Copyright Board's Grave Error - PLEASE READ

To all Copyright Board members, consultants, and lobbyists,


In this age of diminishing returns for the hardest working in ANY field, you have dealt a severe blow to the music industry and you act like it was nothing at all!

Many musicians have spent their lives perfecting their craft, only to have the rug pulled out from under them as the landscape changed quickly and dramatically. It took some scrambling to regain any type of music income when mp3s replaced the CD, when the CD and stores fell out of favour, and the hardy were just getting some of their footing back with an increase in internet performances and their (meager) royalties... and now this? A cold hard bludgeoning is what you perpetrated, and see what you caused?!

Royalties were already low, but they were there in spirit, and commensurate with the US. Now Canada's rates are far, far below the US, and if you do the math you will see that a massive 'hit' might earn just enough for a burger and fries.

Stations of all stripes are getting a cushy ride using other's hard won art for little or arguably no payment. What little comes back to the artist is not just low, it is negligible, and does not take the creators of the works seriously enough to compensate them in any realistic way. Soon the art will stop because there is no avenue left to recoup ANYTHING.

You really need to AT LEAST match the US rates and stop cutting deals for the stations who whine and want it all free!

I have spent my life with my craft and even though I have had a half dozen Billboard charting 'hits', it translates to NOTHING! (Oh, I did get a burger and fries once).

And I thought Canada had the greater good at heart?!

Do something for the GREATER GOOD!

♬♩ Gabriel Mark Hasselbach  ♬♩
Juno Award winner and Album of the Year winner 2011
6 singles hit Billboard charts-  new album in production!

 Audio Sample Buy Full CD Download Read Interview  MySpace YouTube FacebookURL TwitterURL Artist Website 



 

Fake Senator on Fire!

The last 3 days have been unbelievable!

Our fake Senate candidate, Honest Gil Fulbright, went viral. The next thing we knew, a storm of national media was talking about America’s corrupt political system, and our plan to fix it.

It started on Tuesday with a story on Fast Company and an Honest Political Ad on Upworthy, then BoingBoing, then Huffington Post, and then Time Magazine reported on the campaign’s five-day crowdfunding surge. On Wednesday morning, NBC’s Today Show featured the story and it exploded… USA Today, CNN.com, Washington Post, and Al Jazeera created a wave that led to Represent.Us director Josh Silver being interviewed live on CNN.

Then last night, we hit our second crowdfunding goal just five short days after the first one! The momentum is undeniable, the excitement is palpable, and we’re not done yet.

Will you help kick off the next wave of momentum by watching and sharing Honest Gil’s hilarious new “Honest Ad” on the economy? Together, we can blast through our next fundraising goal too.

Here’s why all of this momentum matters:

Honest Gil is pushing our issue into mainstream news and culture. That’s absolutely essential to building awareness of the problem AND the idea that there’s an innovative, nonpartisan, grassroots effort emerging to fix it.

The 800 folks who have pitched in to make this happen need your help to take it to the next level with TV and radio ads, and a massive PR push with the Kentucky media. 

Will you watch and share Honest Gil’s next video with a couple of your friends to help keep the momentum alive? It’s hilarious. They’ll love it, I promise.

Things are happening fast. If you’d like to stay more up to date and be part of the excitement, you should like Honest Gil on Facebook, and follow Represent.Us on Facebook for up-to-the-minute campaign updates.

And of course, please share Gil's campaign with your friends so we can take Kentucky by storm. The bigger we get, the more power we have!

Go Honest Gil!!!

— Graham

Here are links to a few of the stories. Enjoy!

CNN.com

CNN Newsroom

USA Today

The Today Show

The Washington Post

Time Magazine Online

Huffington Post

Techdirt

Fast Company

Boing Boing

Political Wire

Al Jazeera America

Kentucky TV (WHAS) 

Kentucky TV (WDRB)

Political Liberty Digest (Libertarian Blog)


Joshua Graham Lynn, Program Director
Represent.Us


Represent.Us is building a non-partisan movement to make the government represent the people. Learn more about the solution at www.AntiCorruptionAct.org. Connect with us on Facebook, tweet on Twitter, and add your name to join the movement. Get involved locally, or donate what you can to support the fight against corruption. Represent.Us is a project of United Republic. Unsubscribe here
Represent.Us Campaign, United Republic, P.O. Box 60008, Florence, MA 01062, 855-585-8100



 
  

 

Alarming lack of transparency

Concerned Citizens,

One of the hallmarks of a great democracy is transparency, which is why the secrecy surrounding the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is so alarming. End the Secrecy

This free-trade pact represents a major change to our trade relations with 11 countries and could have a profound impact on our manufacturing industry. Bottom line: hundreds of thousands of high-quality American jobs could be shipped overseas!

We have to speak out on this and we have to do it now. If you haven’t already signed Pam’s petition to bring transparency to TPP negotiations, please add your name today! CLICK HERE.

The American people and our representatives in Congress deserve to know the details of this highly controversial trade agreement. If we don’t demand to know now, we might regret it later.

Thanks for taking action,

Team Byrnes




contribute


Paid for by Pam Byrnes For Congress


PO BOX 485
Dexter, MI 48130

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Increasing wealth and income inequality in the United States is the great moral and economic issue of our time

 What Bernie Sanders said about the minimum wage?

Did you see the email below from Sen. Bernie Sanders? More than 50,000 DFA members have already signed his petition to raise the federal minimum wage, and that number is growing by the minute.

Sen. Sanders is working hard in Congress to force a vote on raising the minimum wage, but he needs your help to overcome Tea Party obstructionism. If you want to give tens of millions of Americans a raise, don't miss this chance to speak out. Sign our petition and tell Congress to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 today.

http://act.democracyforamerica.com/go/3830?t=2&akid=4462.2264341.DKut35

Thanks for fighting the good fight.

- Jim

Jim Dean, Chair
Democracy for America

 

 

Increasing wealth and income inequality in the United States is the great moral and economic issue of our time.  It speaks to whether we will be a nation with a vibrant and growing middle class, or an oligarchic form of society in which a handful of incredibly wealthy families control our economic and political life.

In America today, the top 1% owns 38% of our country's financial wealth. The bottom 60% owns all of 2.3%. In the last several years, 95% of all new income has gone to the top 1%. Sadly, we recently learned that in 2012 the top 40 hedge fund managers in the country earned $16.7 billion dollars, as much as 300,000 public school teachers combined -- almost a third of all high school teachers in America. How's that for national priorities!

In recent months, world leaders from the president to the pope have been speaking out on this long ignored, but critical issue. Several months ago a number of us in the Senate and House urged President Obama to issue an executive order to raise the minimum wage for federal contract workers from $7.25 to $10.10 an hour. Recently, the president did just that. I applaud him for taking this important step forward.  But much more needs to be done.

Within the next several weeks Democrats in the Senate will be bringing forth legislation to raise the national minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 an hour. If this effort succeeds, 30 million Americans will be getting a long overdue pay raise. And, just last week, House Democrats indicated that they are preparing to undertake what is known as a discharge petition which would force a vote on the minimum wage in the Republican controlled House of Representatives.

Momentum is on our side. Now is the time for Congress to act!

Please join me and Democracy for America in calling on Congress to increase the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour.

http://act.democracyforamerica.com/go/3830?t=5&akid=4462.2264341.DKut35

Currently, powerful forces in the Republican Party, under the influence of the Koch brothers and other billionaire families, continue to call for major cuts in programs desperately needed by working families. While the rich become richer and the poor become poorer, these billionaires are waging a relentless fight to cut nutrition programs, education, health care and more.

Incredibly, instead of supporting an increase in the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, they want to end the concept of the minimum wage -- and create a situation where workers in high-unemployment areas could be forced to work for $3 or $4 an hour. For them, "freedom" means that desperate people are "free" to work for starvation wages.

Working together, our job is to create an economy and a government that works for working families and the most vulnerable Americans, and not just Wall Street and multi-national corporations. And Congress should begin by raising the minimum wage!

Please stand with me and Democracy for America today in demanding that Congress increase the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour!

http://act.democracyforamerica.com/go/3830?t=7&akid=4462.2264341.DKut35

Thank you for all that you do.

Sincerely,







U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders

Donate today
Paid for by Democracy for America, http://www.democracyforamerica.com/?t=8&akid=4462.2264341.DKut35 and not authorized by any candidate. Contributions to Democracy for America are not deductible for federal income tax 

As the Congress hostage negotiations rage on, we must consider our options

Time once again to stand up and be counted, life is too short to watch someone else commit economic and political terrorism in the US. If you see the light, please share this!

Here is a recent well founded video rant on National TV you should view (subtext: I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!)

http://daily.represent.us/news-anchor-completely-loses-it-on-camera-because-of-everything-thats-wrong-with-america/

And if the references to banking and repatriation of funds escape you,  here is the backstory highlights:

The Institute of Policy Standards produced a detailed report entitled "Corporate Pirates of the Caribbean" which exposes the hidden Conservative agenda when it comes to their push for Territorial Tax Reform. Territorial Tax Reform is a trifecta of greed that aims to: 
1. Lower corporate tax rates which are already low (reducing flow of money into the US tax base; 
2. Make offshore tax havens standard for select corporations (reducing flow of money into the US tax base); 
3. Create austerity measures that will not promote jobs, health care, infrastructure, or the consumer confidence and flowing economy that comes with consumer confidence. 

Here is a good synopsis (with source links) of the smoke and mirrors game being played by the Power Right, taken from The Huffington Post: 

"A new study by three researchers at the University of Massachusetts found major arithmetic errors in the widely cited paper by Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff, "Growth in a Time of Debt," that purports to show high levels of government debt sharply slow growth. This study has been widely cited by political figures demanding deficit reduction, in spite of the fact that the unemployment rate remains high and interest rates are at extraordinarily low levels.

When the errors in the Reinhart and Rogoff study are corrected, the strong relationship between high debt levels and slower growth disappears. In other words, there is little obvious reason that we need fear higher debt levels. We can have the government make investments in infrastructure and education that will boost growth, create jobs, and increase future productivity...... A country such as the United States borrows in its own currency so it literally can never go bankrupt as long as it knows how to print dollar bills. And, unlike an individual, the government has the obligation to support the economy when private sector demand collapses as it did after the housing bubble burst....... For those who own lots of stock and are at the top of the income ladder, times are good. These people may see efforts to lower unemployment as posing a risk. With lower unemployment workers may be able to get a larger share of productivity growth. This may be good for most of the country and mean increased economic growth, but it would mean less for the one percent." 

 
Googling this subject might overload your browser, attesting to the implications this has, but here are a few succinct and notable sites to view:





This agenda is all a Right Wing concoction designed to further cushion the already overluxed 1%, and is pushed by that Good Ol' Boy GOP mentality, brandished proudly by Conservative stalwarts such as Alan Simpson, Erskine Bowles, and a cadre of huge corporations such as GE, Honeywell, etc, etc...