This week at The L Magazine, I take a closer look at the reasoning behind Romney’s proposed elimination of the NEA. A sample:
The real good news for Romney, though, is that swing states—which I’m defining as states FiveThirtyEight projects as between 47% and 53% in favor of Romney—receive, on average, less funding than either red or blue states. The average swing state has received just $0.25 per capita in grants this year, and some of the least-funded states are also the most important politically: Florida, under noted funding-refuser Rick Scott, is second-to-last in the nation at $0.11 a head, and Ohio is right behind it at $0.14. Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Virginia, Iowa, and North Carolina get short shrift, too. For Romney, that means threatening to cut the NEA has little effect on the voters that matter, who don’t see its benefits anyway, while giving him a nifty talking point for the any-government-is-bad-government crowd he’s trying to rally. For the rest of us, that means the voters potentially deciding the fate of arts funding in this country have probably never seen arts funding in this country, and have every excuse to believe it’s useless.
To read the full piece, click here.
