Fwd: [SALT] Public Funding for Public Elections (Lawrence Lessig talk)
giovanni_re
6 years to accomplish this, he said. Probably wont happen if not done
by then.
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----- Original message -----
From: "Kevin Kelly" <serv...@longnow.org>
Subject: [SALT] Public Funding for Public Elections (Lawrence Lessig
talk)
Larry Lessig gave a rousing performance for the 100th Seminar About
Long-Term Thinking. In a lawyerly fashion he laid out evidence of a new
type
of corruption that is disrupting the American republic, and he offered a
remedy for that corruption. Lessig has a very distinctive visual style
of
using slides that punctuates, word for word, the clear logic of his
argument.
He said the type of corruption rampant in the US Congress is not the old
type of bribery, where congressional representatives had safes in their
offices to hold the cash they received for voting in certain directions.
That is now illegal and eliminated. This new type of corruption is more
subtle, indirect and harder to outlaw. Corporations legally donate money
to
the election campaigns of legislators, who in turn tend to vote in favor
of
the interests of those corporations. Non-profits like [1]Maplight can
graph
the evidence that a representative voting in favor of a particular
corporate-friendly law will receive 6 or 10 or 13 times the funding than
someone who opposes the law. He cited studies that showed the ROI
(return on
investment) of lobbying to be 1,000%. It was one of the sanest expenses
for
a corporation. But the distortion is not just one sided. The issue that
Congress spent the most time on in 2011 -- a year when US was waging two
wars, dealing with a near economic depression, and revamping health care
--
was the bank swipe fee. Who should pay the credit card use fee -- the
banks
or the stores? There were corporations on both sides of this minor
argument,
but each side was promising campaign funds, so this was the issue that
got
all the attention of the officials. But the real money to be made in
Congress is the relative fortune to be made as a lobbyist after leaving
office. The differential in wages between a staff member and a lobbyist
has
escalated a hundred fold in the past 40 years. Now 43% of staff go on to
become lobbyists. The promise of a well-paying job working for corporate
interests later is enough to warp voting now.
Links:
1.
http://maplight.org?utm_source=SALT&utm_campaign=e66ef2b2d2-SALT_Lessig_Summary1_19_2012&utm_medium=email
None of this is illegal, but Lessig argues that we have a constitutional
argument for eliminating it. The Constitution talks about the republic
being
"dependent on the people alone." But now it is dependent on corporate
funders, and more and more JUST on corporate funders. His solution is to
return the republic to being dependent on the people alone. His solution
is
an innovative kind of campaign finance reform. Give every voter a $50
campaign voucher. The $50 comes from the tax pool. It can be given to
any
candidate who accepts only money from the vouchers (and maybe a limit of
an
optional voluntary $100 per single voter). Thus all campaign money would
come in very small amounts from The People. Lessig calculates that the
total
amount of money raised this public way would be 3 times the amount
raised by
private means in the last election cycles, and therefore more than
adequate.
But it would break the grip of corporate influence over what is voted
up.
The result would not be harmonious utopia, but the usual give-and-take
compromises of politics -- which the US has not seen in decades. The
issues
that people cared about would return to the agenda.
Lessig spent the remaining time and some of the question and answers
talking
about the real-politic necessary to pass this reform. A similar public
financing scheme works in places like Sweden, where one elected
legislator
told Lessig he had never had to worry about where his funding came from.
But
the US has a fierce free-speech component not found elsewhere, and
ironically, since spending money is viewed as a type of free speech,
this
complicates reform. As a free-speech advocate himself, and a
constitutional
lawyer, Lessig talked candidly about the difficulties of reform. He
ended by
saying that it would probably be a generational task. Overcoming
institutional racism and sexism took more than one generation, and
returning
the republic to the "people alone" could take just as long, although in
this
case, the republic might not last that long without reform.
--KK
[If you like these SALT talk summaries, all 100 or so of them are
collected
in Kindle format for $3, available here.]
Links:
2.
http://www.amazon.com/Summaries-Condensed-Long-term-Thinking-ebook/dp/B005I57M4O?utm_source=SALT&utm_campaign=e66ef2b2d2-SALT_Lessig_Summary1_19_2012&utm_medium=email
--
Kevin Kelly -- k...@kk.org
The Long Now Foundation -
http://longnow.org?utm_source=SALT&utm_campaign=e66ef2b2d2-SALT_Lessig_Summary1_19_2012&utm_medium=email
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