Government

ByHeather

Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.

— Mark Twain

As I watched the latest meltdown from the latest cabinet confirmations I can’t help but think that Mark Twain may have been on to something in his assessment of people who run for political office.

It has been obvious to me for a long time that congress is broken. I couldn’t quite articulate exactly how I thought it was broken but I knew something was wrong. And then I discovered Lawrence Lessig’s latest mission. Partnering with Joe Trippi, he is determined to change congress. He makes a powerful case that lobbying and special interests have eroded the very foundations of the constitution.

Through the magic of podcasts I have heard him speak on the subject on two occasions and I concur with his diagnosis. The best of his talks was titled Coding Against Corruption. He opens with three brilliant examples showing how big money yields undue influence resulting in absurd and corrupt decisions by congress. He then goes on to make a great case that we can change the way the system works.

Lessig is a masterful speaker and presenter. The rhythm and pace of his presentations are mesmerizing. His subject matter insightful and profound. Give a listen to Coding Against Corruption. It will be an hour well spent. It will change the way you think about congress.

Similar Posts

  • What the framers meant by ‘the people’

    ByHeather

    Even though the framers were pretty bad about race, and they certainly didn’t understand sex equality, the one thing the framers got was class. They understood that the biggest risk was to create an aristocracy. And so they insisted, as Madison said, that ‘the people’ meant ‘not the rich more than the poor.’ We’ve completely betrayed that commitment.

    — Lawrence Lessig

    Watch Lessig’s entire 12-minute interview with Bill Moyerswhen Lessig was on a march to end corruption…

  • Important Moments in Life

    ByHeather

    Sooner or later we all discover that the important moments in life are not the advertised ones, not the birthdays, the graduations, the weddings, not the great goals achieved. The real milestones are less prepossessing. They come to the door of memory unannounced, stray dogs that amble in, sniff around a bit and simply never leave. Our lives are measured by these.

    — Susan B. Anthony

    I have never been very big on holidays like birthdays, anniversaries or Christmas. They seem like such artificial constructs to me. Years ago I reached a peaceful truce with my family and friends to not exchange gifts at such times. We have all been enjoying stress-free holidays ever since.

    I don’t mean to demean the important moments in life.

  • Trees

    ByHeather

    Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away; and if they could, they would still be destroyed, chased and hunted down as long as fun or a dollar could be got out of their bark hides, branching horns, or magnificent bole backbones. Few that fell trees plant them; nor would planting avail much towards getting back anything like the noble primeval forests. During a man’s life only saplings can be grown, in the place of old trees – tens of centuries old – that have been destroyed.

    — John Muir

    Like many in my generation, I devoured J.R.R. Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings with great relish. The metaphors, archetypes and stories from the rich world of Middle Earth continue to resonate through my mind many years after my last reading. One of my favorite creations is the sentient, intelligent, and wise race of Ents. These humanoid trees spoke too slowly and at a frequency too low for humans to perceive. They moved through the forest at a pace too slow to be perceptible.

    Some years ago I hiked with a friend to a sacred Native American burial ground in the mountains of Northwest New Mexico…

  • TV Ads – Too Many?

    ByHeather

    We are in the business of providing the material that prevents the commercials from all slamming together . . . that’s what we are doing here. That’s what we are doing on the West Wing set. We gotta deliver them twelve minutes of stuff to separate the Chevy commercials.

    — Lawrence O’Donnell, Jr. Executive Producer of the The West Wing. Quoted in an NPR interview, January 2006.

    I counted forty-two ads in last week’s episode of Lost. And that does not include any that aired before the show started or after the credits started to roll. Just forty-two ads in five breaks squeezed between six seven-minute segments of content. There were almost nineteen minutes of ads in a sixty-two minute time slot. That’s almost 30% of the air time dedicated to noise from advertisers.

  • Don’t make them think

    ByHeather

    If you make people think they’re thinking, they’ll love you; But if you really make them think, they’ll hate you.

    — Don Marquis

    I lived in Denver in the late ’80s. At one point I met an acquaintance who invited me to attend his monthly book club. I was in a heavy reading phase and was excited about the prospect of connecting with fellow book lovers. I was encouraged to bring a book and plan on sharing a favorite passage.

    The book I happened to be reading at the time was The Death of Ivan Ilyich, and the passage I picked to read turned out to be pretty heavy.

  • Occupy Wall Street’s Beef: Wall Street is Cheating

    ByHeather

    These people aren’t protesting money. They’re not protesting banking. They’re protesting corruption on Wall Street.

    Matt Taibbi finally articulated what I have been trying to find words for. I don’t begrudge Wall Street, or anyone, their good fortune (I seek the same good fortune). I just begrudge the way a few people have rigged the system in their favor.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.