Wonder no more, NW Folklife's IRS threat against street performers is a new low blow for the event organizers of this "folk" event. When you're so desperate for cash to run your event that you have to start demanding %15 and assorted other fees from street performers (essentially robbing from the poor) you've already lost and should just step down from calling yourself an event coordinator/producer/organizer and throw in the towel. If your goal is to be a thief, these (four letter words deleted) should go get a job on Wall Street, where robbing from the rich and poor alike is sanctioned and supported.

Street performing, as a folk art, is the one of oldest forms of entertainment known to man. It is perhaps the original form of entertainment. It has existed for thousands of years, far longer than most of the forms of music and art that we support as "folk" today. To treat this honorable means of exchange between humans as something to be scorned and treated as "less than" corporate controlled folk arts is criminal. It's bureaucracy run amuck!

What next? Is NW Folklife going to start robbing the panhandlers too and reporting them to the IRS if they don't comply with their demands?