Your Tax Dollars at Play
The National Endowment for the Humanities has published their list of Awards and Offers for August 2009 and the list should be a real eye-opener for the almost 10% of Americans who are unemployed and the much larger percentage of Americans who are underemployed.
During these tough economic times, the federal government has decided to spend your tax dollars for things that it feels are more important than you. Here are just a few excerpts from the report:
| $189,917 | Two one-week workshops for eighty school teachers on the history and culture of the Blue Ridge Parkway. |
| $65,000 | Development of a script for a 90-minute documentary on the life of Thomas Day and the history of 19th-century free blacks in the South. |
| $148,416 | A three-week college and university teacher institute for twenty-five participants to explore the history of economic thought. |
| $115,901 | Two one-week workshops for fifty community college faculty members on industrial landmarks in western North Carolina. |
| $350,000 | Implementation of a traveling exhibition, a catalog, a website, educational materials, and public programs that explore the cultural significance of the circus poster during its golden age in America. |
| $148,046 | A three-week school teacher institute for twenty-five participants to explore Dvorak’s New World Symphony to understand American culture and society in the late nineteenth century. |
| $134,201 | A five-week college and university teachers seminar for sixteen participants to study the two great autobiographies of late Antiquity, the Prison Diary of Perpetua of Carthage and the Confessions of Saint Augustine. |
| $141,220 | A five-week school teacher seminar for sixteen participants to study Germany’s cosmopolitan society over the past two centuries, to be held in Berlin. |
Please don’t stop here. Please read the entire report. The document lists eleven pages of these outrages.
When you can’t afford to send yourself, or your children, to college to improve the economic situation of your family — think of all of the “public servants” who are vacationing in Europe on your dime. When you can’t afford to buy your children the Christmas presents they want this year, think of where your money is going instead. Most of all, please remember these parasites the next time you find yourself standing in a ballot booth. Outrage should lead to action.
