Ben Adler at The Atlantic writes:
Why stimulus spending should go to public art
In their search to find programs upon which to rest the complaint that the stimulus bill is too generous, some conservatives have seized upon one of their favorite whipping boys: the arts. "Even [House Republicans] can't quite believe it... $50 million for that great engine of job creation, the National Endowment for the Arts," declared Rep. Mike Pence (R-Indiana).
Pence intended to be ironic about the NEA's role as an engine of economic activity. But he could have been sincere, since his comments were right on the money. Arts are actually a great form of economic investment, particularly public art, and they should be amply funded in the stimulus package. Every year nonprofit arts organizations generate $166.2 billion in economic activity, support 5.7 million jobs, and send almost $30 billion back to government, according to Americans for the Arts. There is hardly a person more likely to go out and spend her stimulus check than a starving artist.
Unfortunately, $50 million is an awfully small amount: it is 1/600 of the $30 billion allotted for roads and bridges. The House Democratic majority wisely ignored Pence's philistinism and created other revenue streams within the stimulus that can be made available to the arts.
The money for artistic projects is almost by definition ready to be injected into the economy. It may take years to draw up a plan for a highway, obtain the right of way and fend off legal challenges before the bulldozers start rolling. But to buy a canvas and some paintbrushes, or even some metal for a public sculpture, is comparatively straightforward. That puts quick money into the pockets of the companies that build, sell and ship those artistic materials as well. ...
A well-designed public space can boost real estate values and create opportunities for small local business to thrive. Public art in urban environments can also help physically and socially knit together communities. ... Judy Baca, an artist in Los Angeles has hired inner-city youth to help her paint public murals, partly to help improve relations between rival gangs. "It has the additional benefit of crime prevention and enhancing the opportunities of under-privileged kids," explains Robert Lynch, CEO of Americans for the Arts. "The process is as important as the product."...
Hopefully the Mike Pences of the Senate will not win that argument next week.
In that period that nobody wants to compare our current situation to, the Great Depression of the 1930s, the whole idea of work being nothing more than farming, selling or building things - roads, bridges, dams - was expanded to include the arts. A wide range of programs were deployed to put artists to work. This inspired, entertained people and promoted American culture. The most famous of these, and the one that lasted the longest, were put together under the Works Progress Administration, the WPA, which started in 1935 during what is called the "Second New Deal."
Together, as Arlene Goldbard explains, these arts projects were called Federal Project Number One, or colloquially, "Federal One." There were five divisions: the Federal Art Project, the Federal Music Project, the Federal Theatre Project, the Federal Writers Project and the Historical Records Survey. By the end of the first year, these employed more than 40,000 artists, writers, actors, film makers, musicians and dancers.
But other federal departments and agencies also put those in the creative arts to work. The Resettlement Administration produced documentary photographs. The Treasury Department's Section of Painting and Sculpture commissioned post office murals. The New Deal didn't just put Americans to work, however, it celebrated workers, their talents and diversity. Americans' lives became immortalized in plays, oral histories, murals, and photographs by the likes of Dorothea Lange. The arts projects ultimately created a documentary record of how the Great Depression affected Americans.
Critics said these programs were a waste, mere frills, tax-subsidies for people who painted and wrote and built stage sets and dared to call it work.
It was three decades before government-funded arts employment returned, under the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act in the 1970s, another period of high unemployment. At its peak, in 1979, CETA provided some $200 million annually for arts jobs, about $590 million in today's dollars. The rhetoric Ronald Reagan used when eliminating the program was just an updated version of what critics had claimed during the Depression and what we're hearing from the Mike Pences right now.
+ + +
The Overnight News Digest is posted and includes the story, Obama, Pentagon pull in different directions on no nukes goal.