Opinion
By Jeff Childers
06-24-24
Good morning, C&C, it’s Monday! It’s also the last full week of June. We’ve almost checked off another 2024 month, and next week we head off into the back half of the year. Due to some last-minute work obligations, today’s roundup is just a quick hitter: DeSantis prunes liberal darlings from budget and wails quickly commence; new, large, post-jab adverse events study reveals more undisclosed medical problems; President Trump teases a big promise; and activist mom calls for common sense.
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🔥🔥 Governor DeSantis triggered the left again. The story appeared in the Tampa Bay Times, headlined, “Florida arts and culture funding slashed from budget.” Late last week, using his line-item veto power, Governor DeSantis slashed about $32 million in arts and culture grants from Florida’s 2025 budget, and liberal brains popped off in a cascade of explosions that could be easily seen from space.
The Tampa Museum of Art’s executive director, Michael Tomor, expressed bafflement and dismay that the wellspring of taxpayer money was suddenly drying up. “It’s a huge disappointment and a quandary,” he complained. Director Tomor just can’t understand it. “We are all unclear as to why this happened,” he scowled.
Now what are they supposed to do?
The Tampa Bay Times’s reporter was just as confused as Director Tomor. They both assume as a fact — like gravity or virtue signaling — that the government’s job is to scrape together working people’s tax money and then redistribute it to elite, art-collecting institutions whose directors make six-figure salaries.
I’m sure there are even some C&C readers who are thinking right now that the arts are super important, a critical investment in the future, a civilizationally defining necessity that, of course, should be funded by the state.
But according to the Times, Governor DeSantis took a dimmer view, less like a high-minded, politically connected museum director, and more like an overworked bookkeeper running out of adding machine paper. Even though Florida is currently running a surplus, the state’s top executive decided the arts were an inappropriate use of state tax dollars, and snip snip:
DeSantis’s decision mystified the Times. Lost and wandering around somewhere in the early impressionists, the paper couldn’t conceive of any principled objection to funding the arts with tax dollars.
It’s … the arts!
But unsurprisingly, the outraged Times reporter never looked beyond her champagne glass or interviewed anyone who agreed with Governor DeSantis, or could explain his logic. And that is what passes for journalism these days.
It only took me about two minutes of digging. I pulled up the Tampa Museum of Art’s latest Form 990 disclosures on Guidestar, which the Times’ reporter could not find, probably because it involves numbers and not pictures.
According to the museum’s disclosures, in 2022 the Museum received $5.5 million in donations and grants. But, and this is the key issue right here, it lavished over half of that total, about $3 million dollars, on “salaries, compensation, and benefits.” Not art.
$1.2 million of the museum’s 2022 revenues came from “government grants.”
Now, I am quite certain the Tampa Museum of Art is a fine institution, with a lovely art collection, and good luck to it. But I don’t see why taxpaying citizens — outside Tampa! — should be made involuntary patrons for invisible, highly-paid persons who never say ‘thank you’ but only complain when the money spigot turns off.
In other words, being as charitable as I can, government grants for the arts are mostly wealth transfers. Grants forcibly take money from people who could care less about art, but who are keeping the lights on and the toilets flushing, and doles their money out to elite liberals running non-taxed “non-profits.” Artsy liberals who often make artistically tasteless decisions.
There’s nothing wrong with museums. There’s just too much bad art and too many grifters.
One imagines the millions of tax dollars “invested” in trendy liberal fads, like “diversity art.” And don’t even get me started on so-called modern art, like the fifteen-foot square, blank canvas I saw spotlighted in New York’s MOMA one time. It was titled, “Nothingness.” (I thought, “genius!” I clearly invested way too much effort on my 10th-grade final art project, dang it.)
People in the “art industry” often don’t act like they love the arts. They act like everybody else, like art is a career choice, and all too often they act like the job is called ‘government cash grab.’ Incensed Director Tomor, for example, is no volunteer. The Museum’s 2022 Form 990 shows the good director earned a nifty $269,083 that year.
And that was his salary two years ago. I bet it’s more now. I’m sure he’s worth every penny. Part of his job is probably to get hold of the same government grants we’ve been talking about. But Director Tomor should earn his living fair and square, like the rest of us. Not through tax gifts.
Governor DeSantis was right to nip out the art funding. Let people keep their money. If the people want more Nothingness, they can pay for nothing by themselves.
💉💉 Another nail in the covid coffin appeared in a fascinating new preprint study published last week on MexRxIV, titled, “Broad-spectrum of non-serious adverse events following COVID-19 vaccination: A population-based cohort study in Seoul, South Korea.”
In the study, Korean researchers crunched several million medical database records, looking for adverse events after covid jabs, but with a twist. The twist was that, instead of looking for serious adverse events, they looked for non-serious adverse events.
Non-serious events can include things like minor aches and pains, or things that doctors call non-serious but victims might disagree. Specifically, the researchers took data from the first 90 days after a safe and effective jab, and looked for gynecological, hematological, dermatological, ophthalmological (vision), otological (hearing), and dental problems.
You can guess what they found. “Incidence rates” at three months post-jab were significantly higher in the vaccinated, for 13 out of 14 adverse event types. These included “minor” medical issues like tinnitus, alopecia, gum disease, glaucoma, warts, herpes infections, endometriosis, and menstrual problems.
All the events were individually ‘rare.’ But nobody toted up the combined risks of so many different enhanced risk categories. The mRNA jabs seem to have more possible side effects than any drugs in history. At this point, growing eyes in the back of your head seems like a real possibility.
While non-serious adverse events grab fewer headlines than do ‘serious’ adverse events like myocarditis, they are still nothing anybody would volunteer for, given the chance. Had people known about the risks of getting these conditions, many people might have spurned the shots.
Even if non-fatal, these “non-serious” AEs play a significant role in quality of life. People having these problems suffer. People who get these conditions might even disagree on whether they are “non-serious,” since they can make a huge difference in people’s lives.
If your hair starts falling out, it might not kill you, but the contours of your life will permanently change. Or tinnitus, which can literally drive people crazy.
And with each additional non-serious AE that people get, their lives can get exponentially worse, even though, conventionally, doctors would still classify these folks’ problems as “non-serious.”
They only studied the first 90 days following the jabs. Who knows how ‘rare’ each condition might be, if they looked at a full year.
Never forget: they promised everyone the only adverse effects were rare injection site pain or a couple days of flu symptoms. They never told us our hair and teeth might fall out. So it’s great news that somebody’s finally looking into these less medically-glamorous issues. The unsung victims also deserve a voice.
Tick, tock.
🔥🔥 This weekend, President Trump gave a speech to conservative Christians at the Faith & Freedom conference. At one point, the former president teased that, if elected, he “will shut down the Federal Department of Education, and we will move everything back to the states.”
CLIP: President Trump promises, at long last, to end the Department of Education (0:30).
Often promised, never delivered, shuttering the federal Department of Education has long been red meat for conservatives, who can’t think of a single reason the federal government needs to be involved in public school. Especially lately, after the feds have been so busy turning the old voyeuristic classic Porky’s into reality, by helping boys get into girl’s locker rooms.
Moms for Liberty’s Tiffany Justice also spoke at the same conference, about the “state of the education union.” Here’s a short clip.
CLIP: Tiffany Justice talks gender ideology at Faith & Freedom (7:51).
Listen to the whole thing. Tiffany’s story is incredibly encouraging. She is also very positive and thinks we will win the counter-revolution. Here’s a little sample from the clip to whet your appetite.
Be bold in your advocacy. I want to give you words today about how harmful gender ideology is. Right now, as the Biden Administration is pushing these regulations and pushing gender ideologies to our schools, there is a tidal wave of truth and knowledge bearing down on America showing the harm of gender-affirming care. Now is a time for common sense.
There is no such thing as a transgender child.
Indeed, now is a time for common sense. In a lot of areas! So, get out there today and spread around some common sense.
Have a magnificent Monday! Coffee & Covid will return tomorrow with a regular roundup of essential news and commentary.
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© 2022, Jeff Childers, all rights reserved
The views expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Citizens Journal Florida
