[inaudible conversations] good evening, everybody. Welcome to tonights event. Thank you so much for coming despite the noreaster storm and terrible conditions. We really appreciate it. And we could not have a more interesting topic or a better panel to address it. You know, there are some people who are attracted to sort of neat tidy little problems theyd like to solve and other types of people who are attracted to chronic problems that are as old and as deep as politics itself. And curbing corruption is one of those challenges. What i want to say about the members of the panel two of them i know very well and one which i had pleasure of meeting just now is that they are people who manage to talk about this topic which can be quite distressing in an uplifting way and sometimes can make you almost feel optimistic about corruption if thats possible. [laughter] so im very honored to introduce our panelists. First, Zephyr Teachout who recently ran for governor of new york in the democratic primary. I should know, because i was her running mate. [laughter] [applause] and as the author of many books, including corruption america which is the book shes talking about today and has also authored a thurm of articles professor a number of articles professor at fordham law school. To her left is janine wedel from george mason university. Shes the author of the book unaccountable which is right here and also back there and also the author of numerous other books. And finally our moderator today is larry lessig who hardly needs introduction, my mentor in law school, my close friend and allaround person who is changing the world. Larry lessig. [laughter] so larry is the moderator, and ill let him take it from here. [applause] thank you tim. And thank you so much, the two of you for participating in this incredible event. And thank you to the new america, is it new america new york city, do i have to say it like that, or can i just say new america . For hosting this. Which is incredibly timely. And for me incredibly exciting. Because these two books, i had known zephyrs, i had seen zephyrs grow for, what, 27 years [laughter] and ive loved zephyrs book ever since you started at 5. [laughter] but janines book ive just had a chance to read and these are two extraordinary books that perfectly complement each other. And they complement each other in the context of a moment where the culture, we have for exampled on fixed on an incredibly narrow perception of corruption. We think of corruption today, corruption is basically rule breaking, quid pro quo its what criminals do can what bad people do. Its what third worlders do, thats what corruption is. So you can know if youre not a third worlder, if youre not a criminal, if youre not a quid pro quo type, if youre not a rule breaker then youre not engaged in corruption. Thats basically the view that dominates in the political space, it dominates in jurisprudence and in so much of popular and professional culture. And these two books come at that conception in two very different ways. Zephyrs book historically gives us an incredible entry into understanding the conception of corruption at the framing. At a time when america conceives of itself as defining a vision of a republic in contrast to a corrupted system which they knew and in some ways loved but believed had collapsed totally and janines account is an to account of a contemporary conception of corruption in many, many different spheres from think tanks to media to government to the academy. Very close to the work that im working on at harvard where were focused on what we call institutional corruption. But theres no significant difference between these two. Whats striking about these two books is one that theyre very very different. Theyre talking about the same thing but very different. Zephyrs book is incredibly optimistic in a certain sense. I was struck watching her run for governor that there was the feature of zephyr that was most helpful was her smile, right . So in her book [laughter] the problem which shes identified in this book is tied to a mistake which makes you feel like the problem is solvable if we could just get one or two people on the Supreme Court to change. Whereas janines problem is, her book is incredibly depressing [laughter] at the end its hard to see what exactly you would do to address this problem. Theres one moment at the end of the book its an extraordinary moment where she describes an event, an incident at a tsa Security Check where she had she didnt want to be body scanned, so she had to use special screening. And, of course, to puppish her punish her they made her wait and wait and wait and wait before they would find a special screener. And she described herself as focused and very disciplined in being as positive and upbeat and polite and kind as she possibly could be. But each five minutes she would and they would say well, someones coming. Nobody came. And so she was at the last moment before she was going to be able to catch her flight and she adopted a strategy to break this norm which was she started singing as loudly as she could [laughter] the starspangled banner. [laughter] and, of course the tsa people quickly looked through their list of regulations and it turns out its not against the rules to sing the starspangled banner, so they had no reason to tackle her or to arrest her. And so the only thing they could do was to get her out by finding somebody to finally search her and let her go. [laughter] so that was and i want to talk about this. [laughter] but the general point the general problem, the general depression of this is if were in this problem in so many spaces, so many spheres like what is the lever that we can use . So the way id like to proceed with this, most of this conversation i want to have is a conversation between these two great authors of these two really great books. And then well have time at the end for questions from the audience. But i want to start, i want to start with zephyr and allow zephyr to really introduce this idea which modern jurists have erased from our history this idea of corruption at the center of what the framers were talking about. And just help us understand how did they get it . Because in a certain sense as i read janines book, i imagine there would have been an equivalent of her book that could have been written that would describe the horrible state of the corruption in britain, but then someone saw that and then figured out how to flip it when they came to america. Yeah. The book is really my far less exciting effort to stand in the middle of the street and sing the starspangled banner as loud as possible. [laughter] yes. So the deeply patriotic book. And, you know, recognizing, it was something i have really learned from larry is ive actually started quoting you almost very bait m larry, which is verbatim larry, which is the founders of our republic, the men who wrote our constitution got many, many, many things wrong. They got race wrong, they got gender wrong, but they had some really powerful insights. And part of, i think, the impulse of the book is to say that the we are going to solve some contemporary problems, theres an extraordinary value in identifying the strains within our history in which theres extraordinary wisdom and value and then elevating those. Because its going to take Something Like singing the starspangled banner, something more than just going along and being cynical to break out of our Current Crisis of corruption. At the Constitutional Convention as i detail in the book there are many different topics, but the topic that comes out more than any other is the question of basically corruption what you might call now money in politics but different ways in which money and power could lead Public Servants to um, represent themselves, their friends, a small group instead of represents the public or their constituencies. I came across this because i was starting to try to understand what the Supreme Court was doing, like how it was defining corruption in some cases in 2006, 2007, and i said lets see what they thought about it, you know back at the beginning. Its actually quite shocking when you read a transcript of the convention, how much this was the focus, the topic. When you when the new Yorker Alexander hamilton later described the Constitutional Convention, he said we tried to enact every practicable intrigue and they were sort of in there messing around how do we put up barriers how do we put up walls . Just a few examples, and then ill answer your question more fully. You know one of things that was most striking to me is they had their own version of what we now think of as the revolving door problem where over 50 of the people go into congress now and become a lobbyist. Huge change from 30 years ago. And then also staffers come in and out staffers and as janine described so eloquently, its more than staffers its sort of a whole network revolve in and out of private and public roles in many ways. Well, at the time the revolving door problem of the Constitutional Convention era or the threat was people who would go into office to get a, go into elected office in order to get an appointed office. Get a great job at the post office. Get a great senate cure that you might not have too many obligations. So it was a way in which the king in england had really secured a lot of power to himself because you basically take a parliamentarian, and if you could promise a really wellpaid job, the parliamentarian was work for the king instead of work for their constituency. And actually mason who your school is named after described the provision in our constitution that prohibits holding an office while holding an elected office as the cornerstone of the constitution, the most important because you didnt want people going into office and serving other masters. Where they got it from, theres sort of a blend of christian and arisk to tail january thinking in the founders this thinking of corruption. But i would argue it predominates its just the [inaudible] at the convention also had something to hang their hat on. Really montesquieu puts virtue and corruption at the core of a successful republic and talks about in language which is very reminiscent of janines book the, you know, if the public for montesquieu it wasnt just the corruption of those in office, but citizenship is an office that can be corrupted. You have an obligation as a citizen to be public oriented in your public actions not in all actions. And montesquieu talks about, you know, were going to be in the real trouble when the citizens of a country sort of give up and wait patiently for their hire. Basically, wait patiently for the moment where they will be hired by one of these private entities. So thats sort of the root that i see coming into the convention. But then when the framers were thinking about, for example, the corruption of parliament right. That kind of corruption operated differently from thinking about or the thing that they were worried about was different from woring about the way an individual might go into parliament so he could get a particular appointment, right . It was the king having an improper role inside of parliament. Yes. I think theyre related. King having an improper role inside of parliament, but theres also a concern about what franklin talked about. If you put the love of money and the love of power in the same place, it will excite the passion for the love of money and the love of power in such a great way that they will be confused, and the worst kind of people will go into Public Office because only those who want to have a lot of money and a lot of power as as opposed to those who want to serve more publicly, and we should figure out systems that attract people to missing part of your question. Yeah, its surprising because its the place we agree upon most. [laughter] a dependency. Yeah. Your focus is still the individual, but the important thing is, you know, janines book brings out so powerfully is the institutional structure and incentive. Yeah. So that was the sense in which they talked about oh, absolutely. You taught me. [inaudible conversations] right. What they talked about was sort of the way in which, you know there are, theres this lovely sort of history. As you know, the language of freedom and independence are very powerful words in american history. And i focus very much on whats happening in this country. And independence at the time was seen as a kind of opposite to corruption, and ip dimension as an opposite independence as an opposite of dependence and dependence and corruption is very similar. And, actually, you can see in the thinkers that the founders relied upon. Theyll use dependents and corruption sometimes interchangeably because the problem was that you would have institutions and individuals within those institutions who were dependent had inappropriate dependencies outside and were not independent of private power, independent of private money or independent of the king. And so they certainly thought about corruption in structural and institution always. It was sort of fundamental. You need to build a system which didnt have didnt encourage the wrong kind of dependencies. Because thats the distinctive blindness of this court. This court will only think of corruption in individual ways, refuses to think about it in structural ways. Yeah. And one of the puzzles is why theyre, why theyve done that. And this is a different and then i want to come to think about the relationship to your book. But this is a really interesting difference in accounts that the two of you give. Because your book is very much a letter to a Supreme Court justice or maybe two Supreme Court justices. [laughter] and part of that letter, you know, as ive tried to emphasize it, is to the originalist on the Supreme Court, people who otherwise say were going to interrupt the constitution the way the framers would have interpreted it. Zephyrs book is a way of saying heres what the framers would have understood corruption to mean, and its radically inconsistent with the narrow conception of corruption that youre offering right now. Thats one part of this message to the framers. But another part of the story youre telling is the way in which there was a long tradition of protecting institutions like government against these corrupt that all of a sudden disappears. And the question is whats motivating it. Like, what is leading what are leading the justices to do that . Because the motivation for that type of corruption feels to me different from the account that youre giving about the motivation, you know to see corruption as just quid pro quo. That has an obvious return to the people who are advancing that idea, but do you think the justices on the Supreme Court are adopting this view . Because think they i think its one of the great puzzles, i genuinely do. And the book has some provisional ideas like why we see 200 years of a broad view one of the jobs of courts in general is to protect against all these kinds of corruption. And then we see the collapse of that understanding. So why . What is Justice Roberts really thinking . What is Justice Scalia really thinking . What is Justice Kennedy really thinking . How can they adopt this . I propose a bunch of theories and i have no idea if any of them are right. Its a genuinely provisional sort of chapter because im throwing out ideas because i want us to engage in this question. We are part of a network of what we call law and economics way of thinking about the world, and that way of thinking about the world relies on the vision of, um the selfish person the egotist. And actually i tie that pack to hobbs. Its a little bit of sort of hobbs arises. And the founders are very antihobbs january. Hobbs has an egotist view of the person. People are fundamentally selfeverybody, thats it. You want to leverage their selfinterests for as good a things a possible. When theyre thinking about policy theyre thinking about themselves. The law of economics embeds that in the law of personality. Another is related to law and economics, just a belief that the best way to govern is outside of democratic representational government. Like a market i find this so fantastical that i have a hard time even expressing it but a market is a better distributer of public goods than a kind of collective public coming together in representative ways. So as much as we can remove politics from the distribution of goods the better it is. And that visioning is politics and Democratic Politics is itself corrupt and corrupting, and so we should run away from that as fast as possible. Another sort of argument i put out there, a little more not controversial, but i know theyll disagree with me on this one is we have a current Supreme Court that doesnt have any people with current political experience on it. So they to not know of what they speak. They have a fantasy about the way politics works and they have no idea what it is like to sit in a room be making strategy and think how important that 2,000 or 4,000 or 6,000 is from a donor. And so they dont realize how profoundly corrupting the private system of Campaign Finance is. Its a kind of naivete or innocence to what they bring. So they have all these mistakes or reasons that are tied to some kind of mistake, but its hard to see them as doing it for their own personal selfinterest which is different from the kind of account that youre offering in many contexts where it certainly serves the interest of people who go from government to private interest to conceive of corruption in this very narrow way, to celebrate the anticorruption campaigns which are fighting corruption conceived in this narrow way because it makes it easy for them to then have enormous personal gains. So i think you see it as tied to that motive much more, do you think . Well i talk about structured accountability and how accountability gets structured into corporate and government organizations and then about the players and the way in which they very often arent even dont even seem to be aware of whats of what, of the terrain on which theyre playing. And, of course my background and my approach is as a social anthropologist and as someone who worked in Eastern Europe under communism and then after communism. And i studied the difference between how the system said it worked, how it was supposed to work and how it actually and how it actually works. Or doesnt work. And so [laughter] so one thing that i charted was whats called dirty togetherness, what polls called dirty togetherness. It was basically working under the table doing deals, and in that context it was people needed to do it under communism in order the buy that, get that kind of meat or gas loon or passport to travel abroad. You needed to have networks, and you needed to have these longterm sort of informal deals with people. And then after the wall fell and i was still there working and trying to understand what would transpire, what i noticed was what has been called greed corruption as opposed to need corruption which is more this oneonone corruption that takes place in a single venue that the economists like to chart as opposed to people who are working in a systemically ask and across and across institutions. So what i saw was the government onetime Government Official who also was working for a western bank who also had his own foundation connecting the dots and overlapping playing having multiple and overlapping roles and using the information in one venue for, for use in another. And fast forward a number of years to the wes and i began to see very similar due namics including the divergence between what the system purports to be and what is actually what people on the ground what we realize is actually happening. So, for instance, it used to be that retired generals when they retired 20 years ago i have a database that shows that predominantly retired generals and admirals would actually retire, play golf with their kids or golf or play with their kids. And now today predominantly that is, most continue to serve in a variety of ways in the defense industry. So, for instance, a retired general, um, will sit on a government Advisory Board that affords him access to proprietary information while at the same time serving as consultant to a Defense Company or even setting up capital, Venture Capital or being part of a Venture Capital company at the same time that hes at a think tank at the same time that hes, maybe has a philanthropic activity as well. So this is what i call representational juggling. And the problem is that we, the public its an information problem. Yeah. We, the public dont know what role or what agenda is being played out in any given context. So when that general its a problem, as zephyr said of serving multiple masters, and that goes back to the bible noted that that could be a problem. [laughter] way back then, you know . So then when were seeing a retired general on television, we have no way of knowing whether he whether theres some agenda other than, you know, his actual expertise thats being presented or whether theres some other agenda. And this problem is systemic. Unfortunately, we see it across the board in so many different arenas. Economists academic economists for instance. There was a study that came out a few years ago,umass study that showed that charted the activities of 19 economy itselfs, academic economists economists who were testifying before public bodies including congressional subcommittees and so on in the runup to the financial crisis. And after always, always they always tout and are identified by their most prestigious affiliation. So it would be and their most neutral apilluation. So it would be affiliation. So it would be think tanker or University Professor rather than that working as a consultant for a company or an industry. And so again, theres an information problem. The agenda, the agenda is obscured. And the reason that i that i think that ive been kind of prime to see it going on is because of all those years in Eastern Europe in the 80s and after communism because, um, so much of what went on there was under the radar. It was hidden. In order to get things done. You couldnt operate the way the system said you should operate. It was impossible. So you had to have networks you had to use your contacts. Even if you were an official waiting in an an estate organization, the only way you got things done was informally and thats why there were, you know, so many of these guys who were managers were drinking all the time because you have to drink with people in order to make deals. So its an institutional systemic problem. And were seeing that sort of thing, were seeing the ip formalization informallization of influence right here in the United States. Its not just with uber and air b b and these, you know Solutions People are turning to under financial stress, its a much more kind of endemic problem. And we would think that, um, you know traditionally the media one would think would be there to help us sort the out. And this is clearly investigative journalists really should be helping us connect the dots of the networks and helping us to look into peoples roles and so on. But the problem is that we know that the Investigative Journalism has been so gutted in the past years. And even and so splintered. And despite this vast Information Group verse we live in information universe we live in, another parallel that i see with Eastern Europe and some other scholars have noted it as well is that, um, that theres been this route anyization of media messaging. And jon stewart actually shows this very well. You know how hell switch from one channel to another channel to another channel. And people on different channels are saying the same thing. Theyre taking across, getting across the same message even using the same words and the same lines. This is exactly what we saw or there are striking parallels to this with late, with late under late communism, this route anyization this formulating media messaging. So how do we respond to that, we the public, we the citizens . Well we do manager that people under communism also did. We turn to powerty. We parity. So hence the popularity of, you know, jon stewart and Stephen Colbert and the sense that their presentations can convey information and truths that cant be quite stated in the media. So yeah, but let me get back to thinking about how this might be remedied. Yeah. [laughter] okay. I mean, the generals example is a very good one because, i mean, youre talking you describe how in one context its 80 , in another context its 90 of these former generals are now engaged in these consulting relationships or a relationship where theyre making, theyre trading on their former expertise. So why wouldnt i do it as well. The striking part of the general english from the economist is that you describe are talking about a general. It will require them to disclose their conflicts and almost overnight, all of them stopped the relationship because it was too embarrassing. They want to be in a position of defending themselves given their pass that is developed. They made it go away. They dont care. If the marker virtues to demonstrate the conflicts. We could think about Something Like the remedy. I actually never thought of it that way. That is very interesting its very important to reflect and what situations can people be named and shamed. Gary oscar named but the shaming doesnt take. Instead this seems like you people arent certain elite networks you continue even to get promoted even though your performance on the job would indicate that you shouldnt be. One thing ive been wondering about and would be really interested to get feedback on is the whole issue of pretty bad outsiders in the role that they can play. We just had a case recently with carbon cigar where she would run than to the flag, institutionally to play this role of the outsider and of course she was wired and she ended up exposing what she felt was a too cozy relationship tween the fad in the bags. She has been of course fired. In a sense this is what institutions and organizations and circles that people need to be encouraged to do. So the physicians who are Key Opinion Leaders who are perked or paid by pharmaceutical companies to influence the opinion of our physicians. We got away physician and a physician and not know that he or she has an influence by one of these Key Opinion Leaders who are always very high status people who are professors and medical schools and so on. What about discussions within circles but also involve outsiders. The challenge here is how to get outsiders than and how to encourage the general for the relative medical community to wonders and bad hair, they really have to Pay Attention to how people think about them. How does revolution happened . Maybe it doesnt. Thats kind of the experience you have. You are outsiders in the political process. You are defined as outsiders not because youre asked to start qualify for great representatives of the state but because you had no money. You could be treated as secondclass candidates because you have no money. They wouldnt debate with you here why would they debate with you . You couldnt possibly win because you had no money. So this feature of the structure of the system that money is so central makes it possible to exclude. So everybody on the inside is complicit in the trade. Your experience though, what a strike that your campaign as you seem to find a way to get people to react to this because of course the beos they dont care about it. But is it true . You describe what that was like to get people to understand. If i had the secret sauce of giving it away. I will say i think we were able to get through in part because theyre such a sense in the media of a deadness and political language. Ive like antipoetry of modern politics, like people just doubt sometimes you have to be a poet to be in politics. People speak so many steps away from how they would honestly speak that it feels like even when theyre telling the truth they are lying. And so to be able to have enough freedom, which we did have a part thats one of the reasons. That freedom is very attractive right now and it relates to the Freedom People feel when they see outside news sources. Its a different way of talking. Some of it is talking itself. Sometimes too much is made of the fact people are coming out to vote because they arent hearing the right message. I often think that still focuses on the magical serum the message formula that will bring people out to vote. As success people are more likely to vote if they feel something more akin to leadership portrait telling. Our Current System trains you to not be a leader. It trains you to be a banker and that is true not just to run for office because your job and running for office as larry has led the way of insisting over and over that we understand how powerful 30 to 70 of the Time Congress spends raising money. So it trains you. Forget the numbers speak about what that means. Think about what the job is so that it trains you to not be a leader and not necessarily be a truth teller, but the deliver of messages to get that money. The veteran areas too. Law schools and nonprofit heads all have the same job. We ask Something Weird of the public, which is to vote for people who do not seem like they are theaters because they are trained and following. Not trained in leaving. Part of it is without some freedom there. I talk about the people. The reason i think it important to engage now is it is so weird and rare in World History to have selfgovernment. We should not take that for granted at all or even see the threats to selfgovernment like on little incursions that are easily fixed. It is a very easy to have a democracy and yet we still have some of that shame as stooges of that shame. We still have a deeply civic sort of history and culture. We can tap into it now before people leave their technical legal rights come its important to fix the system. One thing that was striking in contrast in the problem you describe in the way youve described it is that obviously you and i have been engaged in a common project. Its relatively easy in this sense because when you call it the enemy, they are kind of nameless. The terrible system to have such a tiny number of people funding elections of a corrupted system. You can say it without feeling like you are hurting anybody you know well. Even some of our friends who are big donors would say this is a terrible system. But what is striking about this story you are telling is the enemy is what end. They are our friends. Theres no good party in that party. When you go through the people you name at certain points i cringe because i know those people and that is the really tight connection to the communist story. At the late part of the communist periods people who even understood how things had to change. It was so hard because youre at it against your neighbor coming your friends in some sense. This is who they are. When you suggest that the end we rallied the movement against these people. I wonder whos going to stand out. We are talking about the most successful, prominent people in our party no, no. I think thats the bottom line question. What weve done and what seems to be happening not just in our country, but on a much broader scale is creating a system of increasingly of outsiders but theres just a few insiders and we are living in a world where people are outsiders and you see that in Public Opinion polls across the board. Not just in this country. People no longer have trust in public or formal institutions, whether his courts or parliaments or churches or media. So its the real issue we are living with. The response to that is to go informal and to find these informal solutions. I think the only way to begin to rebuild public trust is through this sort of leadership and leaders standing not and i think only have to begin to understand that these activities are not going to serve them in a longterm and a longterm way. There are things we can do in the meantime and one of them is to really focus on how we might sound farfetched but the whole system of accountability is this checklist accountability that is everywhere. Its an education. Its in finance. Anticorruption industry. The problem is one single one low number, one simple number is supposed to convey the complexity for the help of an entire company or school or country or how corrupted country is. This has become so intimate in everything we do. This is seen in every system as accountability and yet it has the same problem we are just talking about. If accountability from the outside through checklists and measures without ethics, without this sort of can i joke for just a second. I think its absolutely essential in our continuing to name names. When i look back at the populist era and its really important because we were in a terrible place in 1900. Absolutely concentrated power, incredible networks. And journalists really lead the fight. They led the fight in a lot of a lot of ways than the journalists were naming names. It is this particular person. So last week i named a name. As far as i can tell hes done nothing illegal. But is spending millions of dollars of his own money to take over education policy in new york. He and i a lot of mutual friends. So this is real and its the way to engage the fight and also wait to build trust. If youre not naming names it feels like a fantasy where you can redistribute power. We can hope politicians will behave like you. But what im talking the context youre describing is imagining the economy or colleagues at the law school. Some of them are out there engaging in the behavior youre characterizing as corrupt behavior. Not because they are personally corrupt, but they are selling their opinions to the highest bidder. If your mother dr. , the point is these are your colleagues. To imagine the strength that it takes to stand up and name names in that context is an extraordinary amount of strength. What is the mechanism that gets us out of this. Talking about what the family have the ethics beyond the checklist is a little bit like the economist, which is the hard thing. What do we do . You know, ive concentrated it takes all of my time to figure out given how fast things are changing to try to understand these relationships and what we see in finance, we also see an education and these are systemic problems and is crucial to follow the money and you both have done a spectacular job of exposing the problems. There ive concentrated and think it is important for us to follow the players because as nasser has put it so well it is not a simple quid pro quo. Very often these players are engaged in a longterm relationship and its not simple dealmaking and its often brand making. So Michael Chertoff who has this former Homeland Security chief has its own firm is always on tv as the terrorism expert. Now the islamic state. This is part of brand building. He was not, i would assume, getting paid by the media. So the first thing i know we have to come up with solution and thats the most important thing here. The first thing i think is to really get a much better handle on the systemic major of the problem and the subtleties and how under the table under the radar. This is legal corruption that is much less visible, much harder to detect, more elusive then that correction weve seen in the past that is not the simple bribe. The first thing i think is to do what you all are doing is to try and get a discussion going. In different circles i think this crossfertilization of circles and getting outsiders what with the poster the store clerk say about this activity . What is striking is do you feel you do have a solution. I do. Weve got to stick together. This doesnt solve everything for elected officials, theres private funding. You have to have Public Financing of elections. Because the Current System makes it close to impossible to get elected without being dependent on private trust. Thats a failed system. It isnt doing what its supposed to do. Thats a plausible immediate change that cannot really impact. You will still find some brand builders, but at least there is the freedom to be an elected official and not be working for a handful of big interests. The other is break up all of the big companies. Dont ask. Lets focus on the possible positive. Its absolutely possible. Of course i think these two is tied together in a deep way. What is funny as 100 are obvious emotional connection. Its not hard to get people. Public financing is harder. But the connection is one looks at one institution and wealth accumulated how can it be used to influence power and the other is what kind of an attention to want to have exist . What are the institutions of our economy . I often think he original sin of Political Science is economics and Political Science so if we tried to study either of these in isolation from each other, we actually have a false portrait of powers exist. What that means is building an Economic System with greater distribution. So even if youre a church office, harder to be the servant of a few small interest because of the number of bases you are serving us greater. But they are united and decentralizing power. Yes exactly. Whats interesting is its actually potential. Louis gonzalez who writes about the libertarian economist from chicago writes about political antitrust and the point is the antitrust law cant just think about the efficiency markets. Its also worry about whether they are actors that are so powerful that they can ban the government. This is the reunion. His solution is the same. I was wondering when you did your Research Whether you saw it in the many strain that democracy is inherently correct then the answer to the corruption is not more democracy the less democracy. It certainly seems like that least of the way the system was set up certainly at least initially in my mind but they had in mind for a system that isnt democratic and now is the great fear they had that the two go handinhand. I wonder whether you detected any of that in your research. Yeah, there is no unity. Bushs talk about the Constitutional Convention itself and sort of the folks writing the con duchenne. There isnt a unity in the solution to the puzzle of Public Servant serving private and then how to build truly last corrupt systems. Theres a unity. The core argument of the book is that it cannot really start to say youve got corruption are wrong. We can disagree about particular solutions. You have to understand the constitution is an anticorruption document in my anticorruption remain a document dedicated not to causing needbased, but to actually build a system that has the best protections against Public Servants becoming servants of private ends. Some of the folks at the convention had that focus here that is not the dominant focus. There certainly does the pushback to the active debate within the convention between the cc more likely to be corrupt and those who see the exact opposite and those who see the opposite. So theres this double debate in different institutions are created. We have the senate and the house of representatives reflect in the different impulses and actually the madisonian approach is the senate will protect against some time of demagoguery and the house of representatives will protect against the corrupting nature of small, elite institutions. Yes, you sir. Hangs very much for a very stimulating and informative debate. The conversation and the people have always pursued entries. Theyve always manipulated and looked for a better deal and theyve always caught if thats the way we do business. Weve got a very interesting dichotomy as i understand from zephrs perspective and look at parts of the book one way or brown versus better Court Decisions that were made along the way were pretty grim and as a result this is what we got. What janine is saying essentially is we dont know how we are in the situation is so informal. And not knowing we have to have very unorthodox approaches. Way outside the rules way outside the rules. The question essentially as if we are trying to reach and reorient their point of intervention, so often we talk about the nationstates. America is corrupt or not corrupt. We know zimbabwe is more corrupt than denmark. What are the interventions, what are the institutions . That might be a area. Well, i think weve described some of them already. The reason i talked about that and i feel like i should sing it now, but i wont. Its because it was just a little example of this sort of parity strategy that was used by the yes men and there are different kinds different groups like that that is used basically a lie, what they did in one case was they put out in the media that the Company Responsible for the disaster in india in the 80s that company would send the money get reparations as people whose lives were ruined or seriously offended by it. Of course that wasnt true. But it forced the company to respond to that. So theres that eerie sort of crazy thing. That is really ad hoc and piecemeal is not systemic. We talked about regulation. Of course, one of the things we need to do is understand that regulation doesnt end with the president s signature. The double is in the details and we have certainly seen not in the aftermath of doddfrank were provisions are being watered down and cut out and so on and also the passage of laws that often leads to her can lead to unintended consequences. We have seen now with regard to lobbyists than in 2007 there were restrictions passed on lobbyists, more restrictions were put into place. That may be why theres been such a growth in what i call shadow lobbyist. The number of registered lobbyists who could actually decline by about 20 since 2007. I hate to say again we need to inform ourselves, but we really need to have a much better grasp and the world around us has changed so quick he been so dramatically that its very hard one of the things your book does very well in the history of this is to describe the wide range of experimentation that the legislature is engaged in to try to address this problem. Understanding the problem would be different than the consequence of what the Supreme Court has done is to eliminate 90 of those possible interventions. Which makes this so the only thing they can address his is one tiny sliver of the problem. So part of far more experimentation. These things you cannot do. You can pass antibribery laws than you can a Public Finance and election. You cant limit this kind of aggregate spending. Basically the range not to be glib about it but i think of democracy as a constant game of waccamaw. They will not be a permanent solution and we shall seek it lovingly. And each country and each moment in time we should address the individual pathologies at that time and continue to respond to them. I actually dont have an end of history view that we can achieve a completely stable world for those in power dont try to spend again and accumulate even more power. I guess i did the introduction. I can ask questions, too. Ive been going through this presentation becoming optimistically in a depressed spirit wanting you all agree on his remedies are one of the most interesting questions and hard questions we are facing today and transparency is overrated. All of you agree. You say the information problem. Some investigative report reveals this person unless its criminal, its like well that was an interesting story and nothing happens. And must involve locking the bridge. Or involving something explicitly criminal so people end up in jail. And they are still reporting it in the west wing with a few exceptions. So if changes the way you report. Instead of a single report about institutional corrections, that should be the ongoing story. So its not watergate reporting it is ida tarbell reporting. It is a systemic machine reporting instead of acting as if we are still at west wing land. I think the moralism is key and sort of engaging people in the artistic poetic poetic insensibility so we dont sort of put that running for office as something you do as a martyrdom or if you are really inspired. Its important to recognize the corruption that youre talking about what would be understandable with good versus bad plaques the academic choosing to become an expert in the case thats forcing her to do things things you otherwise wouldnt do but shes doing it because thats the best way she can get her kids into private school. That person is motivated for the best possible reasons and thats the idea that you ought to be virtuous. So its hard to imagine ourselves out of this without thinking of structural changes. There needs to be a real discussion. If we ourselves are playing within the Community Professional and otherwise we are playing these overlapping roles lets talk about it because it is subtle and ambiguous and we know that we tend to respond most to what our peers do and take our cues from our peers hence the structural problem. But again it isnt easily seen as good and bad. One thing is for a lot of the things youre talking about if you notice the absence of hard choices anymore in the sense of the committee and it ask credited in this great title and also newspapers when they have an opinion on something and there is the point that you have to choose. It seems different in the air that you dont have to choose. This is where i think we disagree. Shame plays a very Important Role and theres nobody whos hand i would shake and nobody that i wouldnt have a full conversation with but i think that there is a value in calling out and shaming individuals because otherwise i think it is hard to create those choices. The solution can still be structural but i think in the interim, creating the sense that there is a cost for engaging in some of these corruptions. Writing i think i agree with both of you. In the interest of full disclosure i think it is funny that you describe this concept of shame and talking about this concept of naming and shaming game you are in a public position youve donated millions of dollars in the policy goal but how can we as individuals this idea of naming and shaming that we can agree on. Thats where we really need to be investigative reporters and its become a lot more complicated because more governing and policy is outside of the formal government and people do play overlapping roles and the ethical problem comes when the roles are not disclosed, when somebodys testifying before a Public Committee and using the more neutral or prestigious affiliation as the think tank University Without disclosing the corporate. The reason that i agree with both of you is whatever he is suggesting is to this naming and shaming as a step to addressing the more it can be a step towards addressing the systemic corruption. The Coffee Coffee caviar and depends on something to do with the nature of the network. For example you said that they are just going to do it anyway. That is unfair that but that is the way that it is characterized that is the more general point. If you go onto other academic consulting industry that is outrageous, you are behaving unethically then why does this create the wrong influence but the point is it doesnt engage in the same place at shame that it might when youre talking about somebody taking a bribe or doing something thats been understood to be wrong. So this is a challenge. You are defining the wrong. And we have to believe that before you can actually invoke the emotional power of correcting another question. Im curious what the venues are for the discussion because i am sick and tired of things happening [inaudible] we talk about having the conversations. What is the new for them where does it go . Hell do we get that across when the only way to get to the moment you have the conversation is in the Public Domain . I heard you speak twice on radio we talked about the issues and that was the most important thing because every time that i donated to politicians they said its all about money. [inaudible] im tired of going to the marchers, i am too old. [laughter] i dont know except by doing. In the last week i had about six of the conversations most of them not televised and that is what i do as a way and they are about different things. One is about access to capital by black entrepreneurs and new york state. One is about education policy. One is about the questions of constitutional law. So i am personally playing around with these moments but the great passage to india connects the passage of the pros and will be exalted. So, my own personal strategy is to sort of use the persistent connection and hoping something can happen so maybe you shouldnt stop going to marchers. [laughter] first as someone that is an entirely different field im glad to hear the shout out. I am a theater director. But i guess i wanted to ask the remedy of making the public funded campaign would be great but i think that we are also talking about the cost of engaging in those things and i wondered about the cost of citizens engaging or not engaging because i think even though public funded campaigns would get a better selection of people to vote for with gerrymandering so rampant it feels like there is no cost to voting or not voting because it is going to be rigged so even if you have a better person to vote for each category, it feels like it often wont make a difference. Do you have some sort of what is the remedy to the lowerlevel of corruption . We mentioned the citizenship. How do we uncorrupted that as well flex im on a kick to get both more artistic backgrounds to run for office. So, we should talk. But i will tell you one of the reasons, not one of the reasons that the reason people are not running for office is because they do not want to raise money in the way that they currently have to raise money. It is the biggest barrier. Public finance is a key issue. We know where they run for office. As a person of color issue we know where they run for office and of course most along with all of this it is a class issue because we know people who do not have a preexisting circle of friends who can finance the first one or 200 do not run for Public Office and so i asked a young person person the other day are you not going to run for office because it is a square or corrupt cliques so we have to make it less clear and less corrupt. If changes what they do with their dalia job is somehow their job is to listen more broadly. Then you have a lot more meetings with the public and a lot fewer meetings with the super wealthy. That changes how many people engage in another way and then that changes who is voting for the gerrymandering systems. I think they are all connected. In the back. The New York Times had a powerful story this weekend about how the attorneys generals are banded together for republicans and then sending the email. And what can we do to help preserve . Larry, do you want to take the time to answer the question . I think it is an important question because there are people who are powerful representatives who are easily swapped in the money that can be devoted against them so that only answer is that it isnt a tiny few who have a concentrated power in the first stage of the election but instead is all of us that have the power to. It is still compelling. Think about the protest piece in hong kong. They were presented with eight democracy, the committee of 1200 we are going to pick the candidates and the rest of hong kong could then vote for. There are. 4 of hong kong. We should be able to vote. Of course the system that we have here is exactly that system it is a tiny number that gets to pick the candidates are. I calculate about 150,000 americans with no in the United States. As we have the same, tiny he could tiny number that has an extraordinary power that they took to the streets for. Why cant we take to the streets for it and i think part of that is dressed to see how we have been the night was kind of democracies because of the concentration. And any sensible person. I think we are coming to the time. I have to and the first one is going to be corruption is the same as dependence. Does the fact we have a different set of labor in the United States how does that change things but. Is this affected or is that sort of misguided in some way . They certainly know what the court is turning on. It is on the corporate personhood and it goes to the idea of the right to hear regardless of the creator of the speech. That said i guess id seen the Energy Around it and that energy is worth following. It may not be the technical reason for Citizens United but that is something about the way the Court Authorizes off directly directly somewhat disturbing and the Extraordinary Energy suggested this is the way that Many Americans understand their own experience of being completely out of power. My own focus of course is on a concentrated wealth. It is worth celebrating a vibrant marketplace and i think that it can be the thing of this duration of the economic market place. It is a huge problem for our country or our society is the intertwining of corporate and state power and government as separate. Those that work for the federal government are actually private contractors and you see this blended government on all levels so i would just speak to that point. [laughter] this is one of those things that rallys people and that is exciting and powerful. But corporate personhood issue is a problem and a bunch of areas. It is not so much a problem in the campaignfinance area. It is a problem if you want to force the corporation to label a product in a certain way and it is a series of decisions which was to restrict the ability to have the labeling requirement that labeling requirement that isnt directly tied to the campaignfinance. There are lots of ways that we need to fix the constitution. The truth is we could solve 90 of the problem before we get around to amending the constitution. And if you tell people they have to amend the constitution most people think thats just not going to happen. There might be a way to get more people engaged. Once she did talk about money she was talking about changing the way that elections were funded. That was a public funding system out tomorrow and almost did last year for Something Like this and that is the sort of thing that i think really motivates people in the sense of hope. We found 96 of americans believe its important to reduce both 91 percent dont think that it is possible. And those two numbers together. So we have the cuts here. [laughter] it gives people a reason to believe that it isnt impossible. The candidates are extremely happy. It is depressing and powerful. [laughter] so proudly we hailed at the twilights last gleaming whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight or the ramparts we watched [laughter] [applause]