1. How do you prevent 527-like spending or George Soros. Even if I’d never met Soros, his spending $1M on my behalf would corrupt me.

2. Wouldn’t micro-contributing and mirco-lobbying via the net help? I would send a congressman $10.00 with a message like “I’m in favor of chinchilla subsidies”. It would be transparent but ineffectual unless thousands said the same thing. It’s sort of “One dollar, one vote,” instead of “One person, one vote.” It still advantages the rich, but doesn’t freeze out the poor. Consortiums of millionaires can beat a billionaire, and mobs of salarymen can beat CEO’s.

Will you please provide an ODF (open document format) version of your Declaration?

Thank you,
James

The larger point of disagreement seems to be over whether government servants should be viewed as agents of their constituency of voting principals. I don’t want Congress, the President, or the Courts to serve me anymore than I want them to serve Bear Sterns or Halliburton. I want them to serve the long-term interests of everybody, including the non-voting minorities. And again I’m not sure that a move to public finance would be a step forward in that direction. I think the best we can do is achieve a detente among competing special interests. People (including government servants) will never be free from the influence of other people, and we don’t want them to be. We just want to know who’s influencing whom and by how much.

In mire of legalism, effective enforcement of fair campaign financing seems unlikely. So, must we, through commendable efforts of persons as Lawrence Lessig, resort only to public shaming?

If so, are strategies of public shaming being applied even handedly, such as by mainstream media and netroots? Has Senator McCain been credited at least for good intentions regarding campaign finance reform? If not, why not? Have mainstream media or netroots resolved to shame Murtha or Feinstein for their shenanigans with earmarks and funding, as much as were they Republicans? Is it appropriate to hold Obama severely accountable for electing to avoid public financing?

I doubt political campaigns would become “fairer” merely were campaign financing more constrained or regulated. In a way, money translates towards speech. The solution to unfair speech is more speech in an expanded market. Part of a solution to unfair influence in respect of access to money would seem to consist in programs for narrowing chasms in wealth (progressive consumption taxes instead of income taxes).

I would very much like to see a viable plan for reforming campaign financing. However, arguing that such reform would be a good thing if it could be done does not quite explicate how it could be done.

SO, ” WHERE’S THE BEEF?” WHAT LEGISLATION SHOULD BE PROPOSED? IF LEGISLATION CANNOT WORK, HOW SHOULD ACCEPTABLE POLITICAL MORES BE CHANGED (OR SHAMED)?

@MichaelM: True, though the same could be said of the courts, though most don’t believe that (at least the federal courts) are dependent upon this sort of soft influence. In my view, the most you can do is increase the possibility for Members to be good (in the “I’m only dependent upon my voters” sense). There are no guarantees.

@SF: 2c4c.

@kris: not less accountable, differently accountable. I agree flipping is kryptonite (especially for a pol with Obama’s image). But that a candidate flips does not show it is costless. And my statement re the FISA vote was not intended as apologia. It was intended to sharpen where there is proper criticism. I criticism him (too) for the change, but because of the political mistake of the change. You say isn’t it the problem that politicians can always shift when it is not costly enough. They can. And they should. We need to remember, we’re in a democracy, where the votes of a majority (not a righteous minority of us) matter.

@Tom: I (obviously) don’t disagree that better infrastructure would help lots. But I also don’t agree that there is no role for a lobbyist. Defanged, a lobbyist is a supplier of information to an information poor entity — government. I’d love to improve the information gov’t on its own can produce. But regardless of how well it does, more will be better.

@Cat: true enough. Thanks.

@All: Thanks for the comments, especially the sturm&dranm-less comments.

I applaud LL’s ideas on changing congress, but how many election cycles will we have to go thru, spiraling farther into debt, watching inflation erode our our currency, and engaging in military expansion around the world before we finally bring the ship of state back on course. The inertia of the ship is simply too strong at this point and those in congress and those in the bureaucracy to entrenched and too vested to give up power willingly.

I believe that the ‘revolution’ will have to be quite a bit more abrupt that LL proposes if any real change is to occur. Unfortunately, however, we’ve let Congress and the executive militarize the country in the name of security to the point where any meaningful revolution would instantly be characterized as sedition or terrorism and snuffed out before it could take root.

I like the way you think.

My interest in gaining access to all the representatives of Congress is severely restricted to my specific representative. A lobbyist can walk through any door, changing her client profile to match the representative’s particular constituency. Why can’t I do that?

Actually, I could. If every community had a broadband infrastructure, and a virtual world for its residents in place, every resident would have direct access to every voter in every district in the country. There would no longer be a need to rely on lobbyists. Information needed to make decisions would be possible without relying on lobbyists. Further, every voter would have equal access to every representative in Congress. If a representative in Ohio needed to hear from me, in Iowa, I could “walk” through their door at the click of a mouse. More importantly, the cost of a representative to stay in touch, or to reach their constituents, would drop to near-zero.

Is your fight misdirected? Might you be more effective in the pursuit of your mission by focusing on the root issue, that of giving a declaration of independence to our representatives, rather than your apparent goal to control the form of financing of power?