Trump’s Takeover of the Kennedy Center
President Trump is cleaning house at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.. Upset over some of the center’s performances and possibly miffed over the fact that three honorees in 2017 didn’t want to meet with him, Trump fired Biden-appointed board members and others, criticized the center’s programming, and, amazingly, has appointed himself as the new chairman of the center. There is now speculation that Trump will orient the Kennedy Center toward country-music performances.
The controversy demonstrates how different conservatives are from libertarians. While conservatives are hailing Trump for taking over the Kennedy Center and moving it in an appropriate — I.e., right-wing — direction, libertarians ask a fundamental question: What business does the federal government have in the arts? Our answer: No business at all, not even with Trump or some other right-winger in charge.
Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.
While the Kennedy Center is not a governmental entity, it operates as a government-private partnership. While its programing is sustained by private funds, it receives annual funding from the federal government for building maintenance and operation. That annual amount ranges from $40 million to $50 million. Yes, you read that right — $40-$50 million of U.S. taxpayer money every year to cover the maintenance and operation of the building.
Rather than take over the Kennedy Center, Trump could have simply decreed that he was terminating all federal support to the center and severing all ties of the federal government to the center. That would have left it an entirely privately supported entity, which is what it should be. It also would have saved taxpayers som
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