What Will Change Congress?
Apr 14, 2008
As we've written before, Stanford law professor Larry Lessig has taken a step back from his work in the copyright realm to champion a new fight against what he calls "corruption of the political process." Though he decided against running for office himself, at least for now, Lessig officially kicked off his Change Congress campaign a few weeks ago.
The grassroots effort is attempting to build support for a series of reforms -- greater transparency in Congress, public financing of elections, abolition of earmarks and curtailing lobbyist and PAC contributions -- by convincing candidates to sign on to a Change Congress pledge. Supporters hope that taking a public pledge will increase accountability once those individuals are in office, and in power.
While most people probably agree that Congress could use a little "change," not everyone believes that Lessig's approach will do the trick. Tech Liberation Front's Tim Lee gave his take on the battle against political influence in a post earlier today.
Lee writes:
The problem is that if politicians are willing to be corrupted, and special interests are willing to spend resources to corrupt them, they'll find ways to get it done. You can certainly reduce the effect on the margin--by banning overt bribery, for example--but once you've banned the really obvious categories of back-scratching, it becomes more and more difficult to make any further progress. What's going on in Washington is disgusting, to be sure, but it's not new or unique to the United States. And I think fixing it is going to be a lot more challenging than Lessig imagines.
What do you think?
Tags:
2008 elections, Change Congress, Congress, Larry Lessig, transparency
