The recent news has focused on Federal appeals to de-fund the National Endowment for the Arts and how it sends a chilling effect on the arts. Story Time: A long time ago I volunteered a lot at a charity radio station that produced airwave material and put books on tape for visually impaired folks. Don’t worry, even though I tried to help other people, I’m still a republican. Having spent a good portion of my life there, since mom had been bringing me in since 1990, it drove a spike in my heart when the board decided to shut down.

How dare a charity that makes radio for blind people, that has been putting books on tape for them since 1976 shut down? What on earth would be the explanation for such a horrific at?

Get ready for a business lesson:

The board determined that the grants and funding they have could do more good for the visually impaired if directed to other sources such as the similar station in the state capitol. In the year 2014, with podcasts, internet radio, and internet audio book sites, with content that can be produced for free by the common person, the radio stations costs were unjustifiable and amounted to re-inventing the wheel, or the Ford Model T Assembly Line.

The Model T represents the charity radio station for the blind. In 1908, when the Model T first rolled out, the technology was breathtaking and affordable. At the end of the run in 1927, the Model T, though cheap, was vastly outdated and wildly behind the times for technology with better cheaper alternatives. Thus so with the radio station. With internet, it was no longer required.

The endowment began in 1965, just eleven years after the first Color Television Broadcast in North America. So in the current day, when CNN makes a news for Kids show online and any church sunday school can put a video on youtube in the blink of an eye, Any children’s television show like sesame street can be on Netflix, and any artist can put their work on Instagram, Youtube, Pinterest , heck, the entire Bob Ross series is on youtube now(don’t forget he did the show to promote and sell his own line of paints and brushes so stop pretending everyone on PBS has no agenda), does the government need to spend $146,000,000? If you do not like the current Republican run House, Senate, Executive office and Soon to be Supreme Court, you don’t want them controlling the direction of the arts, and if you do like them, you probably like the idea of gutting state sponsored creativity and new ideas, so win win, folks.

Especially if the concern for the future involves fascism. What does every fascist regime control? The Arts. The goal of a fascist regime is to promote and encourage pro-state artists, Mussolini made extreme efforts to promote pro-government art.

Even now, by obsessing over the arts, you run the risk , for you socialists out there, of committing the crime Walter Benjamin described as “fetishizing the hand crafted object.”

Consider Berkeley’s discussion of cutting the chemistry department.STEM needs the help. Social Sciences / Art require very little to succeed compared to scientific programs, whose labs can be incredibly expensive compared to being a youtube star, which takes a phone which every human being in America already has.

So, government sponsored Art, a hallmark of fascist regimes, heads out the door. Celebrate.

So lets argue for it: Here’s Fred Rogers testifying before Congress. Children’s programming, hinges on the only purpose that justifiably proves the role of Public Television. The political commentary fell short of solid analysis. The wikileaks e-mails showing that NPR reporters colluded with the campaign demonstrated they became not merely liberally biased, which they have always been to some extend, but absolute single party propagandists, going as far as listing the crowd interrupting chants during her speeches as ‘about 150 people chanting Bernie’ and ignoring the the suspicious presence of A) syllable by syllable counter chants for the seven or eight other yells and the fact there obviously were substantially more than 150 people doing it, makes me sad. Especially considering how even handed they started out in January, compared to how far on the slider they moved as November drew near. It pains me to lose NPR funding, but they bet everything and their entire credibility on a Clinton victory and lost. he last thing we need is more propaganda. Gone are Lewis Reukaiser and the McLoughlin group, shouting wild matches of different viewpoints and well informed political views (with one exception, Intelligence Squared) transforming instead into calm Soma pills of straw man discussions and the sort of ‘telling you what to think’ journalism that every other for profit station creates.

It is sad. They used to be so good, too.