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Forum Post: At the core of our government is a corruption

Posted 12 years ago on Sept. 21, 2012, 11:51 a.m. EST by TechJunkie (3029) from Miami Beach, FL
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This is an excerpt from One Way Forward, by Lawrence Lessig:

At the core of our government is a corruption. Not the corruption of criminals, violating the law by engaging in illegal bribery. There is some of that, but not much, and even if we ended all of that, we wouldn’t begin to solve the type of corruption that I’m speaking of. Instead, the corruption that I’m speaking of, and the corruption that debilitates this government, is legal corruption. It is the economy of influence that guides Washington to regulate or not to regulate as the funders of campaigns want and, more pressingly and more recently, as the barons of super PACs demand.

This corruption blocks both the Left and the Right. For different reasons, it blocks us both from getting the change that each seeks.

The Left wants climate change legislation. It will never get that so long as this corruption remains. The Left wants real health care reform—with real competition for insurance companies and real competition in drug prices. It will never get that so long as this corruption remains. And the Left says it wants a vibrant and modern broadband Internet infrastructure. But it will never get the competition it needs to inspire that building so long as the incumbents can spend less (through the regulatory system) to block competition than providing that service would cost.

The Right wants different things, but again, they are things it will never get so long as elections are funded as they are now funded. The Right wants a smaller government. But so long as a bigger government means more targets for fundraising (i.e., the regulated), the system is biased against what the Right wants. The Right wants simpler taxes—whether Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan or Rick Perry’s flat tax. But taxes—or, more precisely, the complexity of today’s taxes—are tools in the fundraiser’s toolbox. Got a tax benefit that’s set to expire? Expect a call from a congressman or his fundraiser, eager to enlist you in the fight to “preserve your tax freedom.” What congressman would simplify taxes when that only complicates his opportunity to raise campaign funds?

http://boingboing.net/2012/02/21/lessigs-one-way-forward.html

1 Comments

[-] 0 points by TechJunkie (3029) from Miami Beach, FL 12 years ago

Here's some more of that:

The key is for both sides to look at these failures and to connect the dots. Not to the one or two critical changes that never seem to happen, but to link the five or ten critical changes that never seem to happen, and to ask “Why?” If, to invoke the author of my one sacred text, Henry David Thoreau,

[t]here are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root,

the key is for this thousand to pause their hacking and to begin to go after that root.

The “root” is the role that money plays within this system. Or, more precisely, the role that money from a tiny slice of America plays within this system. It plays that role along two dimensions—one familiar and one brand-new.

The familiar is through campaign contributions. So long as congressmen spend between 30 and 70 percent of their time raising money, they will be responsive to their funders. But so long as the vast majority of us are not “the funders,” this economy of funding will corrupt the system. So long, that is, as the vast majority of funds come from a tiny slice of the top 1 percent of us—0.26 percent of us give more than $200 to congressional campaigns, 0.05 percent of us max out to any congressional candidate, and 0.01 percent spend more than $10,000 in a campaign cycle—that funding will corrupt this system. Members become dependent upon the you-pick-your-fraction-of-the-top-1-percent to fund their campaigns. Government becomes responsive to the you-pick-your-fraction-of-the-top-1-percent to keep the funders happy. No longer do we have a government “dependent,” as the Framers put it, “upon the People alone.”

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