A Letter to the Speaker

Dear Ms. Pelosi,

I note with no little chagrin that the perpetual pander-fest that is Congress has once again spoken through you when you—you choir-preacher you—told the RIAA that “the rights of performers are not forgotten.”

Your confusion is understandable. Many people brighter and more knowledgeable than you, even, believe “the rights of performers” and “the concerns of the record industry” are one and the same.

I DID WHAT?

True, there are many performers—overwhelmingly the successful ones, the fortunate albeit forgetful few who have been able to redeem their souls from the company store—who side with their foreign-owned masters in advocating the Performance Rights Act. But any performer, however successful, who is truly concerned for the music industry as opposed to the record industry, will tell you what a colossally bad idea it is to penalize the one medium above all others that sells records and builds careers.

Madam Speaker, may I refer you to a list of quotes—published in the 3/25/10 issue of The Small Market Radio Newsletter—from dozens of performers who have consistently, publically stood by radio and who are eternally grateful to our medium. A recurring theme in those quotes is, “I owe my career to radio.” (Have your people contact my people and we’ll give them access to our back issues online.)

That said, Nancy—may I call you Nancy? I respect your office and your service, but I don’t call any of my other employees by their last names—you have every right to your opinion, however politically calculated. Of course, if you and your brethren truly represented your constituents, you might think twice about backing an outfit that sued hapless mothers and children for hundreds of thousands of dollars—each!—for what they packed on their iPods.

But please recognize that you are in the minority—even within your own party. Healthy majorities in both the House and Senate have cosponsored the Radio Freedom Act, which prohibits the imposition of a tax for performance on local radio. Yes, it’s a non-binding resolution, but how can a legislator cosponsor our measure and then vote Yes on its polar opposite?

Oh, wait, this is Congress we’re taking about here—members of which have selective memories, to put it benignly. (I vaguely recall that one of your colleagues, the senior senator from Arizona, ran for high office as a “maverick.” But either he suffered a senior senator moment or my memory is playing tricks, because John—he works for me, too—recently denied that he’d ever said he was a maverick. Rewriting history would be a lot easier, wouldn’t it?, if we had an Orwellian Ministry of Truth. Come to think of it, maybe we do.)

But I digress. The real purpose of this epistle is to remind you—you universal health care champion you—that there is nothing healthy about the Performance Rights Act. In fact, it could be downright toxic to the very performers whose rights you’ve vowed to uphold.

No, that’s not a threat. Unlike other industries you’ve tried to reign in recently, radio is too busy serving our communities to cook up vengeful, retaliatory strategies to prove the law of unintended consequences. But there is a reality of which you—you limousine-riding, perk-enjoying you—are unaware: in the world of non-deficit spending, if a new cost is imposed, another cost must be cut. And fiscally-conservative operators—yes, Nancy, they do exist, albeit far from the Beltway—will act on the realization that we can neutralize a tax on playing music simply by not playing music.

Are you ready for Rush 2.0?

If nothing else will, that should scare you straight.