Primaries for the one percent make elections irrelevant

Excellent 6 min video by Lawrence Lessig illustrates that a tiny slice of Americans control our Congressional primaries, making general elections unimportant. Our Owners run our elections much like the Chinese elites are running Hong Kong's elections. What's different is that residents of Hong Kong are demonstrating in huge numbers to force change and we are generally complacent. That is in large part because our "news" ignores our huge problem. We have allowed democracy to die in America. Lessig challenges us - are we willing to fight for it? Quote by Boss Tweed near the beginning: "I don't care who does the electing, so long as I get to do the nominating." Private money primaries make elections almost irrelevant. Lawrence Lessig nails it here.

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United re:public – a new movement to reclaim democracy

United re:public is a brand new movement with the following motto: "Democracy is Not for Sale." United re:public is comprised of an impressive team, including Josh Silver (former CEO of Free Press) and Nick Penniman (former Executive Director of Huffpo). The group is partnered with Jimmy Williams' group, Get Money Out (which he started with MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan) and Lawrence Lessig's Rootstrikers effort. In short, this is a group with immense potential. Here is an excerpt from the "About" page of United re:public's new (but temporary) web site:

United Republic is a new organization fighting the corrupting influence of well-financed special interests over American politics and government. We welcome the energy and creativity of citizens of all stripes – progressive, conservative and independent – who envision a nation where the needs and ideas of the many aren’t drowned out by the influence of the wealthy few.

We believe our political system is dangerously out of balance. Thousands of lobbyists, billions of dollars in campaign contributions, shadowy political attack groups, and career politicians are distorting the government’s priorities at a time of great national need. We Americans no longer have the government or leadership we need to get the country back on the track of collective prosperity and responsibility. The Wall Street bailouts are the biggest example of this problem.

Making matters worse, recent Supreme Court decisions have not only stood in the way of common-sense reforms of the system but have actually knocked down many of the remaining safeguards against large-scale corruption and cooptation of the political process. What results? The kind of overconcentration of power that our nation’s founding fathers repeatedly warned against.

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Victory at what cost?

I'm on Lawrence Lessig's mailing list. Here is an excerpt from an email he sent today, which you can read at Huffpo:

However good, however essential, however transformative this health care bill may be, we should not mistake success here as a sign that Washington has been cured. Indeed, as Glenn Greenwald reminded us over the weekend -- in an essay that should be every reformer's required reading -- success on this bill is no justification for:

claiming that it represents a change in the way Washington works and a fulfillment of Obama's campaign pledges. The way this bill has been shaped is the ultimate expression -- and bolstering -- of how Washington has long worked. One can find reasonable excuses for why it had to be done that way, but one cannot reasonably deny that it was.

Obama's victory was achieved because his team played the old game brilliantly. Staffed with the very best from the league of conventional politics, his team bought off PhRMA (with the promise not to use market forces to force market prices for prescription drugs) and the insurance industry (with the promise -- and in this moment of celebration, let's ignore the duplicity in this -- that they would face no new competition from a public option), so that by the end, as Greenwald puts it, the administration succeeded in "bribing and accommodating them to such an extreme degree that they ended up affirmatively supporting a bill that lavishes them with massive benefits." Obama didn't "push back on the undue influence of special interests," as he said today. He bought them off. And the price he paid should make us all wonder: how much reform can this administration -- and this Nation -- afford?

Another thing: As Greenwald noted in his excellent article, to get this bill passed Obama used "the exact secret processes that he railed against and which he swore he would banish."

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Lawrence Lessig: Disband the FCC

Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig is a student of history.  He has documented that, despite their proclaimed goals, most government regulatory agencies end up promoting "excessive government favors and excessive private monopoly power." In light of this history,) Lessig recommends that we disband the FCC and that we replace it…

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Why fixing the way we finance campaigns is the first problem we need to address

Congress is so incredibly corrupt that it can't figure out that 2 + 2 = 4.    Congress is incapable of making no-brainer decisions.  that is why Congress has only a 9% approval rating. These are the opinions of Lawrence Lessig, founder of Change Congress, which is based on these three…

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