What To Do With the NEA

If I Ran the NEA - Los Angeles Times

(leave it to the Times to find the least-attractive way to lay out an article. Really - I have to click on everyone's head shot and have a pop-up window come up? We couldn't just do text?)

I know some of my more conservative friends will have an immediate reaction to this ("shutter it"), but I wanted to throw this out there anyway.

I can't make a case that the federal government *should* be involved in the arts. It's certainly far afield from the Constitutional duties of the feds. But I look at an arts supports system like Canada's, which has helped give me so many of my favorite bands (Stars, Broken Social Scene and Feist each have received seed money for projects at one point or another), and I wonder how to make it work here.

Can it?