I recently finished reading Lawrence Lessig’s Republic Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress – and a Plan to Stop It and I have to say that I really did enjoy it. Lessig is a professor at Harvard and a progressive voice in the campaign finance world. He has a wealth of knowledge and he is an excellent writer to boot.
In the book he goes through specific examples of how money truly sways our elected officials. This is hard evidence and if you feel that money doesn’t have an influence in legislative voting procedures after you read his works, you need to read closer. He calls the system “legal but corrupt” and I couldn’t have put it any better. The book also includes public opinion polls and the answer that I found to be most alarming was this: According to a survey done by Lessig, 71% of Republicans and 81% of Democrats believed that money buys results in Congress. If that large a percentage of people feel that way, why isn’t there more of a call to action?
The book also goes farther into the issue of Lobbying and I was personally so upset while reading that part that I did not absorb all of the information. The amount of money being thrown around in the lobbying sector is absolutely sickening.
As I mentioned in my last post, there were experiments in Connecticut with small-dollar funded elections, and Lessig’s pitch is matching small-dollar donations and using vouchers so that the people are more in control. Those who normally would not be able to afford political donations are given a voice. Lessig later goes on to propose a Constitutional Convention and that is where he lost me for a bit. I think that our constitution is working pretty well and I don’t think that it needs to be rewritten. But you can’t win them all, Mr. Lessig.
All-in-all, I think this book was an excellent summation of ideas and years of research. Lessig is not going anywhere anytime soon, either. He has joined the fight for net neutrality and is on a cross-country campaign for fairness in Congress.
Super PAC Woman 