Biden Can't Win; He Can Only Count On Trump Losing, Which Appears Likely

My friend Dorothy Reik was recently elected to the L.A. County Democratic Party Central Committee. She received more votes than anyone else who has ever run for that position. Ever! Yesterday, Reik wrote to subscribers of her influential daily update list that "Bernie was on Chris Hayes last night and Velshi this morning. He also hosts town halls on line. Where is Biden??? The sad truth is that the Democratic establishment was not worried that Bernie would lose-- their biggest fear was that he would WIN!"

The Democratic Party is operating on a theory that anyone can beat Trump because no matter how much he spends and no matter what tactics he uses, the election will be a referendum on him and a pile of dogshit will beat him. So the Democratic establishment has chosen a pile of dogshit to run-- and if the pile of dogshit becomes too untenable, they have several more piles in the wings and ready to go. Anyone but Bernie (or Elizabeth).

Even senior citizens-- the mainstay, along with the evangelicals, of the Republican coalition-- are abandoning Trump because of his horrific response to the pandemic. "For years," wrote a NY Times team pf reporters, "Republicans and Mr. Trump have relied on older Americans, the United States’ largest voting bloc, to offset Democrats’ advantage with younger voters. But seniors are also the most vulnerable to the coronavirus, and the Trump campaign’s internal polls show his support among voters over age 65 softening to a concerning degree, people familiar with the numbers said. A recent Morning Consult poll found that Mr. Trump’s approval rating on the handling of the coronavirus was lower with seniors than with any other group other than young voters." In several polls ole Status Quo Joe holds a 10-point advantage among voters who are 65 and older. Meanwhile, Señor Trumpanzee has basically moved on from anything but pretending to focus on controlling the pandemic to pushing an "agenda to restore the country to a place that will lift his campaign," no matter how many (old) people die in the process.

This week the U.S. will clock in with a million and a half infections and come close to the 100,000 deaths mark, about a quarter of whom are residents of nursing homes.

Trump is shedding supporters from elderly voters but Biden isn't exactly setting the younger electorate on fire with enthusiasm. Reporting for NBC News on the results of a focus group by Global Strategy Group on behalf of NextGen America, Sahil Kapur wrote last week that Biden is in no danger of losing young voters to Trump. "But he faces a lack of enthusiasm among Millennials and Gen Z voters with the potential to decide his fate if they stay home or vote for a third-party candidate. Many of these voters preferred Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary and perceive Biden as a blank slate. They aren’t sure that he’s a change agent or that his policies match the scale of their problems. Some worry about his age and fitness. Most seem open to supporting Biden to stop Trump but need to hear more from him... But the election is six months away and if the new focus groups are any indication, Biden is still ill-defined for many young voters. 'Biden is unknown,' the Global Strategy Group study concluded. 'He became the nominee in the middle of the coronavirus crisis. Like many other voters, these ones are still getting to know Joe.'"

On Friday, Billboard reported that so far musicians who backed Bernie are sitting out the Biden campaign. Bernie's high-profile musician supporters who actively campaigned for him included Ariana Grande, Jack White, Neil Young, Cardi B, the Strokes, Halsey, Snoop Dogg, Jack Johnson, Jason Mraz, Miley Cyrus, Dua Lipa, Public Enemy, Roger Waters, Bon Iver, Vampire Weekend, Sonic Youth, Norah Jones, Jello Biafra, Pussy Riot, the Wonder Years, Sacred Reich, Ani DiFranco, Michael Stipe, Ozomatli, Tony! Toni! Toné!, Billy Bragg, and Killer Mike. These artists and their fans aren't Democrats. As far as their politics go, they are looking for agents of change-- like Bernie-- not partisan hacks-- like Biden. Billboard reached out to nearly 20 high-profile Sanders backers in the music world asking to talk about whether they'd shift support to Biden and received quick declines or no response.

Generally speaking, artists lean progressive, and many say they can't stomach the thought of a centrist, especially one with #MeToo issues, in the Oval Office. Strange Ranger, a Philadelphia indie-rock band, released a 20-track, multi-artist compilation to raise money for Sanders' campaign in January and plan a follow-up, but will change the beneficiary to the social-justice group Groundswell Fund rather than the presumptive Democratic nominee. Drummer Nathan Tucker and singer Isaac Eiger don't plan to campaign or fundraise for Biden and will support progressive down-ballot candidates instead. "I'm going to hold my nose and vote for Biden, but I'm not inspired by Joe Biden," Eiger says. "I don't know who is."

"People are always saying to pick the lesser of two evils, or whatever, but it's pretty disappointing to have to choose evil at all," adds Linnea Siggelkow, the Canadian pop singer and Sanders supporter who goes by Ellis. "So I have my hands up at this point."

In 2016, when Hillary Clinton defeated Sanders for the presidential nomination, artists handled these conflicts in different ways. Sanders backer Miley Cyrus became an enthusiastic Clinton supporter, while Killer Mike said supporting Trump or Clinton came down to "voting for the same thing." Cardi B took the Cyrus road after Sanders dropped out this year: “I’m just gonna go with Joe Biden because I cannot see the next step of America being ran by number 45,” she said.

"It's just a no-brainer," adds Melissa Etheridge, who backed Sen. Elizabeth Warren but appeared at a virtual fundraiser for Biden in April. "We can bring on change. It'll just be a little slower with Biden, but at least it will be leadership, for heaven's sakes." Actor-singer Billy Porter is more blunt: "Biden is my candidate because there is no other candidate, period," he says. "We must play the game we're in, and the game we're in is there's a monster in the White House who needs to get out and every one of his cronies needs to get out. Period. Y'all took your toys and went home when Bernie wasn't the candidate last time and that's why we lost. Line up and fix it!"

Complicating artists' 2020 political plans, whether they support Biden or down-ballot candidates or causes, is an inability to hold large public rallies due to COVID-19 lockdowns. It's unlikely, for example, that Bruce Springsteen will draw 11th-hour supporters in Pennsylvania or Beyoncé and Jay-Z will fill stadiums in Ohio in November. How will they adapt? By moving online, of course.

..."Online efforts are extremely scalable," says Carolyn DeWitt, president of Rock the Vote, which is known for its festival voter-registration efforts but has pivoted to lower-overhead virtual organizing over the years. "Setting up a table at a concert, you are bound to get a handful of individuals to register to vote. Online, you can use influencers to reach millions."

That's not to say voter registration is pandemic-proof. When concerts shut down March 12, PLUS1, which supports nonprofits and social-justice groups and focuses in part on voter registration, lost nearly $2 million in 1.7 million of canceled ticket sales; the group quickly launched a COVID-19 relief fund that has raised $250,000 for artists, venues and other music entities. "Financially, right now, we haven't reserved any of that for our partner organizations that do voter registration," says Marika Shaw, the group's founder and CEO. "And it sucks."

But even without Sanders in the race and large rallies questionable for the rest of this year, artist-focused political groups remain confident they can boost voter education through online efforts. "There's a part of me that's skeptical, but the other half is, 'Instead of being at this show and having to text this number with a beer in your hand, you'll go to this website and fill in this form,'" adds Kyle Frenette, former manager of Sanders supporter Bon Iver, who founded a nonpartisan get-out-the-vote group called 46 for 46. "The results could be surprising. People are at home and looking for things to watch. It's not limited to that time and place."

Recently former Onion editor, Joe Garden, put together a piece for Vice: Area Man Regrets Helping Turn Joe Biden Into a Meme "If you’ve ever thought of Joe Biden as a clueless but lovable clod, a well-meaning klutz who is predictable, friendly, and ultimately electable," wrote Garden, "I am in small part responsible for that image. And I’m sorry. I worked at The Onion for 19 years as a writer and features editor. By the time I left in 2012, the publication had developed its take on Vice President Biden: 'creepy but harmless,' with the emphasis on 'harmless.' We lampooned him as an uncle you’d shake your head at but not think twice about-- the sort of guy who’d wink and say, 'Don’t let your meat loaf!' as a farewell. For many people, the image of Biden that most readily springs to mind is the one of Diamond Joe, shirtless and grinning, washing his Trans Am in the White House driveway."

Garden thought of Biden as "little more than a political necessity: the older, more conservative white guy who softened Barack Obama’s image in regions where the prospect of a black president was too radical. A deeper dive on Biden never felt necessary." He's changed his mind and wrote that he now realizes "how badly we screwed up. Instead of viciously skewering a public figure who deserved scrutiny, we let him off easy. The joke was funny, but it didn’t hit hard enough."

I’ve since changed my mind. Today, Biden is the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, despite women calling him out for touching them in ways that made them uncomfortable at public events, and despite objections from the left wing of the party. He has said he has “no empathy” for the problems millennials are experiencing and claimed that Republicans will embrace bipartisanship after Trump is defeated.

...To be clear, Biden won’t wind up in the same layer of hell as Trump, and I don’t believe The Onion’s Biden is solely responsible for this early popularity of real-life Biden. We were just one small link in a chain of institutions that didn’t scrutinize Biden closely enough. I wish we had looked more at his actual career in politics-- which includes opposition to busing as a way to integrate schools and support for predatory financial institutions-- and tried to really puncture him, rather than just turning him into a clown. We helped make him more likable by inventing a version of Biden that never existed.

I still think those Onion articles are funny. The Onion’s approach to covering public figures was to establish consistent, world-building takes that rewarded the reader, and our Biden was an endlessly refillable character with good visuals, one that made us laugh. It still makes me laugh.

But I’m afraid it didn’t go deep enough. His aforementioned handsiness may not be ultimately disqualifying, but his failure to honestly understand why it would be upsetting (he’s joked about it in public) certainly should be. And his insistence that we can rectify our current political discord with some good old-fashioned bipartisan dealmaking seems hopelessly out of touch and ignores all the times Democrats reached their hands across the aisle, only to be met with open flame from the right.

Satire isn’t dead, and it shouldn’t be cast aside. It will always have a place in the social order, and that is to tell the truth by constructing a fiction, to amplify society’s negative traits to a comical extent so you can see the ugliness that’s always been there.

On that score, The Onion’s Biden stories didn’t measure up. We knew through inside sources that at the time people in the White House loved those pieces, and that should have been a red flag. As a guideline, if the people you’re satirizing aren’t mad, then you should dig deeper. I hope that my alma mater, and everyone else in comedy, follows this rule now that Diamond Joe is back.

ClimateBrad observed yesterday that the Biden campaign likes the approach The Onion took on their pile of dogshit so much, that they're using that version to try to win over the electorate! Michael Scherer and Sean Sullivan wrote that "While the Trump campaign online has embraced a macho and combative approach-- 'This account punches back 10x harder,' runs the motto of one campaign Twitter account-- the Biden team has been seeking to develop a more uplifting identity online, embracing the candidate's life story and making light of his love of ice cream and aviator sunglasses. 'Trump's angles on social media are always dark, and they are always mean-spirited,' said Ben Cobley, a Biden digital organizer. He said Biden wanted to build a community around the more positive side of social media, populated by inspiring memes and cat videos. 'We want to lean into that side of the Internet because that side also plays very well.'" They might want to try to figure out why Democratic enthusiasm for their candidate is lagging so badly.

How Many Country Musicians Have Turned On Trump? Gary Nicholson Sure Has!

On days like today I'm reminded of how much I love our country. I was born here, but I chose to live here. Soon after Nixon was elected I gave up on the U.S. and moved abroad-- maybe for a few months, maybe a few years... I didn't know at the time. Years later, as the impeachment hearings were in full swing, I decided to move back home. I could have stayed in Holland, which I had come to love and which I thought of as an alternative home. But one morning I woke up, dreaming in Dutch and I thought, "no, I want to go back to America." I haven't regretted it-- not even when Trump, far worse than Nixon in every imaginable way, occupied the White House.

This morning my friend Dan suggested I listen to two new songs by one of the country's greatest living songwriters, Gary Nicholson. Never heard of him? He won two Grammies. Anyway, you've heard his music. He's written songs for artists you do know-- Bonnie Raitt, the Dixie Chicks, Buddy Guy, B.B. King (including a duet for B.B. and Buddy), Phish, Reba McIntyre, Willie Nelson, Stevie Nicks, Waylon Jennings, Garth Brooks, George Strait, Delbert McClinton, Fleetwood Mac, Etta James, Neil Diamond, Randy Travis, Jeb Mo, John Prine, Brenda Lee, Greg Allman, Tanya Tucker, Dion, Ringo, NRBQ, Charlie Daniels, James Cotton, Trisha Yearwood, Peter Frampton, Billy Ray Cyrus, Foghat...

He has just released an extraordinary album, The Great Divide. He doesn't mention Trump at all-- although he constantly refers to him. I don't know what country music fans are going to think of the album but there's a song up top and a song below and "The Great Divide is also the title track. It's a love letter to our country, endorsing the values that made us who we are: immigration, tolerance, compassion. It might be songs more for a DWT reader than for a "typical" country music fan in a MAGA hat.





And by the way, on the same day he released The Great Divide he also released-- or his alter-ego, Whitey Johnson, released-- More Days Like This. If you click the link you can listen to the title track, not political... but absolutely great anyway. In any case, Gary Nicholson, has a much better idea of how to communicate with rural voters and country music fans than Nancy and Chucky ever will. As The Onion noted today:

Unveiling the new nationwide messaging strategy after six months of planning and research, the Democratic Party launched its “Listen Up, Hayseeds” campaign Monday to win over rural voters. “Hey, you redneck simpletons, put down your whittling sticks, drag yourself away from the Cracker Barrel, and let us tell you how it is,” said a team of Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer on the debut commercial, part of a widespread advertising blitz that will be played at NASCAR races and monster truck rallies across the country. “We know you can barely read, so we’ll spell this out for you: The Republican tax plan will only benefit the rich. Don’t you dumb hicks get that? Democrats will fight inequality so you and all your inbred cousins don’t have to live in a trailer anymore. Get it?”

Oil Can Harry by Nancy Ohanian

Video Was Adopted Fast By Bands And Labels With Nothing To Lose

What do Randy Bryce, Amy McGrath, MJ Hegar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez all have in common? Well, if you hit the links, you'll probably know what I'm talking about. None of those are expensive 30 second TV spots. No one ever heard of any of the candidates before those videos launched them onto the public consciousness. All have been seen by millions of people-- and all have brought in huge numbers of small, grassroots contributions.

Neither Paul Ryan nor Lyin' Bryan Steil, Randy's two GOP opponents, would ever or could ever do that kind of a video. Nor would Jim Gray-- much better known and very rich and favored opponent of McGrath-- or Andy Barr, the Republican she's duking it out with now. Ditto for John Carter in Texas and for Joe Crowley in Queens. Joe Crowley (D-NY), John Carter (R-TX), Andy Barr (R-KY), Jim Gray (D-KY), Paul Ryan (R-WI)/Lyin' Bryan Steil (R-WI) are all old school, very, very old school. They spend small fortunes for some hired guns to create basically meaningless, unmemorable 30 second TV spots for them that clutter up the airwaves and piss people off.

I slip so often on the phone and refer to the Blue America candidates as "artists." That's because I'm from the music business and I deal with the candidates the same way I dealt with the artists of my label. Randy is like Neil Young, Alexandria is like Joni Mitchell, Ammar is like Billie Joe Armstrong, Kara is like Chaka Khan, Katie is like Madonna, Jared is like Ice-T... they all remind me of someone I had to deal with as a record company executive. In my earliest days in the music biz I had an indie label in San Francisco, 415 Records. My partner Chris and I rented some space in a dilapidated old fire house in the pre-gentrified Mission District and ran our label out of that. Who would ever think we could have a #1 record? And that's why I have that Buggles song up top. Let me explain.

Before MTV came along-- and there was no viable internet or social media at the time-- the only way to promote a song nationally was on radio. And the only way to get on radio was to pay immense bribes. It cost thousands of dollars to bring a song into the national top ten-- out of the question for a small company like 415 Records. We worked college radio and new wave specialty shows and sometimes we could break through on one or two big stations like WBCN in Boston or KROQ in L.A. But Top 40 or slickly formatted AOR? Not a chance. So along came MTV. The big record companies and big artists looked at it like some kind of alien life form-- interesting... but what kind of interplanetary disease was it carrying? Would it turn vicious and eat you? The big artists and labels-- like Joe Crowley and Jim Gray and Paul Ryan-- didn't make videos. We saw an opportunity and we quickly filled the void. We had massive hits (for us) with Romeo Void, the Red Rockers (our first #1), Translator and Wire Train (below).

The same folks who put together the smash Randy Bryce hit, just did one for California insurgent Kevin de León, the progressive candidate for the U.S. Senate seat held by Dianne Feinstein who's been in it since California first became a state in 1850. The video is spectacular-- emotive, compelling, incredibly powerful.-- easily one of the best this year.



You think Dianne Feinstein could or would ever do a video like that? You want to talk about "old school?" If enough California voters see it, Kevin's going to win-- even though Feinstein put $5,006,050 of her own loot into her campaign and raised another $10,000,000... compared to Kevin's $1,310,851. (Please contribute to Kevin's campaign here so he can get that out more widely.)

This week our old friend Eric Hogensen has some video tips for struggling political campaigns, 3 Tips for Using Affordable Videos for Your Campaign:

"Only a few years ago," he wrote, "videos were a medium that only large, TV-focused campaigns could afford. That's all changed. Videos are incredibly captivating, and thanks to several new services, producing them and getting views is easier than ever before. Here are our 3 tips for using inexpensive videos for your campaign.

1. Pick a service for creating simple videos.

There are many options to choose from. 30Second Explainer Videos creates short, animated videos for businesses, but the Whiteboard style also works great for candidate campaigns. There are also several companies (Rocketium, Animoto / Animaker, Showbox) that allow you to create your own videos in-house, even if you don't have any experience with editing. These cater well to social media feeds.

2. Plug your videos into social media.

Whether you are doing expensive, professionally-produced videos meant for television, or affordable explainer videos like the ones described above, you need to be advertising them on social media, particularly YouTube and Facebook. Services like HootSuite can help. Boosting the ads to your target audience is easy and, for local races, is one of the best ways to raise your name ID.

3. This can't wait until the last minute.

Developing your social video plan early will allow you to tell your story to voters over the course of several weeks. Plus you'll want to get registered as a political advertiser with Facebook right away. The process takes several weeks, so you'll want to start it at least a month before Election Day!

Friday Night Sing-Along- Trumpty Dumpty

Phil Festa is happy to have a life outside the corporate music business. You can tell from his most recent music. "It's great" he wrote, not to have a record company in charge of your ability to be heard." I know what he means. Enjoy!

#MeToo Finally Meets The Music Business

I've been wondering why the fast and loose music business hasn't been sucked into the #MeToo movement. There's a whole horror show of abuse, from musicians inviting fans backstage to executives preying on artists and abusing staffers. Yesterday when I was reading about a right-wing state Rep. in Arizona being expelled from the legislature for serially harassing women, a music business newsletter showed up about something a little closer to home. First the Arizona Republican.

There was a vote and it wasn't close. First the Speaker removed his handgun and rifle and then the House voted 56-3 to immediately expel Don Shooter (R-Yuma) for "dishonorable" behavior after the conclusion of an investigation. He was escorted off the Capitol premises by by security while legislators were still voting and condemning his behavior. He told the Arizona Republic "I've been thrown out of better places than this." Cute.

The investigation that led to the vote found “credible evidence” that he behaved inappropriately toward seven women and had created a hostile work environment in the House.

A report on the inquiry graphically details lewd language and actions from Shooter, once a powerful Republican committee chairman, who has openly behaved in a crass manner, but did so unchecked by his peers for years.

Moments before voting began, female lawmakers from both parties gathered in a circle around Rep. Michelle Ugenti-Rita, the first woman who publicly accused Shooter of harassment.

So, like I said, just when I was reading that, a friend sent me a copy of the new Lefsetz Letter, a publication that muckrakes brutally about the music business. This one was about a pretty notorious music industry executive, Charlie Walk. I never met him in person, as far as I know, but I had been hearing about him for years, none of it good.

I remember the day you called and asked me to work for you. I was in shock. I couldn't believe a music mogul like yourself wanted ME to come work for YOU. And not only did you want me to work for you, you wanted me to start my very own department. You said it would revolutionize the way the record industry worked. You said I would change the game. You said I had raw talent. You said I was bright, savvy and necessary. You said a lot of things that I wanted to hear. You made me feel like a Unicorn. And you promised me a lot of things. And you were true on your word. You took me as a young trend forecaster and gave me the opportunity of a lifetime. The opportunity to help shape the industry that I loved, which was crumbling at the feet of digital downloads. You introduced me to other music moguls like Donnie Ienner and Lyor Cohen and my ultimate (now fallen) hero, Russell Simmons. You gave me a fancy office, an assistant and a budget. You took me backstage to shows and got me private meet ‘n greets with the likes of Prince. You gave me opportunities beyond my wildest imagination.

But you also made me feel sick to my stomach almost everyday. For a year I shuddered at the idea of being called into your office, where you would stealthily close the door and make lewd comments about my body and share your fantasies of having sex with me. I was 27. No previous experience had taught me what to do in such a situation. So I laughed it off, gently reminded you that you were married with children, and tried to change the subject. But you were relentless. You would instant message me throughout the day making sexual remarks. Truly vulgar words and ideas. Pervasively. You invited me to dinners that in hindsight I had no business being at, but you did it so that you could put your hand on my thigh under the table, every time inching it closer and closer to my sacred place. You did it so you could lean over and whisper disgusting things into my ear and I had to smile so that no one suspected anything. On multiple occasions your wife was sitting right across from us. And then there was that event at your swank pad when you actually cornered me and pushed me into your bedroom and onto your bed. The bed you shared with your wife… your wife who was in the room next door. You being drunk and me being 6 inches taller was my saving grace.

You promised me the world in my career. You told me I would be one of the top 30 music executives under 30. It's what I wanted. Cloaked in power, you knew how to get me right where you wanted me. Under your control. Playing your sick games.

After a year of working in fear, I finally called deep on my courage and shared my story with your counterpart. He wasn’t surprised. He told me that there was nothing I could do about it, but that he would help me coordinate a graceful exit if I wanted. I was paid to keep my mouth shut and my reputation intact. I’m ashamed of that piece but it’s a truthful part of my story. I took that dirty money and moved to LA.

I remember the girl that took that job. I remember how confident and vocal she was. How grateful. I remember how motivated and determined she was to crush it, to be a visionary in the industry. But the girl who walked away a year later had shrunk. She no longer looked up when she walked. She became quiet. Her spirit was barely recognizable. She felt confused. She felt diminished. She felt wholeheartedly worthless. She lived in a corrosive pit of shame.

To you, Charlie Walk what you did was normal. It was a power you perceived to have earned, with a right to exercise it. But to me it was insulting, confusing and objectifying. And it was a secret that I held for a very long time, my experiences only spilling out in flashbacks and nightmares. And my silence paid off. I was able to flourish in the industry, but the more that I did, the more that I saw there were so many Charlie Walks. I walked away from the world of entertainment 8 years ago and never looked back. Now I’m running a women’s sanctuary devoted to self-love, growth and empowerment. I find myself in a vortex of strength, courage and most of all morality. It’s where I belong so in some ways, perhaps I needed to endure you, to get here, so I’m deciding to be grateful for your part in my journey.

The truth is Charlie Walk there will always be scumbags like you. I know this because you're raising sons who will follow in your own footsteps. But here’s the thing, I'm raising a son too. And I'm raising him to respect himself so that he can respect others, including women. I’m raising him to stand up to a-holes like you in honor of women. I’m raising him to know that healthy relationships don’t involve power. I’m raising him to be what you weren’t raised to be, a decent human being.

I don't wish ill for you, Charlie Walk. Only the possibility of personal awakening, accountability and transformation so that you can use your power for good. I forgive you, Charlie Walk. I hope you can forgive yourself.

Free hearted~
Tristan

A couple days later Peter Asher noted that the music business has been curiously quiet when it comes to #metoo and I wonder why, is it because it’s essentially an independent contractor business, one wherein everybody’s too afraid of damaging future relationships to speak up? ... for a notoriously freewheeling business it’s been strangely noiseless.

Could it be that so much of the music is based on sex?

Could the classic rock records of yore, even the MTV rock records of yore, be released today?

So now what happens?

Does Charlie Walk get bounced from television singing show The Four?

One would think definitely, right?

Why is it men who make money feel invincible? Especially those who were shunned growing up. They leave morality behind and believe they’re entitled to their heart’s desire.

I’d be scared to be a woman. It’s like running a gauntlet every day.

Furthermore, where were these men brought up, and how?

And never forget that it’s the team/bro behavior, begun in sports and spread through fraternities and board rooms. There’s groupthink, you take one for the team, you stand up for the status quo and those in power. Irrelevant of sexual harassment this is a huge problem in our economy.

We need to teach people to stand up for what’s right.

And we need to ensure they’re not penalized for their behavior.

Walk was suspended as president of Republic Records and told to not show up for the taping of the finale of The Four where he's a judge.

And on Thursday, Billboard carried a piece about Walk hiring power attorney Patty Glaser to defend him. She also defended Harvey Weinstein.

A Real Time Look Back Into DIY San Francisco Punk Rock

I have a vague recollection that this happened. The first part of this video above was a TV show I apparently taped with KTVU icons Ann Fraser and Ross McGowan in the early 80s in San Francisco about the punk rock scene. Someone sent it to me Friday. (And, no, that was not John Amato shouting "Howie" when I came out on the set. This was decades before we ever met. Does sound like him though.) It looks like they put makeup on me. Eventually I stopped allowing that when I went on TV but this early in my show biz career. Here's a picture of me from back in those days-- without the makeup; I'm the one on the right, at the KSAN studio with Chris Knab, my 415 Records and radio show partner, and a couple of Sex Pistols, Steve Jones and Paul Cook:

Carlos Curbelo Gets A Challenger: Meet Steven Machat

Like me, Steven Machat comes out of the music business. His time at Warner Bros Records, though, predated my own and it was years later that I learned who he is-- a lawyer, an accountant and a visionary who became famous working with artists at every level of their careers. He’s a a team builder-- called the “dreamers dreamer” by those who know him best. He’s always been someone who makes things happen in the entertainment business. And now-- still involved in the music business, bringing Cuban music to America-- he’s also involved with politics, though that’s hardly a new endeavor for him either.

He graduated from Law School at Vanderbilt in 1977 (a classmate of Al Gore’s), where he had spent two years working as a Nashville public defender in court rooms protecting the rights of minorities and the poor who could not afford a lawyer. He grew to like defending the underdog. During his time in Nashville, Steven met his father’s client Phil Walden, the man who created Capricorn Records. Walden got Steven heavily involved in the election of Jimmy Carter and Steven grew to love politics-- putting together teams so dreams could come true.

Steven has played almost every role imaginable in the entertainment business. Mostly on making artist dreams come true. Be it Jet Records with ELO or Ozzie Osborne or Genesis' Peter Gabriel or Phil Collins; Leonard Cohen, Phil Spector New Edition, Bobby Brown, Suge Knight, Soft Cell… many, many others. Steven helped make their dreams a reality.



Steven helped create the Music Festival WOMAD, a festival dedicated to sharing cultures from all over the world. Steven has traveled the world as a business man and has a very unique perspective in what binds people to work together and create. He has lived all over the world representing artists. Be it Manu Dibango from Cameroon. Rita Lee and Gilberto Gil from Brazil. Cerrone and Space from France. Angélique Kidjo from Benin or Franco Battiata from Italy, Steven knows and understands people.

Steven has produced movies and theatre and written four books in which he has endeavor to share his truths and visions. He believes in a dream. He believes we can create the America we all dream about. The one our Declaration of Independence speaks about-- a land where we all work together as a team to build a land, based on the American dream.

Steven ran for the Senate in 2016 as an independent in Florida. He lost to Marco Rubio. Today he’s running for Congress in Florida's 26th district as a Democrat, a blue-trending swing district, occupied by Republican Carlos Curbelo. Hillary beat Trump in FL-26 handily-- 56.7% to 40.6%. Unless the DCCC interferes to put a conservative establishment shill in as a candidate, the district will be blue in 2018. I’m pleased to introduce Steven to DWT readers. He’s truly a Renaissance man. As he says, people first… and let's make our dreams reality


Guest Post
-by Steven Machat

Thank you, Howie. And I am so pleased to announce with you my decision to run for Congress in the 26th Florida district as a Democrat.

I run to serve the people. I look forward to helping do what I can to rebuild the Democratic Party on the inside. As well as help create the awareness and attract the public to vote in Democrats in as we recreate the people's party. The party that gave America the New Deal.

My goal is to get into Congress here in Florida. Florida's 26th District to be exact. My dream is to help finish what one of my personal heroes, FDR, started. We need a second bill of rights-- an Economic Bill of Rights. We have the first bill of rights but it is political, created when most of our nation were farmers. There was no big cities. Everyone could grow their own food. Today that is not true. We need a safety net for all and even the wealthy will be happier.

During FDR's time our nation industrialized. We started trading our wares and ideas with the world on a really big scale. Instead of sharing cultures we tried to control trade, from manufacture to distribution, to whole sale and retail. We have since built an economy on war and industry. We created capitalism with banks in control of our economy and our government. The Fed comes first. And we the people allow this to continue. Our nation was built on visionaries and team work. Building communities and making life better for the living as well as their future. The only asset mankind has in truth is Our children.

We have lost our way as a community of equals. People live to pay interest. We do not own our central bank, AKA the Federal Reserve, as a nation. We let independent bankers get paid before our government gets its taxes. Between Bush the second and Obama we have socialized the losses of these bankers but privatized their wins. We today are a nation of interest slaves.

We say we understand climate change and will fix it. But the Paris accord was a basement not a ceiling. We still take fossils the earth has buried and burn the fuels to run the industries which need to be retired. Our future is renewable energy which will create jobs that can't be exported. Florida is the sunshine state, it should lead our nation in renewable energy.

We need to put people first. Not paper profits. We need to educate our people of all ages so they can help our nation grow. We do not need to create a scam where we loan people money to go to school, in reality to create profits for the banks on debts our young can not escape like the bankers did.

We need to take care of our old. The senior citizens of our land. They have so much to give to us all. We need to insure they live out their lives with dignity, health and welfare.

We need to give everyone health care in a single payeer system. This is the coach ticket to health. You want business or first class pay for it. I have lived in London. Their system works.

The second bill of rights by FDR, as I hereby modify for our time, proposed just before he died must be the following:

1. The right to a useful and remunerative job in private business or working with the local, state, regional or national community.
2. The right to a living wage not a minimum. Where everyone has a roof over their head, food to eat. Plus clothes to wear and money to discover and share culture.
3. The right of every businessman, large or small, as FDR said, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad.
4. The right to adequate medical care. The ability to achieve and enjoy good health.
5. The right to publicly financed education. This includes early education, technical training, and college.

In addition to people economics I run to protect the Environment. We must put earth first. I will protect the Everglades. I will stop Big Sugar from polluting our water. I will do what I can to stop fracking. I believe we need to create a Gross National Quality of life index so we can judge how we are living. Not just a Gross National Product that measures only what we make. We need to effectively measure what the real costs are, of what we do.

On international affairs I will help create an understanding that the whole world does not need to be just like us. We must respect diversity and different cultures. We must stop getting involved in civil wars and nation building. We must be strong and ready to defend-- but not invade so the military industrial complex can profit. We must create a world to share and build cultures.

We need term limits on all branches of our government. That is how you achieve progress and limit the establishment's corruption. Remember when our nation was created people lived to maybe forty as an average.

We must control election spending and election debates. I sued to get on the air to debate Rubio. I qualified to run but did not qualify for the debate because I did not have money for big TV adds. It is nothing but a game of political payola. We need people to run who wish to serve man. Not who wish to serve corporate powers.

I will be the people's candidate and Congressman. People are my constituency and it is to people I will communicate. I also pledge to hold town hall meetings and never run from debates where you the people can become wise about who and what is what.

Please help me to help you. Go to my website Machat4Congress.com and learn more about what I’m trying to accomplish and how you can join in what I’m doing and help the cause.

Remember When Lionel Richie Was A Rocker? Don't Worry, Almost No One Else Does Either

I was surprised at the outpouring of interest we got from the post last weekend about the new hard rockin' Body Count single, "No Lives Matter" from their upcoming album Bloodlust. Someone asked me if we ran it because of Black History Month. Uh... no; we ran it because Bodycount put out a new single about issues relevant to the DWT mission. But Happy Black History Month too. In fact, I rummaged around the files and found this article I wrote for Creem almost 40 years ago about another rockin' band that has been largely lost to (white) history, The Commodores. I had recently returned from over six years living abroad and I was photographing bands and writing about music to pay the rent while I figured out what I was going to do with my life. Creem assigned me this story on the band, just as they started to transition from a hard sound to a predominantly soft, commercial sound.

When I went to interview them late in 1977 I had Machine Gun in mind and the world was soon inundated with Three Times A Lady. But when I talked with Lionel Richie he still kind of wanted to be like my old pal Jimi Hendrix. So we got along great.

The Commodores: Come Funk With Us! (But Bring Your Led Zep Records)
Howie Klein, Creem, January 1978

"NOW YOU take a group like Fleetwood Mac or the Zep," offered Benny. "It's another thing that the audiences get off into. I don't understand it because I'm not a heavy rock fan, but I respect it and appreciate it in my planning for the group."

Benny is the omnipresent Ben Ashburn, and "the group" is the Commodores, the six-man self-contained funk 'n' roll band that has been delighting in breaking rule after rule in the Music Business Book of Absolutes. Benny-- for the record, the manager and surrogate father-- is the seventh Commodore. He and lead singer Lionel Richie are telling CREEM about their Plan and how they've been implementing it. The plan is easy: to stick around and "become an institution, like the Stones." And the implementation-- well, that's a lot of facts and figures-- things like simultaneous #1 hits on the r'n'b, pop and easy listening charts for their two current singles; three million sales for the new-- the fifth-- album; ten million dollars in gross tour receipts; broken attendance records in stadiums from New Orleans to the Philippines; unprecedented-- for a black group-- advance ticket sell-outs, etc. They planned it all this way. They do their homework. And if Benny's not into the heavy rock sound that dominates today's concert circuit, Lionel sure is.

"See, I'm a rocker," he confided. "When we started out back in '68, if I had my way I'd have said, 'Turn the amp up on 12 and let's go.' But I couldn't do it. I had to realize one thing: this industry divides into two categories-- r'n'b and pop. Before I go and sell out Madison Square Garden with Led Zeppelin and all the rest of the brothers, I've got to first of all start r'n'b-- get myself a market together. We cannot say, 'I wanna be a Beatles.' There's a totally different marketing strategy. Number one, we're black. We've got to sell ourselves on another angle. The angle is energy-- coliseum energy, not nightclub energy. When r'n'b groups played coliseums they used to do seven groups in a night. I wanted to sell out Madison Square Garden as the Commodores. Back in '68 people looked at us as if we were crazy. 'Son, I've been in the Business 25 years...'"

In fact, "Son, I've been in the Business 25 years and here is a list of what you can't do," is the Commodores story. The whole band is from Tuskegee, Alabama, where they went to school at the original "Negro college," Tuskegee Institute, in the late '60s. They went through school listening to what all American students were into then: the Stones, Hendrix, the Beatles, the Temptations, the Airplane. "What I realized walking across campus," recalled Richie, "is that even though the Music Industry has a category of r'n'b and one of pop music... well, I was on a predominantly black campus, but I'll bet you we had as many Led Zeppelin and Rolling Stone and Cream albums as anything."

So when they walked into the Motown offices-- ready to revolutionize the Music Business-- they didn't exactly fit into the company's standard success pattern. In fact, it took them over three years from the time they signed a recording contract until they finally got their first record out. Mo-town's idea of plugging into the "Baby Love, Baby Love" formula for making a hit wasn't exactly what the Commodores had in mind for themselves. "We wanted another kind of sound and we had to fight tooth and nail to sell the idea. You see, in r'n'b you're dealing with an industry that's into 'Clean Sound'-- nuthin' heavy. So we walk in and start talking about feedback and 'gimme some echo and some fuzz and some garbage can sounds.' These are professional people who are into cutting clean tracks. So it took right up to this album here just to get them to understand. They still try to mix it down, though. Maybe it's necessary. I can get so locked into the fuzz sound on the guitar that I loose the perspective of what the total song is all about. But once we get live onstage..."

Yeah, that's the way to get into the Commodores-- live onstage. The name is energy. Their thing is to take a 15,000 seat stadium and turn it into a nightclub. "We get insulted if we don't see people up and dancing. We're into total energy. We're into entertaining. The idea in this business is to back up what you say-- to deliver what you promise."

And deliver is what the Commodores do. Beyond the reach of corporate product evaluators and quality control hacks, the Commodores let the audience know how they feel. They're raw and gutsy-- real-- the way the Stones are. There's no glossy patina onstage to make their act safe and homogenized. Forget that. And if "traditional wisdom" says that that makes a funk group "too black," well, just look at who's comin' to Commodore concerts. The Boston police showed up with mace when they found out that the ticket buyers were half white and half black. It was 50/50 in San Diego, too, and almost that in San Francisco. (They didn't need any mace; the band keeps everybody too busy for anything but the music.) You ain't never seen such a racially mixed audience before. And everybody's up and dancing.

"If they're little kids, I give 'em a kiddie show. But on the Stones tour all we tried to do was blow 'em away with the music, 'cause that's where rockers are at. Rockers are into lyric content. The audiences know every word before the show."

Last fall the Commodores and Donna Summer played themselves in the movie Thank God It's Friday, a kind of black Star is Born. The Commodores were billed throughout as the "World's Greatest Disco Group." Now this band may have started as a disco group, but don't be fooled-- today their music goes far beyond the simple, repetitious bass lines and droning mechanical parameters of disco. Richie felt awkward about that part of the film. "It was kind of strange and we thought about it, but we wound up saying, 'What the heck; they use our name all through the movie.' All I know is that the lights were on me and I said, 'Ham it up.' And remember, we did have our beginning as a disco group. We've branched out a lot now, but if you listen to the Machine Gun album right now, you will not be able to sit down. We started out trying to get a following. Now we've got one and we can take 'em to places we want to go."

And where that is, is-- of course-- to the top. Like the man said, these guys wanna be an institution. They've been working real hard at it, too. You've gotta remember something about the Commodores, something they never forget-- they're not in the r'n'b business; they're in the music business.

"I'm not saying I wanna be a rocker," smiled Richie. "What I'm saying is that rockers take risks in their writing and their shows. That's what makes you number one. But you've got to have a following that will stand behind you and say, 'If my man tears off his clothes onstage, it's alright.' Well, that's what we're trying to do right now. We're stepping off into some areas of our music that are risky. But, like I said, in order to be number one you've got to take some risks. In terms of our writing, 'Easy' was a risk. 'Zoom' was a guarantee-- we knew it would definitely take care of our r'n'b audience. 'Easy' was an experiment. Programmers had said our stuff was too r'n'b to be number one on the pop stations. I said, 'OK, I'm gonna give these people a song that has no r'n'b anything to it. There's your pop song. Pop, pop, pop'."

Black Lives Matter? Ice-T And Body Count Have Something To Say About That

Body Count's new album, Bloodlust, will be out March 31 but yesterday, the band's new single was released. You can hear it-- and watch the provocative new video-- above; please do. It's special for me, mostly because Bodycount is a band I worked with when I was general manger of Sire Records. Seymour Stein had signed Ice-T to the label and he was a star-- a successful star who sold a lot of albums. In 1990 Ice asked me to come see his metal band, Body Count, play. Their music and stage show were right up my alley and they were a big hit at Lollapalooza in 1991. It's nice when you work at a record company and actually like the music you have to work.

In early 1992, we released the eponymous album and I was thrilled that Ice had decided to give me credit as executive producer. What an honor! Commercially-speaking, he album was modestly successful-- not on an Ice-T level-- but big for a debut by a new rock band. I don't remember the exact figure but we had sold a solid 100,000 albums when the record was "over." Returns started trickling back from the retail accounts and it was time to start thinking about the next Ice-T album. Then something incredible happened.

We hadn't got a lot of airplay or effective promotion for the Body Count album. But then the Dallas Police force got involved and started complaining about the song "Cop Killer." Complaining really loudly... and really effectively. DC politicians suddenly saw an opportunity to jump on a slightly, subtly racist "law and order" bandwagon. And it wasn't just Republicans. Suddenly we had Dan Quayle and then George H.W. Bush denouncing our artist and their song by name-- on national TV. The trickle of returns stopped and the orders for more album started coming in-- bigly! The album went gold quickly, quickly enough for me to make a gold album for Dan Quayle for helping get the massive sales rush going. (My boss asked me not to send it to him.)

Soon Tipper Gore and Joe Lieberman jumped in and started denouncing us. (Anyone remember the PMRC?) It turned into a real mess. The police would claim several times a week that they had a bomb threat for our building and kept evacuating us so they could search the building. It was pure harassment and it went on and on and on. In the end, the corporate bosses in New York were concerned about Time Warner's stock price. They demanded we drop Ice-T. We refused. They demanded louder. Eventually, the chairman of the company asked me if I wanted to go to New York and argue the case. I said sure. He asked me if I owned a suit. I said, "Of course... I had a bar mitzvah." He looked at me strangely and wished me luck. When the meeting was done-- they walked out cursing under their collective breath-- I was sure my career at Warner Bros was over.

The next time I saw these corporate overseers was about a year later at a company meeting. By then I was the president of Reprise Records, one of their crown jewels. They looked at me and I could see then thinking, "Oh my God, it's him again! Where are the aspirins!" In the interim, though, Ice decided to leave Warner Bros, amicably. I was sad too see him go but it worked out really well for him-- and Warner Bros was basically out of the Black Music business for years.

Among the guest musicians on the album-- not on this song though-- are Megadeth's Dave Mustaine )n the song "Civil War"), Randy Blyth from Lamb of God (on the song "Walk With Me") and Soulfly's Max Cavalera (on the song "All Love is Lost"). There's also a cover Slayer's "Raining Blood" and "Postmortem."

Here are the "No Lives Matter" lyrics:

It’s unfortunate that we even have
To say Black Lives Matter
I mean if you go through history
Nobody ever gave a fuck
I mean you can kill Black People in the street
Nobody goes to jail nobody goes to prison,
But when I say Black Lives Matter
And you say All Lives Matter
That’s like if I was to say Gay Lives Matter
And you say All Lives Matter
If I said Women’s Lives Matter
and you say All Lives Matter
You dilutin’ what i’m sayin’
You dilutin’ the issue the issue isn’t about everybody
It’s about Black Lives at the moment,
But the truth of the matter is they don’t really give a fuck about anybody
if you break the shit all the way down to the low fuckin’ dirty ass truth.

We say that Black Lives Matter
But truthfully they really never have
No one really ever gave a fuck just
Read your bullshit history books
But honestly it ain’t just Black
It’s Yellow, it’s Brown, it’s Red,
It’s anyone who ain’t got cash
Poor Whites that they call trash

They can’t fuck with us
Once we realize we’re all on the same side
They can’t split us up,
And let ‘em prosper off the divide
They can’t fuck with us
Once we realize we’re all on the same side
They can’t split us up and let ‘em
Prosper off the divide

Don't fall for the bait and switch
Racisim is real but not it,
They fuck whoever can’t fight back
But now we got to change all that
The people  have had enough
Right now it’s them against us
This shit is ugly to the core
When it comes to the poor  - NO LIVES MATTER

America’s always been
A place that’s judged by skin,
And racisim is real as fuck
Ain’t no way to play that off,
And in the eyes of the law
Black skin has always stood for poor
This is basic shit - They know who they’re fuckin’ with

They can’t fuck with us
Once we realize we’re all on the same side
They can’t split us up,
And let ‘em prosper off the divide
They can’t fuck with us
Once we realize we’re all on the same side
They can’t split us up and let ‘em
Prosper off the divide

Don't fall for the bait and switch
Racisim is real but not it,
They fuck whoever can’t fight back
But now we got to change all that
The people  have had enough
Right now it’s them against us
This shit is ugly to the core
When it comes to the poor  - NO LIVES MATTER

You never see ‘em pullin’ rich people
Out of they cars in their neighborhood
Because they know they got lawyers
They know they’ll sue their ass
They can tell who to fuck with
Unfortunately Black or Brown skin
Has always meant poor
They’re profiling you kid they know
You can’t fight back, but we about  to

In an interview with Paul Gargano last month, Ice said that he "may have an acting job to fall back on, but my core still looks out there and says that people are a bunch of pussies. What the fuck!?! I never had a hard time putting myself on the line, now I want people to stand up and open their eyes. People are dumb, they don’t know. The cops shoot kids and they say it’s white people-- it ain’t white people, it’s the cops! Racism is real, but that’s not all that’s happening here. I’m singing to my white audience and letting them know that I see them as an ally, and I’m singing to my black audience and telling them to judge a devil by their deeds. I’m trying to lose that picture of the one-dimensional gangster. Mother fuckers that act hard are the fakest mother fuckers in the world-- us right now, this is how human beings really are. We can joke and talk shit, we can hit a political note and be adamant and angry as shit, then on the next note you can be watching cartoons and bouncing your kid on your knee. I’m not worried about people misinterpreting me anymore-- the dummies misinterpret, and the real fans will assassinate them for that. The intention here was to make some great music, open some eyes, and offer people some entertainment. People should rock to this-- I didn’t want to make a mix tape, I wanted to make a BODY COUNT album."

I have a feeling the cops aren't going to be any happier about this one than they were about "Cop Killer," since the implication is clear-- that cops kill innocent people. I wonder if Trump's going to help it go platinum. Listen again.

George Michael, Protest Singer-- RIP

SONY Records— they were still called CBS at the time— had just bought my independent label, 415 Records and I was over in England hanging out with the Clash, Generation X, the Boomtown Rats and Wire and scouting for bands I could sign to 415 now that we would have CBS’ marketing muscle behind us. I met a young unknown singer from a small indie label, Innervision, George Michael and he played me a tape of a kind of protest song called Wham Rap. It was a little slick for 415 but… 415 could change. One thing I knew instantaneously— it was a hit. Another thing I knew: this kid was going to be a superstar. I was wrong about the first supposition and right about the second. I went back to CBS’ New York headquarters determined to sign the band. I had to get permission. They liked the band. “Thanks for bringing it in. It’s not really right for 415; we’ll sign them directly to Columbia. You have a good ear.” That’s called getting fucked.

Michael’s partner, Andrew Ridgeley, appeared gay to me. And Michael was an obvious heartthrob for teenage girls. I didn’t think CBS could sell them properly in the U.S. while keeping their protest music aspect front and center. Well, that aspect lasted shorter than it took for the ink to dry on the contract, although exactly 20 years later George Michael released an epic anti-Bush/Blair song Shoot the Dog. Who would have imagined that just 5 years later Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan would adopt the duo’s second single for a Republican program for electing conservatives to Congress! It was this performance on Dec. 9, 1982 on the Top of the pops that broke the band and took out all the guess-work about how big they would be:



[See Eric Cantor rocking out in the audience? Even he sensed Wham was going to be as big as Culture Club.] CBS, which never really had any respect for indie labels, eventually muscled Innervision out of the picture and released “Wake Me Up Before you Go-Go,” the video at the top of the page, and even people who aren’t as smart as Eric Cantor knew this group was going all the way. Cantor, though, started wearing his “Choose Life” t-shirt under his suits and ties and gave Paul Ryan and Kevin McCarthy the iconic t-shits as well. Tom Rooney (R-LA) bought his own just before the 2008 election and is rumored to still wear it today. “Wake Me Up” was the band’s first #1 and their next release, “Careless Whisper” came out next and was their second #1. Oh, man did I get rooked!


In 1985 they became the first Western band to do a major tour of China and the resulting film (above), Foreign Skies: Wham! came out the following year, just as Wham broke up. Both guys went out of their way to appear to be straight, a typical pop music “business decision” for gay artists. Funny enough, it turned out Ridgeley really was straight and it was George Michael who preferred men. He had told my old friend, Judy Wieder, he was gay in 1999, so it didn’t come as a surprise to me at all when he finally stopped the “bisexual” pose. By then he had already been very publicly living with a gay man in Dallas and had later been arrested for having sex in a park in Beverly Hills. He was 53 when he died of as yet undisclosed causes at his home in the U.K. today. I bet he wouldn't have played Trump's inauguration either.

Will Trumpy-the-Clown's Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, Destroy The Marijuana Industry?

The marijuana industry is growing by leaps and bounds across the country. And industry players are spending money on lobbying and have even been contributing to friendly candidates. Since 2010 the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) has given contributions of between $500 and $1,000 to, among others:

• Chellie Pingree (D-ME)
• Jerry Nadler (D-NY)
• Mark Pocan (D-WI)
• Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY)
• Cory Booker (D-NJ)
• Earl Blumenauer (R-OR)
• Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA)
• Beto O'Rourke (D-TX)
• Alan Grayson (D-FL)
• Alan Lowenthal (D-CA)
• Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ)
• Steve Cohen (D-TN)
• Jamie Raskin (D-MD)

This cycle the Marijuana Policy Project has given around half a million dollars to candidates who support legalization, including to lots of conservatives. Their half dozen biggest recipients in 2014 and 2016 (combined):

• Rand Paul (R-KY)- $13,700
• Peter Aguilar (New Dem-CA)- $8,000
• Justin Amash (R-MI)- $5,750
• Michael Eggman (D-CA)- 5,000
• Ruben Gallego (D-AZ)- $5,000
• Ami Bera (New Dem-CA)- $5,000

The National Cannabis Industry Association is the trade organization for legal marijuana businesses and they lobby and give out contributions as well as does the Drug Policy Alliance. So, it's becoming a real thing in the way the Beltway judges "real."

And there has been some hope that this kind of thing-- coupled with tax revenues being generated-- $44 million in Colorado in sales and excise taxes on pot for 2014, for example-- will keep Trump and Sessions at bay.

This week, the music industry trade magazine, Billboard, tied the growing marijuana industry directly to the music business, which has been suffering and which has been a major American export revenue earner for decades. Andy Gensler asks specifically if growing weed sales can revitalize increasingly moribund record stores. Record stores have been dying off rapidly primarily because most people get their music online. "CD sales," he reported, "have plummeted from $9.4 billion in 2006 to just $1.5 billion in 2015, according to the RIAA-- an 84 percent drop-- and the much-ballyhooed vinyl resurgence has done little to staunch the bleeding, making up only 6 percent of physical sales in 2015." Most states now have some degree of decriminalization and 8 have pretty much decriminalized it completely: Alaska, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada, Oregon and Washington (+ Washington, DC).

But there is hope on the hazy horizon, and it’s coming in the five-leafed form of marijuana, which is legal in a majority of states-- 28 of them have sanctioned cannabis for medical or recreational use-- following the 2016 elections. What does reefer have to do with records? With music retailers getting into the dispensary business or aligning their physical location with pot shops, the long-standing symbiotic relationship between music and weed may finally be (legally) monetized.

“There’s a history of marijuana and music that goes back to the jazz era,” says Michael Kurtz, co-founder of Record Store Day, who also notes retail’s role in selling paraphernalia-- record stores birthed head shops. “Anytime human behavior is decriminalized, it’s good for business.”

And the pot business is booming. Projected to generate more than $1 billion in revenue in 2016 in Colorado, where recreational marijuana is sanctioned, legal weed will soon stretch all the way down the West Coast-- from the border with Canada to the North to Mexico in the South-- once California’s Proposition 64 goes into effect in 2018. No wonder record stores are, for the first time in more than a decade, feeling optimistic.

“With marijuana, everything has gotten better,” says Paul Epstein, owner of Denver’s Twist & Shout Records, which has been in business for 28 years. “You would be hard pressed to find any business in Denver for which the legalization of recreational marijuana hasn’t had a positive effect.”

“Tax revenue [from cannabis] all told last year was $140 million for 2015,” says Andrew Freedman (aka “the weed czar”), director of marijuana coordination for Colorado, an outlier state that legalized recreational use in 2012. Today, Denver has nearly 400 licensed medical and/or recreational-cannabis retail outlets. According to a study by the Marijuana Policy Group cited by Freedman, pot revenue had a $2.4 billion economic impact in Colorado, creating 18,000 new jobs.

That said, Epstein and other music retailers Billboard spoke to in Colorado, Seattle and Los Angeles say they have yet to see significant dividends. “My sales aren’t up,” says Louis Lambert, co-owner of the Independent Records & Video chain in Colorado Springs, Colo., who also is a partner in two medical dispensaries. “I have a dispensary next to my store,” he says, “but there are 10 other dispensaries right next to them.” Other stores, too, spoke of a “weed glut,” along with strict regulations impeding them from fully capitalizing on a nascent pot market.

Another concern is that an incoming Trump administration and its attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions may roll back state marijuana laws. Recalling the hysteria of 1930’s propaganda film Reefer Madness and the Reagan administration’s benighted “Just Say No” policies, in April Sessions called weed “not the kind of thing that ought to be legalized” and a “very real danger.” In fact, Sessions, who was rejected for a 1986 federal judgeship for his alleged racist views, said he thought Ku Klux Klan members were “OK, until he learned that they smoked marijuana.” (Worth noting: Seven of the eight states legalizing recreational cannabis and the District of Columbia backed Hillary Clinton’s failed presidential bid.)

But California chain Amoeba Music, which is leading the state’s music-retail charge into cannabis, may be immune from future “re-criminalization,” as the dispensary license it recently obtained for its Berkeley location is medical and not the result of the recently won recreational rights that came with Prop 64’s passage. Meanwhile, its San Francisco store has opened Green Evaluations adjacent to its location. There, for $44, California residents can be examined by a physician and receive a medical marijuana ID card. That business now covers half of the Haight Street store’s annual rent. Amoeba’s Hollywood store, which is set to move from its current location within five years, may explore a similar strategy.

“We’ve gone to great lengths to keep the Berkeley store going for many years without making much money, but just trying to keep it alive,” says co-owner Marc Weinstein, who notes that Amoeba earns roughly half the revenue it did in 2008 and is down to 35 employees from 90. “The reason we worked on getting this permit for five years is because we really believe this is the mix that can help the store make it in the long run.” He adds that pot’s profit margin is greater than recorded music’s and “something Amazon can’t kill you on.”

Still, there are challenges, like stipulations as to what can be sold and where. Says Colorado’s Freedman: “You’re only allowed to sell marijuana products and some amount of paraphernalia, but very little else in recreational and medical establishments here.”

When asked what makes him think he can run a successful dispensary in what is still a budding crossover market, Amoeba’s Weinstein cites his 26 years running one of the country’s most successful independent music-retail chains. “Our model is to have as many products as possible, know about them in depth and be able to offer people selection,” he says. “We’re just interested in having a killer retail store.”

For Madell, whose Other Music was in business for 21 years, the possible marriage of music and marijuana comes too late. “For many customers, myself included, this would be a dream combination,” he says. “I can’t really say if Other Music would have gone this route if we had the opportunity-- too many hypotheticals here-- but I will say 100 percent that I will frequent the first New York City shop that realizes the dream.”

UPDATE: Is Stone Stoned?

One of the manipulators behind the Trumpanzee curtain has been the always controversial Roger Stone. Today he wrote a commentary on how he sees Trump and the marijuana question, claiming el President-elect Señor Trumpanzee opposes legalization but is good with medical marijuana and has tended to agree, from time to time, that states should make up their own minds on legalization. As with most of what Trump says, his stands on marijuana change depending on the audience and varies drastically... and incoherently. Stone urged Trump to take a hands-off approach and to ignore anti-pot fanatic Jeff Sessions. He wrote that one of the many controversial decisions Trump is getting ready to make "is whether to continue the federal stand-down by the us Justice department in which DOJ does not enforce federal marijuana laws where they contradict state laws legalizing the legal use and sale of marijuana in the 37 states where it is currently legal in some form."

Canceling the order by Obama attorney general Eric Holder to stand down on Marijuana would cause a major dislocation in multiple states that are currently budgeting millions in state revenue from the taxation of marijuana and un-employing hundreds of thousands of people currently working in an industry legalized by the states. I would urge President-Elect Trump to view this as a business man; U.S. government cannot turn back the clock on federal marijuana law enforcement.

...A great many pro-marijuana organizations, publications, and Internet outlets put their support behind Donald Trump based on his positive statements about Medical Marijuana. People who have marijuana rights as their primary political issue turned to Trump, many against long time party affiliation, in hopes of greater freedom and less abuse at the hands of Federal Agencies.

If, after winning the election, Donald Trump listens to the likes of Chris Christie and Jeff Sessions he risks alienating his base and his newly won supporters in a very tangible way. Both Sessions and Christie come from ‘Old World’ War on Drugs thinking.

Criminalized Marijuana has directly lead to the persecution of countless individuals, the vast majority of whom are poor and minorities. That this was the desired result of the designers of the system of criminalization cannot be reasonable doubted.

“Laws to suppress tend to strengthen what they would prohibit. This is the fine point on which all legal professions throughout history have based their jobs security.”- Frank Herbert.

We cannot leave it to ‘Law Enforcement’ types to decide what is to be allowed and what is to be prohibited. The People must decide for themselves, and they have decided. Overwhelmingly so. They have decided they want legalized marijuana.

“If the people let government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny.”- Thomas Jefferson.

Drain the Swamp.  Limit Federal Power. Reel-in out-of-control Alphabet Soup agencies. Return respect for law.  These are all things Donald Trump made as major issues for his campaign platform.

“The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.”- Albert Einstein.

A precipitous move by the Trump administration to change the equation on legal marijuana in the states could in fact bring action by congress where a coalition of liberal Democrats and libertarian Republicans are moving towards legislation to legalize the plant.