Sunday, October 11, 2015

New York Times on the American Oligarchy: Why Not Larry Lessig? ... by gimleteye

The New York Times has a great visual representation of "The Families Funding the 2016 Presidential Election".

If all the money, though, sloshing through PAC and superPAC entities were accounted for, the graphics would be even more dramatic, but campaign finance loopholes allow for dark money to flow unimpeded by any examination under legal reporting requirements.

That's why I wrote a (small) check to the Larry Lessig For President Campaign. Take a few minutes to look at Mr. Lessig's website.

"A core corruption of our political system is the concentration of funders of political campaigns," he writes. "That concentration creates extraordinary inequality. The Citizen Equality Act would end that inequality, at a minimum by adopting a campaign funding proposal that is a hybrid between John Sarbanes’ Government by the People Act, and Represent.US’s “American Anti-Corruption Act.” That hybrid would give every voter a voucher to contribute to fund congressional and presidential campaigns; it would provide matching funds for small-dollar contributions to congressional and presidential campaigns. And it would add effective new limits to restrict the revolving door between government service and work as a lobbyist."

Lessig answers the observations by The New York Times' partial depiction of the American oligarchs, and he is right: every corruption in America today ties back to the distortions of campaign finance practices, tolerated by a system of mutual self-satisfaction by big donors and their proxies in public office.

2 comments:

Vilhelm man said...

A beautiful sunday and relaxing to you!

Anonymous said...

OK, so Larry Lessig is going to save the Country.

But could someone explain to me, how the persons in power are going to change something in a direction they do not believe in, and do not stand for?

Revolutions seldom end the way they where started, they get co-opted and re purposed.

Look at the Arab spring event's, same outcome for most, helped by the US to preserve status quo, when push came to shove. Only Tunisia is hanging on by their finger nails.

Now let's assume by miracle, the US votes to make all those changes. At a later time the laws can be changed again, that simple.

To understand the process better, think of the Louisiana purchase; It was cheaper to purchase the goal, then to go to war over it. Aided and abetted by the supreme court today.

I feel the American people face a problem like Volkswagen Diesel, if it would have been easy to fix, it would have been done already.