CNET blogger Matt Rosoff wrote a piece favoring federal spending on stipends for musicians, nightclub tax breaks and concert hall construction budgets.
"It's not enough to give the big labels and radio stations a few hundred million dollars to stem their losses and encourage reinvestment," he wrote. "Instead, we need to create a culture of music appreciation and nurture the talent that will lead to the next generation of musicians."
Universities want a bailout. Honchos including University System of Maryland Chancellor William E. Kirwan wrote Obama asking for "a commitment of 5 percent of the economic stimulus package - in the range of $40 to $45 billion" - to be spent on higher education.
(Unlike most proposed rescues, this could be well-spent if it boosts college attendance and gets more American kids into engineering and technology.)
First prize for bailout chutzpah is competitive, but the ethanol industry is a strong contender. It wouldn't even exist without enormous federal support, but now it wants $1 billion in short-term credit and $50 billion in loan guarantees, says Congressional Quarterly.
"Some have misconstrued this communication as a request for federal assistance or a bailout," says the Renewable Fuels Association, the ethanol lobby.
There is already a chicken bailout. The Agriculture Department just announced plans to buy $42 million of poultry parts for school lunch programs.
Can a dairy bailout be next?
Kathleen Falk, county executive for Wisconsin's Dane County, wants Obama to buy manure processors for dairy farmers, reports The Capital Times of Madison, Wis.
And so on.
It began with the banking rescue. That makes sense, although it's being handled in a terribly secretive and seat-of-the-pants way. Because financiers make everything else in the economy happen, they are the logical receptacle for bailout largess.
But the extension of welfare to the automobile industry has launched pleading inside and outside the Beltway that will get worse when Congress convenes. Everybody wants the same action as General Motors and Chrysler.
Here is a good rule of thumb for Obama. Lenders, at the top of the economic food chain, need bailouts to stay solvent and finance investment. Consumers, at the bottom, need bailouts to spur demand and reduce misery.
All other supplicants should be eyed with a baleful and skeptical stare.
