Can you feel the "Change" in Washington?

I can't say that I'm shocked that federal government employees acted "innappropriately" in an 8/10/09 conference call where National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) employees joined with White House staff to discuss ways of using taxpayer dollars to fund art projects that would promote President Obama's agenda.

While it's wrong in multiple ways, it's not Obama's problem as much as it's a problem with government at every level.

More on the systemic problem in a moment, but first off, exactly what do we need the NEA for?? Why is money forcibly taken from me and every other taxpayer to pay for "art" that we have no say in? It isn't like without government support, there wouldn't be any art. In fact, many of our richest and most famous citizens are artists, and their money comes from the voluntary patronage of their fans.

Put another way, if whatever art is being funded wouldn't survive from the willing patronage of American citizens, then why should we fund it with the involuntary taxation of American taxpayers? Isn't forcing someone to pay for something they don't want contrary to freedom and liberty?

While I'm sure the White House at least wishes this call hadn't been made public, and maybe even that it hadn't happened, this is in no stretch of the imagination a problem unique to President Obama. At the local level, public employee unions (police, firefighters, teachers, office workers, garbagemen, you name it) take money from the wages that taxpayers fund, give it to the politicians who negotiate their contracts, and the politicians sweeten the deal. The politicians get campaign money, the unions get power, the public employees get paid and the taxpayers get screwed. The same thing happens at the state level. In California, the union for the correctional officers (the CCPOA) wields enormous influence in state elections. At the federal level, politicians get contributions from entities that benefit from the local projects that they fund from their earmarks.

So this cycle of taxpayer dollars being spent in a political fashion, while disgusting, is certainly not a problem unique to Obama, it happens every day at every level in our society.