"Homeowners, banks, Detroit—everyone wants a bailout. But President Obama will need to invest serious money, and time, boosting the arts, too." - Jeremy McCarter | NEWSWEEKIt's an interesting concept to say the least. Everyone else gets a bailout. Wall Street got $700 billion and they don't even make anything, save for manufactured wealth. Why not the artists? Or more importantly, funding to offset the already scarce private donors and programs that took a huge hit when the markets went sideways.Most would say that the last thing on our minds at this point should be the arts. I beg to differ. Art is a lively hood for a great many people in this country, just like working for GM or Chrysler. It's also a huge industry, one that suffers just as much, if not more so, during difficult economic times.Let's come at it from another direction, just for sake of argument, and without putting my politics too far out there. The annual budget for the National Endowment for the Arts is around $130 million. If the Pentagon could be persuaded to sell off just one of their F/A-22 Raptor fighter jets, with a price tag of $133 million, we could double the NEA's funding over night. Hell, let's go for broke and sell off two...Read the entire article, "Will Act For Food, Obama and the Arts" at Newsweek.com.
Barack Obama
"Change Has Come To America"
I have gone to bed with such a deep feeling of shame more nights than I care to remember in these past eight years. On November 4th, I fell asleep with the hope that our nation and it's people can some how dig ourselves out of the colossal hole that has been dug."This is our time, to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth, that, out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope. And where we are met with cynicism and doubts and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people:""Yes, we can." - Barack Obama