National Endowment for Government Funding
11th September 2009
We wrote here and here about the corruption of the National Endowment for the Arts in the Age of Obama. Now comes word that on August 12, a group of 21 arts organizations endorsed President Obama’s health reform plan only 48 hours after a conference call in which a top National Endowment for the Arts official asked arts groups for help in advancing the administration’s policy agenda, including health care.
One reason the arts organizations may have been so swift to follow the administration’s suggestion is that 16 of the groups and affiliated organizations received nearly $2 million in grants from the National Endowment for the Arts in the 150 days before the conference call. According to the linked Washington Times analysis of NEA records, more than $1 million of that total came from the stimulus package. The NEA has moved from silence to disinformation regarding these events, but the money was obviously well spent.