My last few postings have been criticized by many for appearing to be angry. To be honest with you, I am angry. Things I care about such as homelessness, mass transit, food stamps, the arts, and education are getting short shrift. Moreover, all over Europe and increasingly in Asia, people who feel they have gotten short shrift are angry and showing up in the streets to articulate that anger. Good for them. We will not be heard unless we express our disappointment and anger. Squeaky wheels get oiled.
In an article in the Guardian today it was revealed that the Labour government in the UK will announce a grant of 40 million pounds for charities that are being slammed by the global depression. The Guardian contrasted that with the already 500 billion pounds that have been devoted to saving the UK banks. UK banks being quite stingy with their executives have already provided in excess of 1.8 billion pounds for their bankers’ bonuses.
Consider the Obama stimulus, which, when all is said and done, will be mostly tax breaks for the wealthy, significant funds for the military department, and what is left of the funds for education, mass transit, etc., will be chicken feed to what will be forked over to the wealthy. Whether the stimulus turns out to be $800 million or $1 billion, it is nothing compared to what the bank bailout bill to follow will cost. Already, the Fed, Treasury, FDIC, etc. have committed in excess of $8 trillion in subsidies, guarantees, interest rate cuts, ad infinitum to financial institutions. A substantial portion of this has already been skimmed off in dividends, bonuses, and perks. But the next tranche aimed at protecting the foolish investors, incompetent managers, and greedy executives will be far in excess what remains in the “stimulus” for us.
Do you really believe the arts and other creative endeavors can survive this massive transfer of the remaining wealth to a select few? What could we do to increase creativity? Under Roosevelt, musicians, artists, architects, and other creative folks received funds to be creative. The great Woody Guthrie wrote songs for the WPA, Alan Lomax toured the South recording folk music and blues, and painters created paintings in post offices and federal building across the nation. This was good stuff. Check some of it out at this site.
Consider the new media that allow ways of reaching out that we have never even thought about before. Why not stimulate things like this? What are your ideas on how we could stimulate new ideas and directions? How can we take this opportunity to have the government support people using old and new forms of creativity?
February 9th, 2009 at 12:48 am
What could we do to increase creativity? As with my comments on the Faith Based Initiative, I think one thing is not to focus only on the money. Richard’s writings have talked about the importance of openness and tolerance to creativity and I think Obama and his administration can do a lot to set the tone. Seeing Malila & Sasha’s artwork in the Oval Office might do as much to stimulate art in America as giving PBS a couple billion.
Portland, where I live, is touted as a creative class center and is brimming with comic book artists, musicians, writers, etc. Yet people are constantly bemoaning that we spend less public money on the arts than the national average.
When Mitterand was President of France they spent a few billion francs on the arts in Paris, resulting in among other things the(IMHO)second rate Gare D’Orsay and Picasso Museums.
I think as important as the WPA was, what was critical was who the artists were and how much freedom they had. Someone had the imagination to hire a hillbilly guitar picker to memorialize Bonneville Dam and to give a weird academic the freedom to roam the backroads with his old reel to reel.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not opposed to money for arts and would love to see more. But I don’t think we should be distracted into using numbers as the only way we keep score. The quality of the artists and their freedom will ultimately be more important.
As far as new media, I don’t even have an iPhone. But I’d be interested in what Kwende has to say.
February 9th, 2009 at 7:06 am
Martin, I’m right there with you, and not only with creativity. Michael, as usual, makes great points, though.
February 9th, 2009 at 9:58 am
The economy is actually turning-around on its own and, ultimately, we are going to over-stimulate the economy. But the financial system had to be saved and it’s better to spray too much water on the fire than not enough. The real issue here that Martin and Michael touch upon is what to do differently after the fire has been put out and the re-building is being contemplated. We need a real and non-partisan debate about how to ensure more stability without stifling the markets. We’ve been baptized into this new era by being dunked into ice-cold water and everyone needs to step back, think hard, and creatively, and throw away the old playbooks. The focus should not be on finding yesterday’s villains as much as it should be about re-engineering the system to accommodate the needs and liabilities of a new era.
One key point here, everyone likes to discuss the financial system, governmental structures and tax codes when discussing the problem and potential solutions. I have yet to hear anyone discuss the problems with the legal system that contribute to the mess. Our legal system has spiraled out of control over the last 25 years. We need to innovate the legal system and I am not talking about tort reform. We need to make fundamental changes to the legal system. Does anyone have any idea how much money it costs to introduce a medical record (or its findings and impressions into evidence). Thousands of dollars. Many of the rules of evidence were designed for circumstances that existed several hundred years ago. The computer has enabled civil lawyers to drown opponents in paper, essentially foreclosing indigent civil litigants access to the courts. I could go on and on but the legal system should not avoid the comprehensive re-structuring that government and the financial system will undergo.
February 9th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
This got me curious so I went to Wikipedia about Guthrie. The course of true art apparently never does run smooth.
“In May 1941, after a brief stay in Los Angeles, Guthrie moved the family to Washington in the Pacific Northwest on the promise of a job. A documentary, directed by Gunther von Fritsch, was being created in support of the Bonneville Power Administration’s building of the Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River and needed a narrator. Supported by a recommendation from Alan Lomax, the original idea was to have Guthrie narrate the film and sing songs onscreen. The original project was projected to take one year to complete but when filmmakers became worried about the implications of casting such a political figure, Guthrie’s role was minimized. He was hired instead for one month only by the Department of the Interior to write songs about the Columbia River and the building of the federal dams for the documentary’s soundtrack. While there Guthrie toured the Columbia River and the Pacific Northwest. Guthrie said he “couldn’t believe it, it’s a paradise”,[32] and was creatively inspired. In one month Guthrie wrote 26 songs, including three of his most famous: “Roll On Columbia”, “Pastures of Plenty”, and “Grand Coulee Dam”.[33] The surviving songs were eventually released as Columbia River Songs. The film was not completed and was only released in a limited form.”
And Lomax. Not clear if he was working for WPA either.
“From 1936 to 1942 Lomax was Assistant in Charge of the Archive of Folk Song of the Library of Congress to which he and his father and numerous collaborators contributed more than ten thousand field recordings. During his lifetime, he collected folk music from the United States, Haiti, the Caribbean, Ireland, Great Britain, Spain, and Italy, assembling a treasure trove of American and international culture.”
But this is quibbling. The important thing is that the government, in whatever department, saw fit to support many artists, building the lodges at our national parks, saving our cultural heritage and creating art. So what would be today’s equivalent?