GOP outlines 2.5 Trillion in spending cuts (none to defense)

agree with you here.. I am definitely in favor of term limits.

 

Hey I totally agree with you. Less Federal Govt involvement is a good thing.
I was only trying to make a point on how the left keeps saying cut the military and not the social entitlement programs because cutting those programs will lose jobs. I was trying to point out cutting defense will also result in lost jobs.
But in the end I am with you we need to cut across the board.

 

In general. Their web sites pretty much spell out what they do. Why should the Federal government be involved in funding the humanities and art? We have local school system with local boards that should dictate what is taught in schools. If you want to broaden your knowledge of the humanities outside of that scope, its up to you to seek out that knowledge. The humanities will not cease to exist without the NEH.

Art is very subjective. Which makes it pretty personal. Why should someone at a Federal level dictate what art gets funded? Since just about anything can be considered art, anything can get funded. That seems like a system easily abused.

 

I find it doubtful, you appeared not to know this earlier when you claimed that these programs were responsible "for giving people their humanities education"

Actually what they are is grant programs. Hence the name. As far as their utility, I pretty much guarantee you that if you ever have gone to a museum or a library or watched PBS in this country, you have enjoyed the fruits of NEA/NEH programs. Accordingly your criticism of it completely misses the mark.

Anyway, if it's so easy to get an NEA grant why don't you apply for one? Then you can show us how the system is "easily abused."

You should really honestly read more before you rant and just make things up, or just go back to the chronicle commenting ranks.

 

I'll just point you to wouldabeen23's post and this article - http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0412/p07s01-wome.html

Iraq was "stable" after the Gulf War and was not involved in terrorism. There should have been very little spent on keeping Iraq stable, since the war should not have happened. Comparing the billions spent in Iraq with the billions spent in Egypt are apple to oranges.

 

If you look at Ancient Greece/Ancient Rome/The Renaissance etc. one of the things that made those civilizations great was their art, and it was most often funded by the govt.

It's part of the greatest civilizations the world has known.

 

Source?

This is one of the more nonsensical statements i've seen. Let's break it down.

40 to 70 cents is a big range, which leads me to guess your source for this is not that great. I suspect there is an exact number and it is higher. And by considering every dollar, you're including the 20% that gets spent on defense, the 20% that gets spent on Medicare/Medicaid, the 20% spent on Social Security, the amount spent on interest, as well as everything else.

I can see how the return might lag on the interest, but everything else I've seen, from grants to unemployment benefits, generate more than a dollar's worth of economic activity. So again, I'd really like to see your source.

This does not logically follow from your previous statement and it would be most interesting to see your source for this nugget.

OK, let's say all government employees are cut. That's about 3 million on the Fed side and a bunch more on the state and local sides.

How does that create jobs unless you plan on contracting out the government jobs you just did away with? And if you do that, countless studies have shown it's more inefficient to contract thse jobs with private companies than for the government to do it.

In fact, it would cost not only the jobs you just did away with, it would further spiral our economy out of control by putting millions of Americans at risk of losing thier homes, not paying their bills, etc. while you also make the world less safe for everyone.

 

LOL, I missed this earlier. Completely false and demonstrably wrong. I don't even wnat to know what trainwreck of a source you are getting this garbage from.

EDIT: i figured out where he grabbed this from - it refers to a study that found that every dollar the gov't spends on the military only generates a .4 to .7 return....

 

A perfect example of what you pointed out is right here in Texas. The Republican controlled state government tried contracting out some of the state's services and it was nothing short of a disaster.

 

I never made that claim. Go back and look at who said what. LScolaDominates said "Humanities education represents the foundation of western civilization ..." implying that cutting the NEH hurts Humanities education.

Then I sarcastically said "And you got your Humanities education from the Federal government, right?" Which is a trap question, and you fell right into the trap. Of course the federal government is not responsible for giving people their humanities education. Since the federal government is not responsible for your humanities education, why should it be funding the humanities?

Agreed, but I can't find anything specific. I'm a history and documentary buff. I actually went to their web site and looked at a list of documentaries they have funded - http://www.neh.gov/projects/medialog/med_idx.html. Nothing looked familiar. I suspect the NEH has had less impact than you expect. Is the program worth the cost? Should the federal government even be in the business of the humanities?

 

Uh, the federal government is responsible for spending lots of money on education, including in the arts as well as the sciences. Of course this isn't the primary goal of the NEH, so your attempt to recover by creating an Akbar-esque TRAP fails.

Nothing looked familiar? So you're a history and documentary buff and you've never heard of this particular project:

Spoiler

 

Mostly libertarian, but their ideology is too simplistic. Laissez faire capitalism does not work. Regulations are required to keep the economy functioning and to protect the common good. Examples would be pollution and monopoly laws.
I also believe there should be a welfare safety net.

 

http://www.neh.gov/whoweare/index.html
NEH is an independent grant-making agency of the United States government dedicated to supporting research, education, preservation, and public programs in the humanities.

The trap holds, you are either avoiding or not understanding my point.

 

I don't understand your point or this "trap" you keep mentioning. Governments have supported the arts for millenia, literally. There is nothing odd, strange, or "liberal" about it.

 

American aid is never about fostering democracy-that is a lamentable tragedy of our times, and a reality that we must all face-namely, that America, more often then not, does not place its' money where its' mouth is.

That said, I think you're suffering a disconnect on my position-I much prefer development aid to military budgets or expeditions. If we could slash more of the bloated military budget and balance it out with slight increase in development aid, we'd make significant work on our deficit and ideally, could gain in soft power, while still maintaining a respectable military (the American military right now is basically just an open provocation to an arms race that no one is quite responding to->America almost spends more then the rest of the world combined! And that includes staunch allies like NATO, Japan, etc.)

 

My original question was "And you got your humanities education from the Federal government, right?"

If you answer yes. I can come back with a smart ass remark along the lines of "So the sum total of your humanities education came from watching Ken Burns the Civil War?" In which case they will hopefully admit that the majority of their humanities education came from K-12, college, or independent learning.

If you answer no. I can say "their mission is to support humanities education" and since you did not get your humanities education from the federal government, its a wasteful resource. Its redirecting funds that could be used to improve local schools.

I'm not at all against teaching the humanities. I'm all for it. It should just be done at the local level. The federal government has no business funding education.

 

LOL...now you're morphing it into some weird local control argument, with some weird implication that the evil federal government is redirecting educational funds from schools into corrupt art educational coffers.

That is not even remotely close to your original argument, Akbar. You still, despite a full day of googling, appear to have zero idea how the NEA/NEH works and what they do.

Quit while you're still behind. My patience is reaching an end.

 

I got my Humanities education partly from the great state of Texas as I went to a public university. Another part came from the Federal government in the form of grants and contracts to the school as a whole. Still another part came from donations and gifts to the school... usually made by alumni who were thankful that they were able to get an education and achieve success because a public university, the foresight of state government, and the goodwill of federal and state taxpayers aligned to help them out.

I guess I'm "trapped."

(By the way Agent, I would still like to see your sources for the earlier post. Thanks.)

 

Hah, a Laughneresque syllogism!

Putting aside the little issue of your conclusion's truth not following from the truth of your premises, what exactly do you mean by "responsible"? Most of the people and institutions that have contributed the actual take-away content of my humanities education--and are in that sense "responsible" for it--are dead and defunct, respectively. A significant amount of the resources I have used to access that content has been subsidized by the Federal Government, making them historically responsible for my humanities education.

Perhaps you were trying to ask whether the FG is obliged to fund the humanities?

Humanities education is the perfect business for the United States Federal Government. You know, the one founded on principles of the Enlightenment, i.e. the humanities' coming-of-age in Western modernity? There is perhaps nothing more important to the functioning of a democratic society than a culturally educated public. That's why you always hear people say, "I can't believe conservatives/liberals/communists/blacks/people who listen to Glen Beck/felons/acorns/country music fans are allowed to vote!" The flip-side is that too much exclusion erodes the legitimacy and necessity democratic institutions.

If a culturally educated public is good for a democratic state, why would that state not want to invest in cultural education? Oh, and it happens to be a damn good investment, so please don't start whining about the big mean gubmi't stealing your precious monies.

 

My original argument was really about local vs. federal control all along. Notice that I mentioned "federal" from the start. I admit there was much googling afterward, but nothing I discovered changed my opinion. I think that's a big problem with the DND, too many rigid opinions.

I would like to think I'm still open minded but maybe I'm too old to change my opinions. Anyway, I've actually tried to ask questions to get other points of view, but I've mostly been confronted with ad hominem attacks.