Last week, I went on KUOW to talk to Ross Reynolds on The Conversation about public art. The subject was an editorial in that morning's Seattle Times by state senator Steve Hobbs (D-Lake Stevens)—an editorial in which Hobbs decrees that art is the enemy of teachers, the sick, and the poor.

If we could just cancel public art for the next two years, he writes, we could save our state. Why, oh why, is art so damned selfish?

I'm mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take it anymore! Hobbs veritably yells in his editorial.

Then, on the radio, he declared public art a "luxury" and a "sacred cow." He said he didn't want to kill it, he just wanted to do some "cow tipping."

Hobbs has the right idea: The legislation he proposed is as intelligent as cow tipping.

Does any of this sound familiar? It's the same debate we had when the National Endowment for the Arts had to get on its knees and beg to be included, for the miniscule price tag of $50 million, in the $787 billion federal bailout. It's the same debate we've been having since Jesse Helms made it obvious that art, due to its subjective nature, would be the easiest target for public ire—the easiest way for politicians to distract the public from real problems.

PUBLIC-ART FUNDING IS A RED HERRING, PEOPLE. If we'd fined every politician who tried to use public art for his or her own gain in the last 20 years, we could have paid for art/music/dance/etc. teachers in public schools this whole time. Imagine!

The state spends about $2 million a year, out of an approximately $15 billion operating budget, on public art. Public-art spending accounts for .013 percent of the state's budget. Please ask your legislators to focus their time and money on fixing the other 99.987 percent of the budget. Please ask your newspapers and broadcasters to stop idiotic, ancient, false debates.

I'm sorry to be belligerent about this, but it is infuriating to have this dumb conversation year after year after year, whether the economy is up or down or in-between, and whether the politicians are Democrats, Republicans, or space invaders.

Most important of all for every intelligent person out there: Don't let anybody, ever, say that art is preventing Americans from being educated, fed, and cared for.

We're mad as hell, and we're not going to take it anymore.