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Is America going dumb as well as fascist? |
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by Res White
(No verified email address) |
07 Feb 2010
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Is it something in the food or on TV? |
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Harvard Law School Professor Lawrence Lessig Prof. Lessig gets it, at last.
The esoteric knowledge that eluded Prof. Lessig, for so long was that the institution of Congress was broken and corupt.
Proffessor Lessig said on Democracy Now
“It has now became clear.
It’s was an obvious point.
I’m embarrassed it took me so long to see it”.
It became clear that democracy is dead in America unless we solve the problem that Members of Congress spend 50% of their time raising money from corrupting corporations so as that they can get back into Congress and the other 50% of their time making sure they do not offend the AIPAC – who, with their foreign controlled and financed organization could evict them from Congress no matter how much money they had.
And the obvious thing that connected and pushed Lessig to do this was recognizing that the same dynamic that was blocking progress in the context of intellectual property or the internet was also blocking progress in the context of global warming, in the context of healthcare, in the context of food safety. And the point is to get people to recognize, to connect the dots, to recognize that it’s each of these issues that’s being blocked for the same underlying reason. And unless we address the underlying problem, unless we fix this broken institution of Congress, we’re not going to make progress on any of those fronts. And so, it seemed to me that it was extraordinarily important not believing that any one person could solve it, but extraordinarily important to begin to push the movement to get this issue solved.
Obama chipped in and said in his state of the union address “It's time to require the AIPAC and the Corporations and their lobbyists to disclose each contact they make on behalf of a client with my administration or with Congress.
It's time to put strict limits on the contributions that lobbyists give to candidates for federal office.
With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections. I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people. And I'd urge Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to correct some of these problems.
Well, that’s all Obama will do – talk - and the corporations know it.
So it’s up to Lessig and people like him to save Democracy in America.
Lessig says what Congress needs to be doing right now is passing the citizen-funded election bill, the Larson-Jones bill.
He should go to Washington and lobby for this now.
Sitting on his Harvard ass, talking – like Obama – is no longer enough.
In the longer term he says we need a constitutional convention.
Lessig thinks that the important thing is to make sure Congress has the power to create its own independence from private interests and go back to dependence upon the people.
He right and it’s his destiny to fight for this.
Lessig should raise some funds and a jet for himself – from the likes of Soros – and go around all the States and promote the Constitutional Conference. |
This work is in the public domain |
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