The Corruption of Congress
polaris_x
Posts: 13,559
this is why the establishment needs to be taken on ... it isn't about right vs. left ... it's ultimately about how the interests of its citizens is second to the interests of corporations ...
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http://www.thestar.com/news/world/artic ... cracy?bn=1
American comedy writers are having a field day chronicling the comic twists and turns in the Republican presidential race. The merriment never seems to end. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, in particular, has been on a roll. This week, the popular TV show went after Republican front-runner Newt Gingrich for proposing to end child labour laws. The show’s “Senior Poverty Correspondent,” as he was described, characterized Gingrich’s bizarre views as promising black children a bright and shining future: “You don’t have to be a pimp, prostitute or drug dealer, my child — you can clean out people’s toilets!” He displayed a “Gingrich 2012 — Yes We Clean” poster.
On that same show, Jon Stewart took on another issue — perhaps the most crucial one confronting the American political system in the long-term — and he did it with his usual sharpness. He brought in Lawrence Lessig, a distinguished Harvard law professor and author of a brilliant new book on the corruption of “big money” in U.S. politics.
Lessig’s damning book is titled: Republic Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress — and A Plan To Stop It. He estimates that less than half of 1 per cent of Americans actually contribute to political campaigns, and members of Congress spend a phenomenal amount of their time fundraising — between 30 per cent and 70 per cent. This means that politicians “obsess” about the sources of their funding, and the elites who provide it — “the less than 1 per cent, not the 99 per cent.”
That, not surprisingly, is why there is no action in Congress on the regulation of Wall Street, or on environmental issues, or on polluting oil companies, or on the private insurance industry and the like — no action on those sectors that “bankroll” the U.S. Congress.
READ MORE: http://www.thestar.com/topic/burmanTony Burman columns
Lessig doesn’t demonize those involved in the system — in fact, he sympathizes with them: “The corruption is not the product of evil. . . there is no bin Laden.” He proposes to scrap the existing campaign finance system in favour of elections where candidates agree to limit their fundraising and spending. His idea is roughly similar to a system of public funding for presidential elections and is based on models in three states — Arizona, Maine and Connecticut — which fund candidates through small-dollar contributions only. The most ambitious part of his pitch is that a Constitutional Convention be called involving the federal government and all of the states.
His proposal is an effort to get around a damaging U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2010 which struck down limits on corporate and union campaign spending. The court’s five-member conservative majority overturned decades of major precedents and opened the floodgates to uncontrolled and largely secret corporate funding. The premise of the ruling was, incredibly, that corporations and unions are the equivalent of individual citizens with the same First Amendment rights.
The campaign against corruption in U.S. politics has another evangelist in Jack Abramoff, the former disgraced lobbyist who pleaded guilty in 2006 to charges of fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy to bribe public officials. Many regard him as the villain in one of the biggest Washington corruption scandals in history.
Abramoff is now out of jail and contrite, expressing a desire to eliminate the political corruption he once infamously practised. And he has also written a book: Capitol Punishment: The Hard Truth About Washington Corruption From America’s Most Notorious Lobbyist. Earlier this month, he was invited by Harvard’s Lessig to discuss his ideas.
Abramoff said then that “what wins in Washington is money. . . Members of Congress will often promise to support a bill — and then mention a fundraiser they’re giving. They’re soliciting bribes is what they’re doing.” Also, legislators often use congressional hearings as a “weapon” to punish opponents and freshmen lawmakers, saddled with campaign debt, are introduced to lobbyists by their party’s leadership so they can retain their seats.
These efforts to direct a spotlight on the growing corruption of the U.S. political system are important and overdue. Professor Lessig’s meticulous presentation, in particular, is timely. His book was written before the ‘Occupy’ movement became organized but he believes, as do others, that this issue should be adopted by the movement as a focus.
Past attempts inside and outside of Congress to reform the system have collapsed, but not by accident. There are many interests whose bottom line would be affected, and Americans are not naïve about it. A poll in Lessig’s book indicates that three-quarters of Americans believe that “money buys results in Congress”.
For all of the empty talk these days about “American exceptionalism”, the sad fact is that the U.S. does not yet have a democracy, as their Founding Fathers envisaged, “dependent upon the People alone.”
******************
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/artic ... cracy?bn=1
American comedy writers are having a field day chronicling the comic twists and turns in the Republican presidential race. The merriment never seems to end. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, in particular, has been on a roll. This week, the popular TV show went after Republican front-runner Newt Gingrich for proposing to end child labour laws. The show’s “Senior Poverty Correspondent,” as he was described, characterized Gingrich’s bizarre views as promising black children a bright and shining future: “You don’t have to be a pimp, prostitute or drug dealer, my child — you can clean out people’s toilets!” He displayed a “Gingrich 2012 — Yes We Clean” poster.
On that same show, Jon Stewart took on another issue — perhaps the most crucial one confronting the American political system in the long-term — and he did it with his usual sharpness. He brought in Lawrence Lessig, a distinguished Harvard law professor and author of a brilliant new book on the corruption of “big money” in U.S. politics.
Lessig’s damning book is titled: Republic Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress — and A Plan To Stop It. He estimates that less than half of 1 per cent of Americans actually contribute to political campaigns, and members of Congress spend a phenomenal amount of their time fundraising — between 30 per cent and 70 per cent. This means that politicians “obsess” about the sources of their funding, and the elites who provide it — “the less than 1 per cent, not the 99 per cent.”
That, not surprisingly, is why there is no action in Congress on the regulation of Wall Street, or on environmental issues, or on polluting oil companies, or on the private insurance industry and the like — no action on those sectors that “bankroll” the U.S. Congress.
READ MORE: http://www.thestar.com/topic/burmanTony Burman columns
Lessig doesn’t demonize those involved in the system — in fact, he sympathizes with them: “The corruption is not the product of evil. . . there is no bin Laden.” He proposes to scrap the existing campaign finance system in favour of elections where candidates agree to limit their fundraising and spending. His idea is roughly similar to a system of public funding for presidential elections and is based on models in three states — Arizona, Maine and Connecticut — which fund candidates through small-dollar contributions only. The most ambitious part of his pitch is that a Constitutional Convention be called involving the federal government and all of the states.
His proposal is an effort to get around a damaging U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2010 which struck down limits on corporate and union campaign spending. The court’s five-member conservative majority overturned decades of major precedents and opened the floodgates to uncontrolled and largely secret corporate funding. The premise of the ruling was, incredibly, that corporations and unions are the equivalent of individual citizens with the same First Amendment rights.
The campaign against corruption in U.S. politics has another evangelist in Jack Abramoff, the former disgraced lobbyist who pleaded guilty in 2006 to charges of fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy to bribe public officials. Many regard him as the villain in one of the biggest Washington corruption scandals in history.
Abramoff is now out of jail and contrite, expressing a desire to eliminate the political corruption he once infamously practised. And he has also written a book: Capitol Punishment: The Hard Truth About Washington Corruption From America’s Most Notorious Lobbyist. Earlier this month, he was invited by Harvard’s Lessig to discuss his ideas.
Abramoff said then that “what wins in Washington is money. . . Members of Congress will often promise to support a bill — and then mention a fundraiser they’re giving. They’re soliciting bribes is what they’re doing.” Also, legislators often use congressional hearings as a “weapon” to punish opponents and freshmen lawmakers, saddled with campaign debt, are introduced to lobbyists by their party’s leadership so they can retain their seats.
These efforts to direct a spotlight on the growing corruption of the U.S. political system are important and overdue. Professor Lessig’s meticulous presentation, in particular, is timely. His book was written before the ‘Occupy’ movement became organized but he believes, as do others, that this issue should be adopted by the movement as a focus.
Past attempts inside and outside of Congress to reform the system have collapsed, but not by accident. There are many interests whose bottom line would be affected, and Americans are not naïve about it. A poll in Lessig’s book indicates that three-quarters of Americans believe that “money buys results in Congress”.
For all of the empty talk these days about “American exceptionalism”, the sad fact is that the U.S. does not yet have a democracy, as their Founding Fathers envisaged, “dependent upon the People alone.”
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Comments
Would we even have budget issues if the money spent for campaigns was used for actual issues?