How City Hall is F*cking Record Store Day!

April 21, 2012 marks the fifth annual Record Store Day, a nation-wide project to promote struggling brick-and-mortar music shops. Across the country, independent stores offer exclusive, one-of-a-kind recordings as a way to bring customers through the door.

"It is the busiest day of the year," says Matt Moffatt, co-owner of Washington, D.C.'s Smash Records, a shop that sells new and used CDs and vinyl LPs, along with clothing, posters, t-shirts, vintage clothing, and more.

But now the powers that be in the nation's capital have decided that record stores must get second-hand dealer business licenses, which cost a lot of money and have onerous reporting requirements. Store owners such as Moffatt would have to report every new piece they put up for sale to the police, allow the cops to verify it's not stolen, and get information about all customers who buy used goods. Failure to comply would mean incurring massive fines of thousands of dollars a days.

"Basically," says Moffatt, "they want us to get a pawn shop license."

Local business groups such as the Adams Morgan Partnership are pushing back but the future of stores such as Smash Records is far from clear. "It just seems so heavy-handed, it could easily destroy businesses like mine," says Moffatt.

About 3.45 minutes. Produced by Meredith Bragg and hosted by Kennedy; co-written by Nick Gillespie.

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[Jarrett Skorup]

"The studies, which show liberals (in the left leaning sense) are more intelligent than conservatives or libertarian-conservatives..."

You just posted 6 long comments in a row in order to try and change somebody's mind on Youtube.

[ronnieblaze2012]

This is how government "helps".

[Mark Burns]

Democrats hard at work screwing the Record Stores in D.C.

[AynManRand]

Local and national politicians DO NOT CARE about your life. All they want to know is how much you can take, and they will gladly stomp on that line until you take a little more.

[kaewonf8]

And they wonder why all the businesses are leaving DC for the Va. and Md. suburbs. This, along with high taxes, and a generally corrupt/incompetent government, pretty much nails it.

[dslider1]

Kill all bureaucrats.

[hcrawford]

Those suspect loans were eventually bundled up and funneled into Fannie and Freddie.

You don't do your argument any good by resorting to ad hominem attacks. I'll read your study when I have time but if it's the one I'm thinking of, it's flawed because it uses an invalid baseline, among other issues.

[hcrawford]

I don't see what deregulation happened in real estate, though. What I did see was pressure being placed on lenders to lower requirements so that minorities had an easier time getting loans. That in itself didn't cause the problem, though. The problem was that more affluent groups had even easier access to lending capital, and they overextended themselves going after property with 0% down. A lot of suspect loans occurred - and I saw a lot of it happen when I worked in Miami. (cont)

[hcrawford]

G-L-B repealed Glass–Steagall, which I do agree created a disastrous situation. Add that the SEC pretty much let the banking industry do whatever they wanted, lowering margin requirements, etc. I concede the point on banking, and agree. (continued)

[successfulbuild]

there were several laws passed such as Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act which broke down the walls between investment banks and commercial banks and there was further deregulation of the derivatives market. Your comment that an idiot at the AEI debunked anything is ridiculous. Read the study I posted and you can see that they were minor players in this crisis.

[hcrawford]

And to repeat my original question, what law was passed to deregulate the real estate and financial markets?

[hcrawford]

You're building and attacking strawmen. I never said anything about government insuring investors/mortgages (although obviously the politically favored tended to survive). Regarding Fannie and Freddie (something else I didn't bring up) I see you're repeating the Norcera arguments regarding government meddling in the housing market. Peter Wallison's report thoroughly debunks the arguments you are presenting (see The American Spectator, April 2012 issue, pages 20-24).