Endowment for the Arts in the 150 days before the conference call. According to a Washington Times analysis of NEA records, more than $1 million of that total came from the stimulus package. (see timeline)
Yes. That sort of makes this no longer funny. The NEA’s regular 2009 budget is ‘only’ $155 million; that kind of money is going to thus loom fairly large in the eyes of groups that rely on the agency’s funding. Enough to make them ‘understand’ that they need to be on-board with the health care rationing bill? Well, that’s an interesting question, which a variety of people look forward to having other people answer…
Moe Lane
Crossposted to Moe Lane.
Steve Maley
KnightsofMalta
Dan Spencer
Moe Lane
Dan McLaughlin
Hello???
jchild314 (Diary) Thursday, September 10th at 10:22PM EST (link)Let’s come right out and say the big word, not beat around the bush, CORRUPTION. This slime has been in Washington since I was young and long before, yet it seems so hard for people to say and debate. But thanks to the Chicago crew, it is Front and Center. Certainly “Citizen Politicians, term limits, and tort reform, a concept that most Politicians on either side of the isle find as poison to think about would be a good start. ANY Politician who speaks like a lawyer, sounds like a lawyer, and defends a politician for no other reason than they are an “accomplished LAWYER” should be toast in the mid-term elections. WE are SICK of their double talk, including OUR Presidents now and in the past. Common Sense will soon be the alternative to this.
I think Beck and Breitbart are working as such a smooth
The_Gadfly (Diary) Friday, September 11th at 12:15AM EST (link)team it doesn’t really matter which of them gets the credit and which one gets the assist. I would of course repeat Beck’s admonition to keep our eyes on the ball: it doesn’t matter whether or not Sergant is fired, reassigned, or even stays; what matters is how this came to pass in the first place and making sure it doesn’t happen again.
1% For Art Programs
Achance (Diary) Friday, September 11th at 6:23AM EST (link)make virtually all “artists” thralls of the government. My mother would have beat me half to death for doing that kind of stuff to her walls, but these people get paid handsomely for producing garbage to decorate publicly funded projects.
For those of you not familiar with this scam, Lady Bird Johnson sought to “beautify” America as a part of the Great Society so they revived a New Deal Program, the WPA Federal Art Project, and decreed that 1% of the cost of all federally funded construction projects would be devoted to art to decorate said project. Many states, mine included, have similar programs. Faceless, nameless low level bureaucrats buy up all sorts of garbage posed as art, store it in warehouses, and drag it out to “decorate” new construction. If they had to live on what they could sell in the private markets, there wouldn’t be a dozen artists in the Country!
In Vino Veritas
I'm a bit puzzled
RedBeard Friday, September 11th at 9:28AM EST (link)Could someone please point me to the article in the Constitution that authorizes the federal government to spend tax dollars on art, whether good or bad?
I only ask because, as we all know if we have been paying any attention at all, powers not specifically granted to the feds from the sovereign states remain with the states and the people, and are therefore forbidden to the feds.
And surely no one in Washington would dare circumvent/ignore/trash the Supreme Law of the Land, right?
Standard-bearer for grouchy curmudgeonry since, oh, 1975 or so.