Trump has promised to add more than $50 billion to the military budget, which will be paid for by budget cuts. Among the federal agencies on the chopping block for total elimination are the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
These three small agencies underwrite programs like Ken Burns’ history of the Civil War, public television, museums, and public radio. These three agencies combined cost the taxpayers $745 million.
Watch this video to learn what that $745 million can buy for the military.
Ask yourself: would you trade all federal funding of the arts and humanities and public broadcasting for that?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The point is to maximize barbarism. These people are proud barbarians. In their quest to maximize reading and math skills, our schools have dropped the ball on building the psychic infrastructure for civil society. Shame on our education leaders for subscribing to an inane and debased conception of education.
“Shame on our education leaders for subscribing to an inane and debased conception of education.”
It’s not just been “education leaders” (a conceit if I’ve ever seen one) but also the Good German petty adminimals and GAGA teachers who have implemented that “debased concept of education”.
Mass societal atrocities do not occur in a vacuum. It takes willing participants who put personal expedience (job security, salary) over justice for the most innocent, the school children, to make it happen:
“Should we therefore forgo our self-interest? Of course not. But it [self-interest] must be subordinate to justice, not the other way around. . . . To take advantage of a child’s naivete. . . in order to extract from them something [test scores, personal information] that is contrary to their interests, or intentions, without their knowledge [or consent of parents] or through coercion [state mandated testing], is always and everywhere unjust even if in some places and under certain circumstances it is not illegal. . . . Justice is superior to and more valuable than well-being or efficiency; it cannot be sacrificed to them, not even for the happiness of the greatest number [quoting Rawls]. To what could justice legitimately be sacrificed, since without justice there would be no legitimacy or illegitimacy? And in the name of what, since without justice even humanity, happiness and love could have no absolute value?. . . Without justice, values would be nothing more than (self) interests or motives; they would cease to be values or would become values without worth.”—Comte-Sponville [my additions]
This administration is absolutely out of touch. When will the 99% awaken?
Lets gather the military money no matter what
Agreed – the WH is totally out of touch and so are our congressmen. Let’s cut the Arts for one plane – and drop our cell phone account so we can afford one/twelfth of health insurance for the year.
The last private market insurance I got was over $1100/mo. I have never owned (or ever will if I can help it) a $600 smartphone. When they get down to dismantling Medicare, I will be in trouble. One thing we need to do is figure out how to get rid of healthcare for our elected officials. Why should their options be any different than those of most of their constituents? Then maybe we could talk about their pensions…
“One thing we need to do is figure out how to get rid of healthcare for our elected officials. ”
I agree with the above but I’d take out the “healthcare for” part.
I think the draft budget will be published tomorrow. That will show the priorities. I hope the draft budget will be made intelligible and put into perspective by the media.
DeVos is also expected to have some key recommendations to states who have been scrambling to comply with ESSA only to find that accountability measures have been removed. Churn and confuse, create chaos. When has this ever been the norm?
Military Bands? Isn’t that arts? They should cut that……. It will be interesting to see the budget draft tomorrow.
$700 million? Isn’t that the cost of a single day of “precision” bombing anywhere where the US has “vital interests”?
“Let them have bake sales”
Let them have bake sales
Let them eat cake
Artists can make sales
Else they are fake
Perfect, Poet. A gentle yet firm reminder of what artists should be, what they should really do.