-By Frank Hyland
The speech by U.S. Senate Majority Bleater Harry Reid (D, NV) on the Senate floor on March 8th is destined to become a classic in the pantheon of such utterances. In condemning the cutting of funds for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Sen. Reid decried the ending of an annual festival in Nevada and stated, “Had that program not been around, the tens of thousands of people who come there every year would not exist.” We’ll leave it to a higher authority in the field of Medicine to determine whether the attendees would still exist.
The National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, the actual name of the festival, was held this year from January28th to February 4th. Direct from the festival’s website is the cost of tickets to the events:
“For the 27th National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, if purchased prior to December 22, 2010, a four-day Deluxe Pass was $60 and included the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering program book. After December 22, the cost increased to $75. If not purchased as a part of a Deluxe Pass, the program book sold for $6.00. A single Day Pass for Wednesday, January 26 was $15, and single Day Passes for Thursday, Friday and Saturday, January 27-29 were $25 each.”
Yes, tickets. Attendees, as you see above, paid anywhere from $6.00 just for the program book to as much as $75.00 for a four-day “Deluxe Pass.” Those figures, of course, were not included by Sen. Reid in his now-viral speech, leaving most American taxpayers to believe that the ending of NEH funding would mean the end of the Cowboy Poetry Gathering with certainty. The cost of tickets might very well increase without NEH support. How much? It is difficult to say because the Gathering has had NEH support, thanks to Sen. Reid’s earmarks. The reality would likely be somewhere between this year’s prices and the cost of Disney World and other similar attractions.
That, though, is a side issue, one that Sen. Reid would prefer that we continue to focus on. The real issue is that you, the American taxpayer, underpin the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering and you do it without having been asked whether you wish to do so because the NEH funds, like most earmarks, are inserted into legislation without debate. It is time for you to weigh in, and not just on this earmark. Your Congressional Representative and your Senators need to hear from you not only on Cowboy Poetry, but on the almost-130 billion dollars that were requested this year alone. To continue on this path is a ticket, all right – a ticket to bankruptcy.
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Frank Hyland is a long-time Writer/Editor who has written for The New Media Alliance, and also for The Reality Check and has appeared weekly on Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Conservatism on Sunday evenings on Blog Talk Radio, along with Babe Huggett and Warner Todd Huston.