Today, Robert Spencer writes about a candidate for that awesome status:
The good news came in a Monday report in ArtNet News, the art world’s media organ. It reported sadly that “DOGE Has Decimated the Institute of Museum and Library Services: All employees have been placed on administrative leave and the future of millions in grants seems dim.” Celebrate good times!
The left, of course, will deplore this as the triumph of the yahoos and rednecks over those who can appreciate the finer things in life. But all that really happened was that the Trump administration cut the funding of the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Why, exactly, should the federal government have an Institute of Museum and Library Services in the first place? It shouldn’t, and this program is a quintessential example of federal overreach and waste.
The world of art is perfectly capable of taking care of itself without federal oversight and funding; after all, it did just that for many centuries even before there was a United States. The program is also an obvious failure: latter-day America hasn’t exactly distinguished itself as a center of artistic achievement, courtesy of the largesse of American taxpayers.
So far so good, right? But wait: there’s more!
There is, however, a rather large fly in the ointment. PJ Media reported back in Mar. 2017 that the Institute of Museum and Library Services was listed among “programs that will be eliminated or ‘zeroed out.’” Yet eight years later, here it is, still doling out hundreds of millions of dollars, no doubt much of it to the kind of artists who duct-tape a banana to a wall and call it fine art.
Why does the Institute of Museum and Library Services even still exist? The Swamp struck back, successfully, and completely under the radar. The swamp creatures protect their own. Will this useless program finally see its end now? We can only hope. Musk, however, would do well to heed Stockman’s warning, and give some attention to make sure that the programs he slays stay dead.
It’s not that long ago that I wrote about another candidate for unnatural longevity. Given the history of the Board of Tea Tasters, it’s difficult to believe that Congress will take up the elimination of the Institute of Museum and Library Services:
I drafted a brief memorandum to President Nixon recommending we eliminate the tea tasters. He agreed and a thick pencil line was drawn through that item in the budget.
Then a call came from the Bureau of the Budget, informing us that we couldn’t eliminate a federal program by drawing a line through it. The tea tasters had been established by Congress and the only way to get rid of them was for Congress to pass a new law repealing the old one.
So we drafted a law and arranged to have it sent to Congress. Soon the tea industry lobbyists swept into action, pleading to save their personal tasters.
We said, “No, sorry.”
Well then, they replied, “We’ll pay for the full costs of the tasting.”
“No,” we said. “It’s the principle of the thing. The federal government has no business tasting tea.”
The lobbyists left and once again we felt pleased. But soon we discovered that the lobbyists had simply moved over to the Congress. Several weeks later we heard the fate of the “Tea Tasting Repeal Act of 1970” – it was dead. The excuse given was that the amount of money was too small to bother with.
The amount of money allocated to the IMLS, in comparison to overall federal spending, is practically invisible. Never mind what you or I could do with it.
This is what comes of the State. ANY State.
1 comments
I am reasonably certain that 10 percent of those employed by the Institute of Museum and Library Services have not been put to the gladius. Whether they should be is left as an exercise for the student.