In God We Trust

I love partisan politics! Yesterday, the U S House of Representatives had a complete melt-down over the issue of bailing out Wall Street to the tune of $700 billion in an attempt to solve our current financial crisis. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, a leading economic indicator, immediately dropped almost 800 points.

Another side-effect of the failure of the House to pass the Wall Street bailout was that the Representatives were too busy with partisan wrangling that they plum forgot to vote on whether or not to adopt the Senate's orphan works language in deference to their own. In the meantime, there were rumors spreading that certain members of the House Judiciary Committee were keen on preserving their version of the bill, which could be relatively good news (the House version, while not in any way desirable, is still better for us than the Senate's version); but the best news came in an e-mail from the office of Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), which said that "no Orphan Works bill will be scheduled by the House in this session."

It looks like we have a golden opportunity to regroup, re-strategize, and come up with a truly unified approach to the next Orphan Works movement, likely sometime in the next two years. Should the leaders of our various organizations fail to reach a consensus, for whatever reason, the memberships (you and me) should definitely rise up and throw the bums out and find new leaders who are committed to working together for the common good of all artists. The current feudal system is petty, serves the interests of no one, is completely unacceptable and it has to end.

ASMP, APA, PPA, SAA, EP, IPA: Let's get it together, and get together, for our common good and defeat the next Orphan Works amendment.