WEBVTT

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>>Male Presenter: I think most people here know Larry Lessig. You should know him either

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from his work at Stanford or Harvard, Creative Commons, helped out the Electronic Frontier

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Foundation, the Sunlight Foundation. There's a whole bunch of places you should know him

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from.

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But really the reason why we wanna pay attention to what he has to say is because he's been

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right on so many issues, whether arguing in front of the Supreme Court, talking about

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things like copyright extension, or--if people noticed a few years ago--he started to move

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away from copyright and started to talk about broader issues.

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Specifically, the influence or potential corruption of money in politics and a lot of institutions

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that are important in the United States. So, I think it's important that we make sure that

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Larry not be a Cassandra. You know, the prophet who could hear the future, but no one would

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ever believe her.

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And so, I think it's important for us to listen to what he's got to say today. Read through

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the book. It's really good. Don't forget to badge in. But also, after the talk, please

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take a little while and ask, "How can we try to make sure that he's not a Cassandra--that

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we do take these issues seriously?"

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Because, I think, the influence of money in politics and in our institutions is probably

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the most important issue facing us today in the United States. So with that, thanks very

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much to Larry Lessig.

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[applause]

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>>Lawrence Lessig: Thank, Matt. And it's great to be back. I have one sacred text. "There

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are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil." Henry David Thoreau, 1846, on Walden.

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There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the roots.

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Imagine a letter written by a young woman. "There were two clocks regulating our life--the

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one on the wall and the one in the bottle. We built our life around those clocks. He

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slept late so mornings were bliss.

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“We could play and laugh without fear. But at some point, he would awake. And soon after

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he woke, the bottle was opened. And then the older the day grew, the more terrifying my

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life became. He was happy at first--just before dinner, the most happy.

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“That's the only time I spoke to him, a moment to pretend I had a father who had a

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feeling of love. He'd smile. He'd laugh. But then, he'd grow irritated. And by the end

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of dinner, he was angry and if we weren't gone--usually just hiding in our room by nine--he'd

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be violent. He hit me more than once.

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“Once he tried to do something worse than hitting me and then I left and I never went

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back. We struggled to do many things in that house to keep food in the house, to keep the

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winter out of the house, to keep the house. But the one thing we never even spoke about

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was getting him to stop.

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“I don't know why. The bottle was just part of our life. We learned to live with it. Anything

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more just seemed impossible." Now, the thing about us--we humans--is that we adapt, we

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adjust, we learn to live with it until we can't.

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And then a certain fever breaks out and if we're lucky, we have this Thoreauvian moment--a

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recognition that we have to stop hacking at the branches and start striking at the roots,

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the recognition that we have to become this sense of a root striker. OK. So, here's the

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argument here.

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I think that there's this feeling among too many of us Americans that we just might not

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make it. Not that the end is near or that doom is around the corner, but that a distinctly

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American feeling of inevitability of greatness, culturally, economically, politically, is

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gone--that we have become Britain or Rome or Greece.

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A generation ago, Ronald Reagan rallied the nation to deny a similar charge: Jimmy Carter's

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fear that we had fallen into a state of malaise. And I confess. I was one of those so rallied

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and I still believe Reagan was right today. But the feeling I'm talking about today is

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different.

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Not that we, as a people, have lost anything of our potential, but that we, as a Republic,

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have. That our capacity for governing, the one thing that we were once most proud of,

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this our Republic, is the one thing that we have all learned to ignore. Government is

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an embarrassment.

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And it has lost the capacity to make the most essential decisions and slowly it dawns upon

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us that a ship that cannot be steered is a ship that will sink. This is not a Democratic

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or Republican point alone. This is a genuinely multi-partisan frustration.

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The sense that the government doesn't work is signaled by many different policy areas

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on the left and the right, which systematically get blocked. And when confronted with this

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systematic block, my suggestion is we need to exercise this Thoreauvian insight. So,

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my objective this afternoon is to do a little bit of brainwashing.

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[laughter]

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To get you to the place that you see the roots that I want you to see. I'm gonna do that

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with three some examples. One of them is familiar. Indeed, I told a similar story here the last

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time I was here--the story around copyright.

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On October 27th, 1998, I became a copyright activist the day President Clinton signed

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into law a statute in honor of this great American, the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension

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Act--a statute which extended the term of existing copyrights by 20 years.

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Now, the question Congress was supposed to be asking when it passed that statute was,

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"Would it advance the public good to extend the term of an existing copyright by 20 years?"

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Copyrights are designed to create incentives, but we know about this universe. Put aside

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Star Trek for a moment.

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What we know about this universe is that its incentives are prospective. So, not even the

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United States Congress can get George Gershwin to produce anything more.

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[laughter]

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So when you ask the question, "Does it make sense to advance the public good to extend

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the term of existing copyright?" it's a pretty easy answer. Indeed, when we challenged this

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statute in the Supreme Court and a bunch of economists wanted to sign a brief saying it

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did not advance the public good, this liberal, left-wing--.

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Oh, I'm sorry. Wait. This is Milton Friedman--right-wing, Nobel Prize winning economist, agreed to sign

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the brief but only if the word "no brainer" was in the brief somewhere.

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[laughter]

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So obvious was it that you could not extend the public good by extending the term of existing

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copyrights. But apparently there were no brains in this place when Congress unanimously extended

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the term of these existing copyrights.

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What there was, was more than six million dollars in contributions from Disney and related

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corporations seeking the extension of their valuable copyrights--the public be damned.

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Here's another example. Wall Street Journal, at the end of last year, was puzzled about

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the explosion of temporary tax provisions in our tax code.

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These temporary tax provisions expire after a limited period of time. And that leads to

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this extender mania, as lobbyists and Congress race around to try to extend the particular

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tax provision for another period of time. And the Journal wondered what explains the

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explosion and change in the number of these extensions.

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Well, it turns out the first of these temporary provisions was given to us by Reagan in 1981.

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Congress passed the Research and Development Tax Credit. But because the Democrats were

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skeptical about whether it would work, they made the tax credit temporary.

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They said they would test it after a number of years. And if it turned out it worked,

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they would make it permanent. If it didn't work, they would repeal it. So, after a couple

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years, the economists asked the question, "Did it work?" The answer is yes. Left and

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right economists all agreed that it did work. It was a great tax idea.

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It spurred a kind of investment that otherwise would not have been spurred. And so, it made

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sense absolutely to make this part of the tax code. Here's the puzzle. It is still temporary

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to this day. Why?

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Well, as Rebecca Kysar describes in this piece in the Georgia Law Review, "The principle

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recipients of the research credit are large US manufacturing corporations. These business

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entities are more than willing to invest in lobbying activities and campaign donations

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to ensure the continuance of this large tax savings."

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The Institute for Policy Innovation put it a little bit more sharply. "This cycle has

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repeated for years. Congress allows the credit to lapse until another short extension is

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given. Proceeded, of course, by a series of fundraisers and speeches about the importance

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of nurturing innovation.

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Congress essentially uses the cycle to raise money for re-election, promising industry

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more predictability the next time around." Now this dynamic is central to how Washington

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works. We architect tax policy in part, at least, not just to raise money for our treasury,

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but to make it easier to raise money for our Congressmen's campaigns.

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And not just tax policy. When Al Gore was Vice President, he had an idea to simplify

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the regulation governing infrastructure that internet would come across. Right now, we

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have two titles in the Communications Act--Title Two and Title Six. Title Two governs telephones.

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Title Six governs cable. Those are two radically different regulatory structures. Gore's idea

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was to put them together in a Title Seven and fundamentally deregulate them--much less

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than even network neutrality regulation would require.

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His team took the idea to Capitol Hill and the chief policy person described--the reaction,

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he said the reaction was quote, "Hell no. If we deregulate these guys, how are we going

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to raise money from them?" And you get this kind of sinking, terrifying feeling here,

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right?

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Recognizing that we tax in part to make it easy to raise campaign funds. We regulate,

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in part, to make it easier to raise campaign funds. Campaign funds driving critical areas

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of fiscal policy unrelated to the merits of the underlying fiscal policy. Here's the third

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example.

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Think about Wall Street. We've of course seen this collapse on Wall Street, which triggered

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a collapse in the economy. What explains that collapse? Well, as Simon Johnson and James

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Kwak describe in their book, "13 Bankers," part of the explanation is this perverse mix

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of too little government and too much government.

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Too little government in the form of deregulation. In the 1990s, we saw an explosion of financial

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innovations, derivatives. But these innovations were essentially invisible to the market because

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a series of regulatory changes in the 1990s made derivatives, unlike other financial assets,

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not subject to the standard requirements that have existed since the new deal that they

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be traded on public exchanges, transparently with anti-fraud obligations tied to every

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transaction.

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So, my colleague, Frank Partnoy, calculated that in 1980, 98 percent of assets traded

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in our economy were traded under these standard new deal, trade-based rules. But by 2008,

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90 percent of the assets traded in our economy were exempted from these exchange-based rules,

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could be traded without transparency, could be traded without anybody knowing what the

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prices would be for.

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It could be traded without any anti-fraud requirements being tied to them, producing

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this shadow banking market, which encouraged--because of the uncertainty it spewed everywhere--the

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bubble which eventually burst and brought the economy down. But that alone, Kwak and

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Johnson say, wasn't enough. In addition, we had too much government.

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Throughout the 1990s, there was a beacon, a constant signal from the government that

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there was, in effect, a government guarantee that when this bubble burst there would be

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a bailout on the other side producing what is the dumbest form of socialism ever invented

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by man--socialized risk and privatized benefit.

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We suffer the downside. They get the upside. Now I know you guys are not lawyers. This

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is a technical legal term, but this is an insanely stupid way--

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[laughter]

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to set up a financial system. And all that stupidity is just before 2008. Even worse

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is after 2008, where we add insult to injury in the way that Congress increasingly functions.

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Because after 2008, after the worst crisis since the Depression, after all who are not

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involved in that crisis had concluded that one of the principle causes to that crisis

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was the architecture of deregulation that Wall Street had purchased until 2008, after

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the dean of deregulation, the Ayn Rand-ian, Alan Greenspan, Head of the Fed, confessed

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in testimony to Congress that he was quote "mistaken" about whether the banks would act

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in the public interest as opposed to their private interest.

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After all of that, Wall Street was still powerful enough to blackmail the Democrats and Republicans

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both to give them an essential "get out of jail free" card and to keep the core flaw

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of our architecture of regulation the same.

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If the banks were too big to fail before 2008, the banks are only too bigger to fail after

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2008, leading many Independents of Wall Street to include that our risk of a collapse is

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greater today than it was before the collapse in 2008. Again, why? What would explain this

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stupidity in the architecture of regulation?

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Well, lots of possible reasons, but here's the one thing we know. The fastest growing

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sector in campaign contributions since 1991, and the largest chunk of contributions in

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the 2010 election, come from the finance and insurance industries. OK. Here's one final

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example.

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I'm sure many of you, when you saw these images, had a question in the back of your head. How

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was it that it's possible to launch such an experimental drilling platform, as the Deepwater

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Horizon, without extensive environmental impact and risk studies?

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All right. In my part of the country, we've just spent nine years and ten thousand pages

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of environmental impact studies to permit the construction of this green energy technology.

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So, exactly how much was required before they were able to build the experimental deep water

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drilling platform, which was the Deepwater Horizon?

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The answer is 17 pages before they were exempted from any further need for review, leading

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Congress to be shocked of course.

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[plays video clip] >>Male #1: I am shocked--shocked--to find

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that gambling is going on in here.

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>>Male #2: Your winnings, sir.

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>>Male #1: Thank you very much. Everybody out in front.

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[laughter]

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[end video clip]

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>>Lawrence Lessig: And of course, it was Congress that had required these fast track approval

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processes, leading again to the question, "What would ever convince them that fast track

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approval on experimental drilling wells made sense?" Lots of possible answers to that question.

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The one thing we know is endless campaign cash driving to this conclusion. Now, here's

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the point. No respectable Liberal or Libertarian or Conservative could defend these cases.

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Each of them is an abomination from each of those three political philosophy perspectives.

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So, how is it they become policy in the United States? Now, it turns out political sciences

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are uncertain. They say it's a little bit complex. But here's the thing. You believe

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you know. I just had to point to point to the money. And you believe you now know the

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root cause to this stupidity.

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And that's the core of my claim. Number one, it is because of cases like this, and I could

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go on for hours, I promise--millions of cases like this--that Americans believe money buys

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results in Congress. Seventy-five percent of Americans in a poll that we conducted for

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my book conclude money buys results in Congress.

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You think, "What were the 25 percent thinking?" I don't know.

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[laughter]

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But a little bit more Democrats than Republicans. But I guarantee you when the Republicans were

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not in control, it was just as many Republicans as Democrats. So, whether it's two-thirds

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or three-fourths, here's the thing we Americans all agree about.

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Money buys results in Congress. Leading to number two. A belief in money buying results

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erodes trust in the institution. So, last year Gallup concluded that eleven percent

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of Americans have confidence in Congress. Gallup's number this year is a little more

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optimistic. They say 12 percent.

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[laughter]

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But I just read today in the New York Times--New York Times CBS poll says that nine percent

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of Americans have confidence in Congress. To keep this in some context, right, it is

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certainly the case that there were more people who believed in the British crown at the time

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of the Revolution than believe in our Congress today.

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[laughter]

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And at what point does an institution have to declare political bankruptcy? At what point

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has it just lost the credibility with the people? What, nine percent isn't enough? Five

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percent? What is the number when we have to say there is no more confidence in this government?

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And that leads to number three. Low trust erodes participation in the system. Rock the

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Vote, the organization that registered and turned out to vote the largest number of young

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people who ever voted in the history of this nation, and arguably delivered the election

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to Barack Obama, in 2010, found a large number of their voters were not gonna turn out and

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vote.

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So, they polled them. Why? Number one answer to that poll by far--two to one over the second

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highest--was "no matter who wins, corporate interest will still have too much power and

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prevent real change." And it's not just kids who think this. The vast majority of people,

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who could have voted, didn't vote and didn't vote in part because of this belief precisely.

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Now here, I'm gonna shift into professor mode. Here's my blackboard. It wasn't supposed to

00:18:50.480 --> 00:18:57.100
be this way. That wasn't the intent. Framers of our Constitution gave us, as Conservatives

00:18:57.100 --> 00:19:04.330
like to remind us, a Republic. But what they meant by a Republic was a quote "representative

00:19:04.330 --> 00:19:05.809
democracy."

00:19:05.809 --> 00:19:10.260
And what they meant by a representative democracy as Federalist 52 puts it was, "a government

00:19:10.260 --> 00:19:17.530
that would have a branch quote 'dependent upon the people alone.'" OK? So, here's the

00:19:17.530 --> 00:19:21.510
model of government. We have the people. We have the government. I do my own slides, so

00:19:21.510 --> 00:19:23.570
it's cool the way that bounces, right?

00:19:23.570 --> 00:19:23.900
[laughter]

00:19:23.900 --> 00:19:29.240
The people, the government, marionette relationship between the two. Here's the problem. Congress

00:19:29.240 --> 00:19:34.580
has evolved a different dependence. It's not just the people and the government. Increasingly,

00:19:34.580 --> 00:19:37.670
it's the funders and the people and the government.

00:19:37.670 --> 00:19:43.900
In a world where members spend between 30 and 70 percent of their time raising money

00:19:43.900 --> 00:19:49.370
to get back to Congress, or to get their Party back into power--they can't help, like each

00:19:49.370 --> 00:19:56.460
of you couldn't help--developing a sixth sense, a constant awareness about how what they do

00:19:56.460 --> 00:19:59.380
might affect their ability to raise money.

00:19:59.380 --> 00:20:04.540
In the words of the "X-Files," they become shape-shifters, constantly adjusting their

00:20:04.540 --> 00:20:09.710
positions. Not on issues one to ten, but issue eleven to five hundred in light of what they

00:20:09.710 --> 00:20:14.670
know will raise money. Leslie Byrne describes it when she came to Congress. She's a Democrat

00:20:14.670 --> 00:20:15.309
from Virginia.

00:20:15.309 --> 00:20:21.010
She was told by a colleague quote, "Always lean to the green." And then to clarify, she

00:20:21.010 --> 00:20:23.380
went on, "he was not an environmentalist."

00:20:23.380 --> 00:20:24.950
[laughter]

00:20:24.950 --> 00:20:35.030
Now, the point is this a dependence, too. But it's a different and conflicting dependence

00:20:35.030 --> 00:20:44.230
from a dependence upon the people alone because--surprise, surprise--the funders are not the people.

00:20:44.230 --> 00:20:50.240
Indeed, candidates pay attention in campaigns most to those who max out in the campaign.

00:20:50.240 --> 00:20:55.150
So, what percentage of Americans maxed out in 2010 in congressional elections in either

00:20:55.150 --> 00:21:02.480
of the two cycles? The answer is point zero five percent of Americans. So, the Occupy

00:21:02.480 --> 00:21:06.730
Wall Street people are so proud of their slogan, "We are the 99 percent." Bad marketing. They

00:21:06.730 --> 00:21:09.640
are the 99 point nine five percent,--

00:21:09.640 --> 00:21:10.460
[laughter]

00:21:10.460 --> 00:21:15.799
who don't get listened to because they are not in the point zero five percent of people

00:21:15.799 --> 00:21:21.299
who are directly tied into the influence that is our government. Now, this is--Supreme Court

00:21:21.299 --> 00:21:24.100
doesn't recognize this yet, but you should.

00:21:24.100 --> 00:21:31.299
This is corruption. It's not the corruption of brown paper bags secreting cash among members

00:21:31.299 --> 00:21:36.640
of Congress. Up through the middle of the 20th Century, members of Congress had safes

00:21:36.640 --> 00:21:41.540
in their office for cash. You think to yourselves, "I didn't know that they paid Congressmen

00:21:41.540 --> 00:21:43.190
in cash." They didn't.

00:21:43.190 --> 00:21:43.559
[laughter]

00:21:43.559 --> 00:21:47.340
They just discovered that there would be cash on their desk and they needed a place to keep

00:21:47.340 --> 00:21:52.390
it. [laughter] So, that was the way things were. But that's not the problem today. Our

00:21:52.390 --> 00:21:56.830
Congress, in that sense, is the cleanest Congress in the history of Congress. It's not filled

00:21:56.830 --> 00:21:58.220
with Rod Blagojeviches.

00:21:58.220 --> 00:22:02.580
It's not filled with people who are violating any law. None of the corruption I'm talking

00:22:02.580 --> 00:22:10.540
about is illegal. It's all legal, in plain sight. But it is corruption because it's relative

00:22:10.540 --> 00:22:16.590
to the baseline the framers gave us of the dependence upon the people alone. We have

00:22:16.590 --> 00:22:19.070
corrupted that dependence.

00:22:19.070 --> 00:22:23.860
It is a dependence corruption because the wrong dependence has been allowed to step

00:22:23.860 --> 00:22:29.670
into the middle of this system. So then, what does the corruption do? How does it affect

00:22:29.670 --> 00:22:35.590
the results? Well, you can think about its effect in substance. But it turns out, interestingly,

00:22:35.590 --> 00:22:41.470
bizarrely, but interestingly, this controversy about whether it affects the results.

00:22:41.470 --> 00:22:47.210
There's some people who believe it doesn't affect the results. Indeed, the former Chairman

00:22:47.210 --> 00:22:54.700
of the Federal Election Commission, Bradley Smith--I quote in his book, said this. "The

00:22:54.700 --> 00:22:59.700
evidence is pretty overwhelming that money does not play much of a role in what goes

00:22:59.700 --> 00:23:04.140
on in terms of legislative voting patterns and legislative behavior.

00:23:04.140 --> 00:23:09.590
The consensus about that among people who have studied it, is roughly the same as the

00:23:09.590 --> 00:23:13.540
consensus among scientists that global warming is taking place."

00:23:13.540 --> 00:23:14.410
[laughter]

00:23:14.410 --> 00:23:21.000
Now, to be clear, Bradley Smith is not a global warming denier. He is a corruption denier.

00:23:21.000 --> 00:23:24.020
And he said this--we were on in interview on the radio. I just couldn't believe it.

00:23:24.020 --> 00:23:27.410
I had to tweet it. But then I got in a lot of trouble for this hash tag.

00:23:27.410 --> 00:23:27.640
[laughter]

00:23:27.640 --> 00:23:30.190
But of course, that hash tag just means Bradley Smith--

00:23:30.190 --> 00:23:30.570
[laughter]

00:23:30.570 --> 00:23:37.490
just talking about--. OK. So, do we have evidence that the results are a function of the money?

00:23:37.490 --> 00:23:41.360
Well, there's lots of recent studies that are beginning to make this absolutely compelling.

00:23:41.360 --> 00:23:45.460
One of my favorites is this piece by Clayton Peoples that looks at seven thousand votes

00:23:45.460 --> 00:23:47.559
over a period of 1991 to 2006.

00:23:47.559 --> 00:23:52.740
It concludes, can show a statistically significant contributor influence in at least seven of

00:23:52.740 --> 00:23:57.730
the eight Houses. The one House you couldn't show it was the House that passed the McCain-Feingold

00:23:57.730 --> 00:24:03.020
Campaign Reform Act. So they were thinking good in that one term, but not any other period.

00:24:03.020 --> 00:24:07.679
But I think more interesting is this piece by Martin Gilens at Princeton. Gilens took

00:24:07.679 --> 00:24:13.580
about 17 hundred public opinion surveys about attitudes about how policy should change.

00:24:13.580 --> 00:24:19.700
And he narrowed that down to about 887, where the attitudes of the top ten percent were

00:24:19.700 --> 00:24:22.400
different from the attitudes of the bottom 90 percent.

00:24:22.400 --> 00:24:27.929
And he asked the question, "When the top ten percent think we should go left, and the bottom

00:24:27.929 --> 00:24:31.330
90 percent think we should go right"-- I don't mean that left and right politically. I just

00:24:31.330 --> 00:24:34.919
mean go one direction and the other wanna go the other direction. "--which way do we

00:24:34.919 --> 00:24:35.710
go?"

00:24:35.710 --> 00:24:41.429
And what he found was "when Americans with different income levels differ in their policy

00:24:41.429 --> 00:24:47.130
preferences, actual policy outcomes strongly reflect the preferences of the most affluent,

00:24:47.130 --> 00:24:53.480
but bare virtually no relationship to the preferences of the poor or middle income Americans."

00:24:53.480 --> 00:24:59.929
There is a vast discrepancy between what our Congress does if it in fact were following

00:24:59.929 --> 00:25:05.320
the people alone, and what our Congress does given that it's following the thing I'm taking

00:25:05.320 --> 00:25:09.700
for as the proxy for the funders. OK. That's substance.

00:25:09.700 --> 00:25:14.140
But here, you can also just more easily identify agenda because remember, Brad Smith also said

00:25:14.140 --> 00:25:19.010
it doesn't affect legislative behavior. And here, there is no basis for suggesting it

00:25:19.010 --> 00:25:22.610
doesn't affect legislative behavior. Here's just one example. If I asked you, "What was

00:25:22.610 --> 00:25:28.679
the number one issue Congress spent its time on in the first four months of this year?"

00:25:28.679 --> 00:25:33.700
It's felt like many years this year, but just the first four months. We're in the middle

00:25:33.700 --> 00:25:39.570
of two wars, huge unemployment problems, huge budget deficit problems. Still have a bunch

00:25:39.570 --> 00:25:42.770
of questions around health care and still have a bunch of questions around global warming

00:25:42.770 --> 00:25:44.440
that have not even begun to be addressed.

00:25:44.440 --> 00:25:49.090
What was the issue they spent most of their time dealing with? The answer is the bank

00:25:49.090 --> 00:25:54.330
swipe fee controversy. Now, what's the bank swipe fee controversy? Well, the bank swipe

00:25:54.330 --> 00:25:58.470
fee controversy is whether banks, when you used your debit card, get to charge more,

00:25:58.470 --> 00:26:02.840
or retailers when you use your debit card get to be charged less for the use of debit

00:26:02.840 --> 00:26:03.750
cards.

00:26:03.750 --> 00:26:08.610
That is the critical national issue that dominated the Congressional agenda for the first four

00:26:08.610 --> 00:26:12.440
months. And you think, "Well, why would that ever be? Why would swipe fees be the center

00:26:12.440 --> 00:26:13.320
of what they care about?"

00:26:13.320 --> 00:26:18.049
How many members of Congress got elected going down there saying, "The thing I'm going for

00:26:18.049 --> 00:26:22.660
is to deal with that swipe fee controversy." Right? Well, the answer is one Senator described

00:26:22.660 --> 00:26:26.510
it like this. "The fights down here can be put into two or three categories: The big

00:26:26.510 --> 00:26:31.340
greedy bastards against the big greedy bastards; the big greedy bastards against the little

00:26:31.340 --> 00:26:36.059
greedy bastards; and some cases even the other little greedy bastards against the other little

00:26:36.059 --> 00:26:37.710
greedy bastards."

00:26:37.710 --> 00:26:38.330
[laughter]

00:26:38.330 --> 00:26:42.000
So we have this kind of controversy. And here's the money line, so to speak. I don't even

00:26:42.000 --> 00:26:47.520
think the authors, Zach Carter and Ryan Grimm, saw the significance of this, but this is

00:26:47.520 --> 00:26:49.040
the real money line in the piece.

00:26:49.040 --> 00:26:54.000
They say, "The clock never ticks down to zero in Washington: one year's law is the next

00:26:54.000 --> 00:26:59.860
year's repeal target. Politicians, showered with cash from card companies and giant retailers

00:26:59.860 --> 00:27:06.100
alike, have been moving back and forth between camps, paid handsomely for their shifting

00:27:06.100 --> 00:27:06.770
allegiances."

00:27:06.770 --> 00:27:13.150
So, it's not just tax policy that gets architected to raise money for members of Congress. It's

00:27:13.150 --> 00:27:17.760
not just regulation that gets architected to make it easy to raise money for members

00:27:17.760 --> 00:27:22.799
of Congress. It's the very agenda of what Congress addresses that gets set in a way

00:27:22.799 --> 00:27:25.770
to make it easier for members to raise money.

00:27:25.770 --> 00:27:30.250
So why don't we address unemployment? Turns out unemployment doesn't pay so well [laughter]

00:27:30.250 --> 00:27:35.840
for Congressmen raising money for their campaigns. Now, my view is we critically need a way to

00:27:35.840 --> 00:27:41.220
change this. And we change this by fixing the dependence. If the problem here is that

00:27:41.220 --> 00:27:48.870
the funders are not the people, a solution is to make the funders the people, to give

00:27:48.870 --> 00:27:49.330
them a way--.

00:27:49.330 --> 00:27:54.660
I know that looks like one word. I mean two words, here. I don't mean give Congress away.

00:27:54.660 --> 00:27:59.410
I know a lot of people would like to do that. I mean, give Congress a way to fund their

00:27:59.410 --> 00:28:05.740
campaigns without Faust, without selling their souls, and thereby without alienating America.

00:28:05.740 --> 00:28:10.390
And the one way, and I increasing think the only way to do this, is to commit to a system

00:28:10.390 --> 00:28:15.890
of publicly funding public elections. Now, a particular brand of public funding is what

00:28:15.890 --> 00:28:21.809
I want to pedal here. I want a public funding that changes from large-dollar funded campaigns

00:28:21.809 --> 00:28:23.610
to small-dollar funded campaigns.

00:28:23.610 --> 00:28:28.700
And there are lots of examples of this around the country. Three states in particular, Arizona,

00:28:28.700 --> 00:28:34.419
Maine, and Connecticut, have systems where candidates opt into a regime where they take

00:28:34.419 --> 00:28:40.150
small dollar contributions only and the regime effectively amplifies those contributions,

00:28:40.150 --> 00:28:45.220
so that they can successfully wage a campaign having never taken a large dollar contribution

00:28:45.220 --> 00:28:45.940
from anybody.

00:28:45.940 --> 00:28:50.289
There are many ways to do that. I describe one in my book that's a little different from

00:28:50.289 --> 00:28:55.600
what Maine and Connecticut have done. And I can talk about that in questions, but the

00:28:55.600 --> 00:29:00.169
point I want you to recognize, the critical point about this way of funding elections,

00:29:00.169 --> 00:29:05.700
is if we had an election where the majority of Congress--the vast majority of Congress--took

00:29:05.700 --> 00:29:14.110
small dollar contributions only, then we all could believe, as we all want to believe,

00:29:14.110 --> 00:29:18.070
[laughter] that when Congress did something stupid it was either because there were too

00:29:18.070 --> 00:29:22.160
many Democrats or because there were too many Republicans, or because they just didn't understand

00:29:22.160 --> 00:29:23.549
what they were doing.

00:29:23.549 --> 00:29:30.669
But not because of the money. The essential element of mistrust and cynicism in the system

00:29:30.669 --> 00:29:35.929
would've been removed by an alternative funding system that gave us no reason to doubt the

00:29:35.929 --> 00:29:39.539
integrity or credibility of what that system was doing.

00:29:39.539 --> 00:29:47.179
Now, this is a way, I believe, to create a reassertion of the dominance of the people

00:29:47.179 --> 00:29:51.570
and the dependence the framers intended and to restore the institution of Congress to

00:29:51.570 --> 00:29:55.890
at least be a little bit more popular than King George at the founding.

00:29:55.890 --> 00:29:56.090
[laughter]

00:29:56.090 --> 00:30:00.419
OK. Now that's the argument. Here's the hard question. How do you get there? I don't think

00:30:00.419 --> 00:30:05.549
it's hard to describe the problem. We all believe we believed in the problem before

00:30:05.549 --> 00:30:06.850
I even said anything about it.

00:30:06.850 --> 00:30:10.150
And it's not even hard, I think, to describe a solution. I'm happy to tell you more about

00:30:10.150 --> 00:30:16.650
mine, but I think the solution is pretty clear. What is hard--maybe what's impossibly hard--is

00:30:16.650 --> 00:30:23.160
to imagine the political movement that brings about the solution. And the reason for that

00:30:23.160 --> 00:30:28.330
is an insight given to me by Congressman Jim Cooper, Democrat from Tennessee, who has been

00:30:28.330 --> 00:30:30.980
in Congress for as long all but about 20 other members of Congress.

00:30:30.980 --> 00:30:35.360
And Cooper said this. He told me "the problem with Capitol Hill is it has become a quote

00:30:35.360 --> 00:30:43.289
'Farm league for K Street.'" K Street, the home of lobbyists. A farm league for K Street,

00:30:43.289 --> 00:30:47.289
meaning members and staffers and bureaucrats have this increasingly common business model

00:30:47.289 --> 00:30:48.400
in the back of their head.

00:30:48.400 --> 00:30:55.570
The business model is focused on their life after government, their life as lobbyists.

00:30:55.570 --> 00:31:00.710
Public Citizen calculated between 1998 and 2004, 50 percent of Senators left to become

00:31:00.710 --> 00:31:04.830
lobbyists. Forty-two percent of the members of the House. Those numbers have only gone

00:31:04.830 --> 00:31:06.250
up.

00:31:06.250 --> 00:31:11.980
And so, in a world where everyone depends upon the existing system surviving, because

00:31:11.980 --> 00:31:18.850
that's the only way they have a lucrative after-government future, how to we begin to

00:31:18.850 --> 00:31:25.049
imagine that institution and those people--the lobbyists, the members of Congress, the staffers,

00:31:25.049 --> 00:31:30.299
the bureaucrats--ever organizing to change that deeply corrupt system?

00:31:30.299 --> 00:31:35.730
Well, in my book, I consider four ideas. One of them is the ordinary idea--the idea of

00:31:35.730 --> 00:31:40.299
passing a statute. That idea is impossible. I looked it up on Google. It is impossible.

00:31:40.299 --> 00:31:40.890
[laughter]

00:31:40.890 --> 00:31:46.610
It's technically impossible. It's impossible because there is no way they will ever radically

00:31:46.610 --> 00:31:52.679
change the system that both got them there and will carry them out in very well-paid

00:31:52.679 --> 00:31:58.990
lobbyist’s jobs. So that leads me to three insane solutions that are only improbable,

00:31:58.990 --> 00:32:00.500
not quite impossible.

00:32:00.500 --> 00:32:03.909
And the third of these, the one that I ultimately think will be the most important, is this

00:32:03.909 --> 00:32:10.720
suggestion of a convention. So, the framers of our Constitution in Article Five created

00:32:10.720 --> 00:32:15.909
the standard way by which the Constitution gets amended. That is, Congress proposes an

00:32:15.909 --> 00:32:19.580
amendment and three-fourths of the states ratify it.

00:32:19.580 --> 00:32:23.280
But then at the convention, somebody said, "Well, what if Congress is the problem? What

00:32:23.280 --> 00:32:29.730
do we do then?" And so, they set up an alternative path. The alternative path is that states

00:32:29.730 --> 00:32:34.830
can call on Congress to call a convention. The convention then proposes the amendments

00:32:34.830 --> 00:32:37.730
and those amendments have to pass by three-fourths of the states.

00:32:37.730 --> 00:32:42.530
So either way, 38 states have to ratify an amendment, but the sources of those amendments

00:32:42.530 --> 00:32:49.070
are different. One is inside. One is outside. Now, all three of these insane ideas are really

00:32:49.070 --> 00:32:55.470
just ways around what is, I think, the cancer that is DC right now. And it's recognition

00:32:55.470 --> 00:33:03.059
that the ordinary means of politics are just not feasible for this kind of problem.

00:33:03.059 --> 00:33:07.659
In this--you can think of--extraordinary times, what's gonna be required here is that we do

00:33:07.659 --> 00:33:15.059
something that we have not done in a very long time--to build a politics that looks

00:33:15.059 --> 00:33:23.030
different from this. A politics that is not--to borrow from my older work-- a 'read-only'

00:33:23.030 --> 00:33:30.590
politics--where people sit there and passively consume what's fed to them in broadcast form.

00:33:30.590 --> 00:33:34.900
But instead, read/write politics where people become more active and engaged and reclaim

00:33:34.900 --> 00:33:41.549
this from the politicians. Now, here's the hard part. I don't actually know whether it's

00:33:41.549 --> 00:33:47.000
possible for us to do it. We don't have any good evidence that we, as a people, have the

00:33:47.000 --> 00:33:53.960
capacity to actually take back power from the professional politicians and reorder it.

00:33:53.960 --> 00:33:59.860
No good example in our recent past. Lots of good reason to believe people are too disengaged

00:33:59.860 --> 00:34:08.149
to be able to do it. I do think we know, however, how that process gets started. And it begins

00:34:08.149 --> 00:34:17.200
with, first, clarity. The clarity of Thoreau. The clarity of a root striker.

00:34:17.200 --> 00:34:20.729
So it might not be surprising that the coolest website of the Occupy movement is the Occupy

00:34:20.729 --> 00:34:27.079
Seattle movement. But if you go to their demands page, you're met with this list of literally

00:34:27.079 --> 00:34:31.659
hundreds of demands, which they are now trying to decide which are the most important of

00:34:31.659 --> 00:34:33.739
their demands.

00:34:33.739 --> 00:34:39.749
Everything from protect the environment to--my favorite--end the industrial prison complex.

00:34:39.749 --> 00:34:45.819
OK. Which is significant there and also here, but that's the scope. All right. Now, I think

00:34:45.819 --> 00:34:49.929
all of these demands are important. It would be great to get Congress or the states to

00:34:49.929 --> 00:34:52.169
address any of these demands.

00:34:52.169 --> 00:34:56.899
But the point is if you come forward with a list of a hundred demands, you come forward

00:34:56.899 --> 00:35:03.700
with noise. And nobody hears anything because they can't hear everything you're trying to

00:35:03.700 --> 00:35:10.759
say. Instead, this movement needs to find a way to clarify and focus. It needs to celebrate

00:35:10.759 --> 00:35:14.029
its diversity, recognize there are leftists in that movement.

00:35:14.029 --> 00:35:18.210
They shouldn't deny the fact they're leftists. There are people on the right in the Tea Party

00:35:18.210 --> 00:35:21.359
movement. They shouldn't deny they're from the right. They should all stick to their

00:35:21.359 --> 00:35:25.729
principle, but they've got to seek a common ground.

00:35:25.729 --> 00:35:32.249
Not compromise, but a common ground so that they actually do speak for the 99 percent,

00:35:32.249 --> 00:35:36.930
not just the 21 percent of people who identify as liberals or the 30 percent of people that

00:35:36.930 --> 00:35:42.099
identify as supporters of the Tea Party. I think there's an exercise we all should go

00:35:42.099 --> 00:35:42.269
through.

00:35:42.269 --> 00:35:47.969
We should be forced to come into a room and say, "We on the left, believe this. We on

00:35:47.969 --> 00:35:54.069
the right, believe this." But then ask the critical question, whether there's a set of

00:35:54.069 --> 00:36:00.789
beliefs that we all share, that could be the foundation for some important reform. And

00:36:00.789 --> 00:36:07.940
my view is that if we could focus people's attention on the wide range of issues that

00:36:07.940 --> 00:36:13.920
they're frustrated about and get them to connect the dots--so whether it's on the left, health

00:36:13.920 --> 00:36:16.589
care reform, or on the right, government bailouts.

00:36:16.589 --> 00:36:21.430
On the left, global warming or on the right, complex taxes. On the left, financial reform

00:36:21.430 --> 00:36:25.769
and on the right, financial reform. Whatever the issue is, if we could focus them, they

00:36:25.769 --> 00:36:34.039
would see this root cause. And the root cause is this picture. A democracy that is distracted

00:36:34.039 --> 00:36:36.319
by a dependence that was never intended.

00:36:36.319 --> 00:36:43.440
And the practice of the root striker has got to be to find a way to get, we the people,

00:36:43.440 --> 00:36:52.509
to see this root. So, that's number one--clarity. Number two is a kind of boldness. Now, in

00:36:52.509 --> 00:36:58.259
the book, I make a little bit of fun of a guy you're familiar with.

00:36:58.259 --> 00:36:59.069
[laughter]

00:36:59.069 --> 00:37:05.660
So, Eric Schmidt came to a talk at the American Academy in Berlin. And it was the first time

00:37:05.660 --> 00:37:09.279
I'd ever met him, first time I'd ever heard him talk. And I was amazed. It was the first

00:37:09.279 --> 00:37:14.400
time I'd ever heard anybody lay out the Google vision.

00:37:14.400 --> 00:37:18.930
And I was astonished. I mean, I was astonished by him. He was extraordinary, but I was astonished

00:37:18.930 --> 00:37:25.150
by the Google vision. This is a place. You saw these really big ideas about how they

00:37:25.150 --> 00:37:30.059
were gonna, you guys, were gonna remake the whole world. The whole world.

00:37:30.059 --> 00:37:34.369
And I was more excited about the work going on here than I had even been in my whole life.

00:37:34.369 --> 00:37:40.009
I felt like this was amazing. So then I thought, "OK. Wow. This is a company of big ideas."

00:37:40.009 --> 00:37:46.420
And I said, "Eric, so there's a whole bunch of public policy issues where the world is

00:37:46.420 --> 00:37:47.799
against you guys.

00:37:47.799 --> 00:37:55.539
And I think you guys are right." So, immigration, anti-trust, copyrights, network neutrality.

00:37:55.539 --> 00:37:59.180
You guys are on the right side of all of those issues and the rest of the world is on the

00:37:59.180 --> 00:38:03.369
wrong side." And the reason the rest of the world is on the wrong side is exactly the

00:38:03.369 --> 00:38:05.119
corruption that I've been talking about today.

00:38:05.119 --> 00:38:10.299
So, what are you gonna do about it? Are you gonna sit around and swipe away these bad

00:38:10.299 --> 00:38:15.180
policies like flies at a picnic? Or are you gonna solve it in the way Google addresses

00:38:15.180 --> 00:38:20.400
a problem and radically remakes the world to solve it? And for the first time in that

00:38:20.400 --> 00:38:24.549
evening, a tiny idea was expressed.

00:38:24.549 --> 00:38:28.039
And it was expressed by Eric Schmidt. Because he didn't have any big idea to think about

00:38:28.039 --> 00:38:33.150
solving this, the most fundamental problem. I agree with Matt that we, as a Republic face--any

00:38:33.150 --> 00:38:37.609
idea like, "Oh, we're gonna get the Google PAC to be more aggressive in teaching people

00:38:37.609 --> 00:38:39.559
what our views about policies were.

00:38:39.559 --> 00:38:45.430
Nothing to change the core root of the problem. Just playing the system with all sorts of

00:38:45.430 --> 00:38:53.809
resources allied against you. What we need here is a Google-level idea. What we need

00:38:53.809 --> 00:38:59.339
is the kind of big idea that you deploy in every other sphere of social life that might

00:38:59.339 --> 00:39:05.019
get this democracy to the place that could address this problem that I guarantee you

00:39:05.019 --> 00:39:12.039
95 percent of experts say is impossible for the world to solve, for us to solve.

00:39:12.039 --> 00:39:17.170
Impossible. But that's the sort of problem you guys take all the time. That's what you

00:39:17.170 --> 00:39:22.900
do. That's your job--the impossible problem. And we need that. And we need that from people

00:39:22.900 --> 00:39:26.299
like you. Now, number three, we need courage. And this is also related to the company, but

00:39:26.299 --> 00:39:28.109
I won't pick on the company anymore.

00:39:28.109 --> 00:39:33.849
Instead, I'll talk about my friend, Arnold Hiatt. So, he's a humble guy. This is the

00:39:33.849 --> 00:39:36.299
biggest I could find of him on the net.

00:39:36.299 --> 00:39:37.029
[laughter]

00:39:37.029 --> 00:39:39.219
[Lawrence Lessig coughs]

00:39:39.219 --> 00:39:44.319
Arnie was the president of Stride Rite. They make great shoes, like Keds. He's also a loyal

00:39:44.319 --> 00:39:50.880
Democrat. In 1996, he was the second largest contributor to the Democratic Party. So, in

00:39:50.880 --> 00:39:55.910
1997, Bill Clinton invited him and 30 other large contributors to a dinner at the Mayflower

00:39:55.910 --> 00:39:59.729
Hotel to tell him, the President, what he should do for the remaining part of his term.

00:39:59.729 --> 00:40:06.589
So, it's this dinner of these fat cats at the Mayflower Hotel to help guide policy in

00:40:06.589 --> 00:40:09.890
America. And each of them got to stand up and address the President. We didn't have

00:40:09.890 --> 00:40:13.920
any pictures. Arnie was the last one to speak. I kind of envision it like this.

00:40:13.920 --> 00:40:18.670
He stood up and he looked the President straight in the eye and he said, "Mr. President, I

00:40:18.670 --> 00:40:25.890
know you're an admirer of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. So I want you to put yourself in

00:40:25.890 --> 00:40:33.440
Roosevelt's shoes in 1940, when he reluctantly came to recognize that he needed to convince

00:40:33.440 --> 00:40:38.239
a reluctant nation to wage a war to save democracy."

00:40:38.239 --> 00:40:44.319
'Cause he said, "You, too, Mr. President. You, too, need to convince a reluctant nation

00:40:44.319 --> 00:40:53.779
to wage a war to save democracy. Not a war against fascists, but in a certain sense,

00:40:53.779 --> 00:40:59.839
a war against us fat cats." A war against people who believe, merely because they are

00:40:59.839 --> 00:41:03.930
rich, they are entitled to guide government policy.

00:41:03.930 --> 00:41:06.709
People who believe merely because they've been successful in the marketplace, they're

00:41:06.709 --> 00:41:12.670
entitled to have dinner with the President. People who have convinced the American public

00:41:12.670 --> 00:41:19.969
that this republic does not work. Now, put yourself in Hiatt's shoes. Imagine yourself

00:41:19.969 --> 00:41:24.999
in that room with 30 other fat cats and the President, basically saying to each of those

00:41:24.999 --> 00:41:29.799
fat cats and the President, "This is illegitimate what's happening here."

00:41:29.799 --> 00:41:32.529
There was silence after he said what he said.

00:41:32.529 --> 00:41:33.430
[laughter]

00:41:33.430 --> 00:41:37.569
The only published account of the evening says that Clinton's response effectively slashed

00:41:37.569 --> 00:41:45.239
Hiatt to pieces, humiliating him in front of the group. I think 14 years later, we need

00:41:45.239 --> 00:41:49.459
to recognize that it was Arnold Hiatt who was right.

00:41:49.459 --> 00:41:55.839
We do need to convince a reluctant nation to wage a war to save democracy. But where

00:41:55.839 --> 00:42:02.599
Arnold Hiatt was wrong was in his belief that politicians would wage that war. It's not

00:42:02.599 --> 00:42:08.660
gonna be politicians. It's gonna be citizens. It's going to be us. It's going to be root

00:42:08.660 --> 00:42:09.989
strikers.

00:42:09.989 --> 00:42:17.130
And I pray it's going to be you. It is our job that requires our courage. It is our republic.

00:42:17.130 --> 00:42:25.219
It is ours, not theirs. They took it away, but we let them. Here's one more story before

00:42:25.219 --> 00:42:31.479
I stop. So, many of you might remember--actually, many of you weren't born, but OK.

00:42:31.479 --> 00:42:40.630
Many of you might remember this event, 1989. The Exxon Valdez crashed into Prince William

00:42:40.630 --> 00:42:47.019
Sound, ran aground, eleven million gallons of oil was spilled into the Sound. This is

00:42:47.019 --> 00:42:51.499
the recording of Captain Joseph Hazelwood when he called in the accident.

00:42:51.499 --> 00:42:53.619
[plays sound clip]

00:42:53.619 --> 00:42:54.329
[static]

00:42:54.329 --> 00:43:03.509
>>Captain Joseph Hazelwood: Yeah. Ah, it’s VALDEZ back. Ah, we’ve— ah, should be

00:43:03.509 --> 00:43:14.109
on your radar there— we’ve fetched up, ah, hard aground north of, ah, Goose Island

00:43:14.109 --> 00:43:26.119
off Bligh Reef. And, ah, evidently, ah, leaking some oil, and, ah, we’re gonna be here for

00:43:26.119 --> 00:43:30.469
a while. And, ah, if you want, ah, so you’re notified. Over.

00:43:30.469 --> 00:43:30.469
[end sound clip]

00:43:30.469 --> 00:43:34.930
>>Lawrence Lessig: And ah, if you want, as, so you're notified. Over. Now, as many of

00:43:34.930 --> 00:43:39.009
you are thinking, there might be a little bit of a question about whether Captain Joseph

00:43:39.009 --> 00:43:44.950
Hazelwood was intoxicated at the time this accident occurred. He denied it. He said he

00:43:44.950 --> 00:43:47.809
only had four vodkas before he got on the ship.

00:43:47.809 --> 00:43:51.579
But his blood level alcohol indicated he must have been at least six times over the legal

00:43:51.579 --> 00:43:58.140
limit when he climbed on board that ship. But he fought it. His lawyers fought it hard.

00:43:58.140 --> 00:44:02.670
There was some ambiguity in the evidence and he was not convicted. So, let's say there

00:44:02.670 --> 00:44:09.339
was doubt about whether Hazelwood was drunk when he was captaining a supertanker.

00:44:09.339 --> 00:44:15.130
What there was no doubt about was that he had a problem with alcohol. His mother testified.

00:44:15.130 --> 00:44:20.269
She had known he had a problem with alcohol. In 1985, four years before the accident, Exxon

00:44:20.269 --> 00:44:24.400
had treated him for his problem with alcohol. After the accident, Exxon's President said

00:44:24.400 --> 00:44:26.380
he "thought he had mastered the problem."

00:44:26.380 --> 00:44:33.180
But in 1986, he had his driver's license revoked for a DUI. In 1988, he had his driver's license

00:44:33.180 --> 00:44:38.269
revoked for a DUI. At the time he was captaining a supertanker, he was not allowed to drive

00:44:38.269 --> 00:44:39.559
a VW Beetle.

00:44:39.559 --> 00:44:40.519
[laughter]

00:44:40.519 --> 00:44:50.249
OK. But forget Hazelwood. Instead, I want you to think about those around Captain Hazelwood,

00:44:50.249 --> 00:44:56.700
these other officers. People who could have picked up a phone while a drunk was driving

00:44:56.700 --> 00:45:01.130
a supertanker. I want you to think about the people who did nothing because all but one

00:45:01.130 --> 00:45:04.859
of those officers did nothing.

00:45:04.859 --> 00:45:10.880
What do we think about them? Now, I ask this question because as I think about the problem

00:45:10.880 --> 00:45:18.819
this nation faces increasingly, I believe we are they. This nation faces critical problems

00:45:18.819 --> 00:45:22.700
requiring serious attention, but we don't have institutions capable of giving them this

00:45:22.700 --> 00:45:22.999
attention.

00:45:22.999 --> 00:45:34.529
They are distracted, unable to focus. And who is to blame for that? Who is responsible?

00:45:34.529 --> 00:45:40.200
I think it's too easy to point to the Blagojeviches and hold them responsible, to point to the

00:45:40.200 --> 00:45:45.999
evil people and hold them responsible. It's not the evil people. It’s the good people.

00:45:45.999 --> 00:45:47.739
It's the decent people.

00:45:47.739 --> 00:45:55.140
It's the people who could've picked up a phone. It's us. It's we, the most privileged. Because

00:45:55.140 --> 00:45:59.709
the most outrageous part here is that these corruptions, of course, were primed by the

00:45:59.709 --> 00:46:07.700
most privileged, but they were permitted by the passivity of the most privileged as well--permitted

00:46:07.700 --> 00:46:09.420
by us.

00:46:09.420 --> 00:46:15.569
When Ben Franklin was carried from the Constitutional Convention in the summer of 1787, a woman

00:46:15.569 --> 00:46:20.009
stopped him on the street and said, "Mr. Franklin, what have you wrought?" Franklin replied,

00:46:20.009 --> 00:46:30.410
"A republic, ma'am, if you can keep it." A republic. A representative democracy.

00:46:30.410 --> 00:46:41.769
A democracy dependent upon the people alone. We have lost that republic and all of us have

00:46:41.769 --> 00:46:53.259
to work to get it back. Thank you very much.

00:46:53.259 --> 00:46:54.989
[applause]

00:46:54.989 --> 00:47:08.489
I'm happy to take questions. I'm a law professor, so I could call on people if you don't ask

00:47:08.489 --> 00:47:09.170
questions.

00:47:09.170 --> 00:47:09.859
[laughter]

00:47:09.859 --> 00:47:11.239
Yes, sir.

00:47:11.239 --> 00:47:18.440
>>MALE #1: Do you have any opinions on electoral reform? I can't vote for the party I want

00:47:18.440 --> 00:47:22.999
'cause if I vote for anybody other than Republicans or Democrats, my vote is wasted.

00:47:22.999 --> 00:47:26.779
>>Lawrence Lessig: Yeah. I think that there's a whole list of other reforms that we also

00:47:26.779 --> 00:47:33.269
need to think about with democracy. The way we gerrymander districts, the way we have

00:47:33.269 --> 00:47:38.099
winner-take-all seats. All of these things I think are critically important, too. I'm

00:47:38.099 --> 00:47:41.699
trying to think about the sequence of problems.

00:47:41.699 --> 00:47:45.380
And I think the sequence of problems is, this is the problem we need to solve first to create

00:47:45.380 --> 00:47:49.039
an atmosphere, an opportunity, to begin to address the other problems. So, I'm happy

00:47:49.039 --> 00:47:54.459
to sign up with you on that once we fix the problem I'm talking about here first. Yeah.

00:47:54.459 --> 00:47:58.299
>>MALE #2: Hi. Two quick questions. The first is, what's the name of the Senator that came

00:47:58.299 --> 00:48:01.549
up with the little bastards that are greedy in the greedy bastards quote?

00:48:01.549 --> 00:48:05.469
>>Lawrence Lessig: He would not go on the record with him name, [audience chuckles]

00:48:05.469 --> 00:48:09.229
so the Huffington Post piece says it's an anonymous Senator who said this.

00:48:09.229 --> 00:48:14.959
>>MALE #2: OK. Secondly, about the Constitution Convention, using say, legislatures. How are

00:48:14.959 --> 00:48:17.999
the state representatives gonna be different from the national representatives? 'Cause

00:48:17.999 --> 00:48:22.119
aren't they just as greedy and looking to climb the ladder of political opportunity?

00:48:22.119 --> 00:48:27.160
>>Lawrence Lessig: Yeah, so state legislatures just passed resolutions calling on the Convention.

00:48:27.160 --> 00:48:30.660
And the question is, how do you populate the Convention? And here's the really insane,

00:48:30.660 --> 00:48:34.140
totally completely insane idea, that I have for the Convention.

00:48:34.140 --> 00:48:38.660
I think the Convention should be populated by a random selection, random proportional

00:48:38.660 --> 00:48:45.789
selection, of citizens. Now, people think that's crazy. And I agree. You're not gonna

00:48:45.789 --> 00:48:47.589
argue anybody into insanity.

00:48:47.589 --> 00:48:54.249
I think what you've gotta do is to show them, like let's run 30 or 40 or 50 of these mock

00:48:54.249 --> 00:48:58.819
Constitutional Conventions where we have deliberative polls where we randomly select a representative

00:48:58.819 --> 00:49:03.440
mix of people from a jurisdiction and we give them the information they need.

00:49:03.440 --> 00:49:07.279
And we have them work through the issue and see what they come up with. California has

00:49:07.279 --> 00:49:11.249
a good example of this. The California Forward Project ran a deliberative project, deliberative

00:49:11.249 --> 00:49:15.859
poll, around the question of what California should do. And the product of that is extraordinarily

00:49:15.859 --> 00:49:20.479
impressive--much better than anything the professionals did.

00:49:20.479 --> 00:49:25.449
And I think that signals the core insight, which is politics is one of these rare sports

00:49:25.449 --> 00:49:29.180
where the amateurs are actually better than the professional. Because the professional

00:49:29.180 --> 00:49:35.380
is good at figuring out how to benefit the special interests that the professional depends

00:49:35.380 --> 00:49:35.880
upon.

00:49:35.880 --> 00:49:41.380
And the amateur, like a jury, can be summoned into a state where they're not thinking so

00:49:41.380 --> 00:49:45.619
much about the special interest. So, I think the only way a Convention makes sense is if

00:49:45.619 --> 00:49:49.569
we can avoid it being captured in exactly the same way government has been captured.

00:49:49.569 --> 00:49:54.999
And I think the only way to that is to have this randomly selected body be the Convention.

00:49:54.999 --> 00:50:00.759
>>MALE #3: First of all, thank you so much for being here and for devoting so much time

00:50:00.759 --> 00:50:01.859
to this very important issue.

00:50:01.859 --> 00:50:02.859
>>Lawrence Lessig: Thank you.

00:50:02.859 --> 00:50:11.039
>>MALE #3: My question is, given the election of Obama in 2008, and then the following three

00:50:11.039 --> 00:50:17.989
years, how much of the overwhelming Democratic majorities and the election Obama have helped

00:50:17.989 --> 00:50:21.489
the momentum of this campaign finance reform campaign?

00:50:21.489 --> 00:50:25.900
In that, I think there's a lot of people who sort of generally understand the Republicans

00:50:25.900 --> 00:50:32.920
were bought, but I think when the nation was rallied around this feeling in 2008, and then

00:50:32.920 --> 00:50:36.109
the disappointment that's come out of it, I just--.

00:50:36.109 --> 00:50:44.529
>>Lawrence Lessig: Yeah. You and I share that view precisely. The book is--. Obama was a

00:50:44.529 --> 00:50:48.920
friend. He was a colleague of mine in Chicago. I campaigned for him. I worked hard for him.

00:50:48.920 --> 00:50:54.420
I talked to a lot of people in here when he first was on the trail about how he'd be so

00:50:54.420 --> 00:50:56.969
great for what we cared about.

00:50:56.969 --> 00:51:02.039
But the only reason I think he was credible as a candidate over Hilary Clinton, was that

00:51:02.039 --> 00:51:06.440
he, unlike Hilary Clinton, said, "This system is the problem. We have to take up the fight

00:51:06.440 --> 00:51:10.269
to change the way Washington works. And if we don't, our children are gonna be facing

00:51:10.269 --> 00:51:11.680
the same problems we faced.

00:51:11.680 --> 00:51:15.170
And our children's children will be facing the same problems they face." So, he made

00:51:15.170 --> 00:51:20.549
it--. He said twice at least, I have recorded in the campaign, "This is the reason I am

00:51:20.549 --> 00:51:26.809
running. To change the system." And then he got elected and he opened up the Clinton playbook.

00:51:26.809 --> 00:51:30.549
And he ran his Administration according to the way Hilary Clinton would've run her Administration.

00:51:30.549 --> 00:51:33.640
And I think maybe Clinton would have done a better job. I don't know. But if Clinton

00:51:33.640 --> 00:51:38.890
had done exactly what Barack Obama did, I think we should say, "Great. You did what

00:51:38.890 --> 00:51:43.009
would come from that kind of Administration. But you promised, Barack Obama, a different

00:51:43.009 --> 00:51:44.940
Administration."

00:51:44.940 --> 00:51:50.469
I feel it's a betrayal from what we thought we were getting. It makes it really hard for

00:51:50.469 --> 00:51:57.559
any of us to believe that reform is gonna come from the top or from any insider. So,

00:51:57.559 --> 00:52:03.369
I think that this is why it becomes critical to think about these outside traditional politics

00:52:03.369 --> 00:52:08.539
solutions, which is unfortunately, I think, the only path we've got right now.

00:52:08.539 --> 00:52:13.229
He doesn't stand credible on this issue. The one person who is credible on this issue is--.

00:52:13.229 --> 00:52:19.699
I will vote for Obama over any Republican except one. The Republican you've not heard

00:52:19.699 --> 00:52:25.069
of. His name is Buddy Roemer. Now, it's funny you haven't heard of him. I mean, he was a

00:52:25.069 --> 00:52:25.069
governor.

00:52:25.069 --> 00:52:29.140
He was a four-term Congressman. He ran a bank for 20 years without taking government bailouts

00:52:29.140 --> 00:52:35.069
and successfully created this community bank. But he has made a pledge in his campaign for

00:52:35.069 --> 00:52:38.069
the Republican nomination for President where he will take no more than a hundred dollars

00:52:38.069 --> 00:52:39.539
from anybody.

00:52:39.539 --> 00:52:44.400
He will commit to no PAC money, full disclosure, because he wants to as his slogan, "It's free

00:52:44.400 --> 00:52:47.420
to lead." But because he takes no more than a hundred dollars, everybody says, "Well,

00:52:47.420 --> 00:52:50.900
you can't possibly win so, we're not even gonna pay attention to you." So, he hasn't

00:52:50.900 --> 00:52:55.140
even had a chance to make this case in the debate.

00:52:55.140 --> 00:52:59.690
But if Buddy Roemer were the candidate in the Republican side, that would be a game-changer.

00:52:59.690 --> 00:53:03.910
If it were a Republican making this argument, then it would be much easier to imagine this

00:53:03.910 --> 00:53:05.529
argument actually having play.

00:53:05.529 --> 00:53:08.099
>>MALE #3: Thank you.

00:53:08.099 --> 00:53:14.979
>>MALE #4: Thank you for coming to talk to us today. I have a question about--. I think

00:53:14.979 --> 00:53:18.779
we all can understand that there's obviously a role that Congress has in perpetuating this

00:53:18.779 --> 00:53:22.670
system. And there's a role that we all have in our lack of action in perpetuating this

00:53:22.670 --> 00:53:23.180
system.

00:53:23.180 --> 00:53:25.509
But I think one thing, you didn't get a chance to talk about and I don't know if you talk

00:53:25.509 --> 00:53:30.799
about it in your book--I look forward to reading it--is the role of the Supreme Court and notably

00:53:30.799 --> 00:53:33.839
one of your own bosses.

00:53:33.839 --> 00:53:38.999
And how you talk about the people want to be more involved, but at this point, the Supreme

00:53:38.999 --> 00:53:46.559
Court has defined "person" to be an incredibly broad system and how we can move away from

00:53:46.559 --> 00:53:51.039
treating corporations as people without their movement and how we can actually affect meaningful

00:53:51.039 --> 00:53:53.440
change without movement on the Supreme Court.

00:53:53.440 --> 00:53:57.380
And a Supreme Court that seems very unlikely to move on that particular issue.

00:53:57.380 --> 00:54:01.569
>>Lawrence Lessig: Yeah. So, the particular version of public funding that I advance is

00:54:01.569 --> 00:54:10.069
completely immune from Supreme Court invalidation. Nothing in the Supreme Court, even this Supreme

00:54:10.069 --> 00:54:13.140
Court's doctrine, would draw this type of public funding into the out.

00:54:13.140 --> 00:54:20.150
But it leaves the problem of independent expenditures, both of individuals, George Soros or the Koch

00:54:20.150 --> 00:54:25.069
Brothers, as well as corporations, which now have unlimited amounts to spend. And it took

00:54:25.069 --> 00:54:29.880
a comedian to teach the Supreme Court that, in fact, they didn't have to be disclosed

00:54:29.880 --> 00:54:33.400
if they all could be secret because you could channel them through a C4 that would itself

00:54:33.400 --> 00:54:37.239
be identified, but the contributors to the C4 not. OK.

00:54:37.239 --> 00:54:41.729
So, we have to address the problem of independent expenditures. Now, my view is the law should

00:54:41.729 --> 00:54:46.779
not ban anybody from saying anything. I think corporations should have a right to participate.

00:54:46.779 --> 00:54:52.650
But they shouldn't be able to dominate the political process so that we have not just

00:54:52.650 --> 00:54:58.150
shape-shifting to appeal to the funders, but we have shape-shifting to appeal to the independent

00:54:58.150 --> 00:55:03.420
expenditure guys and therefore, the same kind of dependency that corrupts the system.

00:55:03.420 --> 00:55:09.589
So, the only way to get there without imagining a Supreme Court reversing itself is to give

00:55:09.589 --> 00:55:14.390
Congress the power to limit, but not to ban, independent expenditures. And if you're gonna

00:55:14.390 --> 00:55:18.589
change the Constitution from that standpoint, I say let's have an amendment that has three

00:55:18.589 --> 00:55:19.309
components.

00:55:19.309 --> 00:55:25.609
Number one, public elections must be publicly funded. Number two, contributions to candidates

00:55:25.609 --> 00:55:31.729
should be capped. I'd say at a hundred dollars--equivalent of a hundred dollars. Number three, Congress

00:55:31.729 --> 00:55:36.489
has to have the power to limit, but not to ban, independent expenditures of both corporations

00:55:36.489 --> 00:55:37.279
and people.

00:55:37.279 --> 00:55:41.269
It just has to have the capacity to create a time for election that's not just about

00:55:41.269 --> 00:55:46.549
the money. But getting to the place that we can have the chance to have that amendment

00:55:46.549 --> 00:55:51.900
passed, is the hard thing because again, I looked it up, there's zero chance Congress

00:55:51.900 --> 00:55:53.099
is gonna propose such an amendment.

00:55:53.099 --> 00:55:57.150
And so, if Congress is not gonna propose the amendment, what's the path to get it at least

00:55:57.150 --> 00:55:58.660
on the table for states to adopt?

00:55:58.660 --> 00:56:00.420
>>MALE #4: Thank you very much.

00:56:00.420 --> 00:56:01.299
>>Lawrence Lessig: Yup.

00:56:01.299 --> 00:56:07.009
>>FEMALE #1: Hi. I'm wondering about your perspective on venture philanthropy and the

00:56:07.009 --> 00:56:12.509
role of money outside the congressional system. Is it a pure good? I'm thinking, for example,

00:56:12.509 --> 00:56:16.259
of education reform, the Charter School movement, that sort of thing.

00:56:16.259 --> 00:56:20.699
Or, is there some danger there that money is talking more than it ought to, even in

00:56:20.699 --> 00:56:21.150
those worlds?

00:56:21.150 --> 00:56:26.390
>>Lawrence Lessig: Yeah. It's a great question. I don't think you can say without reservations

00:56:26.390 --> 00:56:32.390
that it's good. Although, you can say it's really great that it's out there, right? There

00:56:32.390 --> 00:56:41.019
are foundations that are not disciplined enough to insulate and protect the recipients from

00:56:41.019 --> 00:56:43.699
developing the wrong kind of dependency on the foundation.

00:56:43.699 --> 00:56:48.749
So, it distorts them in a way that I think is not productive. And so, harmful. But I

00:56:48.749 --> 00:56:55.900
think there are others that adopt a very appropriate relationship to the targets of their giving

00:56:55.900 --> 00:56:59.829
that allows them to maintain their independence, but does support their work. So, I think in

00:56:59.829 --> 00:57:04.459
a case-by-case way, we gotta make a decision about what's the appropriate kind of relationship

00:57:04.459 --> 00:57:05.739
to be drawing in that case.

00:57:05.739 --> 00:57:07.369
>>FEMALE #1: Thank you.

00:57:07.369 --> 00:57:12.189
>>MALE #5: So, we're out of time to take more questions, but thanks again for coming.

00:57:12.189 --> 00:57:13.380
>>Lawrence Lessig: Thank you. Thanks a lot.

00:57:13.380 --> 99:59:59.999
[applause]