Larry Lessig on the Daily Show last night -- watch this and read the book (Republic Lost -- How Money Corrupts Congress and a Plan to Stop It). As I understand it, the plan is to give everyone a rebate for their first $50 of taxes in the form of a "Democracy Voucher" to disconnect the relationship between big money and results.
You can give your fifty bucks it to any candidate you want, plus you can give up to $100 of your own money. Candidates would need to opt in to this system -- i.e. pledge that they would only accept democracy bucks for campaign financing. He says that will give us $7 billion (from the $50 bucks alone), which is more than double was spent on all the elections the last time around (or something like that).
Once the right Congess is elected, perhaps they could amend the Constitution to overrule some of the crazy campaign finance Supreme Court decisions.
Sounds good to me. As he says, right now, politicians spend 30-70% of their time raising money.
You can give your fifty bucks it to any candidate you want, plus you can give up to $100 of your own money. Candidates would need to opt in to this system -- i.e. pledge that they would only accept democracy bucks for campaign financing. He says that will give us $7 billion (from the $50 bucks alone), which is more than double was spent on all the elections the last time around (or something like that).
Once the right Congess is elected, perhaps they could amend the Constitution to overrule some of the crazy campaign finance Supreme Court decisions.
Sounds good to me. As he says, right now, politicians spend 30-70% of their time raising money.
Did you read about the May Day SuperPAC to end all SuperPACs?
ReplyDeleteHe now has $5 million to elect new skimmers dedicated to taking big money out of politics.
Best,
DJ
I hadn't heard about that -- thanks for the tip (I found this link to be informative: http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/lawrence-lessig-super-pac-rakes-donations). I approve of everything Larry Lessig does -- his heart is definitely in the right place. It's great that he's getting a following, and will be very interesting to see what effect the MayDay PAC's money has on the five "targeted" house races. (As far as I can tell, they haven't actually selected the races yet; but I'll keep an eye open and will repost when I find out what those races are and how MayDay accomplishes its goal).
ReplyDelete