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I'm beginning to believe that the Stalinist method
of dealing with people who are wrong and put forth and push theories that ruin
other people's lives is a pretty good idea. The First Article
is from Today's NYTimes while the quote from the second is from Wednesday's LA
Times in an article entitled: "Governors are trying to slash -- and in some
cases eliminate -- grants to help cover budget
shortfalls."
All I can really say is that in spite of all of
this supposed Art's Renaissance that America brags about, no one seems to
have learned anything about the purpose and value of the Complex Arts much less
how they are funded or survive. The Times Article about
economists could have been written about lawyers or prostitutes but who
can defend a scientist who flip, flops simply because of who's paying his salary
or what prestige he gets. They justify the case that
Fundamentalists make, that science is just another belief system along with the
Bible. Once that is accepted then the next statement is which
works the best at delivering the morals and values for
people's families and lives? We forget that gangs
of poorly raised children are extremely expensive for societies on every level
so the "efficiency" "Steven King" economic argument about "invisible
hands" becomes so simplistic when considered in the truly Macro
picture that it would be amusing if it wasn't so devastating of people's and in
particular my profession's lives.
I would make the case that Frank Rich of the Arts
and Keith Obermann the Sports Analyst, are the two of the most perceptive
and wise political commentators in the country and they aren't
economists. (Remember Herb Stein's son is Ben Stein the
droll Commedian which may be the best job for economists yet. He also
doesn't support Complex Art's funding either.)
Obermann truly plays "Hardball" and Rich plays something much tougher and
that is Broadway Critic. The Right Wing has the inanities of Art Critic
Hilton Kramer and did have the late Pianist/Critic Samuel Lipman but their 19th
century criticisms seem almost quaint when placed next to any Frank Rich
column. Is it any wonder that the NYTimes has kicked him back
to the Culture page?
I realize this must seem pretty provencial to Keith
considering that it is local. Sorry Keith but this is about my work
and how people don't understand it's purpose and I am so tired of driving
outside of New York and being unable to find anything on the radio more
complicated than Right Wing Rants and 32 bar barrom songs and backroom ballads
to a R & B beat and a hip-hop orchestration. Boring! and
bound to put you to sleep while driving.
Now I understand why Elder's in this society don't
get old so much as they get cranky.
REH
February 28, 2003
A Salesman for Bush's Tax Plan Who Has Belittled Similar Ideas By EDMUND L. ANDREWS WASHINGTON, Feb. 27 — In nominating a respected Harvard economist as one of his top advisers, President Bush has now replaced nearly everyone from his original economic team with people who at one time spoke out against the kinds of policies Mr. Bush is prescribing. N. Gregory Mankiw, whom Mr. Bush nominated on Wednesday to lead his Council of Economic Advisers, wrote a popular economics textbook in which he ridiculed the supply-side tax cuts of President Ronald Reagan as "fad economics" conceived by "charlatans and cranks." If Mr. Mankiw is confirmed by the Senate, which is likely, he would become one of the top three salesmen for an even bigger plan by President Bush to cut taxes by about $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years and let the government run big budget deficits for the foreseeable future. Mr. Mankiw's comments have infuriated a number of prominent supply-side economists, including at least one who helped draft the Reagan tax cuts. Some of them question how Mr. Mankiw can credibly promote Mr. Bush's tax cut proposals in Congress, with business groups and among the public at large. "It's stupid; it's simply not what a good economist writes," said Martin Anderson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute who served in the Reagan White House and also advised Mr. Bush during the presidential campaign. "Anybody who puts that in a textbook for tens of thousands of students to read has a lot of explaining to do." But Mr. Bush's decision to recruit Mr. Mankiw and the other new members of the economic team reflects a pragmatic decision to install people who can project confidence at a time when the economy shows new signs of stalling and Democrats are gearing up for the next election. Few people think the new team will waver over Mr. Bush's plans, but the president is nonetheless now relying on people who had no role in drafting the plan that they have to sell. White House officials dismissed criticisms of Mr. Mankiw today, saying he ranks among the nation's top macroeconomists and is solidly behind Mr. Bush's economic plans. "The president nominated Professor Mankiw because he is an outstanding and talented economist who shares his view that tax cuts lead to higher growth," said Claire Buchan, a White House spokeswoman. But Mr Mankiw, 44, (pronounced Man-CUE) is not the only person on Mr. Bush's team who has said things that appear at odds with the president's current policy. Democratic opponents have already jumped on those statements to undermine the credibility of plans. And what worries some tax-cutting hard-liners is whether the new team will compromise more readily when negotiations in Congress reach a decisive point, or make somewhat different trade-offs from the original drafters of the proposals. With the Senate so closely divided, negotiations there are certain to be difficult. John W. Snow, who took over as Treasury secretary this month, campaigned aggressively for a balanced federal budget in the mid-1990's, when the deficit was actually lower than it is projected to be this year. Stephen Friedman, who recently took over as head of the White House National Economic Council, which is responsible for coordinating administration economic policy, was a board member of the Concord Coalition, a bipartisan political group that pleads constantly for balancing the budget and has long infuriated the Bush administration. Thus far, Mr. Snow and Mr. Friedman have swallowed any reservations about deficits they once had and become unflinching champions for the president's tax cut plan. Most analysts predict that Mr. Mankiw will provide equally solid support if he is confirmed by the Senate. But Mr. Bush's decision to recruit all three men appears to reflect a calculation that their credentials on ideological purity are less important than their prestige as either business leaders or economic thinkers. By most accounts, Mr. Mankiw enjoys enormous respect as a bright and prolific economist who has written best-selling textbooks as well as academic papers on topics ranging from consumer behavior to monetary policy and budget deficits. "He is definitely not a supply-sider and definitely not a supporter of Reaganomics in the sense that Washington people talk about," said Dale Jorgenson, a professor of economics at Harvard and a longtime colleague of Mr. Mankiw. "But he is one of the top few macroeconomists in the country. He's also very well-organized and a very, very productive guy." What has infuriated some advocates of Mr. Bush's tax-cutting plans are things that Mr. Mankiw wrote in his textbook, "Principles of Economics," first published in the late 1990's. The textbook includes a section on President Reagan's economic policies, which, like those of President Bush, called for deep tax cuts and were based in part on the idea that tax cuts could help pay for themselves by producing faster economic growth. In a section of his book entitled "Charlatans and Cranks," Mr. Mankiw ridiculed the Reagan policies as "fad economics" that were tantamount to "fad diets." "An example of fad economics occurred in 1980," Mr. Mankiw wrote, "when a small group of economists advised presidential candidate Ronald Reagan that an across-the-board cut in income tax rates would raise revenue." After reviewing the impact of Mr. Reagan's policies, which included a run of high budget deficits that lasted until the mid-1990's, Mr. Mankiw wrote that the moral of the experience was that "when politicians rely on the advice of charlatans and cranks, they rarely get the desirable results they anticipate." In later editions of his textbook, Mr. Mankiw dropped the entire section on "charlatans and cranks" and muted his criticism. But he has not mended his fences with today's advocates of big new tax cuts. "These insulting passages display an enormous level of ignorance about the economic reality of the 1980's," said Stephen Moore, president of the Club for Growth, a political group in Virginia that raises money for candidates who support Reagan-style tax cuts. Mr. Moore said he wrote a letter pleading against Mr. Mankiw's nomination to Karl Rove, President Bush's top political adviser. But White House officials, who are still angry about Mr. Moore's complaints about Stephen Friedman, said today that they did not listen much to Mr. Moore. From the LA Times. In Arizona, the Legislature's two conservative Republican budget committee leaders, Sen. Bob Burns and Rep. Russell Pearce, say they don't think it's right for government to fund the arts, especially now. "If it's all that important to all of those folks, then they ought to support it with their own checkbooks," Burns said. "Why should taxpayers having a hard time in this economy support something they don't take part in?" Tyler Cowen, an economist at Virginia's George Mason University, is skeptical when arts advocates say that government funding brings economic growth. Their studies don't take into account what the same dollars might generate if put to some other government use, or if they were funneled back to the taxpayers, said Cowen. "The arts are essential, but not the arts we get from state spending," he said. "I don't want to trivialize it -- you would have less of some kinds of art if state subsidies were cut. But I don't think we should exaggerate it, either. The sums involved are so small, I don't see the damage." In the debates ahead, those who want to shield state arts funding may be challenged because of the very resiliency and resourcefulness that artists and arts organizations historically have shown. "The cuts are getting everybody shaken up, but the arts have been scrambling and surviving for a long time. They will find a way to survive and find other ways to make the system work and be supportive," acknowledges Robert Lynch, president of Americans for the Arts. But that, he adds, doesn't mean there won't be real pain and loss. "As a matter of survival, there will be fewer performances, shorter hours and perhaps not quite as elaborate or artistically full productions as there could be. The loser is the audience." |
