A massive stimulus bill is being debated in both houses of the U.S. Congress this week. There is honest debate about what constitutes honorable use of the taxpayers’ money, and then there is political posturing.
Did you catch the remark by a politician who thundered that there had not be a penny for the arts in that bill?
I was shocked at the ignorance of our history and the role that visual and other arts play in society. Of course, there are luxury elements therein, and we are dependent on watchdogs to keep us from subsidizing box seats at the opera.
However, consider how the WPA projects of the New Deal enriched our nation even as it provided employment to artists along with bridge engineers and builders, vocational educators and adult literacy teachers. .
- The city center of Greenbelt, MD has its captivating statue of a mother holding a child who is holding a carton of federally-paid milk.
- Many artists of the 1930s and 1940s earned annual contracts with the WPA (Works Progress Administration) of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.
It seems that art was just part of the employment scene, nothing special. And those artists enriched public buildings from post offices to schools to hospitals with art that today provides a rich look at the world of that time. Frills? Not really. I yearn for the time when artists, musicians and dramatists were considered workers, part of the eight million Americans who survived during those tough times by doing what they knew how to do.
February 3, 2009 at 12:23 pm |
First we need still a full review of the waste, fraud, and abuse that has plagued governmental. efforts. What is also needed is a program to remove public officials from office that take our money and spend it on their own false pet projects while many of our people still are not getting the help that they need.
Federal Deficit , economic, job creation and capital expenditure programs… are still untrustworthy. Being a past senior civil, mechanical , projects engineer, project manager myself here now are the major problem I righty still do had with capital expenditure projects even under PM Jean Chretien and never mind next under PM Stephen Harper firstly: and it is is that when you give do monies for a specific capital expenditure projects to the Provinces, Municipalities as well, and just like in many of the non profit organizations now too, a significant portion of the money firstly never even gets to the intended sources but it is diverted elsewhere.. Diverted to: such as paying for existing deficits, debts, unprofitable civil and public services, departments, Crown Corporations too, ineffective overheads, unrelated operating costs in the provincial , municipal departments. Now since all that happens even before it hits the supposedly private sectors we need to address that too. Now next as to the supposedly private sectors and related projects expenditures , totally honest and fair governmental competition bids still tends not to exists. So no one can make me into a believer that this all of this taxpayer’s money will solely go all into a valid job creation program spurring on the general economy. The existing projects, capital expenditure safeguards are still just not totally there, not the related transparency, accountably as well.. even even you try to use an ex retired, RCMP officer as a supervisor in the contracts, purchasing department, for by now we all should now who immoral, untrustworthy even the RCMP now are too in fact. Some of the money will likely be used even out of the country for a selected few persons rather too.. Are many of the civil servants, politicians still taking their holidays overseas at tax payers expenses? There are still much too many abusive and questionable expenses: All still Unacceptable too.
Not just in Canada now there is increasing evidence even in the US, elsewhere that states like California and Michigan, are running huge budget deficits, do need federal aid to keep their essential and non essential services operating. They would plummet an already battered federal budget billions of dollars further into a non positive deficit. We all do need to face the negative fact of what our own political, corporate leaders are doing this to our country too. Still it all also does mean that no one can predict beforehand with certainty which industries and municipalities will get the needed designated federal capital.
Also the too common practice of putting many local workers out of work or paying them less wages by sending the higher paying jobs offshore has a devastating impact on the rest of the World, not to mention the local economy. We also still do need to have the True Unemployment Numbers.
What is also needed is a program to remove public officials from office that take our money and spend it on their pet projects while many of our people still are not getting the help that they need.
” At last count, there were at least 785 criminal cases under investigation by the Hurricane Katrina Task Force, a joint effort of 19 federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Postal Service, the Defense Department and even the Environmental Protection Agency. State prosecutors in Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas are similarly swamped. And scores more cases wait in the wings.”
And do see also Citizens Against Government Waste http://thenonconformer.wordpress.com/