White House uses National Endowment for the Arts to push partisan agenda (complete with audio).
Hard to argue that the NEA was not trying to get artists to shill for Obamacare, education and the environment, particularly when groups getting NEA grants released press releases praising health care "reform" just three days after the conference call.
The $64,000 question is: was it legal? As Ed Morrissey notes, it may be legal but certainly smells wrong.
We do not fund the NEA for it to produce Leni Riefenstahl-type art. If the NEA wants to go into policy activism, then it should become a private foundation with private funding, and Congress should cut it loose.
The NEA was bad enough when it was using tax dollars to fund such memorable art as placing a crucifix in a jar of urine. Congress should completely defund the NEA at this juncture and tell the Obama administration to end its attempts to build propaganda machines in the executive branch.
Republicans should begin arguing for the defunding of the NEA as a partisan political organization. I agree that it's fine for artists to do political work, but not at taxpayer expense.
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