The Great Depression's priceless earmark

If you are lucky enough to live or work in Washington, DC, seek out The National Portrait Gallery. http://www.npg.si.edu/

The gallery is a particularly comforting place on a late afternoon on Fridays, when it's nearly empty, and the man who greets you at the front desk is full of stories about the history of the building, formerly, the nation's patent office, and before that a Civil War hospital, and before that, the site of an enormous inaugural ball for President Lincoln. Right now, there is a wonderful exhibit of government-funded art that Roosevelt commissioned as part of his jobs stimulus plan in the 1930s. Anyone who thinks that funding the arts to create jobs is just funding wasteful "earmarks," should visit this exhibit. It reveals so clearly and eloquently that even in the most difficult times life and joy emerge. Italian immigrants celebrate feast days with Madonnas and swing bands in a down-at-the-heels New York City slum. African-American cotton pickers stand erect from their labors and show beauty and self-respect. A new immigrant captures the drama of a metropolitan subway car. Thousands of artists earned their daily bread painting ordinary Americans trying to get by. Not only did the federal funds buy their financial survival, they brought the rest of us a priceless legacy. If this is an earmark, let them rain down on us!