Help me out here. What’s crazier – the abysmal failure the stimulus has been in Los Angeles County (like everywhere else) or how outrageously wasteful the plan was to begin with?

Los Angeles County’s take of stimulus funds is by far the largest in California, which has received $18.5 billion in ARRA funds, intended to create 110,219.36 jobs statewide — a pricey rate of $168,264.08 per job.

But Hollywood is a different story entirely. Hollywood — the geographic Hollywood as found on Thomas Guide map page 593 — has received $23,338,327 in grants, loans and contracting. This money has created just 20.57 jobs. That’s $1,134,580.80 per job. And as interviews with recipients reveal, even that tiny jobs claim is clearly false, with many of the claims of newly created positions either impossible to verify or lower than reported.

Not even 20 full-time jobs have been created in Hollywood proper.

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Although Broadway - and by extension National Tours of Broadway shows - tend to be the showcase for the American theatre industry, the vast majority of the works that end up in that showcase are born and nurtured in the vast network of non-profit theatres stretched across the country. 

New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco as well as smaller cities like Minneapolis, Houston San Diego and beautiful Costa Mesa (!) have major producing organizations that act as feeders for Broadway and the road.  New playwright programs designed to nurture writers and their works are a staple of most non-profit and institutional theatres.  And these theatres are funded, in part, by federal grants from the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA).  (more…)

So it turns out that HR1, Obama’s giant stimulus bill that’s going to save the world, one contraceptive, lawn care company, STD prevention program at a time has a little coin for all us starving artists. Well, probably not all us starving artists. Probably only the ones who are government and NEA approved. You know, all those right-wing expressionist types. However, if you think the currently allocated $50 million just isn’t enough (the cost of camel hair brushes being what they are these days) there’s a handy petition you can click over to (conveniently listed at the bottom of this post, so as not to divert your attention from this scintillating prose) where a group of artist is requesting a meager 1% (that’s $8.19 billion of the current $819 billion dollar behemoth) stimulus bill while simultaneously asking that President Obama appoint a Secretary of the Arts.

Hey, I’m all for it. I mean, there are at least a dozen black-box theaters in the Valley that could use a coat of paint. And it’s imperative that at this time of world-wide crises, where the country is engaged in two wars, we take the time to really bear down and work on a getting top flight Secretary of the Arts. It’s just what we need because… uh… of…uh… you know. I mean, come on people! (more…)