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Electoral System That Lessig Hopes To Reform Is Keeping Him Out of the Debate (usatoday.com)

schwit1 writes: Lessig has raised a million dollars, which is nothing to sneeze at, but he's being given the cold shoulder by the Democrats when it comes to participating in the debates. I think he's got a good argument for being included — he's certainly as serious a candidate as some of the others, and I'm hearing a lot about his campaign.

Why are they keeping Lessig out? According to Lessig, it's for the same reason he wants in: "My view is that if we can get this message [of reform] into the debate it would change the dynamics of this Democratic primary entirely. This issue framed in this way totally blows up the Democratic primary."

Hillary and Bernie, he says, are promising the moon to voters, but can't deliver. Lessig told me, "If I can get on that stage and say the rocket can't get off the ground, and we have to change this dynamic first," the narrative shifts in a way that the leading candidates can't address.

3 of 239 comments (clear)

  1. Re:The Republican House by erapert · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Why can't the Democrats do the same?

    Because building up a huge all-encompassing governmental establishment is what the statist Democrats are all about. Good luck getting the parasites to bite the hand that feeds.

  2. Re:The Republican House by jedidiah · · Score: 2, Interesting

    That's not courage, that's insanity. The fringe Republican base have given up on the idea of governance. The old guard had already done that to some respects which is why they were pandering to the fringe to begin with. Now they have a perfect storm of idiocy where no one is interested in being a statesman anymore and anyone that tries gets shouted down by the fringe.

    This problem of the fringe driving the selection of candidates is a problem with both parties.

    This is also a problem with the 2 party system where your wing nut "coalition" members get embedded into your party instead of being some outside group (like in Israel).

    --
    A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
  3. Re:Sad by roman_mir · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If your goal is to get money out of politics, you have to get politics out of money, which is ... good luck with that. My point is that the entire notion that you can remove money from politics, when the fact is that politics is all about stealing some people's money by using power that is provided to the governments by the mob, who want that theft to happen, shows that people who want to see money out of politics without addressing the larger issue of government oppression of the individual is dishonest.

    Politics are used to create the divide between those, who make more money and those who make less. Politics are used to create the notion of so called 'just society' based on disproportionate taxation of those, who are in a complete minority of-course by their very definition. To tax in a disproportionate manner while expecting the votes to have equal power is disingenuous.

    Taxes are created by the governments to steal money from those, who have money, tax loopholes are then provided to those, who are willing to subsidise specific politicians. Get rid of income and wealth related taxes and then you may have your equal voting, but you will not have equal individual voting power with disproportionate taxation of individuals.