With all the talk of banking reform in the news today, I thought that now might be a good time to remind folks about Lawrence Lessig’s attempts, through his organization, Fix Congress First, to rally support for the Fair Elections Now Act. As I suspect many of you know, regulating Wall Street, while critical, in and of itself won’t fix all that ails us as a nation. What we have to do, in conjunction with regulating Wall Street, is get the corporate money out of American politics. Here, on that subject, is a recent note from Harvard’s Lessig:
Scott Brown, Massachusetts’ new senator, opposes legislation in Congress that would strengthen regulations for Wall Street.
But when a reporter recently asked him why he’s against this bill, Brown couldn’t give an answer. He’s against financial reform, but he has no idea why.
Let me help Senator Brown: During his campaign last year, Brown received half of his campaign contributions from Wall Street and business executives. He benefited from another million dollars in issue ads by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. They oppose the bill, so Senator Brown opposes the bill. It’s no wonder Pew recently found that trust in Congress is at its lowest point ever.
I focused on Scott Brown, but the influence of special interest money pervades both parties in both chambers. Americans are right to suspect that their representatives are merely doing the bidding of those funding their campaigns…
And, here, for those of you who prefer not to read, is a little video on this very subject, narrated by Lessig.
Now, if you’ve got a second, check out this page on what you can do to help create an opt-in system for citizen-funded elections.
17 Comments
Republicans voted unanimously to not debate Wall Street reform. They voted to give hundreds of billions to the banks in the bailout, but now they’re voting against oversight. It’s insane, and you’d think that the Tea Party patriots would be up in arms about it. They would rather focus on the black man in the white house though.
Had the Republicans voted in support, there would have been no debate. The Democrats would have forced a quick vote on a bill that is poorly constructed and incapable of achieving its stated goals. Kudos to the Republicans for stopping this bad legislation. Goldman Sachs bought Obama with campaign funds and is expecting to continue to reap financial windfalls for their executives as they fleece stockholders and bludgeon the stock market. Democratic “reform” represents abuse by government and the erosion of morality. Their tactics reveal an apparent disregard for all things truthful.
Goldman bought them all, douche.
I realize these hearings may turn out to be just political theater, but this …
http://www.dailykos.com/tv/w/002674/
… prompted me to send Carl Levin a donation for his re-election campaign.
Does anyone know where we could pick up a few hundred cheap guillotines? They don’t need to be real sharp…just sharp enough to get the job done in 2 to 5 whacks. I think I may have a good solution to this Wall street problem. If you wanna help EOS, just put your head right here…we need to test a few of these first…
The free market will solve everything!
I just finished watching the end of the the (live) hearing, during which Senator Levin issued a scathing (and inspiring) indictment of Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein and his entire company for their role in creating and fueling the subprime mortgage crisis.
Almost immediately, the “analysts” on CNBC were “tut-tuting” about how Levin (and the New York Times) had “gone too far …” and about how these “political rubes” (meaning Senators like Levin, McCaskil and others) “simply don’t understand the complexities of high finance.”
Glen,
Levin was responsible for oversight and regulation of Wall Street when these shitty deals occurred time and time again and made the brokers rich while destroying our economy. And for this incompetence you think he deserves financial support for his re-election??? Even the lame street media now acknowledge his incompetence. Exactly what has he done that you think is laudable?
Lloyd Blankfein, the head of investment bank Goldman Sachs, supports the Democratic financial reform legislation!
The major investment firms in the U.S. contributed more to Democratic campaigns than to Republicans in the last election cycle by a more than 4 to 1 ratio.
EOS: Most businesses view campaign contributions as investments. If they don’t think a candidate is going to win, they tend not to contribute. If they think a candidate is likely to win, they tend to contribute more. That’s compounded by heavy Democratic representation in the places where big investment firms are based (New York, Connecticut, etc.) If the 2010 elections proceed as expected (reasonably big Republican gains), I suspect you’ll find that the gap narrows or even reverses.
It took your writing about it about ten times, but I finally wrote a letter to my Congressman about this legislation.
From today’s Progress Report:
New from Lessig:
That Funders Pledge pledge thing sounds like a pretty cool idea.
Agreed, but fixing Wall Street is a damned good start.
Absolutely. We need to put some bankers in jail, but we also have to act on campaign finance reform. The good news is, I think the people at Occupy Wall Street know this.