Lessig Campaign and the Change Congress Movement 409
GoldenShale wrote a follow up to last week's discussion about Lessig running for congress. He writes "Larry Lessig has created a Lessig08 website, and it looks like he is getting serious about running for congress. In his introduction video he proposes the creation of a national "Change Congress" movement which would try to limit the influence of money in the electoral and legislative processes. Having a technologically savvy representative and a clear intellectual leader to head this kind of movement is exactly what we need to counter the last 8 years of corporate dominance in government."
last 8 years? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:last 8 years? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Bush's foreign policy is awesome (Score:4, Insightful)
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That's fine and dandy, and I think you were unfairly modded troll, by the way. All I'm saying is, if Europeans aren't fighting for us, why should we fight for them? Why does it matter to the USA if Poland or Germany are independent from Russia any more than Iraq is liberated from Saddam? There's no difference. I'm saying, let Europeans deal with their own security, the USA can trade with them, but lets
Re:Bush's foreign policy is awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
As to what the difference to the USA is, in case you have forgotten you were involved in a cold war with the USSR. The USA and Europe provided a counterbalancing force to the USSR and China. How long do you think the USA would have lasted if the USSR, Europe and China had been allies? US involvement in Europe, as in South-East Asia in the last century was all about national security.
[1] Yes, unlikely, I know.
Re:Bush's foreign policy is awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
And once the radioactive cloud drifts over your midwest and destroyes the agriculture there, you'll feel really stupid for doing so.
Completely disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
I think Europe is anti-American solely because of what they perceive to be American militarism. I think Europe is so scarred from the World Wars that anything that smacks of a risk of a war terrifies them. And, I think that is understandable. Everyone in Europe, especially Germany, has a family member that was killed on the Eastern Front. Everyone in Europe has families tales of occupation, the bombings, the postwar starvations, the homelessness. They have had enough war to last for generations and they see us as fools for seemingly seeking it out.
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Sorry, but you really think they hate our "freedom" and not our meddling (i.e., causing w
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I'm sorry, but that's pretty arrogant. I understand the notion, but you have to look at it this way. We are considered the evil war monger superpower now. That's not a good thing. If we were to take a step back, let the world work it's magic and help them instead of inhibiting them, we might actually make it off this planet and on to better things. The whole idea behind living a cooperative existence is to NOT go to war unless absolutely
Re:Bush's foreign policy is awesome (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't disagree with any of that. That is why I am saying that the USA should not be military allies with anyone. We should bring all of our troops home from everywhere, cut down the size of our army, and focus on trade. We can sit fat and happy behind a mountain of nukes and a missile defense system for our own national security, plus with a sufficient navy to guard our waters and an air force for our air. But we don't need to be operating in 100 countries across the globe. Iraq is the least of our military perception problems.
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Huh? The President is the head of the Executive Branch of Govt., meaning his job is to Execute the laws of the country and implement those things necessary to keep the nation going. He's the CEO, and Congress is the Board.
Now since you've proven yourself a moron... (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, the reason we are in Iraq is that for over a decade, Saddam Hussein flaunted and refused to comply with the terms of an armistice he himself had signed.
And then he added to that by doing far too good a job blustering and trying to convince people that he had an active WMD program - so good a job that the Russians, French, Germans, Spanish, Chinese, and even the Swiss thought he did still have it going. Why was he doing it? Because it was the only thing keeping Iran off his ass. Problem? He fooled everyone else too, and his history scared the crap out of people that he'd lob a nuke towards someone (Turkey, Israel, Kuwait, Iran) that he considered an "enemy" and touch off even more crap.
We're in Iraq today because the Middle East is ruled by a bunch of fucktards who use a 7th-century religion to justify barbarity and evil, towards each other just as much as towards the "dar al-harb" they profess to hate.
Re:Now since you've proven yourself a moron... (Score:4, Insightful)
We're in Iraq today because the Middle East is ruled by a bunch of fucktards who use a 7th-century religion to justify barbarity and evil, towards each other just as much as towards the "dar al-harb" they profess to hate.
No, we're in Iraq today because the U.S. is now run by a bunch of petulant chicken-hawks (funny how Clinton didn't feel the need to invade Iraq whereas Bush couldn't wait) who use a 0th-century religion to justify the murder and torture (yes, kids, you can watch Christians defend torture!) of people in a different religion who happen to be sitting on a bunch of oil that wasn't being used enough. What's that? They shot at our soldiers? Guess what, our soldiers wouldn't be getting shot at if we had not invaded in the first place. What's that? We really thought Saddam had nukes. Sorry but anyone with an ounce of sense knew that he didn't have them because if he had them he would have used them (argue this all you want but the fact is that Iraq didn't have them and wasn't working on them). I think this is the point where you bring up 9/11 and implore me to support the troops.
Re:Now since you've proven yourself a moron... (Score:5, Insightful)
So, we're in Iraq because we really, really though they had, or were about to have, nukes and threatened nearby countries? Okay. Why aren't we in North Korea? They have nukes, and they sure as hell pose a threat to South Korea. Why can we deal with North Korea through diplomacy, but we had to invade Iraq?
Excepting that Iraq was one of the few places in the Middle East with a largely secular government and peace between different religious groups. Saddam Hussein was a terrible, brutal dictator, but he wasn't a religious zealot, he was a powermonger. He paid lip service to religion because it gave him some political benefit.
Anyone who thought Hussein and Iraq presented a credible threat that was imminent enough to warrant an unilateral invasion was deluding themselves.
Clueless moderators? (Score:4, Insightful)
Last time I checked, it was the US government which tried to convince those countries that Iraq had WMD, and they used a significant amount of fake or exaggerated 'evidence' to do so. Look up Colin Powell's address to the UN, for example.
Europeans opposed the invasion of Iraq because they didn't let themselves be fooled by that. If the US had had a case, most Europeans would have supported the invasion.
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I beg to differ. IMHO, the primary reason we're in Iraq is so we can have a "sufficiently major and long-lasting" war. After all, you can't be a "wartime President" without a war, and it's really hard to make executive power grabs without using war and national security as a pretext. So we're at war in Iraq, in order to be at war, in order to "enhance" executive power.
Beyond that, Iraq was just too attractive:
Afghanistan was (incorrectly) perceived as not being m
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Re:Bush's foreign policy is awesome (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, look at this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multinational_force_in_Iraq [wikipedia.org] A lot of European countries have troops in Afghanistan.
Sorry for not fighting all your ill-concieved wars.
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Sorry our ill-conceived wars are not as so well conceived as World War I and World War II.
Why take offense though? All I said was that Europe is not an American ally, and if anything, you've only bolstered the point. Let's bring US troops out of Europe, bury NATO, and just trade with each other. Europe can handle European security.
*Cough* *Britain* *Cough* (Score:3, Insightful)
Bein allied with someone doesn't mean "invaeds the same places despite advice", it means mutual defence and giving consideration to any other military actions.
Frankly I've more respect for those that didn't go than those that did.
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Its a half-arsed token commitment, and it may as well be none at all, if only because we know the vast majority of Europeans do not want to be in the war at all. And that's fine. Given the bloody history of the World Wars, I'd be shocked that the Europeans would have any troops at all over there.
All I am saying is that there's no reason for the USA to have a military ally in Europe, or anyone else, and vice versa. From the world perspectiv
Re:Bush's foreign policy is awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bush's foreign policy is awesome (Score:4, Insightful)
2. If the dumbest thing you can think of is to appease the largest economic power outside of North America, then you clearly haven't watched American politics for the last 50 years.
3. Europeans ARE fighting with Americans in Iraq. United Kingdom, Poland, Romania, Denmark, Bulgaria, Latvia, Albania, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Armenia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and Estonia (in decreasing number of troops) all have troops in Iraq. Not all of these are EU members, but some are, and all are part of Europe. Europe is not France and Germany, no matter what France and Germany may say about that. That said, Germany is a staunch US ally, host to US bases that are key in moving troops and equipment around the world, and a key member of NATO that helped us during the cold war. Discount such an ally at your own peril....
4. All of the above nations are quite concerned that they've done quite the opposite of what they intended (bring instability to the region rather than stability).
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The USA buys more from Europe than the other way around. If that's not respect, then I do not know what is.
If the dumbest thing you can think of is to appease the largest economic power outside of North America, then you clearly haven't watched American politics for the last 50 years.
Again, if Europe is so powerful, why does the USA need to have bases in Germany? Who is out there that can threat
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My question is, why is the USA so bent on moving troops all over the world. I don't want this job for America any more. America was better off as a trading superpower that it was before it became a military superpower.
Isn't that a question that should be answered by you and your country men? It is not only you that do not want this `job': most of the rest of the world emphatically does not want it either. This last war of `liberation' was very loudly opposed by essentially everyone, remember?
Re:Bush's foreign policy is awesome (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yours slightly confused and pissed off,
Scottish Slashdotter
Re:Bush's foreign policy is awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:last 8 years? (Score:5, Informative)
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Funny, I figured this out a long time ago. . . (Score:5, Insightful)
You won't overcome the republicans or democrats in one big presidential election. Never gonna happen. If you want to make any progress, you will have to build from the bottom up. Start getting candidates into local and state positions, and build on a track record of good governance at the local and state level to leverage your party into the House and the Senate. Once you have enough support in the House and Senate (at least 1/3rd of each), and are nationally known as a party people like and trust, then you are in an excellent position to run a Presidential candidate as a true, meaningful alternative to the two establisment parties.
Otherwise, your just a flash in the pan.
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Each branch has different powers, but none can exerc
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People have been fooling themselves for far too long but seeings as where campa
Re:last 8 years? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's plenty of artists that would like to see copyright be extended as well, so don't pretend that this is merely a right wing corporate thing. There's quite a few liberals earning a living selling books, songs and movies that are delighted to know their grandchildren can inherit their royalties!
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But are corporations the problem? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not Walmart's fault that people shop there and buy so much Chinese stuff. It's not Toyota's fault that Americans would rather pay Toyota and get a nicer car than have a better standard of living for American auto workers. It's not just that a banker on wall street is greedy. It is that -every- American is greedy, and therefor, we got the institutions we asked for.
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It's not Walmart's fault that people shop there and buy so much Chinese stuff.
Mmmmm...actually, it pretty much is. WalMart uses predatory business practices, far worse than Microsoft could imagine in it's worst nightmares, to knock out their competition, brow-beat their vendors into compliance and make themselves a virtual monopoly in every small town in America. When you consider that the vast majority of Americans live in small town America, well...that means that WalMart has pretty much pwned a vast amount of the retail market.
It's not Toyota's fault that Americans would rather pay Toyota and get a nicer car than have a better standard of living for American auto workers.
It's not that simple. The Japanese, who do make
Re:But are corporations the problem? (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't turn a startup company into a national giant without being better than your competition. That's what Walmart has done. Some companies when they get big get lazy, and start to charge higher prices. To their credit, Walmart has done the opposite - they've used their size and influence to create even more efficiencies and provide their customers even lower prices.
The result is that millions of Americans are better able to afford the necessities of life. And that sounds like a Good Thing to me.
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It doesn't take a conspiracy theory to see why the Japanese own the car market. The truth is the American companies dropped the ball on engineering.
Saying that every American is greedy probably wasn't meant as an insult either, but as a point about how we view economics. The common argument is that capitalism counts on each individual to make decisions that benefit themselves which results in a greater whole. The problem is that it doesn't always work out ideally as seen
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Please stop with the "USian" nonsense. (Score:3, Insightful)
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I think you would change your mind if live to meet your grandchildren.
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8 years? Corporations have been exhibiting control over the legislature for much more than the past 8 years... One only has to look at the copyright act extensions to see that.
George Soros [wikipedia.org] is not a corporation. MoveOn.Org [slashdot.org] is a 501(c)(4).
Everyone has an interest group and the legal organization of it is irrelevant. The biggest concern should be that politicians can be bought, not who is doing the buying. Who is doing the buying only concerns people when they disagree.
But how? (Score:3, Insightful)
For example, there is a 'donation cap' of $2300 per person for individual contributions to a campaign or party, I believe. I could think of ways to get around such a donation cap. Most people don't have $2300 to
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Anyone who thinks this is a problem of the last 8 years is either blindly partisan or not paying attenti
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Politicians are also forever tweaking laws, especially tax laws, in an effort to influence how you choose to live your life. I don't smoke, but smoking is a great example - do we really need so many tobacco taxes and cigarette laws? Is that really a free socie
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It would also be the single largest transfer of money from the poor to the rich. That is why it'll never happen: because there is still some sanity in government, even if it's not much.
Dan Aris
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[citation needed]
Really original thinking here (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm all for this, but as the old spam form response says, "Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical".
Re:Really original thinking here (Score:5, Insightful)
Any time we allow our fundamental rights to be legislated away, we lose...
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That's ok, the supreme court has already agreed that money doesn't have rights in civil forfeiture cases where the government simply steals your stuff without a warrant or trial.
Phrase it in that way, and either the supreme court sticks to their guns or they decide that maybe property owners do have rights after all. Either way, we win.
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No. I disagree. That leads to the current situation where each party is constantly looking for corruption and scandal, with hearings ad-infinitum. The solution is to make the money irrelevant.
Use the power of the FCC, which requires broadcast stations to serve the "public good". Set aside a time two weeks before each election for a debate. Nothing may be aired on any ra
The problem isn't the Bill of Rights (Score:4, Insightful)
If the First Amendment wasn't an obstacle, what would you want to do? Limit political contributions, and all you do is restrict the power of middle class individuals' money (which must be pooled to buy a single commercial) in favor of the rich (who can afford to advertise without going through campaign middlemen. We've seen some of that in these primaries, where the $2,300 cap on ordinary Americans' contributions obviously doesn't apply to wealthy candidates who can "loan" millions of dollars to their own campaigns. Limit political advertisements, and all you'll do is force some of those advertisements to call themselves "fair and balanced news", concentrating power still further into the hands of media owners. Limit news that doesn't pass "Fairness" laws, and that just moves the power into the hands of the incumbent politicians and judges who get to write and arbitrate such laws.
The best we can do is encourage the dissemination of less corrupted political information, to inoculate people against the misinformation that money can buy. By the time a voter is watching the commercials that have been pushed at him rather than trying to pull information on issues and candidates for himself, it's practically too late.
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To change Congress, we first have to change the attitude of the voters who think their CongressCritter is giving them a "free lunch" by stealing someone else's tax dollars and funding a local project. Earmarks are just the tip of the iceberg.
How about a Constitutional Amendment requiring all money raised for a campaign MUST be raised from registered voters in
Intellectuals make terrible politicians (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyway, the only way to change the game is to play it - if the congress is run by corporate types, then you need to become a corporate type to change congress. Revolution happens, but it's pretty rare - and frankly I don't think that Lessig has it in him.
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Congressmen get to vote on issues that affect the country. They pass budgets. They make laws to regulate business. If Lessig had a voice in Congress, that would be One vote plus the number of other Congressmen his logic and arguments can influence.
And hell... a vote FOR LESSIG is a vote for FREE CULTURE [google.com]. He wrote the book on the subject. :)
Anybody who would vote against Lessig clearly is more concerned with stifling American Culture, then freeing it. Culture is music, movies, art, and literature.
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Three Words (Score:2)
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If one does it this way, is he still in a position to change congress, or has the system changed him into yet another broken piece of the same-old?
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'Fraid I don't have the answer, but I can't think of a congressional campaign that has "changed" congress. Corporatism is here to stay unless there is either some kind of revolution or some good people wind up in charge of the corporations and put an end to it. I don't see either as terribly likely in the near-term - though there are people out there arguing that the latter is about to happen [nakedcorporation.com].
Your sort of thinking is exactly the problem (Score:3, Insightful)
One compromise after another, until eventually we're in this mess. What we *need* are people who actually have some ideals and well thought out principles and are willing to stick to them or go down in flames trying. Then we might actually see some change, rather than continued appeasement of the entrenched interests.
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I'd vote for him - maybe even work to get him elected. I'm just saying that it is futile. Frankly I think the best way to change copyright law at this point is subversion - get everyone to ignore it so that the whole system breaks. If the RIAA/MPAA has no money to buy politicians, perhaps common sense can regain a foothold?
Just like I wish someone would figure out how to get corn to produce THC - just try
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Lawyers, on the other hand, frequently fit this mold.
Unfortunately, you need those "qualities" to be a successful politician in the US.
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But if you think that a staff assistant will impress the big dogs, you are sorely mistaken!
Congressmen are not all stupid - they just don't pay attention to things that don't matter (to them). Knowing the technical details of copyright law is not much of a survival skill for anyone except Disney and their ilk. Maybe having a voice on the other side will
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Contribution t the flamebait bucket (Score:2)
Seems there are 2 major obstacles which will surely hinder him from getting anywhere in politics. (I could have said "American politics", since he is aspiring to get into that, but that would disregard the universal nature of politicians.)
Only eight years? (Score:4, Insightful)
I recognize the temptation to blame Bush, but this is too old and it runs too deep to pin on him alone.
i see the usual defeatist and cynical comments (Score:2)
that being the case, one has to put a stopper on the defeatist and cynical comments about his chances. simply because his fight is the right fight and every good fight has to start somewhere, no matter how formidable the o
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your brain can say lessig is hopeless. but what does your heart say? so give voice to your heart, and shut your brain up for the moment. because heart is exactly what is needed with issues like financial influence in washington dc
My brain tells me that Lessig is an intelligent man who understood how difficult this task was and who adopted a strategy that will be quickly giving him a lot of allies, maybe enough to win. His stance is "the current situation is not caused by evil people, it is caused by good people in a bad system". If he manages to prove that this cause alone can get one elected, a lot of already known senators will suddenly have to take a stance for or against Lessig ideas.
He is smart, not the herald of corporate
Much of the incentive is in tax laws. (Score:2, Insightful)
Implement the FairTax and the power of the politicians goes back to where it should be.
I'd also favor a simpler flatter tax system THAT CAN'T BE TWEAKED once implemented.
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Think of it in software terms. If you released a product (even a completely absolutely refined product) that was incapable of being patched would you be comfortable? There needs to be SOME way of fixing problems that are unforseen.
Legislation in a lot of ways is like software. Release it early and its full of bugs and exploits, release it late and everyone complains that you are taking to lo
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Any tweaking thereafter is merely some congressman either trying to score brownie points (like mortgage interest deductions) or trying to gain favor with some lobby.
The people of the U.S. supported taxing income because they were told only the top 1% of income earners would ever be
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The FairTax is anything but.
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Anything else is unfair, but necessary simply because not everyone can afford their fair share.
The tax code boils down to extracting unfair amounts of money from whomever can pay and the way that is done is by the politics of helping friends, punishing enemies and pandering to the voters.
So, in the US, with a $3T budget and 300M citizens, if your family is not paying $10,000 a head in federal taxes you are not paying your fair shar
last 8 years of corporate dominance in congress... (Score:5, Funny)
Who? In what state? (Score:2)
Who? Never heard of him, but good luck.
Anyone know what state he's planning to run in? (The article submitter was a little thin in this area.)
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No limits on money (Score:4, Interesting)
No, it is better, really, to just have money go to whomever and without restriction. That way, we can at least see whom is owned by who, and vote accordingly. Better a billionaire writes a million dollar check to a senator than the same billionaire indirectly invests into a bevy of people to work some foul valve of power in the furnaces of Washington.
Make money unnecessary (Score:2)
The only way to reduce the influence of money in politics is to make it unneeded - to find ways of mobilizing voters without bales of cash for tv/radio/print ads.
Maybe by 2012 it will be possible for a candidate to run with a message like this:
O
The First Ammendment... (Score:3, Insightful)
You can not "limit influence of money" without trampling the First Amendment-provided right to free speech. McCain-Feingold [washingtonpost.com] did just this, but it does not make it right (it is the primary grudge against McCain, in fact)...
Funny, how the same people, who complain about First Amendment violations almost all the time — right to sell porn, right to distribute copyrighted (by someone else) material, right to create/publish law-breaking software are all deemed protected by the same Amendment by these people — not only fail to see this trampling, but actually demand more of it... Or, rather, it would've been funny, if it weren't sad.
I thought more of Lessig...
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[1] Actually, that's a serious question. Why not just open elections to the highest coalition of bidders? At least then it would be out in the open.
Won't money always find a way? (Score:2)
For example, if campaigns are all publicly funded, then someone will find a clever way to make lots and lots of other campaign speech be volunteer, which is protected by the First Amendment. If there are limits on the sources of money, someone will find a way to sneak in money through cracks in the definitions.
While I applaud
Influence of government - influence of money (Score:3, Insightful)
The government has exactly one job: to monopolize violence to ensure that people can make arrangements free of violence. Everything else, people can arrange for themselves through voluntary peaceful means.
Proposal: A Line-item vote for Congress (Score:2)
Reasons:
Will he work against legalized bribery? (Score:2)