Lawrence Lessig: "Republic, Lost"
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-10-18/lawrence-lessig-republic-lost
Recent polls show growing numbers of Americans have lost confidence in government. Occupy Wall Street protestors say they are against corporate greed and economic disparity, and their movement is rapidly spreading. In a letter to the protestors, Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig urges them to unite Democrats, Republicans and Independants against what he sees as the root problem: a political system where only 1 percent of americans fund 99 percent of campaigns. He offers a plan to stop the corrupting influence of money on government, including the possibility of a constitutional convention.
Guests
Lawrence Lessig
professor of law at Harvard Law School and director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University.
Read an Excerpt
Excerpt from Lawrence Lessig's "Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress - and a Plan to Stop It." All rights reserved. Copyright 2011 by Lawrence Lessig. Reprinted here by permission of Twelve/Hachette Book Group:
Comments
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"Another court at another time will reverse Citizens United "
Maybe, but I doubt it. In the same way SCOTUS since the 70s has had opportunities to reverse Roe v Wade. To date, it hasn't happened.
"I'll end with"
Sounds like you are done with this and so am I. We've both said our piece.
"Cheers"
Back atcha.
@ecgberht
Not so fast.
“Who decides what a "movie" is - 30 minutes, 90 minutes, 2 minutes (since that's not a typical TV spot)? …..it becomes a sloppy mess.”
A “sloppy mess” is exactly what life often presents us with. Unfortunately, the orderliness that you favor can be a tool to freeze injustice into place.
Who decides? Easy – the courts, if necessary. That's what they are for - to use their judgment as to what the constitution means and what is just. You claim that there is no right to be heard, but mass media plus the ability to spend unlimited money in effect make it impossible for contrary messages to get a hearing. That’s unjust and corrupting. So the best message, not the loudest, gets heard? That’s highfalutin theory which is borne out only in a small minority of electoral contests.
You say that "Suppressing speech - or even making speech "even", [is] NOT a responsibility of government." The “suppressing” part I agree with, which is the very reason Citizens United is a violation. It suppresses by sheer volume. As for the “making speech even” part: I don’t want to make things “even” but I do want a level playing field.
Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution includes the following):
The Congress shall have Power ……To establish Post Offices and Post Roads.
Furthermore, the precedent was quickly set to subsidize printed materials so that people, regardless of their wealth, would be able to send and receive materials for education, information and entertainment – the tools to become part of a literate population and informed electorate. In other words, the Post Office was THE mass communications medium at the time, and Art. 1, Sec. 8 specifically enabled the government to ensure a level playing field for the flow of information, without controlling content. So there you have it - something that doesn’t require a new rule for every new medium that comes along.
Isn't it amazing how some people (not just monte this time) are able to post an informed, intelligent, Comment about a show before it even airs!
Oh, wait, they can't?
Never mind.
The love of $ , v.s. geography, in a distant reality like West America, "virtue" is worth less {geo-cultural Youth 2nd-Norm} le'$$-i.t. of geo-IT and flakey silicon valley [Boston's facebook needED that element, as much as America needs cultural social geo-fabric stability of youth exposure/contag...] and geography is the sweet conspiracy that evil... depends on.
Reform geo-normalcy with cultural love and money[!!!] will feed love and NOT the other way around. ANNYT is the filter of decency that finds! IDEAL REPlacements and starves corruption with ethical perfection.
followed by happy thoughts and magnanimous intervention, the "secondary 1%" suffers, at great cost to responsibility.
I have ze formula, that orbits from unbelievable and hopeless into deeper belief in humanity and even happier thoughts/hope.