A Bummer of a Different Kind

I'm going to set politics aside and write on a subject near and dear to me--intellectual property and performing rights organizations, or PROs. Almost all songwriters and publishers who are trying to make a living with their music belong to a PRO. The PRO collects royalties for performance, usually through a licensing arrangement, and pays the songwriter. If the Dixie Chicks want to perform "Teach Your Children," which Graham Nash wrote, they pay his PRO, and his PRO pays him. Often, local pubs pay a fee to one PRO and ask that musicians playing there only perform songs licensed by that organization. Or, in many cases, the local pubs don't bother to pay anything.
Lately, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has been lowering the boom on pirated recordings, in some cases chasing down teenagers who download music. That may be why the PROs have taken to cracking down on such things as open mike nights. That might not be a problem when they close down an open mike night at a local.
The problem arises that there aren't as many locals as there used to be. There are a lot of national chains, and national chains are run from national offices.
My singing partner, Rog, and I had a great gig lined up at a Caribou Cafe near my home. It was going to be great--just the right time to start promoting our CD. The problem is that the lawyers got to the corporate executives in the home office. Corporate executives are not always the sharpest knives in the drawer, and like dull knives everywhere, they didn't cut very well. They issued an edict that all musical performances in Caribou Cafes must cease until further notice (with the implicit "or else.") The performance that we were going to play was sponsored by the Songwriters Association of Washington. As a songwriter, I can assure you that when I play a Songwriters Association venue, I'm doing it to play my music. As much as I love their music, Neil Young, James Taylor, Glenn Frey, Brian Wilson, and everybody else can paddle their own damn boats. If Rog and I are playing a full evening, we'd surely work in some covers, but not when we're doing a one-hour set at a Songwriters Association venue. And who owns all of the rights to our songs? We do.
So what happens is that the organizations that are supposed to exist to protect songwriters are, in fact, harming us. Thanks a lot, guys.
The more I think of it, it's kind of like the "Better safe than sorry" mentality that so many people seem to live by these days.

"The Enemy Will Follow Us Here"

The Coward-in-Chief has apparently revealed the strategy he will use in the November elections. He's going to say that if we back out in the middle east, the terrorists will follow us home. It's the same tired crap that he began with "They hate our freedom."
The Islamic radicals, whether the Coward-in-Chief wants to believe it or not, do not want anything we've got. They do not want our territory--although they want control over what they regard as their territory. They do not hate our freedom. They only hate our habit of trying to export every aspect of our culture, which they regard as thoroughly decadent. They simply want to be left alone. The western world has not, thus far, respected that desire. We've assisted repressive monarchies. We've failed to respect their religious sensibilities. We've permitted our businesses to move aggressively into the middle east.
These are things that Americans don't understand. No one does these things to the United States. If anyone did, Americans would hate it. Take our most egregious wrongs--the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. I'm not going to argue that Saddam Hussein, the Baathists, and the Taliban were great people. They weren't. But they were operating in sovereign states, and whether we liked it or not, they were holding power within the cultural frameworks of those state. The United States stepped in. Now imagine this: some other nation with sufficient military force looks that the United States and concludes that it is headed by a corrupt regime that is bent on destabilizing the middle east. The leaders of this other power decide to attack the United States. Even those of us who hate the current United States regime would undoubtedly resist this insult to our national soverignty, and well we should.
All of this is part of the Coward-in-Chief's dumbed down, black and white view of reality. It led us into costly wars that have made us less safe than we were when he took office. We had better reject his party and any other candidates who think that United States policy in the middle east is going to succeed and promote a safer world.

Time to Go Back to Work

It must be time for me to go back to work; I watched the news conference that the Occupant of the White House held today.
I can remember White House news conferences back to the time of President Kennedy. The best presidents kept their responses brief and focused. While they were willing to use humor, it was usually tied to a response somehow, and they didn't get into chatty banter with the press corps. After all, they were presidents. A few, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Clinton, had definitely grown up in the middle class, but they understood that they held high office and had to show their affinity for the masses in other ways. Even Bush 41 tried to act presidential.
Other presidents exercised restraint. This one rants, basically repeating over and over that he's right and anyone who disagrees with him is wrong, louder and with more gesticulation as the conference goes on. He reminds me of a preacher at a revival who keeps on and on, hoping that if he just keeps going long enough, some poor sinner will come forward at the altar call. Bush just doesn't understand that he's not going to convert the press corps. They're paid to be skeptical of any president.
It makes me wonder why his minions let him speak to anyone without handlers being present.

Missing Virginia

I've been living in Maryland for two years now, but I still sometimes miss Virginia. I miss it right now because I'm pretty sure that Maryland will show good sense and elect Democrats (although I'm hoping that Al Wynn will lose to Donna Edwards), and I'd love to be in Virginia where I could vote for Jim Moran, whom I respect and like, and vote against George Felix Allen.
Allen has made a fool of himself. He saw one of Jim Webb's volunteers shooting a videotape of one of his speeches. The young man was of Indian descent, born and raised in Fairfax, educated at the prestigious Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, and now a senior at the University of Virginia. His skin was dark. Felix called him "Macaca," a term that he might have learned at the knee of his French-Tunisian mother, who would have known it as a rough equivalent "the n-word." He also welcomed the young man to America and to Virginia.
Republicans have been jumping to Allen's defense, saying that the young man got a lot of attention in the media as a result of the event and besides, it's just political correctness run amok, and Allen apologized. I agree that the young man got attention, which was not what he was after. I also acknowledge that Allen apologized. I'll even go so far as to say that it's a good idea to have a thick skin because life is full of insulting people. Democrats have been pointing out that this is the same George Felix Allen who used to keep a Confederate flag and a noose on display in his office and has always displayed affection for the Confederacy and its symbols. That's true, too. I think that California-born Allen probably doesn't really know very much about the Confederacy, and like many other non-southerners, he thinks that the Civil War and slavery are extent of southern history and culture. That may or may not make him a racist. Don't say I'm not fair to Republicans: I have no idea of whether he's a racist or not, although he doesn't seem to mind draping himself in what many people regard as racist symbols.
Here's what's incontrovertible: For a political candidate to make a public statement that has nothing to do with the issues and fairly begs to be used against him is stupid. It demonstrates a clear lack of judgment, and politicians really have nothing to offer except judgment. Allen could have made disparaging comments about anyone in the privacy and comfort of his campaign office or his Senate office if no one were around but trusted aides. He could have made disparaging comments about anyone at home, although there's a chance that his wife might have questioned what kind of example he was setting for their children. Maybe he could have made it while surrounded by colleagues in the locker room of the Senate gym. Then the comments might have been reprehensible, but the tree-falling-in-the-forest-with-no-one-around principle would apply. Saying it in the context of a public campaign appearance with God and everybody watching is something else again. It makes clear that George Felix Allen doesn't have the judgment and self-control to be entrusted with public office. He certainly hasn't got the judgment and control to be a senator, and he absolutely hasn't got the judgment and control to consider running for president.

Cheney's Mouth

Last week, in the aftermath of Joe Lieberman's well earned defeat in the Democratic primary in Connecticut, "Dick" Cheney said, in a telephone conference call to reporters, essentially that it was sad that the Democrats were rejecting an aggressive stance against al Quaeda and giving in to the terrorists.
"Dick" Cheney likes to talk tough and shoot at people. Why he dodged the draft in his youth I cannot explain because he certainly seems to like war now. But "Dick" has gone far over the line on this one. The administration's alleged war on terrorism has violated the rights of law-abiding Americans. (And don't let anyone kid you: There's no need to keep legal eavesdropping programs a secret. The Coward in Chief and "Dick" and their minions were worried that even the special court empowered to authorize secret eavesdropping wouldn't go along with their program.) It has directly and indirectly led to the deaths of innocent people and the warrantless incarceration and torture of others. It has strengthened the argument of every anti-American group in the world, and it has led uncounted people in the Middle East to believe that they need to defend themselves against American aggression by joining al Quaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, or some other terrorist group. But all of this aside, it is not the only approach to ending terrorism. In a democracy, people of good will are permitted to engage in reasoned disagreement--a fact that "Dick" and the Coward in Chief have never wanted to acknowledge.
I realize I don't cut "Dick" or the Coward in Chief much slack. If they demonstrated good will and reasoning, I would treat them very differently in what I say and write. But they are evil men who seek only their own power and believe that they will somehow enhance it by promoting conflict instead of seeking to promote peace. So much for an administration that was supposed to be led by uniter, not a divider. What "Dick" expresses, presumably with the approval of the Coward in Chief, is a position that Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein expressed toward disagreement. They and their minions have become what they claim to hate, and they present an unflattering representation of American freedom.

More from Fantasy Land

According to a news broadcast last night, there may have been a problem with the alleged terrorists the Brits busted last week. Apparently, none of them had passports. None of them had airline tickets or reservations. And none of them had bomb-making materials. When I went to England in '98, you had to have both a ticket and a passport in order to get on the airplane. A ticket you could buy in minutes, but the passport was a different matter. It took a couple of months unless you had a lot of cash and a lot of documentation to go through the State Department's fast track process. And if you're going to blow something up, you need bomb-making materials.
I've also heard that the liquid, paste, and gel materials used to make bombs can be pretty volatile in and of themselves. The shoe bomber played with them and set a couple of apartments on fire. Maybe the "conspirators" made their martyrdom tapes because they wanted to cover themselves while they were playing around with dangerous chemicals. Or maybe somebody got a new camcorder and wanted to play with it the way that a couple of the characters do int "The Big Chill."
The Coward in Chief and his minions are total cowards. You can see it in their insistence that even a one percent risk is too great. The problem is that they play well to soccer mommies, those suburban matrons who gave up adulthood and careers when they had children and harbor a belief that men exist to take care of them and keep them safe. They like that handsome Mr. Bush, and they think it's wonderful that he's so much more fit than the louts they're married to, and he just looks and talks like somebody who could keep their little ones safe. And Bush's Head Minion, Karl Rove, knows just how to work that.
If we need to be afraid of anything, we need to be afraid of that.

They're At It Again

Anybody miss me? I've been on vacation. We were having a great time in Florida until we heard about the heightened security status affeting the aviation sector on the day before we had to fly back.
Do you believe there was really a plot to explode airliners over the Atlantic? First, it sounds a lot like a "plot" that was discovered a few years back to explode airliners over the Pacific. I can't recall any trials in that case; probably the people who were supposed to plotting are incommunicado in Guantanamo. Or maybe there was no plot at all. That's the nice thing about being the President who cried "Wolf": You can bust some Arabic looking people, park them in Guantanamo, and never have the truth come out at a trial.
But these threats work well for the President who cried "Wolf." Most people are willing to say, as a shuttle driver said to me yesterday, "It's better to be safe than sorry." The alleged existence of the plot makes a threat seem real, whether it is or not. And that can make security an issue in elections, especially for soccer mommies. Doing something about the alleged threat makes the person doing it--or directing it--seem strong and manly, and that gets soccer mommies to vote. In fact, the very pandemonium at airports actually contributes to the success of the President who cried "Wolf." It's clear that he is taking immedate, strong action. And when people are having to discard bottled water, perfume, and Blistex, that just shows how serious the government is about keeping people safe. And people conclude that they are, in fact, safer because of the President who cried "Wolf."
First of all, there's no reason in the world to believe anything that George W. Bush says. About a third of the time, it seems unlikely that he even knows what he's saying. And he has a history of lying to the American people. Over 2500 Americans have died as a direct result of his lies. To argue that he will lie about one thing but not another is a bit of a stretch, and the fact that he hasn't admitted to lying doesn't mean that he hasn't done it. The facts prove that he is either a liar or a gullible fool, and trusting either is not a good idea.
Second, this safety is a sham. The fact that these plots are uncovered doesn't mean that all plots are uncovered, and we may, in fact, be lulled into a false sinse of security. Consider this: You once scored with an attack using commercial aviation, and security has been tightened on that sector. How likely are you to try anything remotely similar? Aren't there numerous other acts that you can imagine that would be equally effective and much more likely to escape detection? And if you really had a plot going, wouldn't you have an alternative--some contingency plan to make a similar splash if the primary plan was uncovered?
So I'm not convinced that there really was a plot at all. If calculations by Karl Rove, the Minion in Chief, and the President who Cried "Wolf" are incorrect and there's no political bounce, they'll just blame the Brits and go on asking Americans to vote for Republicans who have really done nothing to enhance national security.

If This Isn't Political. . . .

The Federal Emergency Mismanagement Administration, the folks who brought you the Katrina debacle last year, are at it again. They've denied federal aid to people in areas of Fairfax, Alexandria, and Arlington, Virginia, who were flooded last month.
I used to live close to the area that flooded. I'm familiar with the parts of Alexandria and Fairfax County that flooded. I'm also familiar with what happened. We got about a foot of rain in one day, and then more heavy rains. I was glad to be on high ground, and a buddy of mine wrote that he had started work on an ark. And on the news, we saw people who had been in their homes one morning, evacuated to escape flooding in the afternoon or evening, and returned the next day to find that their homes were condemned. FEMA says the areas are affluent. I'd be the last to question that there are affluent areas in all three jurisdictions, but the areas that flooded are pretty solidly middle class. There are a fair number of young professionals who buy in those areas because the homes are older and less expensive than in many other areas. I would be very surprised if anyone living there had any flood insurance; I would be surprised if the areas were eligible for flood insurance. It's very likely that some of the people who lived there have been totally wiped out. At best, they face huge expenses to get rid of the lingering effects of having sewage filled water in their homes.
"Affluent" sounds really good to people who aren't familiar with the areas. I've got relatives in South Carolina who believe that everyone who lives in the Washington metropolitan area is right, and saying that these areas are affluent helps to reinforce that at the same time that it seems to justify what is, after all, a rotten decision. But the problem isn't that the areas are affluent. The problem is really that the people in those areas are pretty solidly Democratic. The candidates I knew who represented those areas put a lot of effort into getting out the vote because they could expect those precincts to turn in solid Democratic margins. In some cases, Republicans didn't campaign very hard there. In Arlington, Fairfax, and Alexandria, there was usually one Republican on the county council and one Republican on the School Board. While there are Republican state and federal legislators who represent parts of Northern Virginia, they have carefully gerrymandered these precincts into Democratic districts.
This is how the Bush family and its Rovian minions practice government. The directions, if any are needed, go to the inner circle of sycophants who run agencies. They pass the word to their deputy and assistant sycophants. The career civil servants who want to do the right thing are hemmed in by the political appointees. Solidly Democratic areas have to hope that they won't get hit with any kind of disaster. If those prayers go unanswered, FEMA does nothing to help them. This would not happen to districts that supported the Bush family. The devastation in Virginia is not on the scale of New Orleans, but for the people involved, it's just as serious. It's too bad the country is run by and for the Bush Mafia.

Cuba

I guess I'm on a thing about disproportionately powerful voting blocs and lobbies these days. First, I was complaining about the pro-Israel bloc; now there's the Cuban-Americans. Not all of them, I'm sure, but the ones who were celebrating in the streets of Miami at the news that Castro had given up some of his authority to his brother and probable successor.
Let's not forget that Fidel Castro, at the time of the revolution he led, was supported by the United States. There was a reason why the United States would support Castro: Fulgencio Batista, the despotic ruler he overthrew, was not a nice man. Batista had seized power, and his regime had pursued repressive policies. He was another one of those banana republic dictators Americans loved to hate, and the United States government was glad to see him go. In fact, if Castro hadn't announced that he was a Communist, he might have become the poster child for American support of revolutions in Latin America and the Carribean. But Castro was a Communist, and he quickly made Cuba a client state of the Soviet Union.
At that point, the United States, unwilling to have a Communist nation ninety miles from our shores--at least our southern shores--severed connections, broke off diplomatic relations, and set up an embargo. The intent, apparently, was to starve the Cuban people into overthrowing Castro. The catch was that Cuban people were pretty much used to starving, and the embargo didn't materially change their way of living. Castro, of course, became as repressive of opposition as Batista--and most dictators--become, and many Cubans bolted to Florida. But there's one thing to remember about dictators: they can fall. It takes one determined person willing to give his or her life to do the job. And Castro is pushing eighty after almost fifty years in power.
The Cubans in America have hated Castro for almost all of that time. But there's a Cuban restaurant a few miles from my home where the names of prominent Cuban-Americans are displayed on the walls. Most of them, regardless of their fields of endeavor, are huge economic successes. Granted, Cuba has not been, since 1959, a free market economy, but it's still fair to ask whether any of the millionaires and billionaires would have enjoyed so much success in Cuba. But the success that many enjoyed in the United States didn't stop them from detesting Castro and behaving as if they would happily leave for Cuba in a heartbeat. And they put pressure on politicians.
An online chat on the Post website made the point that in other countries that went Communist, the United States pursued a policy of maintaining relations. Gradually, the Communist regimes in those countries crumbled and they became more democratic and more capitalistic. In Cuba, the embargo was supposed to bring about the overthrow of Castro and the return of democracy. It has failed miserably. Why has the government stuck with a policy that has never shown any signs of success? Because the wealthy, vocal Cuban American voting bloc, filled with hatred of Castro, supports it. Meanwhile, Castro keeps on ticking. In fact, he's set up a program to train United States citizens to be doctors provided that they promise to work in impoverished areas. This hardly makes him a saint, but it shows how much he is moved by the embargo.
Lifting the embargo would actually improve the lives of the Cuban people, and it probably wouldn't make life much more pleasant for Castro. Given some time, it might well bring democracy and economic prosperity to Cuba, and the United States is these days in the business of exporting democracy. The Russians aren't going to put missiles in Cuba again as they did in 1962; burying the United States is not a priority for them. The Cuban Americans who wanted to would have the option of going back to Cuba, although it might be nice for them to leave behind the wealth they amassed in their adopted country.