On Campaign Finance Reform
The other day my father-in-law, and all together decent guy, Bill were busy solving the worlds problems, and while we made little actual progress, we did touch on the topic of campaign finance reform. And what do you know, one of my favorite blogs, Jesse’s Cafe Americain posted and summarized a lecture by Lawrence Lessig entitled “Republic, Lost“, which summarizes his new book of the same title. Lessig’s ideas if put into practice might give the so-called 99% in America a voice in government that has been silent for quite some time. The lecture given in Berkeley is almost an hour long. If you want a quicker synopsis, Lessig was interviewed by Jon Stewart on the daily show not too long ago:
Lawrence Lessig 12/13/2011 – The Daily Show
While my own Libertarian party is generally against all limitations to personal or corporate liberty, I must break with this commonly held assumption when it comes to the issue of corporatism and its parasitical symbiosis with American government. If the fundamental axiom of the Libertarian movement is “life, liberty, and property rights”, we must concede that for but a fraction of 1% of the US population, the role of corporate finance in the election process actually serves to inhibit, and in some respects utterly snuff out our national pursuit of these ideals.
