Bush Is Said to Seek More Money for Arts [$15 million to $20 million for NEA]

WASHINGTON, Jan. 28 — President Bush will seek a big increase in the budget of the National Endowment for the Arts, the largest single source of support for the arts in the United States, administration officials said on Wednesday.

The proposal is part of a turnaround for the agency, which was once fighting for its life, attacked by some Republicans as a threat to the nation's moral standards.

Laura Bush plans to announce the request on Thursday, in remarks intended to show the administration's commitment to the arts, aides said.

Administration officials, including White House budget experts, said that Mr. Bush would propose an increase of $15 million to $20 million for the coming fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. That would be the largest rise in two decades and far more than the most recent increases, about $500,000 for 2003 and $5 million for this year.

The agency has a budget of $121 million this year, 31 percent lower than its peak of $176 million in 1992. After Republicans gained control of Congress in 1995, they cut the agency's budget to slightly less than $100 million, and the budget was essentially flat for five years.

In an e-mail message inviting arts advocates to a news briefing with Mrs. Bush, Dana Gioia, the poet who is chairman of the endowment, says, "You will be present for an important day in N.E.A. history."

Mr. Gioia (pronounced JOY-uh) has tried to move beyond the culture wars that swirled around the agency for years. He has nurtured support among influential members of Congress, including conservative Republicans like Representatives Charles H. Taylor and Sue Myrick of North Carolina. He has held workshops around the country to explain how local arts organizations can apply for assistance.

Public support for the arts was hotly debated in the 1990's. Conservatives complained that the agency was financing obscene or sacrilegious works by artists like Robert Mapplethorpe and Andres Serrano. Former Senator Jesse Helms, Republican of North Carolina, repeatedly tried to eliminate the agency.

Some new money sought by Mr. Bush would expand initiatives with broad bipartisan support, like performances of Shakespeare's plays and "Jazz Masters" concert tours.

Mrs. Bush also plans to introduce a new initiative, "American Masterpieces: Three Centuries of Artistic Genius." This would combine art presentations — from painting and literature to music and dance — with education programs. The program would give large numbers of students around the country a chance to see exhibitions and performances.

New York receives a large share of the endowment's grants. But under federal law, the agency also gives priority to projects that cater to "underserved populations," including members of minority groups in urban neighborhoods with high poverty rates.

The president's proposal faces an uncertain future at a time of large budget deficits.

Melissa Schwartz, a spokeswoman for the Association of Performing Arts Presenters, an advocacy group, said, "We'll be fighting tooth and nail for the increase."

Some conservatives, like Representative Tom Tancredo, Republican of Colorado, vowed to oppose the increase. Even without support from the government, he said, "art would thrive in America."

Representative Louise M. Slaughter, a New York Democrat who is co-chairwoman of the Congressional Arts Caucus, said she was delighted to learn of Mr. Bush's proposal.

"There's nothing in the world that helps economic development more than arts programs," Ms. Slaughter said. "It was foolish for Congress to choke them and starve them. We should cherish the people who can tell us who we are, where we came from and where we hope to go."

Mr. Tancredo expressed dismay. "We are looking at record deficit and potential cuts in all kinds of programs," he said. "How can I tell constituents that I'll take money away from them to pay for somebody else's idea of good art? I have no more right to do that than to finance somebody else's ideas about religion."

The agency has long had support from some Republicans, like Representatives Christopher Shays of Connecticut and Jim Leach of Iowa.

"Government involvement is designed to take the arts from the grand citadel of the privileged and bring them to the public at large," Mr. Leach said. "This democratization of the arts ennobles the American experience."

OK...I will ask why you think Kerry would prosecute the war on terror. I am looking forward to your explanation.

Kerry would not prosecute the WoT as well as Bush, but I believe he would do about 70% to 80% of the job.

Bush is quite politically correct, so we are not investigating US-based Madrasses and Mosques. Kerry would parallel this performance.

Bush attacked Iraq. Now, Democrats despise oil interests -- I suspect he would attack or intimidate Saudi Arabia. The core of Wahabbist extremeism can be found in Saudi Arabia. Attacking or intimidating Saudi Arabia is something I could agree with.

Both Bush and Kerry would definately have gone for Afghanistan. Al Qaeda was based there and emotions were hot after 9/11.

Bush and Kerry both have had military service. Both served honorably. Both recognize that a strong military, and the will to use it, is essential for national security.

Unfortunately, because Kerry would be somewhat beholden to the left of his party, he'd pull some punches, thusly my rating him about 70% to 80% of Bush's WoT performance.

Hillary Clinton would be an unmitigated catastrophe in her prosecution of the WoT.

That is how the republican party really got a national foothold in the 19th century. They got it by elections on the local and state level. I will vote for Pres Bush, but implore those who want a viable third party, you got to start in your local community and send those to Congress who will actually clamp down on spending.

That's not how the GOP got started. It was never a third party.
The Whigs had imploded by 1856, when the Republicans ran their first national campaign. John C. Fremont finished second behind James Buchannan, and the GOP won seats in the House and Senate.
The collapse of the Whigs created a vacuum for a new major party in America's two-party system, and the GOP was created to fill the void.
More...
The Origins of the Republican Party

Trying times spawn new forces. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 divided the country at the 36° 30' parallel between the pro-slavery, agrarian South and anti-slavery, industrial North, creating an uneasy peace which lasted for three decades. This peace was shattered in 1854 by the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Settlers would decide if their state would be free or slave. Northern leaders such as Horace Greeley, Salmon Chase and Charles Sumner could not sit back and watch the flood of pro-slavery settlers cross the parallel. A new party was needed.

Salmon Chase

Where was the party born? Following the publication of the "Appeal of Independent Democrats" in major newspapers, spontaneous demonstrations occurred. In early 1854, the first proto-Republican Party meeting took place in Ripon, Wisconsin. On June 6, 1856 in Jackson, Michigan upwards of 10,000 people turned out for a mass meeting. This led to the first organizing convention in Pittsburgh on February 22, 1856.

The gavel fell to open the Party's first nominating convention, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on June 17, 1856, announcing the birth of the Republican Party as a unified political force.

Horace Greeley

The Republican Party name was christened in an editorial written by New York newspaper magnate Horace Greeley. Greeley printed in June 1854: "We should not care much whether those thus united (against slavery) were designated 'Whig,' 'Free Democrat' or something else; though we think some simple name like 'Republican' would more fitly designate those who had united to restore the Union to its true mission of champion and promulgator of Liberty rather than propagandist of slavery."
The elections of 1854 saw the Republicans take Michigan and make advances in many states, but this election was dominated by the emergence of the short-lived American (or 'Know-Nothing') Party. By 1855, the Republican Party controlled a majority in the House of Representatives. The new Party decided to hold an organizing convention in Pittsburgh in early 1856, leading up to the Philadelphia convention.

As the convention approached, things came to a head -- and to blows. On the floor of the Senate Democratic representatives Preston Brooks and Lawrence Keitt (South Carolina) brutally attacked Charles Sumner with a cane after Sumner gave a passionate anti-slavery speech which Brooks took offense (he was related to the main antagonist of Sumner's speech, South Carolina Senator Andrew Butler.) Both representatives resigned from Congress with severe indignation over their ouster, but were returned to Congress by South Carolina voters in the next year. Sumner was not able to return to the Congressional halls for four years after the attack. Brooks was heard boasting "Next time I will have to kill him." as he left the Senate floor after the attack.

On the same day as the attack came the news of the armed attack in Lawrence, Kansas. As a direct outgrowth of the "settler sovereignty" of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, an armed band of men from Missouri and Nebraska sacked the town of Lawrence and arrested the leaders of the free state. The anti-abolitionists had made it clear that "settler sovereignty" meant pro-slavery. Labeled only as "ruffians" by Southern politicians, Horace Greeley was quick to decry both events as plots of the pro-slavery South. "Failing to silence the North by threats. . .the South now resorts to actual violence." The first rumblings of the Civil War had begun. The stage was set for the 1856 election, one which held the future of the Union in its grasp.

Read the Republican Platform of 1856
And what of the nickname "Grand Old Party"?
The nickname of the Republican Party didn't get attached to it until 1888. Previously, the nickname had been used by Southern Democrats. After the Republicans won back the Presidency and Congress for the first time since the Grant administration, the Chicago Tribune proclaimed: "Let us be thankful that under the rule of the Grand Old Party ... these United States will resume the onward and upward march which the election of Grover Cleveland in 1884 partially arrested."
The Origins of the Republican Party
www.ushistory.org

There is no such thing as a viable third party in American politics. We have two major parties because of certain peculiarities of our electoral laws.
Electoral laws determine party systems. This is an axiom of political science.
Parliamentary systems use slates of candidates, and foster multi-party systems.
Our systems of proportional representation, election by plurality, and the Electoral College all steer our system to two major parties. It's always been thus.
First we had the Federalists and Republicans (later the called Democratic Republicans, then Democrats); then we had the Democratic Republicans and the Whigs; then we had the Democrats and Republicans.
In our 216 years of democracy, we've only had four major parties, and never more than two at once, spread out over three separate two-party systems.
Only two things can change the status quo: completely impossible Constitutional Amendments changing the Electoral College and the structure of the Legislative Branch (too many states of low populations would have to willingly give up power), or the death of one of the existing major parties. Otherwise it's Democrats and Republicans as far as the eye can see, other than the occasional, unsustainable fluke.

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