Baxter Black...say it ain't so!

[Hazcat]

March 08, 2011
Categories:

    * Appropriations

Reid: Save federal funding for the cowboy poets!

File this under: Did Harry Reid just say that?

In the middle of his tirade against House Republicans' "mean-spirited" budget bill on the Senate floor Tuesday, the Senate Majority Leader lamented that the GOP’s proposed budget cuts would eliminate the annual "cowboy poetry festival” in his home state of Nevada. (See also: Reid’s prostitution lecture bombs.)

Reid clearly has a soft spot for the Baxter Blacks of the poetry world and thinks Republicans don't.

“The mean-spirited bill, H.R. 1 … eliminates the National Endowment of the Humanities, National Endowment of the Arts,” said Reid. “These programs create jobs. The National Endowment of the Humanities is the reason we have in northern Nevada every January a cowboy poetry festival. Had that program not been around, the tens of thousands of people who come there every year would not exist.”

Reid was attempting, of course, to criticize the spending proposal crafted by House Republicans that would cut $61 billion from the budget before he began praising the annual festival in his home state. The Senate majority leader also insisted Tuesday that he would do everything he could to schedule an up-or-down vote on H.R. 1 in order to force his GOP colleagues to take a position on the budget bill that Democrats argue includes "draconian" cuts.

For the record, the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering is in Elko, Nev., next January. The 28th annual festival, a “week-long celebration of life in the rural West, featuring the contemporary and traditional arts of western ranching culture,” is expected to draw thousands of people, according to the festival’s website.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/glennthrush/0311/Reid_Save_federal_funding_for_the_cowboy_poets.html

[kmitch200]

"Had that program not been around, the tens of thousands of people who come there every year would not exist.”

Are they listening to poetry or making the two backed howling beast?

[Big Frank]

Maybe one led to the other?

[Pathfinder]

Saw an article on this this very morning. NEH gave a whopping $2k in 2000. That's it.

NEA has been more generous, $30-50k per year for the past 2 decades. A worthy cause, IMHO, but the gummint does not need to be subsidizing art of any ilk. Elko will survive so long as NEH and NEA are done away with.

[BAC]

Maybe those tens of thousands of people can donate to the cause so they can continue to exist.  I will never go there, so why am I paying for it?  Same thing with NPR.  Why am I paying for something (that I don't listen to) from a group of people that wish people like me cease to exist?

If NPR, PBS, NEA, etc., truly merit continuing to exist, they should not need my tax money!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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