NEA and New White House Guidelines

Big Hollywood, Andrew Breitbart, and Patrick Courrielche exposed another Obama administration scandal, using the NEA for partisan propagandizing and abusing taxpayer funds.

The White House has responded after being busted by these watchdog journalists.

Jake Tapper writes:

An August 10, 2009 National Endowment for the Arts conference call in which artists were asked to help support President Obama's agenda -- a call that at least one good government group called "inappropriate" -- has prompted the White House to issue new guidelines to prevent such a call from ever happening again.

"The point of the call was to encourage voluntary participation in a national service initiative by the arts community," White House spokesman Bill Burton told ABC News. "To the extent there was any misunderstanding about what the NEA may do to support the national service initiative, we will correct it. We regret any comments on the call that may have been misunderstood or troubled other participants. We are fully committed to the NEA's historic mission, and we will take all steps necessary to ensure that there is no further cause for questions or concerns about that commitment."

There was no misunderstanding. The message of the conference call was crystal clear.

Here's the full transcript of the call.

The fact that the White House isn't following its usual procedure of fighting this shows that there's a realization there's no way to spin this mess away. It crossed the line and engaged in illegal activities.

I'm not satisfied with this "take all steps necessary" stuff.

...Burton added that the White House will be issuing a formal memo for White House staff “to that effect and will be doing training sessions and personal visits with staff here to make sure the message gets across.”

A formal memo?

Training sessions?

Personal visits?

Give me a break!

There needs to be an investigation into this abuse.

The Obama White House is out of control. The administration needs to be held accountable.

A non-apology apology and a promise to do better next time don't cut it.