Are Your Taxes Too High!

Are Your Taxes Too High?  Actually the answer is "No".


Even though the "Tea Partiers" are screaming about the government taking too many of your hard earned dollars,  a recent USA Today analysis of federal data shows that Americans paid the lowest level of taxes last year since Harry Truman's presidency.  Federal, state, local, property, sales, and other taxes were 9.2% of all personal income in 2009, which is the lowest rate since 1950. 

What might be better for us to scream about would be that mult-imillionaires and billionaires, who pay a maximum 35 percent income tax on salaries and not a penny in Social Security taxes on the vast majority of their income, and who can often call their income from dividends capital gains and pay a maximum 15 percent income tax on them, are also not paying too much in taxes.   And these people have the resources to keep it that way.  They can buy their way into the congressional votes needed to keep the status quo in their favor. For the full story go to:  http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/taxes/2010-05-10-taxes_N.htm

I still believe that the best first start to take back our government would be campaign finance reform.   Television advertising is the single largest expense in current campaigns and if we could take a page from the Brits and out and out ban  political commercials, it might start us back toward a leveler playing field. There is no guarantee that such action would improve the quality of the winners, but it would be a bold simple step toward controlling the fundraising necessary to conduct a run for office.  Without the incessant, repetitive, and often truth starved messages of campaign commercials, we would also immediately improve the relative sanity of the air waves.  Just think about a TV world in which you could once again concentrate on trying to figure out if you will be ready when the time is right.

   

OFTA Features Local Writer

Join Old Friends Talk Arts (OFTA) at 10:00 AM on Wednesday, May 12th at the Buchanan Center for the Arts in downtown Monmouth, IL for a presentation by Ms. Sue Van Kirk titled “A Town, a School, and the Students Who Taught Me” Her collection of short stories, Mr. Vonnegut and Me (and Other Tales from a Teaching Life) will be published by iUniverse in August/September. One story from this collection, “War and Remembrance,” has already been published in Teacher Magazine.


Many locals will know Sue as a colleague or as a teacher of our children, so this should be a most interesting session. She will be dealing with how you accomplish the task of writing about your local community and will also read a portions of one of the stories.

Susan Van Kirk was born and raised in Galesburg, Illinois. She graduated from Knox College and took a job teaching at Monmouth High School where she taught English and speech for 34 years. She was department chairman for most of those years and, along with Jan Willhardt, began an Honors English program at the high school. She earned a M. Ed from the University of Illinois in 1999, and since her retirement from the public schools in 2001 has been teaching in the Education and Communications Studies departments at Monmouth College. She is also the author of the Cliffs Notes editions of Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest.

Backyard Has Beauty Too

Often the traveler is guilty of thinking that only the distant or unusual carries interest or beauty. We love the Southwest, but can also find equivilent natural beauty just thirty paces from the back door.

The tulips glisten after an early morning rain.

The daffodils were caught in late afternoon while the bunny was spied along the side of the garage when I opened the back door one day.

Allergy sufferers beware.  The dreaded forsythia exploded this spring.

The tulips were almost transparent in late afternoon.

And once again our old apple tree sent out its blooms.

So welcome to the Midwest; it has its glory too.

Southwest Still a Winner in the Early Spring

Better late than never is the old proverb and so we touch base with AZ in the early spring even as the spring wears on in the mid west.  It was a fine sojourn on most fronts though an eight hour flight delay on the outward leg definitely put a test on flying patience quotient.   

What else did was on the docket.  There was a trip to Mesa to see a Cubs pre-season outing.  The big Z, now newly demoted to the bull pen, looked like a real winner and threw five scoreless innings. We took Flat Stanley to the park with us so we could show his exploits to our grandson.

Other highlights were the Desert Poppies that were peppering the countryside and the Heard Museum of Native American Culture.

  

Arts Advocacy for April

Some Brief Advocacy Items for April, 2010


This quarter’s Community Grant applications for the Illinois Humanities Council local programming are due on April 15th. Next quarter’s due date is July 15th. Get further information on your possible eligibility at http://www.prairie.org/grants

As financial pressures mount on states and their school systems, the move toward reduction in arts programming as a part of overall budget reductions is becoming more prevalent. Several federal lawmakers have been asking Education Secretary Arne Duncan to step up to the “Arts” plate and declare that “narrowing the education” is not a satisfactory solution to our problems. To get a better picture of where the arts might be heading within the national educational scene, you should put Tuesday, April 13th on your calendar. That will be the 23rd National Arts Advocacy Day in Washington DC. You can follow the action on Facebook or Twitter. Go to http://www.artsusa.org/events/2010/aad/default.asp for full details.

Still on the national level you might have some interest in a new NEA research publication. It’s titled 2008 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts and you can find it at: http://www.nea.gov/research/ResearchReports_chrono.html There are several other reports at the same location and all are downloadable in PDF format. Age and Arts Participation: 1982-1997, The Geography of Participation in the Arts and Culture, or American Participation in Theater (both from the late nineties) are all interesting.

Finally I have a bit of a personal editorial. We have all been pressured into justifying theatre and the arts because it functions as an economic or social engine. We are pushed to define our existence as income producers, traffic generators for restaurants, civilizing forces in neighborhoods and schools, and employers for performers. Certainly we do all of that, but at the core artists feel a more compelling need to instruct, inspire, move, entertain, and sometimes challenge our fellows to live better or more examined lives. We are proud to be creators of art because we know that art lasts and art matters in the lives of our participants and audiences. We create because we have to and we will continue to do so for our own good and for the good of our society as long as we have the energy to pull the curtain.  Drama Jim says “Break a Leg” this spring! 

Jim De Young

ITA Director of Advocacy

Illinois Arts Need Your Support

To all of my Illinois readers:  Pat Quinn, our state Governor has just put out his budget plans. Luckily, he  does not recommend further cuts in state arts funding, but there is many a slip between the cup and the political lip when it comes to proposals and final results.  If you do care, please follow the bouncing ball to the Arts Alliance Illinois and tell your legislators that you do wish to protect what is left of arts funding in Illinois. It’s going to take all of us working together and you have the power to activate others if you move on this now. 


please hit this button.

AND FORWARD THIS ACTION ALERT (http://tinyurl.com/protect-the-arts) to your Illinois friends, supporters, and colleagues

* SHARE THIS ACTION ALERT ONLINE (http://tinyurl.com/protect-the-arts) with your networks on Facebook, Twitter, your blog, etc.  just as I have done.

You can count on opponents of a responsible and comprehensive budget to try to use the arts as a political punching bag. Don’t let these extreme views be the only thing lawmakers hear. For more ways to get involved, contact Scarlett Swerdlow at Arts Alliance Illinois at swerdlow@artsalliance.org or 312.855.3105 x13.

Illinois Arts Advocacy for March

Arts Advocacy Materials for March


If you or your theatre has a project that might fit Illinois Humanities Foundation guidelines the next deadlines for grant applications are April 15 and July 15. More information at this link. April 15th is also the deadline for 2011-2012 Illinois Road Scholars. This is a remarkable program and if you have a special area interest that fits their guidelines, you could pick a plum of a grant. They do consider “living history actors” and are looking for material in the next round that deals with Civil Rights or reflections on the 10th anniversary of the World Trade Center bombing. Check out the application at this link.

Are you in the Western Illinois area? Think about visiting Macomb on Friday, April 9th for a grant application workshop with a representative of the Illinois Humanities Council. For full details on the schedule and registration for this free program click here.

From our great Southwest comes ideas on “Creative Tourism.” Have your considered fully how to integrate your arts program with the interests and needs of visitors to your community? You may not have the artistic ambiance of Santa Fe, but you might still learn something from what the folks out there are doing. See this link.

Are you looking for some new information on the impact of arts on society and the psychology of your audiences. Check out this new book Audiences and the Arts: Communication Perspectives (Lois Foreman-Wernet and Brenda Dervin) from the Hampton Press. It is addressed to cultural policymakers, arts educators, arts administrators, cultural writers, advanced undergraduate and graduate students, art-makers of every kind, supporters of the arts, volunteers, and anyone interested in the role of the arts and culture in society.

The Illinois Governor's Office of Management and Budget (GOMB) has launched http://www.budget.illinois.gov/, a website that allows Illinois residents to provide feedback that will be used to shape the state's fiscal year 2011 budget. This is the time to put in a plea against more cuts in arts funding.