The 'Starving Artist' Needs to Go on a Diet

The Middle American News, November 2009 issue, featured a long list of the funds being distributed by those vibrant patrons of the arts - the U.S. Congress.
Here's a tiny sample of MAN's small sample which listed only about 40 bohemian entities (there's oodles more) who are proudly on the dole:

$50,000 for the Idaho Shakespeare Festival of Boise
$50,000 for the Illusion Theater & School of Minneapolis
$50,000 for the International Accordian Festival of San Antonio
$50,000 for the Mural Project of Brooklyn
$50,000 for the Headwaters Dance Company of Missoula
$50,000 for Grupo de Artistas Latinoamericanos de Washington, D.C.
$50,000 for Jacob's Pillow Dane of Becket (MA)
$50,000 for Friends of a Studio in the Woods, New Orleans

You get the idea.

Let's see if I get the idea: The national unemployment rate is now 22%, yet we enthusiastically continue to subsidize the fiddler to fiddle while Rome burns.

Makes perfect sense.