We the People, and the Republic we must reclaim
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0:01 - 0:04Once upon a time,
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0:04 - 0:07there was a place called Lesterland.
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0:07 - 0:10Now Lesterland looks a lot like the United States.
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0:10 - 0:15Like the United States, it has about 311 million people,
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0:15 - 0:17and of that 311 million people,
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0:17 - 0:22it turns out 144,000 are called Lester.
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0:22 - 0:23If Matt's in the audience,
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0:23 - 0:26I just borrowed that, I'll return it in a second,
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0:26 - 0:28this character from your series.
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0:28 - 0:31So 144,000 are called Lester,
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0:31 - 0:35which means about .05 percent is named Lester.
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0:35 - 0:39Now, Lesters in Lesterland have this extraordinary power.
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0:39 - 0:42There are two elections every election cycle in Lesterland.
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0:42 - 0:44One is called the general election.
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0:44 - 0:48The other is called the Lester election.
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0:48 - 0:51And in the general election, it's the citizens who get to vote,
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0:51 - 0:54but in the Lester election, it's the Lesters who get to vote.
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0:54 - 0:55And here's the trick.
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0:55 - 0:59In order to run in the general election,
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0:59 - 1:01you must do extremely well
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1:01 - 1:02in the Lester election.
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1:02 - 1:06You don't necessarily have to win, but you must do extremely well.
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1:06 - 1:10Now, what can we say about democracy in Lesterland?
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1:10 - 1:11What we can say, number one,
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1:11 - 1:14as the Supreme Court said in Citizens United,
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1:14 - 1:18that people have the ultimate influence over elected officials,
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1:18 - 1:20because, after all, there is a general election,
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1:20 - 1:23but only after the Lesters have had their way
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1:23 - 1:27with the candidates who wish to run in the general election.
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1:27 - 1:31And number two, obviously, this dependence upon the Lesters
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1:31 - 1:33is going to produce a subtle, understated,
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1:33 - 1:36we could say camouflaged, bending
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1:36 - 1:39to keep the Lesters happy.
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1:39 - 1:42Okay, so we have a democracy, no doubt,
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1:42 - 1:44but it's dependent upon the Lesters
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1:44 - 1:46and dependent upon the people.
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1:46 - 1:49It has competing dependencies,
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1:49 - 1:51we could say conflicting dependencies,
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1:51 - 1:55depending upon who the Lesters are.
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1:55 - 1:58Okay. That's Lesterland.
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1:58 - 2:00Now there are three things I want you to see now that I've described Lesterland.
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2:00 - 2:04Number one, the United States is Lesterland.
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2:04 - 2:05The United States is Lesterland.
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2:05 - 2:08The United States also looks like this, also has two elections,
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2:08 - 2:11one we called the general election,
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2:11 - 2:14the second we should call the money election.
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2:14 - 2:16In the general election, it's the citizens who get to vote,
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2:16 - 2:19if you're over 18, in some states if you have an ID.
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2:19 - 2:22In the money election, it's the funders who get to vote,
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2:22 - 2:25the funders who get to vote, and just like in Lesterland,
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2:25 - 2:27the trick is, to run in the general election,
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2:27 - 2:30you must do extremely well in the money election.
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2:30 - 2:33You don't necessarily have to win. There is Jerry Brown.
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2:33 - 2:35But you must do extremely well.
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2:35 - 2:40And here's the key: There are just as few relevant funders
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2:40 - 2:45in USA-land as there are Lesters in Lesterland.
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2:45 - 2:47Now you say, really?
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2:47 - 2:50Really .05 percent?
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2:50 - 2:52Well, here are the numbers from 2010:
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2:52 - 2:55.26 percent of America
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2:55 - 2:57gave 200 dollars or more to any federal candidate,
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2:57 - 3:02.05 percent gave the maximum amount to any federal candidate,
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3:02 - 3:05.01 percent -- the one percent of the one percent --
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3:05 - 3:08gave 10,000 dollars or more to federal candidates,
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3:08 - 3:12and in this election cycle, my favorite statistic
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3:12 - 3:15is .000042 percent
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3:15 - 3:19— for those of you doing the numbers, you know that's 132 Americans —
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3:19 - 3:23gave 60 percent of the Super PAC money spent
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3:23 - 3:26in the cycle we have just seen ending.
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3:26 - 3:29So I'm just a lawyer, I look at this range of numbers,
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3:29 - 3:31and I say it's fair for me to say
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3:31 - 3:35it's .05 percent who are our relevant funders in America.
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3:35 - 3:38In this sense, the funders are our Lesters.
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3:38 - 3:42Now, what can we say about this democracy in USA-land?
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3:42 - 3:44Well, as the Supreme Court said in Citizens United,
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3:44 - 3:47we could say, of course the people have the ultimate influence
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3:47 - 3:51over the elected officials. We have a general election,
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3:51 - 3:54but only after the funders have had their way
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3:54 - 3:58with the candidates who wish to run in that general election.
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3:58 - 4:01And number two, obviously,
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4:01 - 4:03this dependence upon the funders
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4:03 - 4:07produces a subtle, understated, camouflaged bending
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4:07 - 4:10to keep the funders happy.
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4:10 - 4:13Candidates for Congress and members of Congress
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4:13 - 4:17spend between 30 and 70 percent of their time
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4:17 - 4:19raising money to get back to Congress
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4:19 - 4:21or to get their party back into power,
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4:21 - 4:24and the question we need to ask is, what does it do to them,
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4:24 - 4:26these humans, as they spend their time
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4:26 - 4:30behind the telephone, calling people they've never met,
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4:30 - 4:33but calling the tiniest slice of the one percent?
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4:33 - 4:36As anyone would, as they do this,
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4:36 - 4:40they develop a sixth sense, a constant awareness
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4:40 - 4:43about how what they do might affect their ability to raise money.
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4:43 - 4:44They become, in the words of "The X-Files,"
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4:44 - 4:48shape-shifters, as they constantly adjust their views
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4:48 - 4:51in light of what they know will help them to raise money,
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4:51 - 4:52not on issues one to 10,
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4:52 - 4:55but on issues 11 to 1,000.
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4:55 - 4:57Leslie Byrne, a Democrat from Virginia,
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4:57 - 4:59describes that when she went to Congress,
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4:59 - 5:03she was told by a colleague, "Always lean to the green."
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5:03 - 5:04Then to clarify, she went on,
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5:04 - 5:09"He was not an environmentalist." (Laughter)
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5:09 - 5:11So here too we have a democracy,
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5:11 - 5:13a democracy dependent upon the funders
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5:13 - 5:15and dependent upon the people,
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5:15 - 5:17competing dependencies,
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5:17 - 5:19possibly conflicting dependencies
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5:19 - 5:22depending upon who the funders are.
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5:22 - 5:25Okay, the United States is Lesterland, point number one.
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5:25 - 5:27Here's point number two.
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5:27 - 5:30The United States is worse than Lesterland,
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5:30 - 5:33worse than Lesterland because you can imagine in Lesterland
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5:33 - 5:35if we Lesters got a letter from the government that said,
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5:35 - 5:39"Hey, you get to pick who gets to run in the general election,"
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5:39 - 5:43we would think maybe of a kind of aristocracy of Lesters.
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5:43 - 5:45You know, there are Lesters from every part of social society.
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5:45 - 5:48There are rich Lesters, poor Lesters, black Lesters, white Lesters,
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5:48 - 5:50not many women Lesters, but put that to the side for one second.
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5:50 - 5:52We have Lesters from everywhere. We could think,
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5:52 - 5:55"What could we do to make Lesterland better?"
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5:55 - 6:00It's at least possible the Lesters would act for the good of Lesterland.
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6:00 - 6:04But in our land, in this land, in USA-land,
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6:04 - 6:06there are certainly some sweet Lesters out there,
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6:06 - 6:08many of them in this room here today,
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6:08 - 6:13but the vast majority of Lesters act for the Lesters,
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6:13 - 6:17because the shifting coalitions that are comprising the .05 percent
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6:17 - 6:19are not comprising it for the public interest.
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6:19 - 6:23It's for their private interest. In this sense, the USA is worse than Lesterland.
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6:23 - 6:26And finally, point number three:
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6:26 - 6:29Whatever one wants to say about Lesterland,
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6:29 - 6:31against the background of its history, its traditions,
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6:31 - 6:36in our land, in USA-land, Lesterland is a corruption,
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6:36 - 6:38a corruption.
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6:38 - 6:42Now, by corruption I don't mean brown paper bag cash
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6:42 - 6:43secreted among members of Congress.
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6:43 - 6:47I don't mean Rod Blagojevich sense of corruption.
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6:47 - 6:48I don't mean any criminal act.
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6:48 - 6:52The corruption I'm talking about is perfectly legal.
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6:52 - 6:57It's a corruption relative to the framers' baseline for this republic.
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6:57 - 7:00The framers gave us what they called a republic,
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7:00 - 7:05but by a republic they meant a representative democracy,
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7:05 - 7:08and by a representative democracy, they meant a government,
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7:08 - 7:11as Madison put it in Federalist 52, that would have a branch
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7:11 - 7:16that would be dependent upon the people alone.
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7:16 - 7:17So here's the model of government.
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7:17 - 7:19They have the people and the government
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7:19 - 7:22with this exclusive dependency,
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7:22 - 7:26but the problem here is that Congress has evolved a different dependence,
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7:26 - 7:28no longer a dependence upon the people alone,
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7:28 - 7:31increasingly a dependence upon the funders.
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7:31 - 7:34Now this is a dependence too,
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7:34 - 7:38but it's different and conflicting from a dependence upon the people alone
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7:38 - 7:42so long as the funders are not the people.
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7:42 - 7:44This is a corruption.
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7:44 - 7:47Now, there's good news and bad news about this corruption.
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7:47 - 7:49One bit of good news is that it's bipartisan,
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7:49 - 7:52equal-opportunity corruption.
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7:52 - 7:56It blocks the left on a whole range of issues that we on the left really care about.
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7:56 - 7:59It blocks the right too, as it makes
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7:59 - 8:03principled arguments of the right increasingly impossible.
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8:03 - 8:05So the right wants smaller government.
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8:05 - 8:07When Al Gore was Vice President, his team had an idea
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8:07 - 8:11for deregulating a significant portion of the telecommunications industry.
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8:11 - 8:14The chief policy man took this idea to Capitol Hill,
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8:14 - 8:16and as he reported back to me,
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8:16 - 8:18the response was, "Hell no!
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8:18 - 8:20If we deregulate these guys,
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8:20 - 8:24how are we going to raise money from them?"
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8:24 - 8:28This is a system that's designed to save the status quo,
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8:28 - 8:31including the status quo of big and invasive government.
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8:31 - 8:34It works against the left and the right,
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8:34 - 8:35and that, you might say, is good news.
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8:35 - 8:37But here's the bad news.
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8:37 - 8:41It's a pathological, democracy-destroying corruption,
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8:41 - 8:43because in any system
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8:43 - 8:45where the members are dependent upon
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8:45 - 8:48the tiniest fraction of us for their election,
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8:48 - 8:51that means the tiniest number of us,
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8:51 - 8:53the tiniest, tiniest number of us,
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8:53 - 8:55can block reform.
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8:55 - 8:58I know that should have been, like, a rock or something.
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8:58 - 9:00I can only find cheese. I'm sorry. So there it is.
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9:00 - 9:02Block reform.
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9:02 - 9:06Because there is an economy here, an economy of influence,
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9:06 - 9:09an economy with lobbyists at the center
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9:09 - 9:12which feeds on polarization.
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9:12 - 9:13It feeds on dysfunction.
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9:13 - 9:16The worse that it is for us,
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9:16 - 9:20the better that it is for this fundraising.
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9:20 - 9:23Henry David Thoreau: "There are a thousand hacking
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9:23 - 9:28at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root."
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9:28 - 9:31This is the root.
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9:31 - 9:36Okay, now, every single one of you knows this.
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9:36 - 9:39You couldn't be here if you didn't know this, yet you ignore it.
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9:39 - 9:43You ignore it. This is an impossible problem.
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9:43 - 9:45You focus on the possible problems,
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9:45 - 9:49like eradicating polio from the world,
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9:49 - 9:52or taking an image of every single street across the globe,
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9:52 - 9:55or building the first real universal translator,
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9:55 - 9:59or building a fusion factory in your garage.
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9:59 - 10:01These are the manageable problems, so you ignore —
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10:01 - 10:07(Laughter) (Applause) —
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10:07 - 10:10so you ignore this corruption.
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10:10 - 10:15But we cannot ignore this corruption anymore.
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10:15 - 10:18(Applause)
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10:18 - 10:22We need a government that works.
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10:22 - 10:25And not works for the left or the right,
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10:25 - 10:27but works for the left and the right,
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10:27 - 10:29the citizens of the left and right,
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10:29 - 10:33because there is no sensible reform possible
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10:33 - 10:35until we end this corruption.
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10:35 - 10:39So I want you to take hold, to grab the issue you care the most about.
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10:39 - 10:42Climate change is mine, but it might be financial reform
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10:42 - 10:44or a simpler tax system or inequality.
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10:44 - 10:47Grab that issue, sit it down in front of you,
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10:47 - 10:50look straight in its eyes, and tell it there is no Christmas this year.
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10:50 - 10:52There will never be a Christmas.
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10:52 - 10:55We will never get your issue solved
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10:55 - 10:58until we fix this issue first.
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10:58 - 11:01So it's not that mine is the most important issue. It's not.
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11:01 - 11:05Yours is the most important issue, but mine is the first issue,
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11:05 - 11:08the issue we have to solve before we get to fix
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11:08 - 11:10the issues you care about.
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11:10 - 11:13No sensible reform, and we cannot afford
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11:13 - 11:17a world, a future, with no sensible reform.
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11:17 - 11:20Okay. So how do we do it?
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11:20 - 11:24Turns out, the analytics here are easy, simple.
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11:24 - 11:26If the problem is members spending an extraordinary
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11:26 - 11:30amount of time fundraising from the tiniest slice of America,
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11:30 - 11:34the solution is to have them spend less time fundraising
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11:34 - 11:37but fundraise from a wider slice of Americans,
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11:37 - 11:38to spread it out,
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11:38 - 11:41to spread the funder influence so that we restore the idea
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11:41 - 11:44of dependence upon the people alone.
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11:44 - 11:48And to do this does not require a constitutional amendment,
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11:48 - 11:49changing the First Amendment.
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11:49 - 11:52To do this would require a single statute,
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11:52 - 11:54a statute establishing what we think of
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11:54 - 11:57as small dollar funded elections,
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11:57 - 11:59a statute of citizen-funded campaigns,
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11:59 - 12:01and there's any number of these proposals out there:
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12:01 - 12:03Fair Elections Now Act,
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12:03 - 12:05the American Anti-Corruption Act,
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12:05 - 12:08an idea in my book that I call the Grant and Franklin Project
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12:08 - 12:11to give vouchers to people to fund elections,
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12:11 - 12:14an idea of John Sarbanes called the Grassroots Democracy Act.
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12:14 - 12:18Each of these would fix this corruption
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12:18 - 12:22by spreading out the influence of funders to all of us.
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12:22 - 12:25The analytics are easy here.
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12:25 - 12:31It's the politics that's hard, indeed impossibly hard,
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12:31 - 12:37because this reform would shrink K Street,
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12:37 - 12:42and Capitol Hill, as Congressman Jim Cooper,
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12:42 - 12:45a Democrat from Tennessee, put it,
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12:45 - 12:50has become a farm league for K Street, a farm league for K Street.
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12:50 - 12:52Members and staffers and bureaucrats have
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12:52 - 12:54an increasingly common business model in their head,
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12:54 - 12:57a business model focused on their life after government,
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12:57 - 12:59their life as lobbyists.
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12:59 - 13:03Fifty percent of the Senate between 1998 and 2004
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13:03 - 13:05left to become lobbyists, 42 percent of the House.
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13:05 - 13:07Those numbers have only gone up,
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13:07 - 13:09and as United Republic calculated last April,
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13:09 - 13:12the average increase in salary for those who they tracked
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13:12 - 13:18was 1,452 percent.
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13:18 - 13:24So it's fair to ask, how is it possible for them to change this?
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13:24 - 13:28Now I get this skepticism.
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13:28 - 13:33I get this cynicism. I get this sense of impossibility.
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13:33 - 13:35But I don't buy it.
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13:35 - 13:39This is a solvable issue.
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13:39 - 13:42If you think about the issues our parents tried to solve
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13:42 - 13:44in the 20th century,
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13:44 - 13:48issues like racism, or sexism,
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13:48 - 13:51or the issue that we've been fighting in this century, homophobia,
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13:51 - 13:53those are hard issues.
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13:53 - 13:56You don't wake up one day no longer a racist.
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13:56 - 14:00It takes generations to tear that intuition, that DNA,
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14:00 - 14:03out of the soul of a people.
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14:03 - 14:06But this is a problem of just incentives, just incentives.
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14:06 - 14:09Change the incentives, and the behavior changes,
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14:09 - 14:11and the states that have adopted small dollar funded systems
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14:11 - 14:14have seen overnight a change in the practice.
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14:14 - 14:16When Connecticut adopted this system,
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14:16 - 14:21in the very first year, 78 percent of elected representatives
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14:21 - 14:25gave up large contributions and took small contributions only.
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14:25 - 14:27It's solvable,
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14:27 - 14:30not by being a Democrat,
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14:30 - 14:31not by being a Republican.
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14:31 - 14:35It's solvable by being citizens, by being citizens,
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14:35 - 14:38by being TEDizens.
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14:38 - 14:42Because if you want to kickstart reform,
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14:42 - 14:46look, I could kickstart reform
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14:46 - 14:49at half the price of fixing energy policy,
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14:49 - 14:52I could give you back a republic.
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14:52 - 14:56Okay. But even if you're not yet with me,
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14:56 - 14:59even if you believe this is impossible,
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14:59 - 15:03what the five years since I spoke at TED has taught me
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15:03 - 15:06as I've spoken about this issue again and again is,
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15:06 - 15:09even if you think it's impossible, that is irrelevant.
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15:09 - 15:11Irrelevant.
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15:11 - 15:15I spoke at Dartmouth once, and a woman stood up after I spoke,
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15:15 - 15:17I write in my book, and she said to me,
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15:17 - 15:22"Professor, you've convinced me this is hopeless. Hopeless.
-
15:22 - 15:25There's nothing we can do."
-
15:25 - 15:27When she said that, I scrambled.
-
15:27 - 15:29I tried to think, "How do I respond to that hopelessness?
-
15:29 - 15:31What is that sense of hopelessness?"
-
15:31 - 15:36And what hit me was an image of my six-year-old son.
-
15:36 - 15:39And I imagined a doctor coming to me and saying,
-
15:39 - 15:46"Your son has terminal brain cancer, and there's nothing you can do.
-
15:46 - 15:49Nothing you can do."
-
15:49 - 15:52So would I do nothing?
-
15:52 - 15:54Would I just sit there? Accept it? Okay, nothing I can do?
-
15:54 - 15:58I'm going off to build Google Glass.
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15:58 - 16:02Of course not. I would do everything I could,
-
16:02 - 16:05and I would do everything I could because this is what love means,
-
16:05 - 16:07that the odds are irrelevant and that you do
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16:07 - 16:11whatever the hell you can, the odds be damned.
-
16:11 - 16:15And then I saw the obvious link, because even we liberals
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16:15 - 16:17love this country.
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16:17 - 16:20(Laughter)
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16:20 - 16:22And so when the pundits and the politicians
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16:22 - 16:25say that change is impossible,
-
16:25 - 16:28what this love of country says back is,
-
16:28 - 16:30"That's just irrelevant."
-
16:30 - 16:33We lose something dear,
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16:33 - 16:36something everyone in this room loves and cherishes,
-
16:36 - 16:40if we lose this republic, and so we act
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16:40 - 16:45with everything we can to prove these pundits wrong.
-
16:45 - 16:47So here's my question:
-
16:47 - 16:52Do you have that love?
-
16:52 - 16:55Do you have that love?
-
16:55 - 16:57Because if you do,
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16:57 - 17:02then what the hell are you, what are the hell are we doing?
-
17:02 - 17:06When Ben Franklin was carried from the constitutional convention
-
17:06 - 17:10in September of 1787, he was stopped in the street by a woman who said,
-
17:10 - 17:14"Mr. Franklin, what have you wrought?"
-
17:14 - 17:22Franklin said, "A republic, madam, if you can keep it."
-
17:22 - 17:27A republic. A representative democracy.
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17:27 - 17:34A government dependent upon the people alone.
-
17:34 - 17:38We have lost that republic.
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17:38 - 17:43All of us have to act to get it back.
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17:43 - 17:44Thank you very much.
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17:44 - 17:50(Applause)
-
17:50 - 18:01Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. (Applause)
- Title:
- We the People, and the Republic we must reclaim
- Speaker:
- Lawrence Lessig
- Description:
-
There is a corruption at the heart of American politics, caused by the dependence of Congressional candidates on funding from the tiniest percentage of citizens. That's the argument at the core of this blistering talk by legal scholar Lawrence Lessig. With rapid-fire visuals, he shows how the funding process weakens the Republic in the most fundamental way, and issues a rallying bipartisan cry that will resonate with many in the U.S. and beyond.
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 18:19
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for We the People, and the Republic we must reclaim | ||
Thu-Huong Ha approved English subtitles for We the People, and the Republic we must reclaim | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for We the People, and the Republic we must reclaim | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for We the People, and the Republic we must reclaim | ||
Morton Bast accepted English subtitles for We the People, and the Republic we must reclaim | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for We the People, and the Republic we must reclaim | ||
Joseph Geni added a translation |