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A POSSIBLE CANDIDATE?
Lawrence Lessig, best known for his critiques of copyright laws and the creation of the Creative Commons foundation, has recently shifted his attention to political corruption and changing the influence of money in government. Essentially he spent ten years arguing about copyright law, didn't get anywhere, and wondered why. His conclusion was that money has too much influence in politics and so he decided to turn away from copyright work and start trying to mobilize people, mainly via the internet, to try and change things. And I think he's right, if he can start a popular movement to bring something like the clean elections laws passed by Maine and Arizona to the Federal level we could actually change quite a bit. He's also very big on enhanced openness which I'm more skeptical about, but he's a smart guy and there may be ways to connect donations with votes more directly that we haven't thought of yet. What's more, Lessig has a rabid following among a web-savy, geeky, politically-minded set of people who conceivably could do a lot to promote transparency. This is what he's trying to work towards with his Change Congress website which will launch soon (see an interview about his plans here).
Conveniently, he also happens to live in the congressional district of recently deceased congressman Tom Lantos and he's now considering running for Congress. His introductory video is quite interesting. It makes it clear that he doesn't think his main opponent is a bad person--to the contrary he quite likes her--he just sees her as limited by the system. It's also worth noting that Lessig is uniquely well placed to run this kind of campaign both because the district has a relatively high concentration of techy sorts of people who he appeals to and because his fame on the internet and popularity among the netroots will allow him to raise enough money to compete in the San Francisco media market (The Hill has more on the race).
As Chris Hayes says, if this election wasn't interesting enough already...
--Sam Boyd
COMMENTS (6)
I just moved into that district this past year - if he does run, I'll vote for him!
Posted by: Shadow Wolf | February 20, 2008 5:11 PM
I've pointed out in comments at his site and at his wiki that IllegalImmigration is the clearest indicator of massive corruption anyone can find. Yet, for some reason he doesn't appear interested in that. I guess there's a clash or something.
Posted by: TLB | February 20, 2008 10:01 PM
TLB,
The reason you don't understand is that your views are informed by racism. Wipe that out of your eyes (or scrape it off you shoe--whatever works) and look again.
Posted by: John A Arkansawyer | February 21, 2008 7:31 AM
Run Lawrence! We'll support you in a big, big way.
Posted by: Anonymous | February 21, 2008 1:09 PM
TLB - The reason for rampant illegal immigration is because of our idiotic trade policies, NAFTA, WTO, and because of our insane agriculture policies. When you fuck over a country like we fuck Mexico, the people who live there come to our country to work jobs that most of us won't work.
Why won't we work them? Because many of them aren't safe. Go work at a meat packing plant and let us know how long you last.
Why aren't many of these shit jobs safe? Because big business and our corporate ass-kissing government continue to gut labor laws, food safety laws and environmental protection laws as fast as you'd have to gut a "maybe dead cow, maybe alive cow struggling dangerously (for you) on a hook" if you weren't such a stupid fucking panzy.
Next time you eat a cheap piece of shit hamburger from McDonald's, know that you have many illegal immigrants to thank.
Look for the CAUSE of a problem, not its SYMPTOMS.
Posted by: Anonymous | February 21, 2008 1:17 PM
Sorry, that was over the top. Please do educate yourself TLB.
Posted by: Anonymous | February 21, 2008 1:19 PM