Executive Summary
Frank Wright, Ph.D., President/CEO
May 15, 2009 Vol. IV, Issue 14

This has been a very interesting week in the halls of Congress.

On Wednesday, the full House Judiciary Committee met to “mark-up” (amend and then vote on) a series of bills. The first was the Performance Rights Act (H.R. 848).

Bob Powers, NRB’s Vice President of Government Relations, continues to alert Members of Congress to the dangers of the new radio tax created by H.R. 848. Bob sat through the entirety of Wednesday’s multi-hour committee mark-up. Since none of the Members of Congress who are most strongly opposed to this legislation are on the House Judiciary Committee, it seemed that the Performance Rights Act was destined to sail through the mark-up process, with very little debate.

Then Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) asked for time to speak.

Ms. Waters gave an eloquent defense for terrestrial radio, particularly for small broadcasters and those stations that are religious or minority-owned. She even mentioned KKLA (owned by NRB Member Salem Communications) by name, and that her ability to communicate lies with small minority broadcasters. Ms. Waters’ boldness, while somewhat unexpected, was a wonderful demonstration of the ways in which constituent voices make a difference.

Rep. Dan Lungren (R-CA) then took the discussion a step further by offering an amendment that would require the Government Accounting Office (GAO) to do a full study, thus delaying a Committee vote on H.R. 848. This amendment was voted down. Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA), the author of the Performance Rights Act, said: “I don’t care what the GAO will say.” The Judiciary Committee then passed the Performance Rights Act by a vote of 21-9, with Rep. Waters the only Democrat to go against her party and oppose H.R. 848.

This portion of the committee mark-up was significant for many reasons. First, it was heartening to see that Rep. Waters weighed the issues at hand and made a decision that – while not popular with her peers – took the best interests of her constituents to heart.

On the flip side, Rep. Berman’s comment regarding a GAO report was also significant. Intellectual honesty demands that every avenue of analysis be exhausted, particularly if there’s an objective way to quantify the true financial harm that would be foisted upon terrestrial radio stations by a “performance tax”. It’s rather distressing for a Member of Congress to say that they simply “don’t care” what the federal accounting office might say.

We must also give some credit to Chairman Conyers for offering a “Manager’s Amendment” that provides a more lenient fee structure for minority and religious (non-profit) broadcasters than previously offered. While that amendment passed, it still does not provide the breadth of protection that is needed. In principle, the Performance Rights Act is simply bad legislation because any new mandatory fees placed on radio are unacceptable. Any effort to make this legislation more palatable won't change that fact.

I am grateful to so many of you who have taken the time to absorb the details of H.R. 848, and contact your Senators and House Member regarding the Performance Rights Act. As was so clearly demonstrated this week by Rep. Waters’ actions, your voice can be heard and is important.

Please also continue to lift up religious broadcasters in your prayers. The rights to free religious speech and free religious expression that we enjoy here – while Constitutionally guaranteed – are still increasingly at the mercy of subjective decision-making by Congress and even the courts. Our first and best line of defense continues to be prayer. Please pray for NRB as we work to defend your rights to freely share the Gospel, pray for Members of Congress of every political persuasion, pray for our courts, and pray for President Obama. The unseen Hand of our very sovereign God is still at work.

The President’s Column was prepared with the valuable research and writing assistance of Laurel A. MacLeod.

Quick Glance - Articles This Week!

Washington Whispers
Rates for Web Streaming
Britain's Blacklist
DHS Secretary Explains
Who's Covering for Whom?

Washington Whispers

Rates for Web Streaming

In addition to the Performance Rights Act, the House Judiciary Committee also passed the Webcaster Settlement Act of 2009 (H.R. 2344) on Wednesday by a voice vote.

This is another issue of great importance to NRB. When the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) set exorbitant rates for radio stations to stream on the web, Congress asked the record labels and radio stations to talk through the problem and re-negotiate the Internet streaming rates. While the music companies struck a deal with for-profit and public radio stations, non-profits were left out in the cold at the 11th hour.

This has placed a tremendous undue financial burden on non-profit radio, which has borne the brunt of paying large amounts to record labels, every month, just so they may broadcast on the Internet. As a result, some religious stations have already been forced to stop web streaming and many others are on the verge of ending their web streaming operations. This will have a tremendous impact on areas of this country that aren’t able to access smaller religious radio stations through traditional means (due to signal loss), and on those around the world who listen to religious programming via the Internet.

Dr. Frank Wright, NRB’s President and CEO, has repeatedly asked Congress to address this issue. On Tuesday evening, he sent a letter to Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI), asking Congress to provide an effective legislative remedy and temporarily suspend the outrageous CRB rates. For a copy of the letter, click here. We understand that the Webcaster Settlement Act essentially took a first step, offering more time for webcasters that have been disproportionately affected to negotiate new rates. Craig Parshall, NRB’s Senior Vice President of Communications and Chief Counsel, NRB Vice President of Government Relations Bob Powers and NRB’s Music Licensing Committee have spent many months working to create possible remedies for this situation. We will keep you abreast of any new developments as they arise.

Britain’s Blacklist

One never knows how political correctness might run amuck. Last October Great Britain decided to ban 22 people from entering Britain, saying those individuals were intolerant and implying that their “extremist” views might just be dangerous. Last week, most of the members of this “blacklist” were revealed. Among others, Britain’s list includes Yunis al-Astal (anti-Western Islamic cleric and Hamas member), Artur Ryno and Pavel Skachevsky (Russian skinheads who have bragged about killing ethnic minorities), and five Americans – one of whom is popular San Francisco-based radio host Michael Savage. According to a report by The Washington Times, Savage’s radio show is the third most popular in America, with an estimated 8 million listeners.

The rationale for forbidding Savage to step foot on Britain’s shores?

Britain’s Home Office issued a statement clarifying that “British law permits the government to exclude any noncitizen who foments terrorism, serious criminal activity or ‘hatred’,” reported The Washington Times. Jacqui Smith, Britain’s Home Secretary, said that this “least-wanted” list was released to show “the sorts of unacceptable behavior we are not willing to have in this country” (The Washington Times). Savage is known for strongly supporting traditional marriage, and for opposing illegal immigration.

In a televised BBC interview, Mrs. Smith said that Mr. Savage isn’t your average radio broadcaster. “This is somebody who has fallen into the category of fomenting hatred, of such extreme views and expressing them in such a way that it’s actually likely to cause intercommunity tension or even violence if that person were allowed into this country.”

And according to the LA Times, Mrs. Smith also told a television interviewer that “It’s important that people understand the sorts of values and sorts of standards that we have here [in Britain], the fact that it’s a privilege to come and the sort of things that mean you won’t be welcome in this country.”

So much for free speech.

Yet Britain is not, as you may recall, quite the same as the United States when it comes to inalienable rights. Unlike our First Amendment rights to free speech (religious or otherwise) and free religious expression, Britain’s right to free speech is built on custom, not codified in a federal constitution.

For his part, Savage responded by highlighting the irony of the British decision.

“[Smith] is linking me with mass murderers who are in prison for killing Jewish children on buses? For my speech? The country where the Magna Carta was created?”

It certainly does seem ironic, especially when one considers the rich common law heritage of Britain, a structure upon which our legal system is, in large part, based. And it’s of particular concern when one considers that Britain is farther ahead of the U.S. in implementing legislation regarding “hate crimes,” which NRB has long-argued would lead to exactly this type of subjective pandering to special interests who don’t want the truth of Scripture (i.e., that marriage should be between a man and a woman) to be broadcast over the airwaves or preached in pulpits. Britain has taken that a step further by saying that such a person isn’t even allowed to step foot in their country.

Finally, it’s clear that Mrs. Smith is somewhat confused about the definition of “acceptable” behavior. Just a couple of days after her official comments about Mr. Savage, a British newspaper reported the many outrageous expense claims of British parliamentarians and reminded its readers that Mrs. Smith had recently put pay-per-view pornography on her government “expense” list for reimbursement. While she did, apparently, acknowledge that “expense” as an error and has since re-paid Britain’s government, it does demonstrate an obvious and somewhat shocking double standard for personal behavior.

[Henry Chu, “Michael Savage: Banned in Britain,” Los Angeles Times, May 6, 2009; Valerie Richardson, “U.S. talk radio host banned,” The Washington Times, May 6, 2009; David Stringer, “Quirky expense claims of lawmakers exposed,” Associated Press as reported in The Washington Times, May 9, 2009.]

DHS Secretary Explains

On April 24th, Dr. Wright’s Executive Summary in Washington Next Week focused on the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) report that warned against possible domestic terrorist attacks by homegrown “rightwing extremists”. Unfortunately, a lengthy footnote on page two used an incredibly broad definition of “rightwing extremist”, including pro-life abortion protesters, those opposed to illegal immigration, and military personnel who have recently seen active duty. Titled Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment, the report – which you may read here – was essentially an equal opportunity offender. It also gave a brief glimpse of the ways in which a government agency could view sincerely held religious beliefs and cast them as precursors to terrorist activity.

Last Wednesday, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano was called to Capitol Hill to explain.

“The wheels came off the wagon because the vetting process was not followed,” she told the House Homeland Security Committee. “The report is no longer out there. An employee sent it out without authorization.” It is now, according to Secretary Napolitano, no longer on the “intel Web site” and it’s being re-written in a “much more useful and much more precise fashion”.

[Audrey Hudson, “Report citing veteran extremism is pulled,” The Washington Times, May 14, 2009.]

Who’s Covering For Whom?

In recent months there’s been a lot of discussion about ACORN, an entity that bills itself as: “the nation’s largest community organization of low- and moderate-income families, working together for social justice and stronger communities".

ACORN continues to be in the news because locality after locality has accused them of voter fraud. The most recent accusation was leveled last week by officials in Nevada, who charged that ACORN’s Las Vegas field director submitted several thousand fraudulent voter registrations prior to last year’s election. Also last week, officials in Pittsburgh, PA, also charged ACORN operatives with the same offense.

The hue and cry from groups concerned about the integrity of our nation’s election system has been so great that last March, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) pressed Rep. Gerald Nadler (D-NY and Chairman of the Subcommittee on the Constitution) to hold a hearing on ACORN. At the time, Mr. Nadler agreed.

But according to a Wall Street Journal report, Conyers said last week that he has “concluded that a hearing on this matter appears unwarranted at this time”. An inside Democratic Congressional source told the Journal’s author that it appeared that the House Leadership had pressured Chairman Conyers to back off, a claim denied by Conyers’ office. And also earlier this month, Rep. Barney Frank, as Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, gutted an amendment to the mortgage reform bill that would not have allowed any group indicted for voter fraud to receive federal housing or legal assistance grants.

What’s happening on Capitol Hill? It’s not a stretch to assume that Congressional leadership doesn’t want light shed on ACORN right now. There have been many reports of the group’s links to the Obama election machine, and President Obama got his start as a community organizer heading voter registration for “Project Vote”, then a partner of ACORN. He also represented ACORN in an important court case in 1995. So one may assume that neither the White House nor Congress want negative press that might tie them to ACORN in the midst of Democratic efforts to pass an ambitious legislative agenda.

This is also particularly concerning for broadcasters because ACORN has a stated goal to be front and center when the FCC enforces its call for “community advisory boards”. You can be fairly certain that ACORN members would use some of the same heavy-handed tactics for which they’re known in election circles to get members of their organizations appointed to the local boards tasked with “advising” broadcasters regarding “acceptable” community standards. In that position, they would be well placed to begin making decisions that could ultimately affect the programming content of local broadcasters – religious and otherwise.