asrabkin: (Default)
ASR ([personal profile] asrabkin) wrote in [personal profile] tim 2010-02-18 06:47 am (UTC)

Lessig is a smart guy, but I'm unconvinced.

He talks about restoring Congress's "institutional integrity". When was the last time they had it? I think it went missing sometime in the 1830s, and has mostly been absent ever since. The underlying problem is that small groups of very motivated people can outweigh large numbers of not-very-interested ones. And that's not going to change.

You can restrict direct contributions to candidates. If you wanted to ban private groups from doing targeted GOTV, from doing independent expenditures, etc etc, you'd basically have to repeal the First Amendment. I don't think there's a way to restrict private expenditures without basically having the government prohibit private newspapers from having an editorial line, and then instituting strict government oversight of reporting to ensure that the so-called newspaper isn't just a party mouthpiece.


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