We have lost our republic.

I just finished watching an inspiring TED talk by Lawrence Lessig, who implored:"We have lost our republic. We all need to act to get it back." What else can you say when only about .26% (don't miss the decimal) of American give any significant amount to federal candidates running for office. Also consider that only .00042% of Americans (that's only 132 people) gave 60% of the SuperPac money in 2012. Politicians spend 30-70% of their time seeking money for reelection. This corrupts the entire political process, in that our politicians vote so as to keep their funders happy, not the people generally. Thanks to corrupt federal laws and terrible rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court, the entire political process is corrupt, and it is legally corrupt. Very few people run the political process. Lessig argues that we can no longer ignore the corruption because this tiny number of people can block any meaningful political reform on every major issue. Nothing is getting done in Congress anymore, and that is the future unless we force the system to change. thus, election reform might not be THE most important issue (there are many important issues), but it is the "First Issue." Nothing else is going to get done unless we address election finance reform. Reforming the system is not a conceptually difficult issue. All we need to do is make sure the funding for our candidates comes from a wider swath of people. We need to spread out the influence of the funders. There are many worthy proposals out there that do this, such as the Fair Elections Act, John Sarbanes' Grassroots Democracy Act, or optimally, the American Anti-Corruption Act put forwarded by the Represent.us organization. All we need to do is "change the incentives." Lessig implores the audience: "Prove the pundits wrong. If you love the republic, act. We have lost our republic. We all need to act to get it back." We need to restore our republic, our representative democracy, meaning "a government dependent on people alone. I would make one additional suggestion. We should either enact a meaningful grass roots campaign funding system, or we should stop celebrating the Fourth of July. Or alternatively, until we enact grassroots campaign funding, we should celebrate the "Anti-Fourth of July."

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Not the will of the people

Tonight I received this mass-distributed email from Josh Silver of represent.us:

The US Senate just rejected a basic background check law for gun sales despite the fact that 90% of Americans support it. Even 74% of NRA members support it!1 Represent.Us has no official position on gun rights/gun control, but you're damn right we have a position on whether America's Congress follows the will of the American people. And they don't. Our leaders are FAILING US, and by letting it happen, by letting them continue to steal our country, we're failing America. It's time to WAKE UP. Stop writing emails to Congress. Stop yelling at your computer screen. Stop feeling hopeless. Instead, face this simple fact: The insanity in Washington won't end until we cut the corruption and cut the cord between Congress and the Fat Cat lobbyists who run our country. Let's commit ourselves to this fight. Let's commit to creating a government of, by, and for us, the American people. The Represent.Us plan will work — if we all go the extra mile to make it work. Tonight I'm asking you to do one simple thing: Forward this email to ten people who have not joined the fight to get money out. Tell them we must all work together on this issue, or no other issue can prevail. Tell them to become a "Citizen Co-sponsor" of the American Anti-Corruption Act by visiting this link.

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The five most corrupt industries

Noah Bonn has written a succinct summary of the five "most corrupt" industries: Banking, Energy, Agriculture/Biotech, Media and Healthcare. Fair enough. These are five deserving nominations. Rather than focus on his nominations, though, I focused on Bonn's "solutions." Though they aren't complete solutions, they are mostly good ideas: Credit unions, renewable energy, local food, independent media, and "naturopaths and homeopaths." What? I've written before on the huge problems with homeopaths. But that still leaves a vaccuum. What is the solution to our out of control health care system? I'd look long and hard at the solutions proposed by the recent Time article titled "Bitter Pill." I agree with many of Bonn's proposals, but I do think that the problem with this slippage into homeopathy is typical with many proposed "solutions" that fall short: they are caused by the lack of even-handed skepticism. America is a huge collection of overlapping tribes, and we need to put the magnifying glass onto those people we want to like as well as those we've written off. In fact, I believe this need for equal opportunity skepticism, is America's biggest need. In short, many of our problems arise from the confirmation bias.

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Pay for Delay

Why is it that generic drug makers sometimes delay entering the market, sometimes long after the drug patent expires? This is another tale in corporatocracy, told by Alternet:

[I]magine you’re a big-time drug company. You want to keep competitors off the market as long as possible. Your move is to basically sue the pants off the generic drugmaker for copyright infringement, setting in motion a long and tortuous legal process. And these usually end with “pay-for-delay” deals. The brand-name drug company pays the generic manufacturer a cash settlement, and the generic manufacturer agrees to delay entry into the market for a number of years. In the case before the Supreme Court, the drug company paid $30 million a year to protect its $125 million annual profit in AndroGel, a testosterone supplement. It’s hard to see this as anything but bribery, designed to preserve a lucrative monopoly for the brand-name drug maker. In fact, this is what the Federal Trade Commission has argued for over a decade. They consider it a violation of antitrust law, arguing that the exchange of cash gives the generic manufacturer a share of future profits in the drug, specifically to prolong the monopoly. As SCOTUSBlog summarizes from the FTC’s court brief, in the regulator’s view, “Nothing in patent law … validates a system in which brand-name companies could buy off their would-be competitors.” Indeed, everyone wins with pay-for-delay but the consumer: the FTC estimates that the two dozen deals inked in 2012 alone cost drug patients $3.5 billion annually, with the brand-name and generic manufacturers splitting the ill-gotten profits.

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How the Swiss handle corporate fatcats

This from The Economist:

PUBLIC wrath at the widening gap between packages awarded to company bosses and the average citizen’s take-home pay resounded through Switzerland on March 3rd. Voters there overwhelmingly backed an initiative to give shareholders of Swiss listed companies a binding say on executive pay and an annual right to vet board appointments. Other sanctions would forbid the award to executives of severance packages, side contracts, and rewards for buying or selling company divisions. The penalty for infringements could be as much as three years in jail, or the forfeit of up to six years’ salary.

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