Romney to ax art funding

[babylonsister]

Romney to ax art funding
In an upcoming Fortune interview, Romney says he will cut funding for the arts if elected
By Jillian Steinhauer

This article originally appeared on Hyperallergic.


Politico has excerpts from an upcoming Mitt Romney interview in Fortune magazine, in which the Republican presidential candidate expounds on his plan to shrink the federal government and reduce spending. Depressingly, but not surprisingly, he targets arts funding, saying:

(F)irst there are programs I would eliminate. Obamacare being one of them but also various subsidy programs — the Amtrak subsidy, the PBS subsidy, the subsidy for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities. Some of these things, like those endowment efforts and PBS I very much appreciate and like what they do in many cases, but I just think they have to stand on their own rather than receiving money borrowed from other countries, as our government does on their behalf.

This means not a reduction in the funding for PBS or either of the National Endowments but complete elimination. Goodbye, NEA! It’s been a wild ride. (On a side note: Amtrak is already a hot mess. Privatizing it would seem to be the last nail in the coffin of nationwide public transport. Americans love their damn cars so much it makes me sick.)

more...

http://www.salon.com/2012/08/18/romney_to_ax_art_funding_salpart/

[Scootaloo]

1. Is this a surprise?

Look, something I had to explain frequently to the paultards... there were no differences between any of the candidates running for Republican nomination. NO DIFFERENCES AT ALL. They all have exactly the same economic policy ("Cut everything everywhere!&quot they all had the same foreign policy ("More war in the middle east, threaten china and Russia, ignore Europe and Latin America entirely&quot all had the same attitude on social policies ("Gays bad, abortion bad, women bad, nonchristians bad, nonwhites bad&quot and - amusingly - all of them were batshit insane on every level and doomed from the start.

Romney's only at the top now because he's the richest motherfucker that actually showed up, and to Republicans, wealth = human value, so he's a shoo-in.

But we would be seeing no difference if it were a Bachman-Gingrich ticket, or a Paul-Cain ticket.

No matter what, the actual policies and positions held by the Republican candidate for president were already locked in. it was easily the most heavily inbred primary I've ever seen.

[glowing]

2. Quite honestly, more would take a train if it was

a super fast train, like in Europe. And that when one got to their destination, there was ample public transportation that worked well enough to not require a car. Plus, we have a larger country... Sprawl has been the modeled plan for a long time.. This has made for an ugly mess of people commuting from farther and farther out into cities to work. I'm not sure how that would even work? There's a ton of park and ride areas; even for say Boston. It's not that people are addicted to their cars; I don't know a ton of people who love to drive (other than 16 yr olds). By 17, I was done with the thrill. And picking a DD all the time sucked. One person has to stay all sober or have a minimum amount of drinks during the night to safely drive everyone home.

Some of the best nights out I had were in Rome, Italy... It was so damn easy to get around. If those same people came to Tampa Bay, FL, they would have to rent a car, spend a ton of money on cab fare, or waste valuable time using the inadequate busing system. Good luck for those coming into the area for the RNC... No way in hell I'm going anywhere near the downtown area in the next couple of weeks.

[davidpdx]

3. Anything arts or education related he'll gut

Not cut, gut.