Lessig warns of lobbyists’ influence
Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig described the influence of lobbyists and campaign donors on public policy.
By Ping Khuan Sim
Published on Friday, May 28, 2010
Wealthy campaign donors and lobbyists continue to exercise a disproportionate amount of influence on lawmakers, Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig said Thursday evening in the lecture “Rebooting Democracy.” Lessig said the influence is part of a set of “completely predictable, understandable results” of a democracy centered on a flawed system of electoral campaign finance.
The United States has experienced a “radical change in the industry of lobbying” in recent decades, Lessig said, explaining that members of Congress have become “increasingly dependent on campaign cash” as the costs of campaigning increase. Politicians are spending a significant portion of their time in office ensuring that they or other members of their party are re-elected, he added.
The recent financial crisis exemplified this problem, according to Lessig. The “explosion in campaign cash” given to the Democratic and Republican parties by large firms who lobbied for financial deregulation changed the nature of Wall Street operations, Lessig said. This exchange fostered a relationship between the government and corporations that gave lobbyists more power in Washington, he added.
Financial regulations have also protected Wall Street interests through bailouts, which “socialize risk and privatize benefit,” Lessig said.
The return on investment for lobbying efforts is enormous, which explains the amount of money poured into the occupation, Lessig said. According to one report, the return of investment for lobbying efforts can reach up to 22,000 percent, he said.
The flourishing lobbying industry has caused a “wealth boom” in Washington, D.C.
“The business of selling policy is an extraordinary profitable business,” Lessig said.
The nature of campaign finance in the United States has created a democracy that favors policies supporting the interests of the largest campaign donors, despite the insistence of politicians that campaign money “might be affecting access to lawmakers, but is definitely not affecting results,” according to Lessig.
Lessig said the “learned obliviousness” of legislators is the underlying cause of this problem.
The debate over global warming is another example of how private industries are attempting to shape public policies, Lessig said. He cited a survey of approximately 1,000 peer-reviewed science articles, all of which support the global warming findings articulated by former Vice President Al Gore. At the same time, over 50 percent of articles produced by “popular media” explicitly questioned the validity of the global warming issue, he said.
“The difference between science and the popular media is the extraordinary amount of junk science that has been spread into this debate by campaign funders who have particular and self-interested views in the matter,” Lessig said.
These donors hope to give Congress reason to delay implementing environmental-related policies that might hurt businesses, he added.
“Policies get bent to those who pay … to the effect that it weakens public trust of American democracy,” Lessig said.
A poll suggested that roughly 88 percent of the American population currently believes that “money buys results in Congress,” he said.
The solution, Lessig said, is to “reboot our democracy.”
Lessig proposed a cross-partisan citizen movement to restore the integrity of American democracy, and the link between what the people want and the policies lawmakers implement.
“We need to take control of this alternate path to delete the corruption that is our government in this sense,” he said.
Lessig currently serves as the director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics at Harvard University.
The lecture, held in Filene Auditorium, was sponsored by the Ronna and Edward J. Goldstein 1962 Fund for Distinguished Visitors in Film Studies.
What was the Film Study this Law Professor from Harvard was peddling here? Al Gore’s movie? All of these peer reviewed articles support Al Gore’s personal wealth machine of global warming which has made him richer than his family tobacco farming money and Occidental Petroleum money times 50. This Professor is a lobbysit for the biggest lie ever told and he complains about the “popular media” questioning “his” and the great Al Gore’s ridiculous idea that CO2 is creating global warming. How much is this guy getting paid to ignore all of the evidence from the warming hoaxers themselves in the form of their own e mails detailing exactly how they were rigging their results and smearing and systematically excluding scientists who were writing peer reviewed articles that refuted their side of the argument. A Harvard Law Professor paid to come to Dartmouth College by a Dartmouth Film Study Fund? Another unbelievable “Story” from Harvard.
By Brandon Lachner on May 28 | 10:38 am