Well, I’m not sure about the “major metropolitan area” part, but there’s this [edit: I chose this example by searching for the 2016 spring awards for “opera,” and this was the second hit]:
Now, I don’t know how funding works, and it looks like the last performance for AZO for the season was last month. There may have only been five performances total; that’s all I can find on the website. I’m not seeing any mention of how they worked to make tickets affordable, except that under-40 patrons can get a season pass that works out to $17 a ticket.
I’m not ready to say this is an ill-considered grant, but if someone wanted to argue that bringing five shows of an opera to Phoenix, without providing public showings or school showings or other means for low-income folks to attend, is a poor use of government funds, I think they’d be on much firmer ground than if they argue that the NEA as a whole is a waste of tax funds.
Of course I do not dispute that the huge LIGO project has developed technology, as I’d already stated, but …
[QUOTE=septimus]
What [LIGO] technology does have general use could have been developed at a much lower cost.
[/QUOTE]
I certainly do disagree that LIGO has provided value to the federal government commensurate with its cost! I do support LIGO but only because I’m happy to see the federal government advance happiness and knowledge, and to inspire humanity, even when it is “unconstitutional” for it to do so.
Note that the claims you’ve made in the excerpted quote, supposedly supported by a cited webpage, are not evidenced at that webpage. The ONLY mention of “Computing,” for example, on the entire page is as a bullet point in a “Last but not least” afterthought. You must have gotten desperate, scrolling through that page before finding something useful! If you can find something more specific than a single word in a bullet point, please help us out here!
The costs of LIGO include building some 16 kilometers of straight tubing and evacuating it — these are the biggest vacuums ever created in North America. Does this further the goal of finding prime factors, in your opinion? LIGO needed extremely precise mirrors, a very powerful pulsed laser, and much more.
How much of the $1 billion spent represents technology that will have military or national security value for the U.S.? Who can say? Perhaps as much as $250 million of it will have value, or as little as $50 million. Even if we take the higher of these arbitrary estimates then $750 million of federal money was spent as a honey-pot to induce top scientists to provide the country with $250 million of value.
Could the fruit of the rest of that Billion dollars have military value (or some other value you deem constitutionally appropriate)? Feel free to ask the Board’s physicists what the chance is that detailed knowledge of black holes or gravity waves will lead to a new development in weaponry or computation within the next half-century. My guess is that that chance is quite small.
IMO, many of the NEA grants have values in excess of their monetary cost. This is not something you and I could debate: We’d have to start by Googling “definition:value” and it would be straight downhill from there.
Speaking as someone with a certain amount of experience in arts administration and cultural policy, I can tell you that if you want government money for your arts project the key thing the government looks for isn’t adherence to a particular political viewpoint. In fact what it is can be summed up in one word: accessibility.
While the criteria and the processes and the priorities change year on year, what never changes is the requirement that your project addresses an underserved niche in the arts market - if you’re not doing something markedly original you’d better be either bringing mainstream arts to audiences who don’t readily have access to them (e.g. the poor, children, the geographically remote) or bringing underexposed arts (e.g. folk and bluegrass, to borrow something already mentioned) to mainstream audiences. Projects along the lines of “I want to put on an opera” without an accessibility hook (or a staggeringly unique approach) very rarely get funding, because even mindless government bureaucrats can usually spot someone fishing for money for their particular vanity project.
This whole “The NEA only funds art for the rich and middle-class” meme the anti-NEA crowd pushed is so far from the truth it’s really quite disappointing, particularly as the people it benefits tend to be them.
(Also: I’m not a particular fan of NASCAR or sports in general, but I have relatives who enjoy NASCAR - indeed, one used to pitcrew for a while - and they’re not dumb. They just like car racing.)
Yes, sir, he’s pining for the great wide open spaces of the West. He says the East is effete and he wants to be out there among the silent canyons where men are men. If you want to know what I think, somebody’s been feeding him Zane Grey. Mr Waddington dashed a hand across his eyes.‘The West ! Why, it’s like a mother to me ! I love every flower that blooms on the broad bosom of its sweeping plains, every sun-kissed peak of its everlasting hills.’
George said he did, too.
'Its beautiful valleys, mystic in their transparent, luminous gloom, weird in the quivering, golden haze of the lightning that flickers over them.
’‘Ah!’ said George.
‘The dark spruces tipped with glimmering lights ! The aspens bent low in the wind, like waves in a tempest at sea !’
'‘Can you beat them !’ said George.
‘The forest of oaks tossing wildly and shining with gleams of fire !’
‘What could be sweeter ?’ said George.
Wodehouse — The Small Bachelor
What makes the Trump-Ryan call to destroy NEA, CPB, etc. especially tragic is their complete destruction. With severe budget cuts, there might be a core ready to rise from the ashes when sanity returns, but with complete destruction the entities will cease to exist. To rub it in, the plates and hard disks containing NEA letterhead, etc will be destroyed.
Thank you! I did miss this.
Now if we could get you to concede that the reason the Trumpists want to abolish NEA, etc. is not so they can buy one (1) more Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey, nor even so they can give the super-rich a further 0.000001% tax cut, but just so they can send a poke-in-the-eye at progressive culture. BTW, what’s your stand on the government’s insistence that its scientists no longer practice science? This isn’t just the short-fingered sociopath — the entire Republican Congress supports the abolition of government climate science.
You have a brain, Bricker. And now show willingness to change your opinion — a trait as rare as four-leaf clovers. Maybe you’ll come around to the Rationalist side yet!
To be fair, I doubt if President Trumpo gives the faintest of tosses one way or the other; but he has to keep throwing red meat to the elected congressthings.
Not being a Trump voter, I am perhaps ill-equipped to discern their motives.
But I am a Republican, and I can affirm that my objection to the NEA was not based on a desire to poke progressive culture. It was based on the concept of a clear line between federal and state functions, and a mistaken view of the extent of NEA grants.
And I still contend that the grants process itself should focus on measurable results to a greater extent than it seems to – that a grant should require that the recipient identify the measurable benefits intended to ensure from their project, and that the agency collate and assess those results to steer their future grant decisions.
And that same process should exist for almost every grant from the government, whether the subject matter is writers on Whidbey Island or sonar effectiveness of the anti-submarine P3-Orions on . . . well, also Whidbey Island.
So I think there’s room to improve the NEA grants process to strengthen it against criticism that it accomplishes little, and to that end I’d be open to an increase in funding to accomplish that measurement.
I suspect this is grist for another thread, but I don’t know that the above claim is accurate.
I contend I am squarely in the rationalist camp now. The only caveat I’d offer is that popular use of the term implies a personal acceptance only of claims that may be rationally demonstrated to others; I am a rationalist with respect to my own experiences. For example, not to put too fine a point on it, I am convinced of the existence of God, and this conviction abides in me because it’s a rational one, given experiences I have had. I don’t claim that everyone should rationally accept God’s existence, because the rational view is to regard such a claim as unproven and unprovable. I agree absolutely that rational people lacking my experience should be agnostic on the issue.
Ok, you all proved they do fund some music types outside of New York City including bluegrass.
However I do feel that if the NEA wasnt under pressure from conservatives to diversity their funding, they would not do so. Indeed it was only under pressure that they stopped funding “piss Christ” type stuff which happened under Clinton.
Do you have any evidence at all that their funding of bluegrass-type stuff is recent? I get that you “feel” things about them, but your feelings are not of any real interest here; if you have evidence to support that “feeling,” I’d genuinely love to see it.
Do you have any evidence at all that they no longer fund controversial art?
Urbanredneck, I think septimus is wrong about Bricker: while I disagree frequently with him, he’s absolutely rational about most subjects. He builds his opinions on evidence, and when he encounters new evidence, he can change his opinions.
What I’ve seen from you in this thread does not suggest you’re looking for evidence on which to base your opinions. You started off assuming “conservative=good, NEA=bad,” and imagined some stuff to support that opinion; when shown that what you imagined was false, you just found a way to restate “conservative=good, NEA=bad,” and speculated some additional facts.
[QUOTE=Septimus]
Joseph Stalin allegedly said “When one man dies it’s a tragedy. When thousands die it’s statistics.” Perhaps those who want to kill the NEA’s entire $150 million (just a statistic) should be forced to watch each $10,000 grantee be killed, tragedy by tragedy.
The East Valley Children’s Theatre in Mesa, Arizona received a $10,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Read up about this program and decide if you’d be happy to Kill this Theater.
Or is it more important that billionaires, now often “taking home” 85% of their gross pay, have their taxes cut so they can take home 85.0000000001% instead? (Or don’t give them their tax cuts? Kill another 199 projects like the East Valley Children’s Theater (EVCT) so we can buy one cruise missile with the savings?
EVCT is so well-respected now, that it might survive without this small $10,000 stipend, but the initial stipend was key, perhaps unlocking matching grants from state governments:
[/QUOTE]
I’m sure that one could say that about any program that receives government funding. Surely the government is not so brazenly wasteful that it spends money on things that are net negatives to society.
That being a given, how do we ever cut spending? If we point to Exhibit A to cut, its supporters will point out how wonderful it is. And I don’t dispute that it is a good program. My issue is should government be spending on any of these things. Period.
As others have said, if it is something worthwhile, then people will support it with their pocketbooks. If left to its own devices, nobody wants to pay to keep it afloat, then why should everyone be forced to do so, even if it is a net positive? Why not pay more even more nice programs?
Who (besides you) has said that? It is outrageously ignorant.
“If the Defense Department is worthwhile, then people will support it with their pocketbooks;” why the need for taxpayer support?
If the LIGO project were worthwhile, would people have supported it with their pocketbooks?
Do you expect that a children’s theatre program will train young actors quickly enough to get high ticket prices for their first performance? In an impoverished community?
Which is more worthwhile? Cocaine or drug interdiction? Which do “people support with their pocketbooks”?
Your comment is so ignorant, that I really think you should be specific with your “As others have said” — you owe these “others” an apology for calling them also ignorant.
The Defense Department is a traditional, agreed upon governmental function. I am not talking about anarchy or large “L” Libertarian philosophy. I am talking about government efforts to promote social good like the program you mentioned.
You obviously have strong feelings about the program and it shows through your hostility. That’s my point. I have strong feelings about the programs I like, and so does everyone else. If you try to make the tiniest of cuts to the government, the people who like the program will march on the Capitol with pitchforks screaming that the cut is killing society.
Of course a children’s theatre will not make money. If the parents cannot afford to subsidize it, should I? Most people agree that we should provide food, clothing, shelter, etc. to impoverished people…but theatre? What else?
Where is the principled distinction between what the government should pay for and what it should not? If the answer is simply good or positive things then we are not spending nearly enough (and likewise are not in debt enough).
By that I mean that the race to put a man on the moon spurred huge advances in other areas of technology. It’s not an exaggeration to trace the microcircuits that are now processing the words you’re reading to research and development that originated in the space race.
Much like roads and the military, which are concededly worthwhile expenses that few expect to be handled by private pocketbooks, there are research and development projects whose long-term payoffs are too long to attract private capital investment. I think a strong argument can be made for government-as-customer to take an extremely long view of such investments.
