With our current spending issues, how exactly is it wise to be increasing the National Endowment for the Arts budget, as the NYT reports the Bush administration is about to do. And, no, I can’t get beyond the fact that it is the NEA that we’re talking about here. How many years have conservatives fought to decrease funding, to eliminate funding for inappropriate (re: pornographic, ridiculous, etc.) “art and other silly allocations of funds (like grants to NYC’s impoverished MET)? I’m sure the White House justifies the increase in the spririt of a long-held Western tradition of public funds for the arts…and the current chairman is a gem (Dana Gioia)…but for a spending increase, this is neither the time nor the place. What happened to the days when we were going to abolish, not expand?