* How has lobbying changed in the Age of Obama? Peter Suderman at Reason Magazine has a good take on lobbying aro, breaking down some data and concluding:
I’m not exactly a fan of rent-seeking, but I hardly think businesses (or lobbyists) are particularly to blame for this sort of behavior. When the president and Congress decide it’s time to rebuild the entire framework by which an industry does business, you can hardly expect them to sit idly by as their livelihoods are manhandled by the federal government. That’s especially true when the plan is to turn more decision-making power over to the government: The more Washington stands to pick winners and losers in a particular sector of the economy, the more that industry will spend its money there.
* I just got a mass email from Tim Westergen, founder of Pandora, an Internet radio service I recommend. Pandora has settled its dispute with the record labels regarding the royalties the site should pay in royalties. Now Pandora is lobbying to impose more royalty payments on their competition, broadcast radio. The email reads, in part:
On the heels of this resolution, there is a new effort in Congress to fix the broader issue of how musical artists are compensated across all forms of radio. The system as it stands today is fundamentally unfair both to Internet radio services like Pandora, which pay higher royalties than other forms of radio, and to musical artists, who receive no compensation at all when their music is played on AM/FM radio.
A bill has been introduced in congress to remedy this by establishing a level playing field. We, along with the artists whose music we play, strongly support this new legislation called the Performance Rights Act (S. 379).
