ArtBistro

I'd like to see a graph of every penny from the stimulus and where it is going.

Its not surprising. Obama has shown a dictators penchant for art glorifying his reign here on Earth. He'll probaly stuff every gallery with paintings of his lying face. IMHO- if i see one more messianic Obama t-shirt - I may just fucking loose my shit.

PS Thank you Valerie for your work on this article. FYI my diatribe yesterday was not in response to you, but to the letters i had read below. I am still learning the mechanics of blog boards...lol

Good article, Valerie. Can I offer some constructive criticism as a friend?
There were a couple of typos " a government agency that has be? limping.." and " The New
Deal President Roosevelt stared?"

Very thoughtful article.

Voxbox, I'll wager that you'll return from your lofty exile to read this reply to your post. You make some good points, but this isn't an argument about bullet points. It's an argument about principle. The federal government's role was relegated principally to foreign affairs, whereas internal commerce, including the arts, would be the realm of states and interstate commerce - free of the shackles of a large, central government.
James Madison, "the father of the Constitution," said, "The powers delegated to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the state governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, [such] as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce. The powers reserved to the several states will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties,
and properties of the people."; and WHEREAS, Thomas Jefferson emphasized that the states are not "subordinate" to the national government, but rather the two are "coordinate departments of one simple and integral whole. The one is the domestic, the other the foreign branch of the same government."
(Taken from http://apps.leg.wa.gov/documents/billdocs/2009-10/Pdf/Bills/House%2...)
The issue is not that FDR took millions of dollars of taxpayer money to fund a wagonload of murals; the issue is that he never should have in the first place. The principle of the matter is that the federal gov't is too large for its own and our own good, and it has overstepped its bounds time and time again. This "stimulus" package is a crock of garbage. Obama talked about change - here it is. What a change, indeed. INCREASE taxes FOREVER. Gee, thanks. INCREASE the scope of federal government FOREVER. Thanks again. INCREASE the peering eye of big brother, INCREASE funding, and therefore CONTROL over the arts.
Marx, Lenin, Hitler, Mao, Castro, Chavez all knew/know this principle: control over the arts and media outlets means an extra measure of control over the "useful idiots" they claim to serve. If we accept federal monies for work, we are beholden to the federal government for the use of those dollars and the work they produce. We become accountable to a corrupt bureaucracy's agenda and slaves to the machinery of oppression, censorship, and even death.
I join my voice to Simon9's and jbortiz99's - keep the federal government where it belongs - out of our studios and wallets and back to the very few realms it was designed to care for - war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce. Obama can take his trillion-dollar rape of our posterity and flush it.

Oh man I never thought I'd see it: a pissing contest between artists or see who was more noble or moral to not apply for a grant. Stealing from taxpayers. Artist's welfare. Think about this: art is about the unimagined, the future. the unspeakable the theoretical. Art moves society. Unless it is corporate art, created to showcase products for sale, such has television, and required to follow an acceptable formula of social numbness.
Art, the visionary art, is what exposes Genocide, Racism, Patricide, when the world looks away: Art, the unimaginable, is what envisioned space travel, science fiction: Artists in the schools or in Museums, teach kids whose local funding had been stripped away from their education system such as Prop 13 in California. Furthermore, Arts funding for touring experimental theater, music, and dance, merely gets them in the door of the venue, the rest is supported by ticket sales. The fees paid to keep an art project, a tour, or an idea alive are minimal, to the recipient. You are still thinking of it as a 1-1 ratio: i make art, i sell it, i get your dollar. That is not how art functions, unless of course you only see through the lens of Marxist Materialism. Art, creativity, release, expression, of the unexpected, un-thought of , unimaginable, moves the social dynamic to a better place, a more democratic place, a freer place. Do you realize , probably not, that the internet was designed by the US Military, certainly on taxpayers dollars, and therefore technically belongs to us? But no, you pay to be on it. because you didn't remember you own it. Do you forget that radio and television airwaves are also public? perhaps you are to young to know these things. No, you have forgotten that, because the corporations have co-opted the delivery systems, the hardware, so we pay to get that too. So don't tell me the public has no place in the creation of art, or the mechanisms of distribution. Most NEA grants require super hoops, and something socially minded is expected. An NEA grant might be as small as $10,000 for one salary to teach 50 baby ballerinas, or write a great children's book, or fund a marching band, or a small orchestra of kids in the inner city.
NO, my guess is you are all to young to even know how much the NEA made your lives better. Now you are in a pissing contest, about who is more noble or clever or sacrificial to do your art without being paid. And you internet kid? you think you are a renegade because you use YouTube? You are using a public mechanism to do your art! Maybe that means we really succeeded all this time! Art is equal between the races, classes, and genders; art is not always pretty, sometimes its a scary. But it wakes us up. And comforts many, And makes stronger brains in Children. Smarter doctors, better listeners. You are all very awake people what woke you up and when?
So lose your false nobility and fears of government control, and get behind each other! I have never hear so many ridiculous self serving arguments in my whole life! I am getting off this blog and getting back to my music. You make me crazy.

Yes, remember the exposure to the arts we got and the corresponding flap about NEA funding when "Jesus in Piss" and other nonsalable works of "art" paid for with tax dollars hit the news a few years back. Very few people thought this was an appropriate use of tax dollars. And the NEA was hissed and booed by many.

But this IS what happens when art is funded politically. Conservatives will have it funded (if at all) in line with their conservative tastes. Avant garde mentalities will give us things like "Christ in Piss". But no one can complain if people pay for things with their own money based on their own tastes and needs.

We in the arts want the arts to survive and prosper. But do we need to have money forcibly taken from people who wouldn't voluntarily buy our work to survive? Do we need welfare and the patronage of bureaucrats?

As I see it, the choice between spending taxpayer's dollars on bailing out either "rich CEO's" or politically connected art organizations is a false one. Public money shouldn't be spent on either.