[jacobolus]

Okay, but so what? Lessig has no chance of winning the Democratic Party nomination, so his campaign basically amounts to hijacking the primary to promote his message. Even if that message is “completely right”, so what? You think if Lessig gets a seat at the Democratic primary debates, he’ll be able to convince the Republicans in Congress to reverse course on campaign finance? Fat chance.

The most likely way to improve things at the moment is to elect another Democrat to office, and hope that Justice Scalia and/or Justice Kennedy resigns within the next few years, and the composition of the Supreme Court changes enough to reverse the Citizens United case. Also, hope that the Justice Department under a Democratic president stays aggressive about promoting voting rights around the country.

Beyond that, the next big hope is getting Democrats back in control of the House of Representatives, which probably can’t happen until after the 2020 census, and only if the Democrats gain control of enough state legislatures to redraw fairer district boundaries.

[Gotadime]

Having a single party in total control like that would be destructive to our country, no matter how you spin it. Both parties have legitimate points and interests that need to be represented in our system. I have never understood individuals that buy in 100% to a single party and just can't fathom the idea of the opposing party having any good ideas that need to be heard. Radicalism of any kind is dangerous - conservative or liberal.

[jacobolus]

Campaign finance reform is dead in the water as long as the Republicans control Congress (and as long as, per Citizens United, unlimited corporate spending on political advertising is considered protected speech).

So if we agree with Lessig that campaign finance reform is the most important national political priority, then electing a Democratic majority to the House is the necessary precondition. (I’m not saying you should agree with that, but it’s the premise of Lessig’s campaign.)

[gonehome]

Not really - The premise of Lessig's campaign is that the party in power is irrelevant, neither can do it because they're both corrupted by their need to raise funds (and notably that the people funding them are not the public).

This is partly why his ideas to fix it seem drastic - there really aren't any non drastic solutions that can work.

https://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_...

It has nothing to do with which party is in power - the affect of fundraising has corrupted the underlying incentives of the entire congress.

I found his book on the topic pretty convincing: http://republic.lessig.org/

[gonehome]

As a follow up - I like Lessig a lot and agree with most of his ideas. The tragic thing is that politics isn't really idea driven at scale, it's more controversy and 'alpha monkey' driven. Lessig comes off as a quiet and reasonable academic - he needs somebody as his front man that can be more forceful that the media will give more attention to (though I do think his presentations are really good).

[humanrebar]

> unlimited corporate spending on political advertising is considered protected speech

Probably an unpopular opinion in this thread, but...

It has always been protected speech. The Supreme Court just declined to make a distinction between The New York Times and an arbitrary group of citizens (or even a single citizen) doing a one-off publication.

[rayiner]

Yup. Citizens United wasn't a "is money speech case?" It was a case about whether the government could ban an unflattering movie about one of the leading candidates in the election. Its core political speech and always has been.

[comex]

So where do you think we should go from here? Honestly. I share your misgivings about regulating political speech, but then we get things like

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/11/us/politics/20...

Whether or not you agree with the slant of that article, it is a fact that Super PACs have enabled a massive centralization of political contributions - which, even if there's a limit on how much advertising can accomplish in general (cf. Trump), is still fundamentally undemocratic, and should be fought. We probably can't just go back to how things used to be, so how do we go forward?

[hga]

And people should really be thinking twice about the consequences of suppressing core political speech from those they don't like, be it a single citizen publishing a book (in oral arguments the government admitted that fell into the McCain-Feingold ban), an arbitrary group of citizens producing and distributing a video about a public figure running for office, or the eeeeevil NRA with its five million members amplifying their voices in collective action, which e.g. AlwaysBCoding in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10403569 explicitly wants to silence (note below that one of the ways to achieve such survey results is to keep gun owners in the dark about what's actually being proposed).

Is "democracy" really enhanced by silencing one very large but disfavored side of the debate, by the side that just so happens to be catastrophically losing it? Was this what our founderes were thinking about when they had the 1st Amendment to the Constitution enshrine freedom of speech and the press?

To bring this back to Hillary!, the subject of the * GOVERNMENT CENSORED * 2008 campaign Citizens United video---yes, this really happened, the FEC got the District Court for the District of Columbia to ban it, per Wikipedia it "found that the film had no purpose other than to discredit Clinton's candidacy for president", which obviously is beyond the pale---well, in the debate a few days ago, echoing Obama's recent statements, she called for outright mass confiscation of guns with a token "buyback" compensation. I could put this advertisment together in a few hours, a few minutes if I was into video editing: http://www.pagunblog.com/2015/10/16/hillary-clinton-endorses...:

The ad for the general election writes itself:

Scene 1: “In Australia, the government confiscated 1/3 of the guns in the country. In America, 1/3 would be around 120 million guns”.

Scene 2: footage from Australia of big piles of guns getting ready to be melted down (it’s on YouTube in a documentary).

Scene 3: footage of Hillary saying Australia is a good example of what we should do in America.

Note that the NRA helped demolish the 1988 Dukakis campaign for President publicizing an even more clear quote, "I do not believe in people owning guns, only police and military. I am going to do everything I can to disarm this state.", which was the sole copy on a solid black background that was the chilling, high impact cover of the November 1988 issue of the American Rifleman. They wouldn't have been able to do if McCain-Feingold had been law back then.

These people want to deny us the soap box to present these incontestable facts, effectively denying us the ballet box by keeping the vast majority of affected gun owners in the dark. They really should think about which box follows.

[wyldfire]

I agree with your all of your concerns. But what if all campaigns for office were funded with public money instead of private money?

Seems like it would solve some of the stated problems without arguing over what some would call a "loophole" but others would recognize as "free speech."

[hga]

But what if all campaigns for office were funded with public money instead of private money?

Then the game changes to who gets allocated said public money. Can't see how that wouldn't entrench the establishment a zillion times more. Note Trump's effectiveness because he can ignore the Republican Party donor class riot, which is in stark opposition to the majority of the party's base.

For those eeeevil people who nonetheless managed to get some, prosecuting them for not following one of the zillions of non-statutory but still the force of law rules they will inevitably break. Using another example of fighting gun control (because I know the most about how this has played out since the early '70s), here's just one notorious example of how that "works" http://jpfo.org/filegen-a-m/cac-info.htm (note, that's from a very partisan group, not the milquetoast NRA). That's sort of thing is also happening in Connecticut right now post-Sandy Hook.

Ah, and a useful analogy from fighting gun control: a lot of the laws in place and proposed are, as Michael Bane put it, "flypaper laws", designed to trap the unwary in "crimes" entirely lacking in mens rea or any actual good public policy results, resulting in a chilling effect on Constitutionally protected actions.

Same exact thing here, "campaign reforms" by the goo-goos, especially financial ones, have a greater chilling effect on genuine citizen grassroots actions. You have to hire really good legal council, and surprise, surprise, pretty much all those lawyers are already retained by the existing political parties and their units. And even then we see atrocities like the political prosecutions of Tom Delay and Ted Stevens, eventually reversed by higher courts but not before accomplishing the mission of removing them from politics.

[rayiner]

Public financing is totally orthogonal to Citizens United. Even if campaigns were publicly financed, you couldn't stop independent organizations from blasting the airwaves with advertising supporting their preferred candidate.

[humanrebar]

It's a good idea, but I don't see how the details work.

Would the government give out money to anyone who ran? How do you stop someone from using the funds for an election campaign that is indistinguishable from an audition for FoxNews or MSNBC contributor? No matter what the bar is for funding, the government would be picking winners and losers, right?

Would you ban private donations to campaigns? What about private speech that advocates for a candidate?

I'm not sure what that public money buys us that other regulations couldn't do better.

If we're worried about getting information to voters, requiring all public debates be in the public domain and posted in standard web formats seems like a sensible first step.

[JackFr]

If you want to keep corporations from giving money to politicians, the only effective way to do it is to stop politicians from giving corporations money.

Limiting the scope of government is not ideological -- its pragmatic and practical.

[hga]

Or shaking corporations down. A whole lot of "gridlock" is merely milking proposals that'll help or hurt various companies and sectors, and collecting contributions to continue preventing the bad or pushing for the good. Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets is (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0544103343) a really good book on the subject, taught me things I didn't know despite watching this sort of thing closely starting around the time of Watergate, like how there's a type of PAC a Congresscritter can establish that can be legally converted to subsidize their lifestyle.

This is one of the reasons for the constant changes in the tax code, despite the great uncertainty this creates for businesses and people. The obsession with short term results makes more sense when you realize long term financial planning is literally impossible (yeah, technically you might get that widget into production in a few years, but you really don't know how much money you'll be allowed to make from selling it).

[jjoonathan]

And what about politicians who give money to corporations by limiting the scope of government (see: deregulating energy markets -> Enron buys up capacity and shuts it down -> rolling blackouts and $$ in their pockets as prices spiked)?

Regulations aren't the only cause of friction, perverse incentives, and exploitative business models. They're also pretty much the only tool we have against tragedies of the commons. Deciding which regulations are good and which are bad is inherently ideological, and the declaration that we should generally assume they're bad is so extreme that Adam Smith himself would disapprove.

[JackFr]

I am not against unreasonable regulation, rather I'm in favor of broad principled regulation that takes the form laws passed by Congress and interpreted by courts. The Securities and Exchange Act of 1933 is a good example as was Glass-Steagall.

A law like Dodd-Frank on the other hand is an example of rent seeking by banks while Congress gets bought off while they act under the guise of 'reining in the banks.'

[unethical_ban]

It enrages me that you got downvoted, because I've thought this for almost as long as I've had political thought. Corporations and lobbyists would stop buying politicians if the scope of power were limited.

[tptacek]

That's fine, but as a positive-only, non-normative argument, 'jacobolus is right: the GOP opposes campaign finance reform. The issue here is the most effective way for Lessig to accomplish what Lessig wants to accomplish, not the best way to represent both parties.

[Bud]

And yet, I doubt you can point to any actual harm that occurred when Democrats did briefly hold both houses of Congress after Obama was elected. BTW, there never was "total control", at least not if you meant control of all three branches; the Supreme Court remained a solid conservative majority during that period. And the Republicans of course still had the filibuster, which is plenty of power to represent any "legitimate points and interests" that they sought to advance. And they were able to complain enough about Obamacare to flip the House back almost immediately in the next election.

If people vote for one party to control everything, maybe, just maybe, they had a good reason to do so. I see no reason to assume this would be automatically destructive to the country.

[irishcoffee]

If memory serves, the Democrats had the POTUS, the House, and the Senate in complete control for 2 years. Didn't get anything done.

I may be incorrect about this, was a while ago.

[GavinMcG]

When are you talking about? If it's Obama's first term, "complete" control would be a bit off – only 56 Dems in the Senate, and two left-leaning independents. Some aisle-crossing Republicans were needed for major legislation to pass.

And major legislation certainly did pass:

- Obamacare

- American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the stimulus package)

- Dodd-Frank

- Fair Sentencing Act

- Repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell

- Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act

more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/111th_United_States_Congress#M...

[irishcoffee]

Hmm, those are your examples?

http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/04/opinion/atlas-obamacare-poor-m...

http://www.forbes.com/2009/06/09/american-recovery-reinvestm...

Dodd-Frank = "Here, take my taxes and bail out the country. After that, create PMI. Even though I didn't cause the problem, in order to buy a house I now need to piss away 200-300 bucks a month that goes towards _NOTHING_ making it even harder to afford to own my own home." (Fuck yeah)

"Fair Sentencing Act. In 2010, Congress passed the Fair Sentencing Act (FSA), which reduced the sentencing disparity between offenses for crack and powder cocaine from 100:1 to 18:1" (Thank Christ POTUS spent his valuable time analyzing the ratios of crack and coke, fuck yeah)

DADT, fully on board with this one. Sincerely.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilly_Ledbetter_Fair_Pay_Act_o... (So more people can sue more people, b/c that was a problem before, excellent)

He is a failed 2-term POTUS. B/c of him, dems are destined to lose this election. He ran on change, funny how accurate he was.. 8 years later.

[humanrebar]

> Having a single party in total control like that would be destructive to our country, no matter how you spin it.

I'd argue it has been destructive to our country. Specifically with the way healthcare reform was passed. All democrats by the slimmest margin. Absolutely no wider support for one of the biggest changes in our country in a long time, as far as domestic policy goes. The result? More fighting than before. Complete gridlock on every other issue.

There is half a valid objection to say that Bush wasn't bipartisan either. That's not entirely true. He certainly wasn't bipartisan enough, but he certainly tried more than once (remember medicare part D? no child left behind which was also sponsored by Kennedy?). I don't think the President and the democrats are solely responsible for the bad blood. But I think a wise person would recognize that lacking ultramajority (>70%) consensus for a major rule change was a major contributor.

That's a long unpacking of why I agree. We have to find resolutions that not just a majority of people agree with, but almost everybody wants.

[Bud]

Huh? 60% support in Congress plus the support of the President plus the support of the Supreme Court (when the ACA was tested there) plus the overwhelming support of the American people wasn't good enough for you? Under what circumstances, then, WOULD you be able to accept that health care reform was a good idea and a good thing to pass?

The constant infighting caused by Republicans is a result of their corporate masters not wanting any health care reform passed, ever. And the gridlock they have created is a result of their endemic racism and inability to accept a black President. They stated, out loud for God's sake, from day one, that their admitted goal was to block Obama from doing anything at all.

Sorry, have to disagree. The amount of support for the ACA was plenty. Asking for even more support for that, in a country where we have Fox News around to brainwash a significant portion of Americans, just really amounts to insisting on permanent gridlock.

[woah]

Racism? The runner up in the republican primary is a black man. When you accuse anyone you dislike or disagree with of racism, you cheapen the term and devalue the experiences of those who are actually suffering from it.

Also, in general, you seem extremely partisan and basically want to treat politics like a soccer match. People like you are the reason that we have a corrupt 2 party system. You can't conceive of any possible higher goal than rooting for your team.

I know you'll respond to this with another laundry list of how the republicans are the root of all evil. Thanks in advance for proving my point.

[humanrebar]

60% is too low of a bar. 40% of a country vehemently disagreeing with a big change is a big deal. That's why the amendment process exists and is supposed to be used.

[Bud]

The amendment process isn't relevant here. Republicans were completely opposed to any version of Obamacare; amending it wouldn't have fixed matters for them. They were opposed in principle to any large new federal system to make it easier for citizens to buy health insurance.

Are you perhaps referring to Constitutional amendments?

[humanrebar]

Yes. Constitutional amendments require two kinds of super-majorities just for this reason. Even if technically an individual mandate didn't require a constitutional amendment (I believe it did), the spirit of the amendment process indicates that you should get 2/3 support to propose and 3/4 support to ratify fundamental changes to our government.

[Gotadime]

All in one comment (never mind the absurdity this guy has posted in the rest of this thread):

- Citing ridiculous, unfounded, and irrelevant statistics that actually, when viewed objectively, support the opposing argument

- Completely neglecting to address any of the actual points made previously

- Straw manning the republican argument (which represents the thoughts of an entire portion of our population)

- Labeling an entire party racist

- Speaking in broad, absurd general strokes about statements that never were (and, for that matter, never could be) made

- And the classic....bashing Fox News, the easiest target ever and the fast way to a pseudo liberal's heart

Bud, you've got everything it takes to be a political shill. If you aren't already getting paid for this nonsense, you should be.

[jellicle]

You seem confused about cause and effect. The GOP started their policy of total obstructionism (no votes for any Democratic policies, period, regardless of merit) in December 2008, immediately after the elections. There were caucus meetings where this plan was laid out by leadership and agreed to by all members.

I don't think you can blame the passage of the ACA in 2009 for an obstruction policy begun in 2008. Time only flows in one direction, as far as I know.

If you were less ignorant about the subject, you would probably realize that the ACA passage without much Republican support was the result of Republican obstruction policies, not the cause of them.

[hga]

I think that deserves a Citation Needed, seeing as how I don't remember that, and to double check on the putative effect, I drilled down in Wikipedia's list of 15 major enacted laws for 2009 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/111th_United_States_Congress#E...) and found that 8 were passed with large bipartisan majorities in both houses, 2 with large Senate bipartisan majorities.

[jellicle]

A history of Republican obstructionism:

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2015_02/...

[hga]

No, claims by disaffected Republicans that are thoroughly impeached by, you know, the actual on the record roll call votes I cited, and those just for 2009. "You are entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts."

And if you expected the Republicans to roll over and play dead on Obamacare, something they'd successfully fought since Harry Truman, then, well, it might come as a surprise to you, but that what we sent them to Washington to (not) do for 7 decades.

[littletimmy]

That's false, because the Democratic party today encapsulates both the old Republican and the old Democratic party. Hillary Clinton is essentially an Eisenhower Republican (if you place her into any European country she's in their conservative party), and Warren/Sanders are the left wing group.

The republican party of today is essentially a business lobby masquerading as a party. Place it into any European country, and it will be a far right extremist group.

[Gotadime]

Why does Europe always come up in these conversations, as if it's the litmus test for good policy? You do realize that's an entirely separate continent, with a different culture, history, and set of issues, right? Are you so ignorant to believe that the United States should actually be run like Europe?

To say that the Republican Party of today is a business lobby is an absurd and I'll-willed attempt to deliberately oversimplify, misinterpret, misrepresent, discredit, and ultimately slilence a legitimate political party that represents the thoughts and viewpoints of millions of American Citizens. Real people. Tax payers. Born here or abroad. Educated or self made. People that help make this country what it is.

I'm a registered Democrat and even I can't put up with this radical loyalist bullshit that aims to silence an entire portion of our population.

[littletimmy]

There is nothing ignorant in suggesting that the US should be run more like Europe. Northern European countries have higher living standards, and a pleasant lifestyle. The US has mass incarceration, poor healthcare, and gun violence.

The Republican party is financed by billionaires and corporations, which is perfectly in line with my comment that they are essentially a business lobby. What is one economic policy they have that is not pro-business?

That is not to say there are no good republican politicians; for example, John McCain is a good man. But the direction of the republican party today, with people like Tom Cotton and Ted Cruz, is decidedly psychopathic. Scott Walker is a borderline fascist. This is not a "political party" because it doesn't stand for people.

[bsimpson]

Isn't "fairer" roughly coterminous with "more likely to get people I like elected"?

I don't trust one major political party to draw unbiased boundaries any more than I trust the other.

[jacobolus]

“Fairer” in this case means “composition of each state’s congressional delegation roughly represents the composition of political affiliation among the state’s citizens, and elections are reasonably competitive in areas with mixed support”. Currently, there is no question that the Republican Party has a significant structural advantage in Congress due to the gerrymandered district boundaries in states they controlled after the 2010 census. Moreover, most congressional districts are extremely safe for one party or the other, encouraging candidates to run for office on radicalized anti-compromise platforms. My personal preference would be to see districts drawn in a neutral way.

The green states in this picture use an independent commission to draw districts, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4d/Redistri... It would be nice if more of the yellow states (redistricting controlled by the legislature) would switch to independent commissions.

[humanrebar]

I think there's no such thing as an independent commission. I'd rather it be part of the political process but improve the checks and balances somehow. Not sure what that looks like. Maybe explore special referendums or require more involvement from another branch of the government.

It's also worth pointing out that the courts have actually mandated gerrymandering at times to promote majority minority districts... which actually help create supermajority caucasian districts. We would need to stop this kind of gerrymandering or somehow establish the bright line between 'beneficial' (scare quotes for skepticism, not sarcasm) gerrymandering and corrupt gerrymandering.