Did the NEA break the law?
Public funds are not supposed to be expended to support partisan projects. Beyond that, it is unconstitutional to grant or deny federal funds on the basis of the recipient’s political actions or opinions. National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley. The NEA is the single largest funder of the arts, and several participants in the August 10 conference call had recently received NEA checks. It would have been entirely reasonable for those on the phone call to conclude that future NEA funding could be influenced by their willingness to play ball with the Obama administration’s political agenda. Moreover, the Hatch Act limits the ability of federal employees to engage in partisan politics. Sergant’s sending of the email invitation to artists and arts groups, using his government email account, could be considered a bright line violation of the act, as could his apparent solicitation of political support from any arts group that had an application for funding pending before the NEA. Likewise, Ms. Wicks’ participation in the call would appear to be illegal if she was “on duty” and if the call was deemed political in nature.
It would take a thorough knowledge of the facts and more legal research than I’ve had time for to draw a conclusion as to whether the White House or NEA violated the law in connection with the artist outreach, but at a minimum an investigation is in order.
Why not? This administration, and its defenders, doesn’t seem to be all that fastidious about either the law or the Constitution. So how long does Yosi Sergant keep his job?
If they get their way, NEA “artists” will have Obama’s likeness everywhere just as the other narcissist “Dear Leader” types. You think all of those Lenin, Mao, and Saddam statues and posters just happened?
I bet this NEA story is just the tip of the iceberg. And should anyone paying attention be surprised? It’s how politics is played Chicago style.
It seems to me, that four words suffice with respect to Liberal Democrats in general, and the Obama Administration in particular and how they see the Constitution, the uselessness of the Constitution and ignoring our freedoms under that Constitution, to go more toward a Socialist Government, controlled by the Liberal Democrats, for our own good,
.
SSDD.
Pharaoh Akhenaten established a new state religion in ancient Egypt and replaced the traditional priesthood with … himself.
His sun symbol resembled an O…
Why the NEA would other enlisting or influencing artists is beyond me. I’m an artsy type and move in artsy circles, and at any gathering I’m usually the only consistently pro-freedom person in the bunch. Oh, sure, artists and writers yell a lot about freedom when the threat of censorship rises up (at least half the time an imaginary threat, and usually when there’s a Republican president)’ but on the whole, in my experience, artists and writers are the biggest State-fellators on the block. In any political contest, the arts community will always support the biggest statist, and historically have always been willing to fall in lockstep behind Big Brother. (In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if “Jim” were an artsy type himself, since we’ve already established that even the Ku Klux Klan values freeedom more than Jim.) It’s just another sign of the general lack of ismarts on the part of “Il Dufe” and his gang that they would go through all this trouble and create a scandal just to recruit already over-eager butt-boys.
Correction on first sentence: that “other” should be “bother.”
Well Bilwick, while it’s true that the art community was generating cult-of-personality works on its own (Soviet Realism FTW…literally), I think the WH was intent on getting them to really push his agenda in a focused way, something they weren’t likely to do spontaneously. Art vs. marketing/propaganda.
Good point, Titus.
Sharpen,
Single Sided Double Density?
Supersonic Dungeons & Dragons
Same sh*t, different day.
Bilwick,
I can’t say I know you as anything else but a commenter on this blog.
I do have serious artist credentials. See my web art gallery for samples. I also am involved in the DC arts community. Believe me, there is a serious commitment to freedom — at least the kind that affects artists.
When I hear a libertarian — especially a right libertarian — saying others are not committed to freedom, I tend to think they are focusing too much on freedom from tyrannical government. That’s very important. But there are other assaults on freedom as well. Consider, for example, the demands that some corporations make, especially on their workforces. 24/7 is not a symbol of commitment — it’s a surrender of lives to corporate demands. Jack Welch of GE was not a bold defender of liberty. He was an abusive bully who fired thousands of people to boost quarterly profits.
How do I sell libertarian ideas to Democrats? I tend to start by telling Democrats how various police activities are harming people and our society. The Drug War is filled with examples. Since I am involved in aerospace industry politics, I can come up with examples (think ITAR) where some government action is harming the community in some way. Most importantly, I listen to them. I — in as friendly a fashion as possible — discuss things from both their point of view and my own.
I consider it a problem when libertarians seem drawn disproportionately to the Republican Party. The Republican Party does not, to me at least, seem any more committed to libertarian ideas than the Democratic. I think it better if some of us worked on the Democratic side as well.
Now I must go back to lurking again.
Chuck,
Some corporations do indeed make excessive demands upon their employees. Those employees have choices…they can LEAVE. I did, and though I took a pay cut, my life is better. Some stay, and acknowlege that they are making a CHOICE…don’t liberals LOVE choice?
On the other hand, when Government becomes tyrannical, choices disappear, and there are no effective responses. If I don’t like government censorship (under the rubric of ‘hate speech’), I have no options other than to find a way to replace or at least reorient the government. Good luck with that….
Libertarians (the ones that I know) are NOT associated with the GOP except in the ‘lesser of two evils’ category, and only rarely then. If the libertarians had not been so willing to say ‘a plague on both your houses’ in 2008, Obama would still have won, but with a smaller majority, and perhaps with fewer votes in the house and (especially) the Senate. This would have mitigated (to some extent) the worst excesses of this administration. Still, libertarians aren’t know for strategic thinking, and I am sure that it felt better to curse both parties.
The notion that in the modern Democratic party there is anything to offer libertarians is simply nonsense, and reveals a profound ignorance on your part. This is the part of speech codes, nanny-statism, and government intrusion into the economy for the benefit of favored constiuent groups. I am not going to defend the Drug War (one of the biggest mistakes in the history of this country), but the Dems have their hands plenty dirty with that mess just as do the Republicans. Democrats (really liberals….there are a few real centrists left in the Democratic party, but very, very few…) typically are the enemies of everything that Libertarians stand for, with the sole saving grace that the GOP is almost as bad…
Chuck goes Orwellian. “Sure, we want freedom–and a Big Government”
“I do have serious artist credentials.” That does not surprise me. As I wrote before, artists are among the biggest State-fellators of all.
Hmm. I come back to see if there are any reactions to what I wrote.
Well, Scott says:
Some corporations do indeed make excessive demands upon their employees. Those employees have choices…they can LEAVE. I did, and though I took a pay cut, my life is better. Some stay, and acknowlege that they are making a CHOICE…don’t liberals LOVE choice?
Scott, do you ever talk to people in the larger society? I work in IT. It’s getting harder and harder to find reasonable work places. If you are middle aged, it can be even harder. I don’t see too many libertarians raising hell about unreasonable private employers.
Bilwick1, I put forward some serious comments. You engaged in name calling — and dishonest name calling at that.
Actually Chuck, I work in IT too (and for that matter, so does my wife), and at 50, I suppose I am middle aged as well. It is never easy, but you have the option to leave when you wish to…nobody said that you have some guarantee about it being easy… If you cannot cut it, I am sure that retail would be happy to have someone with your dedication…
As for Libertarians and unfair corps…Libertarians are about limited GOVERNMENT, not limited corporate power. With that said, I have seen plenty of libertarian rants against corporate power (just try reading Reason sometime for a good taste, though I am sure that our host here would be happy to provide other examples), based largely on the principle that large centralized orgs of most sort are unhealthy to maximized liberty.
Lets be real about this, with private corps, you can escape at some cost, with government you cannot escape at all…to ignore this difference is to pretend to a foolishness I rather doubt is appropriate in your case.
Now Jim, on the other hand….
Well, those people that guy fired from GE are at least free of being pushed around by him. I’m not sure being fired qualified as a threat to freedom, especially if the job you were fired from was so horrible.
“Serious artist credentials”, Chuck? So that means you don’t know anything about corporate employment?
Believe me, there is a serious commitment to freedom — at least the kind that affects artists.
How about a serious commitment to freedom of the kind that affects most people? Freedom from crime. Freedom to have and leave a job and freedom to hire and fire someone. Freedom to buy incandescent light bulbs or burn a little more carbon than the next person. Freedom to enter into private health care arrangements. Freedom to run a business, even if the artists don’t like you. Freedom to have a life that is less sacrificing and arduous than apparently some people think you should have.
Karl, All,
I do have a serious IT side as well. Since the discussion was about the arts, I did not bring that up.
The culture of IT has been getting worse for years. Quite a few people are saying that. Research indicates young people are avoiding tech fields because of poor work life balances and bad management.
For too many people in their 50s, choosing an employer is a practical impossibility today. Too many cannot find any sort of job at all. 40% of people in their 50s are losing their jobs — and most are never recovering.
Yes, I am familiar with the criticisms of corporate power from political conservatives. I welcome them.
What bothers me most about right libertarians is their ignorance of the larger culture. Some get it. Too many seem not to.
What bothers me most about right libertarians is their ignorance of the larger culture.
What bothers me most about you is that you label others as ignorant because they don’t raise hell over your peeves.
The culture of IT has ALWAYS been bad, only a very small part of it (development) ever really experienced any difference, and that was during a period (the 90s) where a lack of standards and limited barriers to entry (typical in most infant professions) allowed nose-ringed twits to make $80K doing website design. The Y2K debacle and the attendant bubble-bursting of the early part of this decade fixed that problem, and all too many from that era seem to be unable to understand that this was the exception, not the rule, to life in IT.
As for the rest of us (and well over 75% of all of IT is operations, etc.), little has changed. IT is a support function, and as such is underfunded and overworked. I have been in the field on and off since the mid-80s, and while there are certainly ups and downs, the general outline of work for most in IT is pretty much constant. Ask most engineers outside of IT in the support end of any business and they tell you the same story. I suspect that this is simply a part of the way any business runs, but as businesses get leaner and their systems become more complex, the pressures on IT will inevitably grow.
Don’t like it…leave. I did, and then came back again, as I found that the grass wasn’t really all that green anywhere else. This is the whole point of libertarian philosophy…you get to make your own choices and suffer the consequences, but nobody gets to limit your choices in the service of their priorities. Does it get more difficult to get a new job when you get past about 40 or so? Obviously yes, and anyone with an ounce of insight can give you any number of good reasons (and lots more that aren’t so good) why. Precisely why is this such a bad thing? Want to see what happens where you don’t have this sort of turnover…go look at the education buisness (schools and colleges) or most unionized businesses…ah yes! that is the model we want to follow….
Guess what Chuck, life is tough for everyone, and you man up or give up…
Titus,
I’ve known too many libertarians who rant when someone points out things that don’t fit their philosophy. I read an awful lot — probably more than most people here. The book I am currently reading is Ryan Grim’s “This Is Your Country on Drugs.”
Scott,
You get to make your own choices? What planet are you living on? I’d like to move there. Government is not the only thing that limits choices. An interesting case can be made that it isn’t even the most powerful limit we face.
Toughen up? I’ve heard that line from too many abusive bullies who don’t like when people rebel against their abuse. Abuse which is, all too often, harmful to the enterprise.
Now I will probably go away again for weeks.
Rand, thank you for having a weblog with some interesting news and views.
I’ve known too many libertarians who rant when someone points out things that don’t fit their philosophy.
So? I know too many statists who do the same thing. Maybe you should try meeting it with reason instead of passive-aggressive name-calling. Just sayin’.
I read an awful lot — probably more than most people here. The book I am currently reading is Ryan Grim’s “This Is Your Country on Drugs.”
Good for you. I’m reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Are we in the TTM book club now?
Chuck, I believe that you just made my point….
Chuck, I believe that you just made my point….
Yes, I think he did too.