Trump has proven himself to be a true barbarian by proposing to eliminate the modest federal funding for the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Why should there be a partisan divide over the funding of public programming for the arts, history, drama, museums, and public media? Don’t Republicans visit museums and listen to history programs on radio and television? Do they enjoy music and dance? Don’t they appreciate art as much as Democrats?
A deep fear came to pass for many artists, museums, and cultural organizations nationwide early Thursday morning when President Trump, in his first federal budget plan, proposed eliminating the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
President Trump also proposed scrapping the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a key revenue source for PBS and National Public Radio stations, as well as the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
It was the first time a president has called for ending the endowments. They were created in 1965 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed legislation declaring that any “advanced civilization” must fully value the arts, the humanities, and cultural activity.
While the combined annual budgets of both endowments — about $300 million — are a tiny fraction of the $1.1 trillion of total annual discretionary spending, grants from these agencies have been deeply valued financial lifelines and highly coveted honors for artists, musicians, writers and scholars for decades.
Nothing will change for the endowments or other agencies immediately. Congress writes the federal budget, not the president, and White House budget plans are largely political documents that telegraph a president’s priorities.
Yet never before have Republicans, who have proposed eliminating the endowments in the past, controlled both Congress and the White House and were so well-positioned to close the agencies. Reagan administration officials wanted to slash the endowments at one point, for instance, but they faced a Democratic majority in Congress (as well as Reagan friends from Hollywood who favored the endowments).
As for 2017, it is unclear whether Republicans who are friendly to the endowments will fight their own party’s president on their behalf. Mr. Trump went ahead with the proposal even though his daughter Ivanka is a longtime supporter of the arts, and Karen Pence, the wife of Vice President Mike Pence, has been a staunch advocate for art therapy for years, being a painter herself.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Strongly agree that these federal funds have accomplished a great deal and should be retained.
Trump has no culture..just greed. He wants cuts to the State department, EPA and HUD which gives voucher money for the poor to help pay for rent. This also helps veterans who need assistance. What we really need is more poor people out on the streets.
Trump is crazy. Is Congress also crazy?
Here is more of what he wants to spend money on:
…the document mirrored pledges to spend more on the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal, veterans’ health care, the FBI, and Justice Department efforts to fight drug dealers and violent crime.
The Department of Homeland Security would get a 6.8 percent increase, with more money for extra staff needed to catch, detain and deport illegal immigrants.
Trump wants Congress to shell out $1.5 billion for the border wall with Mexico in the current fiscal year – enough for pilot projects to determine the best way to build it – and a further $2.6 billion in fiscal 2018, Mulvaney said.
The estimate of the full cost of the wall will be included in the full budget, expected in mid-May, which will project spending and revenues over 10 years.
Trump has vowed Mexico will pay for the border wall, which the Mexican government has flatly said it will not do. The White House has said recently that funding would be kick-started in the United States.
That DUMP is indeed CRAZY. He needs a psychiatrist and a couch.
It’s just another example of the deep anti-intellectualism in this country. Yesterday, a reader asked if we could teach critical thinking. Teaching the liberal arts goes a long way towards cultivating a critical, analytical, and knowledgeable process of thinking. We are losing that, too.
The reason is simple. These agencies support ideas. Ideas are the enemies of backward looking, evidence hating liers out 9bly to enrich themselves.
“Art is for Democrats”
Art is for Democrats
Lib’rals and freaks
Funded with income tax
Paid for by geeks
Any other questions?
Forgive the redundancy
Thought this was interesting. It comes from Nicholas Kristof’s column in the NYT:
…It hasn’t received much attention, but President Trump is on the witness list for a trial related to a sex trafficking case in Florida involving girls allegedly abused by billionaire Jeffrey Epstein, a friend of Trump. The case also has links to Trump’s nominee for Labor Secretary, Alexander Acosta, who was a federal prosecutor at the time.
“Don’t Republicans visit museums and listen to history programs on radio and television? Do they enjoy music and dance? Don’t they appreciate art as much as Democrats?”
Perhaps not?
FLERP,
I suppose Republicans enjoy those things but think that people should pay for it themselves. Many museums will close as will other cultural institutions that have to raise entry fees. The arts and culture will be limited to those who can pay, where they still exist.
The bottom line is if you look at county-level election results you will see that within red states the “blue counties” tend to be clustered where the theaters, art museums and concert halls are located. So for the many of these voters, it might be argued in the same way that heath care is argued, that “access” to these resources does not necessarily mean they will be able to take advantage of them on a regular basis. That, and other than the billionaires and millionaires who voted for their own selfish interests, one would think, given the ant-intellectual nature of his campaign, these are not the type of people, generally, who listen to NPR or watch PBS. So, he is pandering to the base.
When Mitt Romney ran against Obama, he proposed cutting funding for the arts, humanities, PBS, NPR, etc, too. As I recall, he said those programs should be privatized. I remember thinking at the time that would be a way of turning public broadcasting into vehicles for right-wing propaganda without many people realizing it. Then, when John Arnold effectively paid PBS to pass off his anti-pension campaign as if it was news, in repeated airings over time on NewsHour, I thought this is exactly how, as part of their anti-social, greedy self-serving agenda, Republicans want to use PBS against the working class, denying a livable retirement income to vulnerable people in their senior years.
With Trump at the helm, the GOP is aiming to derail Medicare and Medicaid, and Social Security as well –which doesn’t provide a livable income to seniors as it is, considering today the average monthly SS check is only $1300 (many of us make much less, like my $900 per month check). They intend to decimate HUD, too, which helps low income seniors with housing –and there is already a five year waiting list for that in my city, where it’s too cold to survive on the street.
Trump is spearheading a very cruel Republican agenda. The GOP doesn’t care that, without safety nets for the poor, they will be creating a very large population of sick, aging homeless people. They just want us to die quickly. The demise of the arts and humanities will be collateral damage, to a party that really only values business acumen in pursuit of the almighty dollar –a party which is, at bottom, heartless and not really civilized.
Not only is Trump slashing the arts and humanities, but he wants to strip 17% from NOAA’s budget. National security is not just about weapons and boots on the ground. Tornados and hurricanes kill US Citizens more than domestic or foreign terrorists. If we don’t have access to satellites and dopler radar, then people will die. Trump is anti-science and technology. That is why scientists will be marching on Washington DC at the end of April.
Lea. You are correct about the cuts to NOAA’s budget, especially the moderate orbit satellites that document the weather, effects of long-term drought, infestations that devastate forests and food crops, also the symptoms of global warming. You can bet the Koch brothers had a hand in cutting NOAA. I am waiting to see if the National Science Foundation also gets major cuts as well as the Institute of Educational Sciences, perhaps even funds for the NAEP tests.
We need a huge DUMPster for all the Dumps with whom he has surrounded himself.
Quite honestly, with all these cuts T is making and the HUGE increases to defense…well, what will be left to defend? Not public education, that will be gone. Not the environment, that will be destroyed. We are in a very dark period in this country.
Trump Proposes Federal Budget With Massive Cuts to the Arts, Science, and the Poor
By Damian Paletta and Steven Mufson, The Washington Post
16 March 17
…Mulvaney said the White House was open to negotiation, but he was unapologetic about the size and scope of the reductions.
“This budget represents a president who is beholden to nobody but the voters,” Mulvaney said. “He is following through on his promises. We did not consult with special interests on how to write this budget. We did not consult with lobbyists on how to write this budget. The president’s team wrote this budget and that’s what you’ll see in the numbers.”…
Trump has said he wants to eliminate all disease, but the budget chops funding for the National Institutes of Health by $5.8 billion, or close to 20 percent. He has said he wants to create a $1 trillion infrastructure program, but the proposal would eliminate a Transportation Department program that funds nearly $500 million in road projects. It does not include new funding amounts or a tax mechanism for Trump’s infrastructure program, postponing those decisions.
And the Trump administration proposed to eliminate a number of other programs, particularly those that serve low-income Americans and minorities, because it questioned their effectiveness. This included the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which disburses more than $3 billion annually to help heat homes in the winter. It also proposed abolishing the Community Development Block Grant program, which provides roughly $3 billion for targeted projects related to affordable housing, community development and homelessness programs, among other things.
The budget …calls for privatizing the Federal Aviation Administration’s air traffic control function, cutting all funding for long-distance Amtrak train services and eliminating EPA funding for the restoration of Chesapeake Bay. Job training programs would also be cut, pushing more responsibility for this onto the states and employers….
There were several areas in which Trump proposed increasing spending. He proposed, for example, $168 million for charter school programs and $250 million for a new private-school choice program, which would probably provide tuition assistance for families who opt to send their children to private schools….
If Trump wants to strip every government agency that assists humans, why is he supporting “choice” for students? Trump could really care less about choice. His goal is privatization. The only reason he supports choice is to destroy another public institution, public education.
Reblogged this on Terri Goldson and commented:
Read, learn explore and form your own opinion because Knowledge is Power! Click on the Site for the full story … Terri Goldson
I decided not to cut any of Dan Rather’s comments. It expresses beautifully what is wrong with Trump. He sheds some hope. I’m not so sure.
………
Donald Trump’s Cruel and Unusual Budget Proposal
By Dan Rather, Dan Rather’s Facebook Page
18 March 17
Cruel and unusual,” the phrase rings in my head as I read the press reports of President Donald Trump’s proposed budget.
But to even talk about it as a budget is to miss the point. It is not a budget. It is a philosophy, and one that may come as a surprise to many of the people who voted for Mr. Trump. They will hurt in real ways. Meanwhile it confirms the worst existential fears of those who see his presidency as a threat to the very being of the United States they know and love.
This is a man who made a lot of promises on the campaign about helping those struggling in society, about leading the United States to greatness in such things as fighting disease. If anyone had any doubt about the hollowness of his words, this philosophy is all the evidence one would need.
This is a philosophy that doesn’t believe in helping the poor, rural or urban, or the power of diplomacy or the importance of science. It is a philosophy that doesn’t want to protect the environment. It doesn’t believe in the arts. This is about putting a noose around much of the United States federal government and hanging it until it shakes with life no more. In the name of reining in waste, it rains pain and suffering amongst the Americans who already are the most vulnerable. It must be remarked that many of these programs are really small budget items in the greater scheme of things, rounding errors in the federal budget. The purpose is to send a message, not to save money.
Rather than investing in what truly will make America great, this philosophy pounds its chest with false bravado. People will die because of this budget. People will suffer. Diseases will spread, and cures will not be found (really? slash science research?) Our nation will be darker and more dangerous. You know it’s a philosophy because the budget has few details really in it. And here is where I see its saving grace.
This philosophy is not the United States I think a majority of Americans would recognize. I believe that we are not so cruel, so shortsighted, so dark. It’s easy to rail against the federal government on the campaign stump, but cutting programs that people rely on, that is the kind of thing that can break through the fake news into reality very soon. We have already seen the mess that has become of the health care efforts.
This philosophy is no longer theoretical and it will be a rallying cry for a reverse philosophy. Those who champion an empathetic America, an America prepared for the challenges of the modern world, will have plenty of evidence to point to. Mr. Trump has already put many Republicans in Congress on a defensive footing, on Russia and on healthcare. Wait until the constituents start calling about how they won’t be able to heat their homes in the winter or the agricultural programs that were slashed.
“The administration’s budget isn’t going to be the budget,” Senator Marco Rubio told the Washington Post. “We do the budget here. The administration makes recommendations, but Congress does budgets.” You can expect to hear a lot more of that kind of rhetoric.
Mr. Trump’s philosophy is an opening salvo in a battle for the soul of America that is only beginning. This will be a battle fought trench by trench. But I think it is winnable and America will reconfirm a governing philosophy that is hopeful, compassionate, and wise about the role of government in making our world a safer, fairer, and more just place to live.
I had this feeling that they think that these programs are “liberal” and “elitist” – They encourage thought and diversity and acceptance and tolerance and compassion, but this is threatening to those who have a narrow view of the world, and do not want it broadened. Perhaps, as one commenter said, it is in context of a privatization and a free market ethic, but that only reinforces inequality, where only those who can pay will have access to these wonderful programs. It is appalling and scary. But thank goodness we have opportunities to get back on track with the election in 2016 to change the power in Congress. Let’s hope we CAN.
Diane,
It is 2018 that we can change Congress.