Last night on Charlie Rose, Lawrence Lessig was interviewed (video) about his book Republic, Lost; How Money Corrupts Congress—and a Plan To Stop It".
I found the discussion interesting enough that I ordered his book this morning. Lessig made several points, but one was that Congress passes legislation that appears to do things most of us want them to do, but never go far enough to actually change anything or are so effectively gutted by limiting regulations that they are actually just window dressing to make us think they are actually doing something. More information on Lessig at Wikipedia. The broader point of his comments (and book, I assume) is that money has become so much a part of the Congress that there has been a huge shift of influence and power from the 99.95% of us to a very, very rich very thin sliver of the population. This effectively concentrates an enormous amount of power in the hands of very few and destroys the value of a representative government for the rest of us and makes the idea of democracy nearly irrelevant..
In short, to paraphrase Lord Acton's " Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.", I say " Large political contributions tend to corrupt, and unlimited political contributions corrupt absolutely."
Lessig suggests that contributions be limited to $100. In addition to that he advocates that the first $50 of income taxes be refunded as a democracy voucher. This would put about $6 Billion of small contributions into the political system and effectively remove the unbalanced influence big money corruption that exists now. At least then we could assume that Congressional blunders are due to stupidity, ignorance, or incompetence rather than rotten corruption aimed at making the middle class politically irrelevant.
Honestly concerned TEA Party supporters (rather than their crony capitalist funders) and the Wall St Occupiers should be able to find common cause in cleaning up congressional corrruption.
** Stay tuned even if you aspire to be a crony capitalist powerful enough to assist in the destrution of the USA as our founders imagined it.--- Doug Wiken
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