SCREWING THE MUSICIANS, EVEN THOUGH THEY’RE MOSTLY DEMOCRATS: U.S. Dept. Of Justice Deals Crushing Blow To Songwriters.

Don McLean forever memorialized Feb. 3, 1959—the date of the plane crash killing Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. “Big Bopper” Richardson—as “the Day the Music Died” in his song “American Pie.” If you ask most songwriters or music creators, June 30, 2016—the date the Dept. of Justice ruled on music licensing consent decrees—may go down in history as “the day the music rolled over in its grave.”

How severe are the rulings by the Dept. of Justice? “This would create Armageddon in the professional songwriter community,” Nashville Songwriters Association (NSAI) Executive Director Bart Herbison said in a press release. “I am stunned and sickened [by the ruling],” NSAI President Lee Thomas Miller added. “DOJ did not take the impact on songwriters into account when issuing this ruling.”

Songwriting and music licensing is one of the most strongly regulated areas in entertainment, dating back to pre-World World II policies put in place by the federal government to control how the two largest performing rights societies (PROs), ASCAP and BMI, can license music. It goes without saying that the music industry is entirely different today than it was 60 years ago…or even six years ago. Streaming services, in particular, have greatly disrupted the industry and led to tremendous declines in the revenue paid to songwriters. However, songwriters’ hands are mostly bound, because the federal government’s Consent Decree mandates how songwriters can be paid. . . .

Also in the ruling, the DOJ denied requests from songwriters to be able to withdraw their catalog from digital licensing services, which would essentially allow them to negotiate fair market rate payments from digital services like Spotify, Soundcloud and Apple AAPL +0.35% Music. Record labels and recording artists, who are not bound by the pre-WWII Consent Decrees, already have these rights. This issue is at the root of reports you’ve probably heard about songwriters getting ridiculously low payouts from digital streaming services, including “All About That Bass” songwriter Kevin Kadish’s claim he made $5,679 from 178 million plays on Spotify.

Google and Apple have more money. And besides, most of those songwriters will keep voting Democrat anyway.

THOSE BLOODY BORDERS: Patterns of Islamic extremist terrorism: now it’s Bangladesh.

THEIR LIVES, THEIR FORTUNES, THEIR SACRED HONOR: They gambled them, and many of them lost them.  What Happened To The Signers Of The Declaration?

AN INDEPENDENT AUTHOR IS NOT THE SAME AS AN INDEPENDENT NATION: And yet, there are similarities. ‘Of Independent Mind’.

HILLARY’S LIBRARY WILL BE EASILY ACCESSIBLE FROM RUSSIA: Presidential Libraries and Museums.

IF MULTI-CULTURALISM IS SUCH A GREAT IDEA, WHY DOESN’T IT CUT BOTH WAYS? Westerners who don hijabs in Iran are a disgrace.

LAWS ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: Hillary’s latest shower of email shoes.

AND IT’S A SIGN BEN FRANKLIN LOVES US AND WANTS US TO BE HAPPY: How beer has shaped our bellies — and America’s soul.

HOPE EVERYBODY HAD A GREAT FOURTH OF JULY WEEKEND.

EXPECT FIREWORKS: Wikileaks publishes Clinton war emails. They’re here.

Given that Wikileaks is widely regarded as a front for Russian intelligence, I wonder how they got them? . . . .

HER INSTINCT IS ALWAYS TO CRUSH THE OPPOSITION. UNLIKE OBAMA, SHE APPLIES APPROACH OUTSIDE THE BORDERS OF THE UNITED STATES: Why Is Hillary Still A Hawk?

BOSTON GLOBE FREAKS OUT over sign advertising that ammo shop sells ammo.

AT AMAZON, new deals in Amazon Exclusives.

Plus, New Releases in Movies & TV.

INDEPENDENCE DAY THOUGHTS FROM KURT SCHLICHTER: You Owe Them Nothing – Not Respect, Not Loyalty, Not Obedience.

Think about it. If you are out driving at 3 a.m., do you stop at a stop sign when there’s no one coming? Of course you do. You don’t need a cop to be there to make you stop. You do it voluntarily because this is America and America is a country where obeying the law is the right thing to do because the law was justly made and is justly applied. Or it used to be.

The law mattered. It applied equally to everyone. We demanded that it did, all of us – politicians, the media, and regular citizens. Oh, there were mistakes and miscarriages of justice but they weren’t common and they weren’t celebrated – they were universally reviled. And, more importantly, they weren’t part and parcel of the ideology of one particular party. There was once a time where you could imagine a Democrat scandal where the media actually called for the head of the Democrat instead of deploying to cover it up.

People assumed that the law mattered, that the same rules applied to everyone. That duly enacted laws would be enforced equally until repealed. That the Constitution set the foundation and that its guarantees would be honored even if we disliked the result in a particular case. But that’s not our country today.

The idea of the rule of law today is a lie. There is no law. There is no justice. There are only lies.

As more people think like this, the Coming Middle Class Anarchy won’t just be coming. It will have arrived, in consequence of the revolt against the masses.

MICHAEL WALSH: Trump’s Hidden Advantage — He’s Crazy.

Plus a revealing look back at competing 1980 election messages from an earlier, funnier Onion.

I’ll DRINK TO THAT: This Independence Day, Let’s Thank Beer for Its Role in Getting This Country Started.

SARAH HOYT: The People Are All Right.

In contrast, as Rod Dreher notes, our elites have revealed themselves to be largely a mass of parochial “Cultured Hicks.”

Which is why, as Kurt Schlichter writes, “You Owe Them Nothing — Not Respect, Not Loyalty, Not Obedience.”

QUOTE OF THE DAY:

About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.

—Calvin Coolidge, Address at the Celebration of the 150th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia on July 5, 1926.

Or to put it another way:

Rough Creek Lodge (site of December’s Bullets & Bourbon) in Glen Rose, Texas last night.

21ST CENTURY PROBLEMS: College ‘drunkorexia’ more common than thought.

HISTORY: A Hundred Years Ago, Two Sisters Crossed America On Indian Motorcycles.

AT AMAZON, deals on Power & Hand Tools.

Plus, deals in Organization & Storage.

RAPPER KENDRICK LAMAR TO PERFORM AT WHITE HOUSE FOR SEMI-RETIRED PRESIDENT ON JULY FOURTH.

Obama met with Lamar, apparently one of his favorite “artists,” before his final State of the Union address. As Victor Davis Hanson noted at the time, the cover to Lamar’s 2015 album To Pimp a Butterfly features a dead judge and his murderers posing in front of the White House.

DEAR SILICON VALLEY: Forget Flying Cars, Give Us Economic Growth.

COMPUTERS GET BETTER EVERY YEAR: One Million Faces Challenge Even the Best Facial Recognition Algorithms.

OH, GOODY: Sex May Spread Zika Virus More Often Than Researchers Suspected.