Republic, Lost_ How Money Corrupts Congress--And a Plan to Stop It - Lawrence Lessig [175]
That it was a fact, as certainly known as that he and I were then conversing, that particular members of the legislature, while those laws were on the carpet, had feathered their nests with paper, had then voted for the laws….
[That this was a case of] a legislature legislating for their own interests, in opposition to those of the people….
[T]hat these measures had established corruption in the legislature, where there was a squadron devoted to the nod of the Treasury, doing whatever he had directed, and ready to do what he should direct….
[That] there was great difference between the little accidental scheme of self interest, which would take place in every body of men, and influence their votes, and a regular system for forming a corps of interested persons, who should be steadily at the orders of the Treasury….
I confirmed [Washington] in the fact of the great discontents to the south; that they were grounded on seeing that their judgments and interests were sacrificed to those of the eastern States on every occasion, and their belief that it was the effect of a corrupt squadron of voters in Congress, at the command of the Treasury….
Thomas Jefferson, The Complete Anas, ed. Franklin B. Sawvel (Round Table Press, 1903; 1792), 54–55, 85, 91, 104–5.
51. Citizens United v. Fed. Election Comm’n, 130 S. Ct. 676, 910 (2010) (quoting McConnell v. Fed. Election Comm’n, 540 U.S. 93, 297 [2003] [opinion of Kennedy, J.]) (emphasis added).
52. Speech of Barack Obama, Feb. 10, 2007, available at link #207.
53. Citizens United v. Fed. Election Comm’n, 130 S. Ct. 676, 910 (2010).
54. “Congress Ranks Last in Confidence in Institutions,” July 22, 2010, available at link #1.
Part IV. Solutions
1. 145 Cong. Rec. 25517 (daily ed., Oct. 15, 1999) (statement of Sen. Tom Daschle citing Sen. Barry Goldwater).
2. Casey Bayer, “Jon Stewart and Bill O’Reilly Bond over Campaign Corruption,” Christian Science Monitor, Sept. 28, 2010, available at link #208.
Chapter 15. Reforms That Won’t Reform
1. Clifford D. Tyree, “History and Description of the EPA Motor Vehicle Fuel Economy Program” (EPA Report No. EPA-AA-CPSB-82-02) (1982), 2–3. I was inspired to this powerful and subtle view of transparency by Archon Fung, Mary Graham, and David Weil, Full Disclosure: The Perils and Promise of Transparency (Cambridge University Press, 2007).
2. Center for Responsive Politics, Top 100 Contributors: Representative Michael E. Capuano 2009–2010, OpenSecrets.org, available at link #209.
3. Public Citizen, “Disclosure Eclipse: Nearly Half of Outside Groups Kept Donors Secret in 2010”; “Top 10 Groups Revealed Sources of Only One in Four Dollars Spent 3” (Nov. 18, 2010), available at link #210.
4. Marcos Chamon and Ethan Kaplan, “The Iceberg Theory of Campaign Contributions: Political Threats and Interest Group Behavior” (April 2007), 2–5, available at link #211.
5. Interview with Larry Pressler, June 16, 2011 (on file with author).
6. “Cause for Concern: More than 40% of Hill Staffers Responding to Public Citizen Survey Say Lobbyists Wield More Power Because of Citizens United,” Public Citizen (May 2011), 6–9, available at link #212.
7. See Jack Beatty, Age of Betrayal (New York: Vintage, 2007), 216.
8. Bruce Ackerman and Ian Ayres, Voting with Dollars: A New Paradigm for Campaign Finance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 48–50, 102–4. Ian Ayres first introduced the idea of an anonymous donation booth with Jeremy Bulow in “The Donation Booth: Mandating Donor Anonymity to Disrupt the Market for Political Influence,