Piano Sonata in FTC Minor

Music teachers, beware. The feds are onto you. Better not try to raise the price of your lessons.

By Kim Strassel
...Now comes a terrifying tale of how the Federal Trade Commission, a governmental Goliath, crushes an average David—because it can.

In March of this year, a small nonprofit in Cincinnati—the Music Teachers National Association—received a letter from the FTC. The agency was investigating whether the association was engaged in, uh, anticompetitive practices.

...The association's sin, according to the feds, rested in its code of ethics. The code lays out ideals for members to follow—a commitment to students, colleagues, society. Tucked into this worthy document was a provision calling on teachers to respect their colleagues' studios, and not actively recruit students from other teachers.

That's a common enough provision among professional organizations (doctors, lawyers), yet the FTC avers that the suggestion that Miss Sally not poach students from Miss Lucy was an attempt to raise prices for piano lessons. Given that the average lesson runs around $30 an hour, and that some devoted teachers still give lessons for $5 a pop, this is patently absurd.

...The FTC didn't care. Nor did it blink when the MTNA pointed out that the agency has no real authority over nonprofits (it is largely limited to going after sham organizations) and that Congress has never acted on the FTA's requests for more control over 501(c)3 groups. Nor was the agency moved by the group's offer to immediately excise the provision. The investigation would continue.

With a dozen employees and a $2 million budget, the group doesn't have "the resources to fight the federal government," Mr. Ingle says. The board immediately removed the provision from its code, but the MTNA staff still had to devote months compiling thousands of documents demanded by the agency, some going back 20 years: reports, the organization's magazines, everything Mr. Ingle had ever written that touched on the code. Mr. Ingle estimates he has spent "hundreds upon hundreds" of hours since March complying with this federal colonoscopy.

This October, MTNA signed a consent decree—its contents as ludicrous as the investigation. The association did not have to admit or deny guilt. It must, however, read a statement out loud at every future national MTNA event warning members against talking about prices or recruitment. It must send this statement to all 22,000 members and post it on its website. It must contact all of its 500-plus affiliates and get them to sign a compliance statement.

The association must also develop a sweeping antitrust compliance program that will require annual training of its state presidents on the potential crimes of robber-baron piano teachers. It must submit regular reports to the FTC and appoint an antitrust compliance officer. (The FTC wanted the officer to be an attorney, but Mr. Ingle explained that this would "break the bank," so the agency—how gracious—is allowing him to fill the post.) And it must comply with most of this for the next 20 years.

The MTNA is not yet free of fear; the FTC has still to approve the consent decree. An FTC spokesman told me the agency does not confirm or deny the existence of investigations. The organization to this day has no idea how it became a target, nor will it ever because the FTC doesn't have to provide it.

... Brian Majeski, the editor of the journal Music Trades, lambasted the FTC in a December editorial, noting that "a consumer watchdog that sees piano teachers as a threat either has too much time on its hands, or badly misplaced priorities."

That might be too kind. Whether it is the IRS targeting conservatives, the Justice Department hounding Gibson Guitar, or the EPA conducting an armed raid on an Alaskan mine—this administration has a tendency toward abuse of power. That's how antitrust laws created to tackle megamonopolies end up being used to hound and hammer a nonprofit devoted to piano teachers.

America: Land of the Adult-Children

Turning adults into children who must be cared for by the state has long been a goal of the progressive movement.

Back in the day, children became adults at the age of 18 and quickly learned what it’s like to enter into responsible adult- hood. Politicians and the general American public embraced the idea of “kids” regularly transitioning into an account- able and productive member of society. After all, World War II was won by young men between the ages of 18 and 26.

But these days, our politicians and the country seem to be singing a different tune. The good news is, we still have brave young men and women voluntarily sign- ing up to serve our country at the age of 18. But the adults back at home, unfortu- nately, are now referring to them as “kids.”

One key point President Obama has repeatedly made in an effort to sell Obamacare (and to gain votes in elections) is that “kids” can stay on their parent’s health insurance until they are 26-years-old. Obama repeated the kid claim during a town hall meeting in New Hampshire just two months before the health care exchanges crashed and burned.

Hands Off: Will the Feds Keep You From Your Money in Another Crisis?

By Austin Hill
....For one, there was the November 25th report in the Financial Times indicating that the U.S. Federal Reserve is considering the possibility of arbitrarily cutting the amount of interest it pays on money that it borrows from private commercial banks. The interest that the government pays when it borrows money from private banks is, understandably, a big revenue stream for those banks. If the Federal Reserve makes this move, banks say they will in turn need to make up for the lost revenue by charging private individuals, households and businesses for depositing money in their accounts.
Let’s be clear about what is under consideration here. Customarily when an individual or an organization puts its money in a bank account, the bank will pay their customer at least some nominal level of interest in exchange for the privilege of possessing the customer’s money for a period of time. In the scenario that the Financial Times reported, some banks would completely reverse this historic bank-customer relationship and charge private individuals and businesses for the privilege of “parking” their money in an account for a time.
Could that create a bit of a backlash against banks? Recall that in March of this year, the dreadfully overspent government of Cyprus arbitrarily chose to impose a tax on all private bank deposits as a means of feeding the government’s never-ending hunger for money. This created a “run” on banks with private citizens rushing to clear out their accounts, which in turn led the government to force private banks to close for about ten days. When the banks re-opened, citizens were only permitted to withdrawal about $383 of their own money each day – a quick-fix that Nobel laureate economist Christopher Pissarides said was “extremely unfair to the little guy.”
...But fundamentally, and philosophically, there is an undercurrent to all of these policies and proposals: it is the belief that the wellbeing of the institutions of government is more important that the wellbeing of individual persons, and an individual’s right to possess their own money.

Let's Talk Turkey

By Clarice Feldman
....As the obvious failure of ObamaCare has become evident to all but his most blinkered cultists, Obama fell back this week on upping the propagandizing and deflecting attention from his failures with even more lies.
His organizing arm OFA (Organizing for America) urged supporters to use this year's Thanksgiving dinner to persuade less-blinkered family members to sign up right away for ObamaCare, extolling its (apparently hidden) virtues. They handed out a tip sheet to help out with this hard sales pitch.
Michele Obama joined in the rallying effort, urging her fans to work with OFA to gather and share their happy ObamaCare experiences.
Word went out to the Obama megaphonic press, some of which went so far as to offer debate tips regarding the increasingly unpopular program.
Anticipating perhaps that this effort might be insufficient to stem the tide, the administration funneled $1.1 million through the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation to the non-profit, "non-partisan" Families USA to pad the propaganda by producing a database of ObamaCare "success stories."
Iowahawk cast his gimlet eye on this effort and tweeted: "Say what you will about Scientologists but they don't show up at your house on Thanksgiving with Xenu talking points."
In characteristic Obama FUBAR style, in any event, the propaganda wing and the administration side clashed. For just in case any relatives might have been persuaded to push back from the turkey feast and rush to their computers to sign up for ObamaCare, they'd have been unsuccessful. Someone gave all the call center operators off on Thanksgiving, and the site was even deader than usual. The White House then issued a last-minute call: hold up on the signup.

The Laughable Liberal 'Moral Imperative'

By Trevor Thomas

....Reich noted that recently he heard a young man express that he would rather pay a penalty than be forced by law to purchase health insurance.  According to Reich, the young man asked, "Why should I pay for the sick and the old?"  Reich's answer is telling: "The answer is he has a responsibility to do so, as a member the same society they inhabit."

When explaining why "richer people" have to pay higher taxes to finance health insurance for lower-income Americans, Reich concludes, "It's only just that those with higher incomes bear some responsibility for maintaining the health of Americans who are less fortunate."  Did you catch that?  A liberal exclaiming that "it's only just" when explaining his plans for wealth redistribution.

Reich complains that Democrats have not properly made the argument in favor of redistribution.  "This is a profoundly moral argument about who we are and what we owe each other as Americans," he declares.  Reich even goes so far as to lament that redistribution has become so "unfashionable" that it's just easier to say "everyone comes out ahead."

So redistribution of wealth by our benevolent federal government is not only moral, but "profoundly moral" -- so much so that it's okay to deceive the public at large about what is really happening.  (Democrats are getting quite good at that.)  Because, you see, as Reich puts it, "there would be no reason to reform and extend health insurance to begin with if we did not have moral obligations to one another as members of the same society."

As you see, multiple times Reich makes a moral (almost desperate, it seems) appeal in favor of ObamaCare and the redistribution of wealth that it requires.  Of course, moral arguments to support their Big Government programs open up so many possibilities.  To begin with, to what moral code is Reich appealing?

As is typical with so many liberals and their similar arguments, he never does say.  Perhaps it's just assumed that everyone thinks that providing health care for those in need is the "just" or "responsible" thing to do as "members of the same society."  However, not so long ago, the "responsible" thing to do was for men and women to get married before they decided to make babies.

The Reason Police Brutality is Rising

Because the state is losing its veneer of legitimacy.

....The problem now confronting government is that the unseen is becoming visible. The damage done by ‘services’ like Obamacare has become as evident to people as the social security check in their hands. Cronyism has become so blatant that government does not even bother to hide the raw privileges it grants, such as health care exemptions for unions. The triangular interventions through which government controls social and economic interaction are being seen for what they are: sophisticated versions of brute force and plunder. Politicians are being seen for who they are: arrogant elites who care nothing about the average person and cannot even lie about it convincingly.
The great fiction of government is imploding. What is left is the great reality; namely that all government intervention rests upon coercion.
The intimate relationship between the three forms of intervention is in motion. As average people begin to see triangular intervention for the fraud it is, law enforcement will increase its use of direct force to compel obedience and to create a fear of authority to fill the vacuum where respect used to be. The rise in police brutality against average people is proportionate to the loss of trust with which those people now view all government intervention.
It is a vicious circle, of course. The more brutality occurs, the less trust there is. And law enforcement’s willingness to taser children, shoot unarmed civilians and gang-bludgeon unresisting people is an ominous sign. It means they are no longer reluctant to be “seen.”