Federal funding for the arts--clubbing the President over the budget

One of the arguments I've heard in favor of keeping the various arts funding programs of the federal government is the wildly successful musical, "Hamilton." You know--the one where the cast lectured the Vice President. Look at all the jobs it has produced!! Look how no ordinary citizen could possibly afford or even get a ticket!! It apparently had a small grant to get off the ground and the rest was history. Who really believes that there were no private investors for this in the shopping around stages? And now we have "Go fund me" type sources--at least for liberal causes. I helped fund the movie about the abortionist, Gosnell. We helped with a funding page for a rare disease. And there are funding opportunities for small business start ups--I get an email about once a week on marvelous innovative products. But what about all the great ideas/performers/artists the government by-passes, or all the horrid things it does fund which the public hates? 

Yesterday Facebook was awash with hashtag  IMLS--Institute of Museum and Library Services.  Since it was only liberals posting it, I figured someone feared Donald Trump was going to do something awful.  All of a sudden libraries and museums are going to collapse because fewer federal dollars are going for studies that no one reads and cushy federal jobs for conferences and workshops? Is that what people think makes libraries and museums work? Look, when Laura Bush (a real librarian) was advocating for libraries and museums, members of the American Library Association were boycotting her appearances. When George W. Bush was reading to school children on 9/11, all manner of paranoid plots blossomed when he took a few minutes not to alarm them. So save your hash tags and support your local bond issues--that's what pays for your library services--we the people.

Then when your public library turns down your request for conservative or Christian titles, you know where to complain.  This is not about money.  The amount the federal government puts into the arts wouldn't build a bomber or drone.  It's about where does the responsibility lie, and who should be in control.

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/17/im-calling-bs-on-the-la-times-using-hamilton-as-a-pawn-in-trumps-budget-game-commentary.html

http://www.theverge.com/2017/3/16/14948108/trump-nea-neh-budget-cuts-proposal-arts-funding-effects

Steve Jobs--why technology can't help education

Interview with Wired Magazine 1996

I used to think that technology could help education. I’ve probably spearheaded giving away more computer equipment to schools than anybody else on the planet. But I’ve had to come to the inevitable conclusion that the problem is not one that technology can hope to solve. What’s wrong with education cannot be fixed with technology. No amount of technology will make a dent. The problems are sociopolitical. The problems are unions. You plot the growth of the NEA [National Education Association] and the dropping of SAT scores, and they’re inversely proportional. The problems are unions in the schools. The problem is bureaucracy.

I have a 17-year-old daughter who went to a private school for a few years before high school. This private school is the best school I’ve seen in my life. It was judged one of the 100 best schools in America. It was phenomenal. The tuition was $5,500 a year, which is a lot of money for most parents. But the teachers were paid less than public school teachers – so it’s not about money at the teacher level. I asked the state treasurer that year what California pays on average to send kids to school, and I believe it was $4,400. While there are not many parents who could come up with $5,500 a year, there are many who could come up with $1,000 a year.

If we gave vouchers to parents for $4,400 a year, schools would be starting right and left. People would get out of college and say, ’Let’s start a school.’ You could have a track at Stanford within the MBA program on how to be the businessperson of a school. And that MBA would get together with somebody else, and they’d start schools. And you’d have these young, idealistic people starting schools, working for pennies.

They’d do it because they’d be able to set the curriculum… God, how exciting that could be! But you can’t do it today. You’d be crazy to work in a school today. You don’t get to do what you want. You don’t get to pick your books, your curriculum. You get to teach one narrow specialisation. Who would ever want to do that?

These are the solutions to our problems in education. Unfortunately, technology isn’t it. You’re not going to solve the problems by putting all knowledge onto CD-ROMs. We can put a website in every school – none of this is bad. It’s bad only if it lulls us into thinking we’re doing something to solve the problem with education.

Lincoln did not have a website at the log cabin where his parents home-schooled him, and he turned out pretty interesting. Historical precedent shows that we can turn out amazing human beings without technology. Precedent also shows that we can turn out very uninteresting human beings with technology. It’s not as simple as you think when you’re in your 20s – that technology’s going to change the world. In some ways it will, in some ways it won’t.

Why does the President hate black children?

No, I'm not referring to his stance on abortion, which kills them before birth, in higher percentage than other groups and races.  It's the DC scholarship program that he has ruined for them.

In the fall of 2008, 216 new low-income students were notified by the Department of Education that they had been selected to receive scholarships to get out of violent DC public schools and attend alternatives, like the ones the Obama girls, Malia and Sasha, attend. But the NEA and the AFT teachers' unions helped elect Obama, and now Obama has torn up their winning “lottery tickets” to a good education and has taken back the scholarship money. Most of these kids are black.

This report by the Department of Education is not exactly a page turner, and it's stuffed tables and graphs, but it does say children in the Opportunity Scholarship program had statistically significant better reading scores than students who applied to the program but were not offered a scholarship. Also, read it now, because reports that go against Obamaplans have a tendency to disappear from the internet.

All the NBC channels and cable affiliates are promoting Obama's and Arne Duncan's education plans and theories this week. Why not discuss the alternatives? Because NBC is in Obama's hip pocket and he belongs to the unions who helped him get elected (and will be appearing in full force in DC on 10-2-10 along with the Communist Party USA and other radical groups).