[captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] you have been watching cspans special president ial program on Campaign Announcements. You will find lots more coverage of past president ial campaigns at our website, cspan. Org. Just type road to the white house in the search bar. Weve been asking you who your favorite president is and why. Gerald ford had to deal with watergate scandal of president nixon and the end of the vietnam war. Edward says bill clinton brought the deficit down, has surplus, gas was cheap. You can post yours at face. Com cspan. Congress is off but members are busy tweeting as they are on their break. A freshman democrat tweeting happy president s day and thanks to mount burden for joining me to join washingtons birthday festivities. Marsha blackburn tweets pleased to speak with a class at churchill college. Joni ernst says rate to talk to veterans today during my 99 county tour stop. Colorado republican can buck tweeting out a message and picture great turnout on a snowy day for a town hall. Lots more for you to see at your column cspan. Harvard University Law professor, Lawrence Lessig formed a super pac to back candidates that want to change the campaignfinance system. Hes as the Current System favors wealthy over others. He talks about made a pack and its activities journey recent election at the Jewish Community center in San Francisco. [applause] hello, everybody and welcome to the jccsf. Im delighted to host all of you for a terrific evening with Lawrence Lessig. [applause] a special thanks to tonights partners, Uc Hastings College of law, usf school of law mac light Creative Commons and counter pac. [applause] our guest this evening is harvard law professor, lawrence less Lawrence Lessig. He is known as the elvis of cyber law. One of the countrys most influential theorist on the intersection of law, clerk for task culture and the internet, hes shifted focus to the corrosive power of money on politics. He walked 200 miles for the New Hampshire rebellion to encourage citizens to and the system of corruption in our nations capital. The next walk starts this sunday and its not too late to book a plane ticket and join him. We have flyers in the lobby. They look like this. They can tell you how to participate. Lawrence lessig is here tonight to talk about made aipac, the crowd funded super pac to end all super pacs and what is in store for 2015. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me and josh join me in welcoming him to the jccsf. [applause] so my computer shutdown and now i have to try to make small talk. What shall we talk about as it comes back to life . The weather. Its going to be incredibly cold and New Hampshire. The high right this and it is six degrees in the place we are starting our walk. I apologize. Its wonderful to be here, back, in San Francisco. Talking about something i began here in San Francisco because i was forced to begin talking and thinking about this. My dear friends from San Francisco, aaron swartz who, the second anniversary of his death is this sunday. And whose memory is vibrant in this community and around the world. But what he was focused on, he often described to me as simple justice. As he talked to people about the simple injustice of the world we find ourselves in, there was a growing frustration. One way to understand this frustration is to recognize the way in which we refuse to acknowledge the real nature of the problem we are talking about. America has been focused for the last year on a range of problems related to race in America Michael brown eric gardner, the injustice of the systems that we feel as a system of inequality that gets described as a system of racism, and there is evidence to support the racism. This recent study of the racial distribution of death of 218 deaths involving police tries to map the predicted incidents according to race and you see the predicted incidents for whites are fewer than the actual incidence. You take this and brought this out to what the actual differences are and as the statistician summarizes, the answer to the question what is the probability we would see a distribution at or more extreme than this one, assuming race plays no factor in Police Related thats is on order of 10 to the 82. If you are not a mathematician you might wonder what that is like. You can compare it to this number 10 to the 79, which is the probability of being hit by lightning, 13 times in one year. [laughter] which means the probability of 10 to the 82 is a really, really, really small probability, which is to suggest there is a high confidence in the judgment that the race of the victim is related to the violence. There are lots of quibbles one could have with this study that what comes through in our culture is the view that this manifests a certain kind of racism. That gets framed as if it is the racism of bull connor or the racism of the 1960s. And the 50s, and the 40s and all the way back. There is no doubt in my mind there are jim close there are jim crow racists out there but there is no doubt a pattern like this is not reduced by that sort of racism. It is a different racism, maybe a more fundamental racism, a more fundamental inequality. If we were to talk about how to solve that, we would look beyond the simple image of a hateful person we would look for structure of poverty or the stupid war on drugs. Structural problems that require we think of a more difficult task, a task that solving this inequality without focused picking out the evil of individuals picking out the evil or outrage, but we dont do that. We cant do that. Not because its hard for people to understand these issues as contributing to these kinds of racism, but the focus on simple injustice the focus on the outrage, the focus on the difference between the good and the evil in this story pays structures of media that talk to us about this. It pays the activists organizations that want to rally us about this. Keeping it simple keeps the fury going. So while we get nothing done, we remain angry and focused on the simple injustice we see. Heres another example tied directly to what i want to talk about today. The simple injustice around the institution that is congress will stop that is congress. We all know the perception of their confidence in this institution has collapsed. 7 have confidence in the institution of congress. The crown jewel of our democracy according to our framers article one, congress, 7 of us trust. More than 50 call the institution corrupt. When we talk about it being corrupt, we focus on people like jack abram off jack a runoff or william jefferson, people we think of as criminals. There is a quote corruption inside this is the tuition, no doubt. But there is also no doubt that the failure of this institution is not produced by that form of corruption. It is a different kind of corruption, a more fundamental kind of corruption. It is not bad souls engaging in criminal acts, it is good souls engaged in a system that drives to this corruption. If we wanted to solve that corruption, we would have to look elsewhere. Look elsewhere from beyond the risen walls, but we dont do that. We cant do that, not because its hard. Our focus is on the simple injustice, the outrage of thinking of this institution in these good versus evil terms because it makes it easier to organize. It makes it easier to vilify the results you dont like, using it simple keeps the fury going while we get nothing done in fixing the problem it represents. The simple injustice. The simple injustice hides the real injustice. The real work its going to take to fix it. If we wanted to think beyond the simple, to understand something beyond the simple injustice, what would it be at least as it relates to the institution i know something about congress . What are the real problems here . At the end of august, hong kong discovered something which triggered an incredible revolution in the streets first by young people and then joined by people from across the city. What they discovered was the method hong kong would be forced to adopt for electing the governor. China had promised in 2007 that the chief executive by 2017 would be popularly elected but the chinas People Congress laid out the procedure and as the procedure described, the ultimate aim is the selection of the chief executive by universal suffrage upon nomination by a broadly represented nominating committee in accordance with democratic procedures. A nominating committee. A committee composed of 1200 citizens, which means about. 0 24 of hong kong. What the chinese were describing was this twostage process there is an election where all the citizens and on in hong kong would have the right to vote, but theres a nomination process where the select 1200 would have to vote. And you have to do well in the nomination process to be able to run in the election. A twostage process with a filter in the middle between the two stages and that is what triggered the strike in hong kong because the view was the filter was biased. As protesters describe the 1200 being dominated by probeijing business and political elite. As the chairman of the hong kong credit party put it, we want genuine universal suffrage in hong kong, not democracy with chinese characteristics. But is this particular feature chinese . The answer is its not unless boss tweed was an ancient chinese profit. [laughter] because as tweed put it, i dont care who does the electing, as long as i get to do the nominating. We should describe the system tweed was constructing. Lets call it tweedism. It has this form theres two steps, the nominating process with the tweeds vote and the citizens vote, and a filter in between. That is what boss tweed wanted. In the history of democracy in america, there is a long history of tweedism, most dramatically in the old south stop its embarrassing to recognize 1870, america passed an amendment to the constitution that guaranteed to africanamerican males the right to vote. The perception at the time that was passed was this would be the future of democracy in america and in fact the future looks more like this. For 100 years thats exaggerating a bit. For 95 years, it was the concerted effort to exclude africanamericans on the ability to vote to stop no place more ambitiously than the state of texas, which enacted by law and all white primer. Theres a general election where all americans got to vote. Africanamericans, if they got to register. Theres a white primary and you had to do well in the primary to run in the general direction in the general election. A twostage process that excluded in the critical first step africanamericans from the system, but the consequence that they had a democracy that was responsive to whites only. That is a profound and indira singh stage of tweedism in america. But lets think about tweedism in the new america. We take it for granted campaigns will be privately funded. Funding of campaigns is a is an essential step to getting elected to any major office. We have a twostage nominating process. To get the funders vote, he has to campaign for a, which means you have to raise money for it. Candidates spend for congress, anywhere between 30 and 70 of their time raising money to run the campaigns to get them elected. They do it in things like this where they have parties where they say for 500, you can come to a reception and 420 400, a photo up, meet and greet and reception. This is a game that gets played, but they spend an extraordinarily an extraordinary time dialing for dollars between two and four hours of a calling people they never met developing a sensitivity and awareness about how what they do will affect their ability to raise money. Bh skinner gave us the image of the skinner box were any stupid animal could learn what buttons it needed to push to get the sustenance it needed. This is a picture of the modern American Congressperson. [laughter] as the modern American Congress for some learns which buttons need to get pushed to get to the the votes they need. We develop a sixth sense. What is needed to satisfy the obligation . They become shape shifters as they constantly adjust their views in light of what they do what they need to raise money. One person describes always lead to the green. He was not an environmentalist. This is a twostage process with a filter in the middle, begging the question is the filter biased . That depends. That depends on who the funders are. We here is what we know about who the funders are. About 5. 4 Million People contributed at least one dollar to any congressional campaign, which means about 1. 75 of america contributed to campaigns. But if you take that 1. 75 of america, the top 100 gave as much as the bottom 4. 70 5 million contributors. The top 100 gives as much as the bottom 4. 75, but its only less than 2 of america we are talking about. If you look at people who gave 2600 at least that is about point that is about. 044 percent, a little less than the amount of people named lester in the united states. Thats why i called America Lester land. You look at 10,000 or more, that is. 008 of. 008 percent of america. If you think about the effect of the Supreme Court decision for the decision that created the super pac. In 2012, 132 americans gave 60 of the super pac money spent in that election cycle. Whether it is lester land or sheldon city the point is we have a system where the tiniest tiniest fraction of the 1 dominates this first stage in our election process, a twostage election, a general election where we are all invited to participate and something if you have an id, and not a white primary, but a green primary in america and it you must do well in the green primary to run in the general election. There are people like jerry brown, but you believe and your Campaign Manager believes you must do well in the green primary and so you live your life as if you live the priority. The vast majority of americans are excluded from this article first that with the consequence that we are a democracy responsive to the funders and maybe only its a little controversial im not allowed to show the princeton study. This incredible study was published last year trying to measure the effect of the economic elite on political decisions. They gathered the largest empirical study of actual policy decisions in the history of medical science and tried to relate the actual decisions of our government to the views of the economic elites and organized interest and then the average voter. They found a graph that is intuitive if you think about what this says those favoring a policy change those from zero to 100 the probability goes up. Thats the way you would expect it to be the more it is supported, the more likely it is to be adopted. Something similar with interest groups. The more who supported, the higher the probability it goes up. This is a responsive system for economic elites or organized interest groups. Here is the graph for the average citizen will stop the average citizen. That is a flat line. Regardless of the percentage of average citizens who support something, it has no effect on its probability of being adopted. As i described in england when the preferences of the economic elite and the stands of organized groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average american appear to have only a miniscule and near zero statistically nonexistent impact on Public Policy. This is a democracy where the average voters views dont matter to the probability of a policy being adopted. Here is one context in which that consequences quite dramatic. This graph was put together to describe the change in the distribution of average Income Growth over different periods across our history coming out of recessions. Heres the first one we are talking about. The bluegrass represents the percentage going to the bottom 90 and the red are is showing the percentage going to the top 10 . This is showing the top 10 getting 20 in the bottom 90 of getting 80 . You might have trouble with that or not, but the autumn 90 is getting as eating significantly more than the top 10. Here is how that carries out across the next period. The 12 the 2009 2010 recovery the autumn 90 actually lose income relative to the top 10 who gain more. This change, according to hacker and pierson is tied directly to changes in government policy and changes in government policy are tied directly to the influence of the tweeds in our democracy. This is tweedism. Its not dominated by a beijing political elite, the green primary dominated by a business and economic elite. It is just as extreme as the story in hong kong. Remember, i told you. 024 percent is the percentage of hong kong that is to be in the nominating committee. If you ask what percentage of voters maxed out to just one candidate, they gave 5,200 that number and percentage of voters is. 024 percent. Many would say 5,200 doesnt achieve real influence so its worse than. 024 percent of the average of percentage of voters, but it is as tiny, it is as distorting, and it is just as wrong. What does it do . What is its effect . A recent book describes america not as a democracy, not as an aristocracy, plutocracy or clip talker see america has become a vetocracy. That means its a system where it is easy now for economically powerful groups to block a change. It is tied in his view to our systems of checks and balances and our polarized political culture, but in addition to those, its tied to the number of funders who fund campaigns. In a system with a tiny, tiny number, that means a tiny, tiny fraction has the power to block reform because their disagreement with reform is enough to stop the policymakers from adopting it. This is not just reform on the left this is any change if it is against organized money whether from the left or the right fails. Anyone coming into a room like this has an issue you care about all stop it could be Climate Change health care, tax policy i dont care what the issue is. At the federal level, you all have an issue you think is important. You spend your free time, if there is such a thing a thing anymore, supporting causes that would be about this issue. Even if your issue is the most important issue, change on that you wont happen until we change this c