Money and its influence -- on politicians and on corporate executives -- are the prime reasons for the nation's financial crisis and the pain and suffering of the American public, says anti-corruption crusader Lawrence Lessig.
That doesn't mean capitalism is the problem, but it does mean political leaders can't let business interests control their decision-making via campaign contributions and pressure from lobbyists, the Stanford University professor said in a talk Thursday at the University of Pittsburgh.
"We have a Congress that fewer than 10 percent of the people believe is doing a decent job. There were more people who had faith in the British Crown before the Revolution than that," said Lessig, who also is a noted expert in copyright law.
He has been making stops throughout the country pushing for a "Declaration for Independence" -- a campaign to eliminate the chances that political candidates and government leaders can be swayed by "improper influences."
Public financing for elections is the best way to do that. A close second would be radical reform of earmarks doled out by politicians for constituents, Lessig said.
"I believe in capitalism, but what we need is a little more critical thinking," he said in an interview. "It's not about what the citizens want. It's what they (politicians) have to do to continue to raise money to stay in office."
The banking crisis is a great example of that, he said. Lobbyists for financial institutions contributed millions of dollars to politicians, with the result being eased regulations.
"When you look at the financial crisis, when you look at Enron, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the crash on Wall Street, the one thing that links these all together is the extraordinary deregulation that has happened in the last eight years," he said.
"My message is that we've lost trust in basic institutions, and one of the reasons we've lost trust is that those institutions have become dependent on an improper influence. And the improper influence on Congress is money during the campaign process.
"That makes it impossible for us to have faith in what they do," Lessig said.
Although the public must create pressure for the government to change, that won't be easy or quick, he said. True reform might take more than a decade.
In the meantime, the government's recent moves to commit billions of dollars to bail out Wall Street must leave out the executives who caused the problem, he said.
"Pittsburgh is a great place to think about this," said Lessig, drawing a comparison to the demise of the steel industry in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
"There are a whole bunch of people in Pittsburgh who suffered enormously because of economic changes they didn't cause. They lost their jobs, and ... they lost their pensions.
"The idea -- that these guys who gamble in this way for enormous profit and then come in and say the government is going to bail us out; and, oh by the way, we shouldn't have to give up our million-dollar salaries -- is outrageous," he said.
"They should suffer for this failure that they partly caused as much as the steelworkers suffered for the failure of the steel industry."
No comments:
Post a Comment