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not at all on the others; and at last a downright equal division of everything be demanded, and voted.” Hacker and Pierson, Winner-Take-All Politics, 77. Tocqueville, too: “The government of the democracy is the only one under which the power which votes the taxes escapes the payment of them.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Francis Bowen, trans. Henry Reeve (Sever and Francis, 1863; 1835), 272.

2. See “How Dismal Is the Financial Future for America and Europe?” available at link #162.

3. U.S. Department of the Treasury, “The Debt to the Penny and Who Holds It,” available at link #163 (figure obtained on Sept. 23, 2010). Brian Riedl, “New CBO Budget Baseline Shows that Soaring Spending—Not Falling Revenues—Risks Drowning America in Debt,” The Heritage Foundation, Aug. 19, 2010, available at link #164 (calculations based on Congressional Budget Office baseline calculations).

4. Hacker and Pierson, Winner-Take-All Politics, 78.

5. Timothy F. Geithner et al., 2009 Annual Report of the Boards of Trustees of the Federal Hospital Insurance and Federal Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Funds, 24, available at link #145.

6. Cohn, “How They Did It,” 14.

7. Peter S. Goodman, “Treasury Weighs Fixes to Foreclosures Program,” New York Times, Jan. 22, 2010, at B1. Treasury indicates it lowered the burden by $5.9 billion. “Making Home Affordable,” U.S. Dep’t. of the Treasury, available at link #165 (last visited June 21, 2011).

8. American Bar Association, “Lobbying Law in the Spotlight: Challenges and Proposed Improvements,” Task Force on Federal Lobbying Laws Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice (Jan. 3, 2011), vi, available at link #100.

9. Carter and Grim, “Swiped.”

10. Scott Rasmussen, “50% Say ‘Rigged’ Election Rules Explain High Reelection Rate for Congress,” Rasmussen Reports 2009, available at link #166.

11. Ibid.

12. Schram, “Speaking Freely,” 135–36.

13. Birnbaum, The Money Men, 66.

14. Clawson, Neustadtl, and Weller, Dollars and Votes, 37.

15. Ibid.

16. Birnbaum, The Money Men, 194.

17. Clawson, Neustadtl, and Weller, Dollars and Votes, 36.

18. Kaiser, So Damn Much Money, 315.

19. Schram, “Speaking Freely,” 134.

20. Evan Halper, “Maker of Tax Software Opposes State Filing Help,” Los Angeles Times, available at link #167.

21. Ibid.

22. Brian Kelleher Richter, Krislert Samphantharak, and Jeffrey F. Timmons, “Lobbying and Taxes,” American Journal of Political Science 53 (2009): 893, 896.

23. Ibid.

24. Ibid., 893, 905.

25. Ibid., 893, 907. And not just taxes. As they also conclude, “firms that lobby are the primary tax beneficiaries of research and development activities.” Ibid., 906.

26. Ibid.

27. Michael J. Graetz, “Paint-by-Numbers Tax Lawmaking,” Columbia Law Review 95 (1995): 609, 672.

28. Rebecca Kysar, “The Sun Also Rises: The Political Economy of Sunset Provisions in the Tax Code,” Georgia Law Review 40 (2006): 335, 340.

29. Ibid., 335, 341.

30. Ibid., 335, 358.

31. Ibid., 335, 358–59.

32. Ibid.

33. Ibid., 335, 363–64.

34. Mancur Olson was the father of modern public choice theory. His book The Logic of Collective Action (1965) explains most powerfully just why special interests are so powerful.

35. Kysar, “The Sun Also Rises,” 335, 365.

36. John D. McKinnon, Gary Fields, and Laura Saunders, “ ‘Temporary’ Tax Code Puts Nation in a Lasting Bind,” Wall Street Journal, Dec. 14, 2010, available at link #168.

37. Clawson, Neustadtl, and Weller, Dollars and Votes, 76.

38. Hacker and Pierson, Winner-Take-All Politics, 107.

39. Rajan and Zingales, Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists, 293.

40. Ibid., 276.

41. Ibid., 294.

42. Ibid., 10.

43. Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, ed. Edwin Cannan, vol. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), 144, chapter X (“Of Wages and Profit in the Different Employment of Labour and Stock”), part II (“Inequalities Occasioned by the Policy of Europe”).

44. Rajan and Zingales, Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists, 9.

45. Ibid.