Yesterday, NPR’s Fresh Air discussed money in politics and how recent changes to campaign finance laws have made it difficult to track money spent on elections and who is spending it.
Here is a description of the podcast from the NPR website:
Campaign finance rules allow some groups to not disclose their donors. The New York Times’ Nick Confessore says there could be “influence peddling … because we can’t see the money changing hands.”
Seven years ago, Internet activist Aaron Swartz convinced Lawrence Lessig to take up the fight for political reform. A year after Swartz’s tragic death, Lessig continues his campaign to free US politics from the stranglehold of corruption. In this fiery, deeply personal talk, he calls for all citizens to engage, and a offers a heartfelt reminder to never give up hope.
Recently, Harvard Law School’s Lawrence Lessig gave an impassioned TED Talk advocating comprehensive campaign finance reform and “reclaiming our democracy:”
Here is a description of the talk:
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world’s leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (or less). Look for talks on Technology, Entertainment and Design — plus science, business, global issues, the arts and much more.
Profiting from Politics: How Members of Congress Exploit Campaign Finance Laws
There is not a lot that unites Republicans and Democrats in this era of hyper-partisanship. However, last evening 60 Minutes posited that there is one thing that is common to both parties–profiting from public office.
Here is how the story began:
The government shutdown that finally ended on Wednesday night furloughed 800,000 government workers for the better part of two weeks, but there was one group of federal employees that was able to maintain the lifestyle that many of them have grown accustomed to: members of Congress.
With all the talk about their irreconcilable political differences, we wanted to see if they shared any common ground. And we found some. For example, there seems to be a permanent majority in Congress that’s completely satisfied with the current state of campaign financing and congressional ethics and members of both parties have institutionalized ways to skirt the rules.
Most Americans believe it’s against the law for congressmen and senators to profit personally from their political office but it’s an open secret in Washington that that’s not the case. As the saying goes the real scandal in Washington isn’t what’s illegal, it’s what is legal.
Looking Across the Pond to Prevent Political Gridlock
After sixteen days of government shutdown and being on the brink of federal default, Congress passed, and the President signed, a bill that will re-open the government and raise the debt ceiling, preventing high stakes budgetary brinkmanship at least until 2014. In keeping with what has become a theme this past week this story from NPR’s Story of the Day podcast and Weekend Day Edition Saturday discusses possible solution to gridlock in Washington. The story interview’s comparative political scientists about how the American political system compares to European democracies, which generally do not find themselves deadlocked by political paralysis. While is it unlikely that the U.S. will soon amend the Constitution to adopt a parliament, the story discusses some important differences between how elections are financed and political negotiations are conducted in Europe and the U.S.
Here is how the segment begins:
Will Lobbying Destroy the American Empire?
Recently, Fareed Zakaria began his Sunday show discussing the deleterious influences of lobbyist on American politics.
Here are the basics of “Fareed’s Take”
The entire political system creates incentives for venality. Consider just one factor – and there are many – the role of money, which has expanded dramatically over the past four decades. Harvard’s Lawrence Lessig has pointed out that Congressmen now spend three of every five workdays raising money. They also vote with extreme attention to their donors’ interests. Lessig cites studies that demonstrate that donors get a big bang for their campaign bucks – sometimes with returns on their “investment” that would make a venture capital firm proud.
Now, taking money out of politics is a mammoth challenge. So perhaps the best one could hope for is to limit instead what Congress can sell. In other words, enact a thorough reform of the tax code, ridding it of the thousands of special exemptions, credits, and deductions, which are, of course, institutionalized, legalized corruption.
The most depressing aspect of This Town, by Mark Leibovich, is how utterly routine all the influence-peddling has become. In 1990 Ramsay MacMullen, the great Yale historian of Rome, published a book that took on the central question of his field: Why did the greatest empire in the history of the world collapse in the fifth century? The root cause, he explained, was political corruption, which had become systemic in the late Roman Empire. What was once immoral had become accepted as standard practice and what was once illegal was celebrated as the new normal. Many decades from now, a historian looking at where America lost its way could use This Town as a primary source.
Watch the video for the full take and read more in the Washington Post