Sherry Chandler » Smithsonian in trouble
Smithsonian in trouble
I saw this article in the NYTimes online on August 25th and intended to comment on it. Unfortunately, in the distraction of Hurricane Katrina and her aftermath, I delayed until the full article went into archive and is no longer available free. Here is the abstract
Years of inadequate financing and maintenance have led to widespread disrepair that is imperiling collections at Smithsonian Institution, world’s largest museum complex; recent audit by Government Accountability Office noted ‘broad decline’ in its aging facilities and systems, posing ’serious long-term threat’ to its countless artifacts; Smithsonian officials estimate it will take total of $2.3 billion over next nine years to solve most pressing problems; say Congress’s slightly increased appropriations for fiscal year 2006, to $621.3 million from $615.2 million in 2005, is not enough
The current administration has as its goal to cut the Federal government until it is small enough, in words widely attributed to Grover Norquist, “to drown in a bathtub.” This is a federalist ideology that began to break down in the days when Calvin Coolidge may or may not have visited flood-ravaged Louisiana with Randy Newman’s “little fat man with a notebook in his hand,” who may or may not have been Herbert Hoover. At any rate, Coolidge’s federal government felt no responsibility to help victims of the 1927 flood on the Mississippi, many of them poor and black.
We see one result of that revived ideology in the feeble response to Hurricane Katrina, another in leaks in the Smithsonian roof.
Mr. Bush’s first resort to help the flood victims is to set up the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund to raise private moneys.
The United States rejected this lack of government involvement after the 1927 flood and especially after the Great Depression.
Are we, in fact, embracing it now?
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