Elsewhere (39)

Darleen Click quotes William Voegeli on taxes and welfare:

One way to describe the difference between liberals and conservatives is that liberals want government spending to be the independent variable that determines tax levels, and conservatives want government spending to be the dependent variable determined by taxes… 

I’m a conservative because I think it's democratically healthy to confront the hard question about taxes first and directly, and then let our answer to that question determine the budget perimeter for our welfare state. It is democratically unhealthy to proceed the way liberals have habitually dealt with the problem, by promising generous programs that will “pay for themselves” or even “pay for themselves many times over,” and only later, after people have come to expect and depend on the stream of government benefits, fess up about the taxes required to sustain them.

Related: How much extra tax would you volunteer to pay?

Raedwald ponders Darwinism and the arts:

Milan Kundera termed the support of awful art by controlling political regimes the “absolute denial of shit.” By supporting and promoting the dreadful, the sense of common discrimination is dulled, the people gulled, and the power and voice of worthwhile and original art and culture suffocated beneath the drek of lesbian dance collectives and men who exhibit painted plaster casts of their penis. The deprivation of meritocracy from art and culture, the protection of the awful from Darwinian winnowing, the blurring of our power of discrimination, is all, Kundera says, an effort by the politically powerful to isolate the people from uncomfortable truths.

And the Devil runs a salty tongue over Caroline Lucas:

Lest we forget and imagine that Lucas is qualified to prognosticate on anything useful, your humble Devil would like to remind his faithful readers that Caroline earned her doctorate with a thesis entitled Writing for Women: a Study of Woman as Reader in Elizabethan Romance.

As usual, feel free to add your own in the comments.

Comments

[Sam]

But David, Caroline Lucas is a political heavyweight! The BBC says so.

[David]

“But David, Caroline Lucas is a political heavyweight! The BBC says so.”

The Beeb does seem determined to take her seriously. Let’s see. Privately educated middle-class lefty does joke degree, joins CND, hangs out at Greenham Common, defends anti-Israel vandals, defends Yusuf al-Qaradawi, champions the taxpayer funding of homeopathy, and then does a Toynbee and calls for “a return to wartime austerity” – i.e. poverty - because she knows it’s good for us.

What’s not to take seriously?

[Rob]

Frightening how quickly the green insanity is becoming mainstream. Mainstream for the establishment, of course. Ordinary people see it as horeshit still.

[David]

Rob,

It surprises me that our communist eco-imp isn’t laughed at more widely. Aside from the homeopathy and her comical double standards, and the jihadi “root causes” guff, and her alleged “expertise on peace issues,” Lucas takes economic advice from, ahem, Richard Murphy. Yes, our mistress of Elizabethan sonnets seeks the counsel of a retired leftwing accountant whose blunders, distortions and authoritarian fantasies have been catalogued at great length by Tim Worstall.

[WTP]

You are sooo ignorant of economics.

"In a healthy economic recovery, states and localities start hiring, expand services and help fuel the nation's growth...Yet state and local governments are still stuck in recession. Short of cash, they cut 30,000 jobs in May, the seventh straight month they've shed workers. Rather than add to U.S. economic growth, they're subtracting from it."

Obviously, what is needed are more taxes to enable the great economic engine that is governement to start expanding their services. It is Government from whom all blessings flow. Paul Wiseman is an economic writer for the Associated Press and he knows what he's talking about....

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110606/ap_on_bi_ge/us_economy_state_local_cuts

[carbon based lifeform]

Here's one. Ann Pettifor (NEF) tweets "Sign now to defend media diversity and independence. Say no to Fox News in the UK."

http://timworstall.com/2011/06/06/another-fascinating-tweet/

Because banning equals diversity or something.

[Sgt Pinback]

Caroline Lucas is one of the most disgusting 'mainstream' politicians in Britain. In the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks she blamed Israel / Jews. And kept blaming them even after the bastards who carried out the operation stated it was about Kashmir.

It takes a certain type of maggot to blame Jews for an attack by Islamists on India and Lucas played her part perfectly.

[AC1]

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/04/07/climate-models-go-cold/

[Anthony]

The acid test for art in an advanced civilisation is the market.

This is total bollocks.

[David]

Anthony,

“This is total bollocks.”

Well, by all means have at it. That’s the point of the ‘elsewhere’ posts – to spur discussion.

But the Darwinian analogy isn’t without some merit. My local publicly-funded galleries of contemporary “work” can be relied on to disappoint - and to go on disappointing precisely because there’s no obvious mechanism for correction. At times, it’s as if the intention were to repel anyone with an interest in beautiful objects and compelling images. Aside from the occasional item of briefly amusing fluff – the kind of thing that might scrape a mention in Friday Ephemera – the pickings are lean. At least, they are if you’re hoping for some visual intrigue and a sense of wonderment.

There is, however, an awful lot of this, where political issues of a certain kind are allegedly “interrogated” and visual ingenuity and public interest are pretty much irrelevant. Events like the one linked above - or like this, or this - aren’t comedic aberrations; they’re standard fare and announced proudly, as if they conferred gravitas and prestige. For quite a few people art has been reduced to a subset of pseudo-intellectual noodling and political posturing. Which may explain why so much space and public money is steered towards flummery that’s deemed relevant and challenging because it conforms to the prejudices of a curatorial caste.

One local, desperately modish gallery had an “installation” consisting of nondescript Velcro strips coiled around some wire hanging from the ceiling. It was by any measure an “absolute denial of shit.” And then a thought occurred. Whenever I’ve visited the place - being disappointed each time - I’ve only ever seen the same handful of faces - mostly staff and their friends and perhaps a handful of students. In effect, it’s a taxpayer-subsidised private hang-out for, at most, two dozen people.

Perhaps some winnowing might help.

[Simen Thoresen]

The acid test for art in an advanced civilisation is the market.

This is total bollocks.

'The market' is essentially a mechanism for figuring out what is wanted (and how much it is wanted). Anything that is wanted, will have a space in the market, while anything that is not, will not.

To me your assertion reads that you do not see a connection between the artwork, and wether anyone would want it. Do I understand you correctly?

Because I have a word for something made by humans and which is not not wanted, namely trash.

-S

[Anna]

My local publicly-funded galleries of contemporary “work” can be relied on to disappoint - and to go on disappointing precisely because there’s no obvious mechanism for correction.

Spot on. Good piece and video here:

"Artists who seek public financing don't worry about freedom of expression — they oppose the freedom to fail as artists. They don't like it, and so they want taxpayers to act as patrons, while demanding that they don't exercise the traditional role of patrons in discriminating between good and bad art. Not only are we too broke to provide welfare for artists who can't hack it on their own talents, all it does is encourage bad art to flourish by eliminating the feedback loop."

[sackcloth and ashes]

Talking of matters of art ...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/3604278.stm

Can you see a cleaner accidentally throwing away this

http://www.artchive.com/artchive/m/manet/manet_dejeuner.jpg

Or this

http://www.starlight-tower.com/images/starlight_tower/The_Thinker_Rodin-2.jpg

Or this

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/28/The_Nightwatch_by_Rembrandt.jpg

Because he/she thinks its a pile of trash?

[sackcloth and ashes]

'Caroline Lucas is one of the most disgusting 'mainstream' politicians in Britain. In the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks she blamed Israel / Jews. And kept blaming them even after the bastards who carried out the operation stated it was about Kashmir'.

Knowing what I know of Ms Lucas, I'm not disputing this in the slightest, but do you have a link?

[AC1]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwzHovOB1Vc

[Horace Dunn]

The artworks in the new show by James Cauty look quite good, as far as I can see from the clip. It seems as though there's at least a degree of decent craftmanship involved - again, as far as I can tell from the clip.

But the clip raises other issues ...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-13704273

"The people who are rioting are performing a sort of public service in a way, because they're doing it for us".

I have no idea whether this particular artistic venture is funded by the taxpayer (my guess is that it isn't) but I wonder why the taxpayer-funded BBC felt it appropriate to use our money to promote this show so fawningly.

[TimT]

The weapon for bad artists after grant money in a democratic society is conceptual art. Surrealism, Dadaism, postmodernism, and all other 20th century movements didn't quite fit the bill, being too freighted with ideology or skill. But conceptual art, encompassing virtually anything the artist cares to call art, while not requiring any complicated explanation, was just perfect.

So galleries full of vague installations of wire, people who want to go and vomit in public places, etc, etc... that's all fine.

If you have no talent, are not particularly interested in art, don't really want to actually do any work at all, but you happen to like money, a lucrative career in the conceptual arts beckons.