Sound like a decent, albeit rough, definition? Good.
What an incredible waste of money this thing is. Let's get something straight here: The NEA funds a wide variety of "art", some of which is widely considered to be pornographic or blasphemous in nature. A while back a fellow, who I will not validate by mentioning his name, used your tax dollars to take pictures of, among other sexually explicit scenes, himself with a bullwhip sticking out of his anus and pictures of men urinating on other men.
And he called it "art".
Ok, whatever, I'm not going to argue something as subjective as what constitutes art and what doesn't. I'm going to argue against supporting someone who would rather pursue "artistic" ventures than be gainfully employed. I personally see the NEA as a fund for those that would rather live off the contributing, functioning, participating mass of the society than get a job. In other words, we've set up another cash cow to be milked by those that haven't the spine to get training and sell their services or any goods they can produce.
I draw. I'm not too bad, either. I'd like to one day concentrate on my drawings and see if I can get them into a gallery. It's a fantasy of mine to have my drawings be so good that others would actually come to see them. But you know what? I'm not an artist by profession. I suppose if I got really talented enough to sell my art widely and for a high enough price that I could in fact become an artist by profession, but right now I'm an artist as a hobby, as a matter of accident and talent. What I am by profession is a Sr. Systems Engineer. It's what I do for a living.
I'd like to interject a sentiment that I heard expressed long ago and believe in whole-heartedly. It goes something like this:
Your work is something you do that gives you fulfillment.
It is your means of expression. It is something you
enjoy doing that gives you a sense of accomplishment
and satisfaction.
Your job is something you do that you probably wouldn't
do if someone wasn't paying you to do it.
The two are not mutually exclusive, but they are rarely
one and the same.
It's my feeling that the government shouldn't be employing artists without
some return. If you want to employ an artist, you specify what you want
created and they create it. You don't hand someone money and say, "Gee,
you want to stop working so you can paint? Ok, go ahead." That's moronic.
I find the time and the materials for my art quite readily. Art existed
long before the NEA came into existance, and it would exist if the NEA
disappeared tomorrow.
I say let's put our tax dollars back into our schools... which brings us to our next topic o' the day...
Know why?
Cause the cops were picking up the same kids over and over and over. The kids that walk out of school aren't going to be impressed with the cops. Would you like to know what would impress them? Their parents standing over them, pissed off and waving a court summons in their faces.
Yeah, baby, I'm talking about zapping those kids where it hurts the worst, in their parent's change purses.
I skipped class twice in the entire time I was in grade school. Once was when a girl talked me into skipping a class with her. She was really cute, and I, being full of hormones at 16, said yeah, what the heck. I was sweating it the entire time. When the call came from school and my mother asked me about it, I lied. I said I was in class. I gotta tell ya, I hate lying to my mom, and I never skipped class again... until the last day of my senior year. And once again, a cute girl told me to meet her at the park. Boy, I tell ya, women are trouble, aren't they? (big grin) Anyway, this time I explained my plight to my TV/Radio Production teacher. He got a pained look on his face, shook his head, and said, "As long as I don't see you..." Unfortunately, as I was tiptoeing out so none of the other students would see me leaving, he looked in my direction from his office. I said, "You didn't see this!" and closed the door quickly behind me. He was a great teacher in that he was fantastic at imparting knowledge and he was also a buddy.
But enough of that; the point I'm getting at is, generally speaking, truancy was not a problem in my school career. "Applying myself" was, but not skipping class. And can you guess why? Because my dad would have worn a hole in my britches beating the hell out of me if I had! Say what you want, but kids will stay in school if their parents make a big enough impression on them to do so. And if you ticket the parents everytime a kid is picked up for truancy, they will make an impression on their kids.
Going to school is the law. Parents are legally responsible for their kids' actions until the kids are 18. If the kid breaks the law by being truant, the child should be held at the police station until the parent comes down to pick the kid up. The parent should be given a ticket before the child can be released. The child should be turned over to protective services if they are in truancy lockup for more then 12 hours. The fines would pay for the program. Since you're not holding them overnight, truancy cells don't require a bed, so they can be smaller in size than normal holding cells. Since these kids are trouble, you probably don't want to put more than one in a cell, so you make the cells really tiny, the only openings being a barred window and a door. Small, light, cheap meals would be served at noon and at 5pm. There would be a metal chair bolted to the floor, a light, and a few magazines. Shoot, if they've got their books with them, they can study while they wait for their parents to pick them up...