Democrat Fatcats - Glenn Reynolds

Democrat Fatcats - Glenn Reynolds - who, in the blogger world is known as Instapundit - has found both a glaring irony and a wonderful opportunity for Bush and his new majority.

For all the Dems' caterwauling about Republicans and big business, it's worth noting that one of our biggest, most corrupt industries - entertainment - overwhelmingly supports Democrat candidates and causes.

And oy, gevalt, is that industry corrupt:

audits of record companies routinely indicate "errors" that are always in the companies’ favor. (Recording artist Peggy Lee just won a big judgment, and many other artists’ lawsuits are pending). Accounting is byzantine enough to make Enron’s look simple.

Record companies regularly deduct 15 percent off the top of sales as an allowance for "breakage" — a survival from the days of shellac records that now simply serves to reduce artist royalties by that amount. Despite being illegal, payola is rife, keeping interesting artists off the air in favor of the manufactured hitmaker of the week. And now, record companies — who have allied themselves with the just-as-bad motion picture industry – want to make it a felony for you to own a computer that is capable of copying music from a CD to your portable player without paying them money, even though courts have held that such copying is entirely legal.

And this is an opportunity!

But what’s bad judgment and betrayal of principle for Democrats is a political opportunity for Republicans, who can capitalize on that "backlash." Imagine this scenario: the Department of Justice investigates the record and motion picture industries for fraud, where artists are concerned, and price-fixing, where charges to consumers are concerned. (There wouldn’t be anything bogus about doing so: I mentioned the vulnerability of the record industry to racketeering charges a few months ago at an entertainment-law panel discussion that I was moderating, in the hopes of stirring up a hot dispute between lawyers who represent artists and those who represent record companies. But, strikingly, everyone there agreed that the record companies were vulnerable on this ground.)

Meanwhile, Republican legislators denounce these industries for trying to take control of individuals’ computers, denouncing the "spyware" already on Windows Media Player that tracks what you listen to, and promising to outlaw such intrusive technologies in the future. Democrats are left with a choice: side with fatcats, and against consumers and popular artists, or turn on a constituency that has been a major source of campaign funds.

Such an approach would turn the Democrats’ greatest political weapons into vulnerabilities. Are the Republicans smart enough to do that?

Well, this one is. And I'll be on the horn to Coleman's office shortly.

Posted by Mitch at November 7, 2002 08:59 AM