Harry: we can live without the cowboy poetry festival

  Okay, nobody's saying the Cowboy festival in Nevada doesn't look like fun. Nobody's saying that they want to get rid of it.
  The reason people are laughing so hard they're hold their sides is because if people really like cowboy poetry so much, then they should pay for it. If this is such a worthy cause, people will be willing to sustain itself just the way other festivals do.
  Are all festivals funded by the government? Don't other festivals have business interests help to underwrite their cost? Don't people pay to be part of it, through entrance fees?
  Are you, as a citizen and taxpayer, willing to borrow the money from the Chinese for your children to pay back to fund THIS?

 And, hey, Harry, dump the melodrama. Those people WOULD exist if you hadn't had the festival.