 Good morning. Welcome to Welcome to New America. I'm Mark Schmidt. I'm the director of the political reform program here at at New America and we're delighted this morning to have Zephyr teach out with us to talk about Primarily, but not exclusively about her new book called corruption in America which is which I'll say a few words about and then she'll You know present a little bit about it, and then we'll just open it up to a real conversation You know between us and and with all of you for those who don't know her Zephyr is Among other things a professor of law at Fordham University's graduate of Yale and Duke Law School She's one of those people You know actually she she was telling me that we were in touch years ago And I couldn't remember it because I always think what when you hear the name when you hear her name Or you know it sticks with you and I remember her first from her involvement in the Howard Dean campaign in 2004 and she's balanced politics and academia ever since then working on that campaign going back to To academia and most recently this year. She was first a candidate for the working families party's nomination for governor of New York as they struggled with whether to Accept a second term for Andrew Cuomo or or take a different stance and then a candidate in the Democratic primary Who I think everyone agrees did fantastically well Against against a governor who seemed to have a deeply entrenched position Zephyr among also has been a a fellow at New America latin 2013 2014 working with Barry Lynn's open markets initiative and with and with our program and with the open technology Institute so she's she's very much. She's very much one of us and and and a really great ally For all of us we're thinking about money and politics political reform and so forth And I think she's one of the people who understands that we don't just need You know a massive movement. We actually need to really rethink some of the basic Assumptions about how we think about what I what I call the the intersection between political and economic inequality in the way that economic inequality uses the political process to kind of reinforce itself and she's She's done in in this book. What she does is really Blow up the narrow definition of corruption that has governed the Supreme Court And that's really at the heart of Citizens United the McCutcheon decision and other things that we're concerned about not necessarily the literal You know the literal decisions are less important than the extremely narrow definition of corruption That the that the court has embraced and what what Zephyr does in this book is go back deep into American thought and American history and show that a much richer conception of what corruption actually is in reality Has has really been at the heart of our of our democracy for a long time and is really closed out by by this more recent And fairly radical view. I think I think as I was reading the book. I was thinking you often see pieces You know, you'll you'll see people routinely say oh, you know Bad things you see in politics negative advertising massive amounts of money influence of wealth has always been a part of American democracy It's always been the way it is. That's life Zephyr sort of does the opposite of that which is to say that that which is to show that the struggle to Reorient American politics towards a really strong notion of the public interest in the idea that the public interest can be Corrupted or distorted by money That's also been a part of our history for a really long time and there are times when we've when we've had a richer vision of how To do that then we do right now So that's one of many contributions of this book. So, you know, I'd like to just you know Zephyr could talk about the book, but we can also talk about, you know, the other things. She's done this year, which I mentioned I Send out a note about this to a bunch of friends and called it ask Zephyr anything like on Reddit So we will we will definitely adhere to it. She doesn't have to answer everything, but Definitely definitely ask her anything. So with that, I'm gonna great. Thank you so much. I'm thrilled to be here. I spent about What seven years on this book One year actually the first thought of it came in 2007 and When the Supreme Court came down with the decision where it described corruption in the kind of a funny way and I didn't do anything about it for a couple of years and Then for about five years, I was working on other articles and also working on the book I sent in a draft and then in January I got a notice that I had to get my final draft in by March March 15th and So in fact, I think I wrote the entire book well here As a fellow at the New America Foundation because any of you as any of you who've written no at least it was true for me That the real book was written in those last three months where I Re-formulated and rewrote each of the chapters. So I'm extremely grateful For the fellowship at New America that gave me that opportunity to condense several years of thought into into this book I'm gonna be a little more academic than I have in some of the talks about the book and but then we can open it up and talk about other things I Think we have these two crises of corruption in America and they're related to each other the one is the crises of What is happening in our government and the other is a crisis of definition? What corruption means and this book in many ways is an extended letter to the Supreme Court? I'm delighted other people are reading it, but I mostly want Justice Kennedy and Scalia to read it Extended letter to the Supreme Court about how they misunderstand corruption So to give you some background the definition of the word corruption is at the center of some of the most vital legal disputes that we're having right now So it's fun to talk about the meaning of corruption, but here it actually has Jurisprudential impact in Citizens United in January in 2010 and then in McCutcheon versus FEC this past spring the Supreme Court struck down Popularly passed laws limiting in one case corporate involvement in politics and in the other case The degree to which an individual could contribute to campaigns and it struck them down because it said neither of these laws Served an anti-corruption interest it they didn't serve an anti-corruption interest because corruption was defined as quid pro quo and nothing more in other words something is not corrupt Unless there an act is not corrupt unless it is quid pro quo corruption This is very explicit in McCutcheon versus FEC. It was implicit in Citizens United By quid pro quo, they meant not the for the lawyers among you not the traditional contract law phrase quid pro quo Which means this for that and relative equality of exchange but a very new idea of quid pro quo that really has been developed since the late 1970s and this new idea is that quid pro quo corruption is fairly explicit bribe criminal law bribery So in other words something is not corruption if it is not an explicit deal that could be punished under criminal law statutes So there are many problems with this definition. I mean the first is that it treats corruption lightly as an external Sort of non-psychological concept that defines a very narrow category of things so sometimes in these decisions you see a way of talking about corruption that sounds like they're talking about you know stealing Aluminum pipes, you know, this is a small criminal law problem as opposed to a fundamental political problem The second problem is it reclassifies what we have traditionally thought of as corruption as normal political behavior and actually explicitly says that the effort to Donate money for influence is something we should sanction and approve of is a positive part of political life A third problem is that it Pretends to avoid problems of definition it says like we know what corruption is because it's just quid pro quo, but in fact Actually displaces a lot of the definitional questions in other areas and doesn't avoid these very difficult questions because these are difficult questions of political philosophy that basically the court is trying to Not deal with by calling corruption only a small criminal law issue But I think of course most importantly the problem with this definition is that it's dangerous to the health of the nation and the health of democracy and The crux of this book is that citizens united and buckly before it and McCutcheon versus FEC and this whole strain of thinking is Not only bad law, however, but displays a very bad understanding of history now Americans from Madison onward really up until 1976 have argued that Corruption means something broader broadly put when those in public office Use their public power for private ends either their own selfish interests or the interests of Close family or colleagues or those who might be their donors so What I what I try to show in the book Can I use a yeah, I will show in the book is the first the first third of the book is a real argument to Scalia and Kennedy and then hopefully to all of you that that Actually if you look at the Constitutional Convention It is not merely that they misunderstand corruption the definition But they misunderstand the role of the concept of corruption in American history and that arguably the constitutional convention was about many things But the most important thing it was about was building a country that could protect Against big money. It basically was a money in politics convention I mean the way that we talk about it now the way they use the language they use was the language of corruption But we would Describing it from the outside if we saw it now say their focus their obsession was how do we protect? How do we build structures that protect the public-spiritedness that people are possible of But they're capable of and dissuade the kind of self-interested political behavior that we know happens in government after government and they were particularly concerned about the ways in which centralized monarchic power could use money to corrupt parliamentarians but they were also concerned about a broad array of of Sort of what we might call now money in politics issues at the Constitutional Convention they actually talked about Corruption more than they talked about factions which the convention is known for or violence or Any of the sort of short-term contemporary concerns that they brought together to the convention and actually one of the things I found really interesting looking at the convention is that It was motivated by these short-term concerns you had Shays rebellion He had these crises in the state and the first speech at the Constitutional Convention that Randolph brings is a speech That's really about these local local in the sense of Contemporary issues what happened yesterday but what Benjamin Franklin brings then is a speech that he wrote down because he was actually so focused on making sure that he got everything right and had somebody else read out loud and He brought a sense that we can't just focus on what happened yesterday But have to focus on the fate of all republics and the fate of all republics is this tendency towards Corruption, so I want to read a little passage about Ben Franklin's Introduction to the convention in the early spring of 1787 Benjamin Franklin 81 years old Wrote an old friend from France about pigeons lightning Mutual friends and the art of ballooning Showing off both his Enthusiasm and his sense of a declining body he wrote about his dream of having a French balloon that was large enough to lift him Being held by a string held by a man walking on the ground How we all wanted that Franklin as ever believed in the possibilities of progress, but wanted to be sure that his flights Into electricity politics and air travel were grounded a Little more than six weeks after writing his letter Franklin attended the opening of the American Constitutional Convention Not lifted by a hot-air balloon, but carried on a sedan chair He was too weak to walk But he was not only aware of his own body's degeneration Rather, he saw how the body politic could degenerate it given a chance Franklin's first speech his major contribution to the convention was about money power and the inconsistencies of the ambitious human heart at Stake was short-term stability, but also the nature of the new country Would it be able to justify its violent separation from England or would it become another corrupt failure? And so after Franklin's speech you see a change in the mood of the convention and this kind of returning over and over again to questions of actually human psychology You know, how do we create? Representatives who won't be tempted to serve their own private ends now we talk a lot about the revolving door and The concern is that people go into public office Perhaps as a staffer and then end up Even in their staffing role Imagining their other job their future job working for a private lobbying firm and therefore serving their future master instead of their current one Well, they talked about the sort of modern version the contemporary version of the revolving door at the Constitutional Convention Was what they called the problem of placement and It was the concern that people would go into elected office in order to get appointed office from the king and They would end up serving the king instead of serving their constituency and in fact This was such a focus that the provision in the Constitution which Prohibits that in the United States was called a cornerstone of the Constitution by George Mason The limitation on holding elected office in a pointed office at the same time So that was their revolving door But they saw that that problem of temptation is so central as to sort of be the bulwark protection of the new Country they talked about the veto power in terms of money in politics They have concerned if the a number of Senators required to override the veto was too high The president would basically bribe the remaining number successfully to keep them from over from Allowing a veto so they were sort of looking at the numbers in terms of corruption. They talked about the size of Constituencies in terms of corruption the size of bodies the concern being that Small bodies were more easily corrupted because coordination problems were easier to solve by the big money at the time Whereas large bodies were harder to corrupt One of my favorites and what sort of motivated the name of the book Benjamin Franklin snuff box Is that we have a provision in our Constitution that forbids accepting a gift of any kind whatever From foreign power without getting commission of Congress So this is some of the most petulant language in the Constitution You know sort of first amendments like extremism of any kind whatever no cookies, you know and this came out of a Provision actually in the from the Netherlands that was so opposed to European custom that it was made fun of as like who do they think they are in the Netherlands? So what do they want to start? international scholar of the 17th century said what they think they're play does you know they're building play does republic and the Martians and Ben's But this is the provision that forbids Accepting a gift from foreign powers and this was so much the part of the culture of Europe that you accept diplomatic gifts That when we chose to accept it in part because I'll tell you why in a second we chose to accept it It was a very explicit rejection of what we saw as old-world corruption And it was and I use it as a symbol because it was a choice over and over again To create a country to protect against money in politics even if it took extreme measures Even if it meant actually annoying our trading partners so Franklin had received a jeweled snuff box with a portrait of the king from the king of France after the end of his diplomatic tour in France and The concern was that that gift would corrupt Franklin There was nobody who had thought that it was a bribe this wasn't a criminal law definition But that rather it would affect his sympathies Because once you accept a gift It sort of changes your orientation towards the gift giver and they understood that again. It was a deeply psychological understanding so instead he and everyone who followed after him had to Bring their gifts to Congress and get permission to keep it. They brought other stuff rocks John Jay brought a horse a Jefferson who is you know perhaps in our country our favorite iconic hypocrite Was a thought this was an incredibly important provision and Yet when he later went to France and received his own snuff box he was so Upset by the idea of having to bring himself to the humiliation of going before the gridiron of Congress That he asked his closest associate to take all the diamonds out Secretly sell them and put the money towards his own account and he hid his gift So we've always struggled with money in politics After the convention Hamilton was describing it and you know I make this argument by sort of showing Part after part of the convention that sort embodies this anti-corruption impulse after the convention Hamilton was describing it and said What we did at the convention is create every practicable obstacle to corruption so this is the core of the argument to Scalia or to Kennedy is that the Constitution is itself an anti-corruption document and the kind of anti-corruption documented is is not an anti-criminal law bribery document, but opposed to the kind of corruption where public servants serve private ends and To deny that in these contemporary cases is actually to deny one of the most extraordinary parts of our own history If you question whether they might have actually when they talked about corruption every day meant what we now think of criminal law bribery I should tell you that There just were no criminal law bribery laws for the most part especially those applying to legislators bribery really comes out of if you trace the deep history of bribery bribery comes out Bribery laws come out of laws governing the judiciary but they're very a very uncomfortable fit with legislators because Elected officials are always getting gifts and are always Interacting and making promises it was it took a long time for bribery laws to ever apply to elected officials And we still struggle now in the courts with applying criminal bribery laws to elected officials But after so after the the convention the the sort of next third of the book is looking at okay So we we had an anti-corruption Constitution what next what about what happened to this idea? Maybe it just went away and what you see instead is that the judiciary really until the 1970s sees its job as Protecting against the corruption that might creep into our young republic as Marshall once talked about it and so over and over again you see that the Judges stepping in and taking an active role in protecting against this kind of public or private serving behavior in the public realm One of my favorite Chapters in the book actually is Looks at the history of lobbying law So basically from if you for the plurality of our history Not the majority, but there was a period when sure there really was no lobbying as we currently understand it But for for more time than not in American history Lobbying has been against the public policy of the courts in the United States Since for the most part there weren't criminal law bribery laws or those that existed weren't enforced the way in which this anti-lobbing Doctrine was enforced was through contract law So you hire somebody to fix your roof they fix your roof They ask for money you pay them You hire somebody to Sell an organ they sell you the organ you might they ask for payment You might say no, I don't have to pay you because selling organs is against public policy Like selling sex or selling babies. There's all kinds of things kinds of contracts, which the courts just won't enforce So for most of our history courts would not enforce contracts to lobby in the same way that you might now see Courts not enforcing contracts for sex babies or organs and they didn't because they saw it as so fundamentally corrupting my favorite example of this is this old man who hired a lobbyist to He was owed money from a loan to the federal government money in the Battle of Guadalupe and he was owed $20,000 and he hired a Boston lawyer to go to Washington and Get his money back Lawyer goes to Washington writes letters. He has meetings. He gets his money back and He asks for payment on the contract and the old man says I'm not going to pay you That was a lobbying contract So this goes all the way up to the Supreme Court. Does he owe money on this lobbying contract and the Supreme Court says? well, you know there's no evidence in this instance that that's The lobbyist had bribed any of the legislators or anything else like that, but if we were to allow lobbying Contracts in this instance. Well, then the great corporations of our day would hire adventurers To bring their cases to the halls of Congress and the state houses and every right-thinking man would call that corrupt So basically you couldn't allow lobbying contracts even with the old man who was too weak to travel to Washington Because if you allowed them in one instance, you would then allow them in all instances And that would lead to the temptation to the the corruption of the entire system so this falls away really in the 1920s more like You know forgotten key than an explicit overturning of laws It's sort of a series of cases where it just gets shuttled away And I'm not and I'm not sort of convinced we should outlaw lobbying But I do think that there was some real wisdom in the court's own sense that this was a genuine threat to representative democracy another way they talked about it actually was that That lobbying That personal influence is not a vendible. It's not a sellable thing And that as the courts people could make these contracts in private But as the courts one of their jobs was to protect The publicness of our public spaces and so they could not be part of the selling of personal influence. They couldn't sanction it I'll just do a few more minutes. I I mean all this changes in the 19 Really starts changing in the 1970s. I don't think it changes in on the street Like I think if you talk to people on the street, they'll still describe corruption in a very similar way But it the supreme court starts defining corruption in increasingly narrow ways and increasingly Tying definitions of corruption not to public and private serving this but rather to criminal law bribery And I think the temptation comes from a few different things. I mean one is I think it comes from a a Sense I mentioned this earlier, but a sense that If you can defa if you can attach it to criminal law bribery, then you don't have to get into really complicated questions of political philosophy Corruption is just criminal bribery Or it's not corruption therefore we don't have to answer the question of what should society look like should people be public interested What does public interest mean? What does private interest mean all these like really? I think important and never easily answerable questions And so on the on I would say that there's these two two sort of strains within the legal Academy As I promised I'm going a little more academic here than I must talk There's two strains like Academy that run away from corruption as a foundational legal principle in American law One is from the left and one is from the right and on the right you see this running away towards corruption is just criminal law bribery in Part I think because they don't actually believe in the the particular law and economics right doesn't believe in the idea of public spirit in this itself Like the idea that one could be public spirited it's sort of a deeply American Madisonian idea is actually rejected in Members of the modern law and economics Academy that people are fundamentally egotistical It's a deeply Hobbesian understanding a lot of ways Cobbs and Montesquieu had this fight several hundred years ago. It's sort of having that fight again in the Supreme Court and and I you know I I Think that's it's pretty easy to explode that because if this is Basically what I would call sort of the problem of positive it's positiveism in corruption law That if you have a positive law definition of corruption law if you only define corruption by reference to criminal bribery laws Then the most corrupt countries have no corruption Because if there is a country or a state that chooses not to criminalize any bribery and corruption is only defined by that which is criminalized Then there is no corruption in that state. So it leads to this kind of circular definition of corruption Also, it's since at the founding era. There were no criminal bribery laws. I guess there was no corruption You know, there's just a deep logical flaw there on the left You see a very different temptation which is the temptation to say that all problems of corruption are just problems of equality So that when we have a problem in you know the problem of corruption in government It's just that people have unequal access and I think it's an also an effort to get away from the psychology and morality of the founding era I Actually, you know, this is an ongoing debate I think that equality is very important But corruption is not just a subsequent government is not just a subset of the equality problem There is something fundamentally different about a public servant who is fighting for the public good And someone who is not Somebody who believes that there's only problems of equality and not problems of corruption would say as long They can be as self-interested as we as they want as long as they're considering every person's interest equally So there's that sort of Academic tendency on the on the left and the impact as I sort of began with has been quite severe and the reason is there's this case Buckley versus Vallejo in 1976 Buckley versus Vallejo says that we will allow only allow Congress to pass laws that have some That infringe political speech if those laws are motivated by an anti-corruption concern So this sort of this theoretical debate about what corruption means that has a real impact in what laws get upheld What laws get struck down and as the court increasingly narrows The definition of corruption it basically narrows the scope of kinds of laws, which don't worry. I'm not going to read 20 more pages Because the scope of kind of laws So I will sort of tie this into my recent campaign just if you're curious, I mean I I Ended up Running for governor For a very similar reason to the reason that I wrote this book, which is that I think You know, I'm very much a patriot and I think that there is a Really deep threat to self-governing society right now and So the the fight in the book is to the court and the fight I Was cited in dissent and Citizens United by the way I'm still working on getting from dissent to majority But but I see I saw in in actually in my race I saw Andrew Cuomo actually also having something that reminded me of the court is a similar inability to Comprehend the idea of public interest itself and brought a deeply transactional understanding of politics to his job and to my job in fact when I when I Started running for office. He called a friend of mine and said what does she want? My friend said I think mr. Governor she wants to run for governor But but the the question itself suggests that one is necessarily transactional even in public life And that there is not this possibility of a kind of public spirited Service and I feel like it is incredibly important to move beyond a totally transactional kind of game of thrones understanding of politics And it is in many ways I'm gonna finish the most The One of the most extraordinary things in the human history that we were able to do that and have been able to do that in this country And I want to sort of hold on to that so My hope I know you're not supposed to read the end. I'm gonna tell you is that the lawmakers will quickly act to pass public financing system and anti-monopoly laws those are the two areas that I think we should move in for structural reform to protect our civic culture I sometimes feel like our country is both young and old Like the 81-year-old Franklin floating in his hoped-for air balloon We are in many ways inside his magical experiment and it has been every bit as extraordinary as imagined It has brought people to levels often dreamed of and rarely achieved Where they live together in peace Exercising collective power over their own lives. I have no doubt this represents one of the greatest achievements in human history But democracy without constant vigilance against corruption is an unstable Unmourned thing subject to great gusts of whimsy and likely to collapse There is no one walking below holding the string We need obstacles restraints an unbreakable connection between the public and the representatives Thank you Zephyr that was fantastic Let me ask you a couple questions. I mean one you I mean you describe the the Hobbesian view And and that and the end that being the the kind of prevailing view kind of on the court What's what's kind of your own view about human nature? I mean, you know Larry Lessig kind of Has developed who's kind of a counterpart of yours Devella has this idea of dependence corruption in other words. It's not just like bad individuals It's everybody in the system and when I first got involved in this issue when I was working for senator Bill Bradley I remember putting this line in a speech over and over again It's good people caught in a bad system and I would always back up and say well, they're not all good people There's some real there's some real scumbags up here But but I did think it was important to to sort of identify that it's not just a matter of you know Tom DeLay should go to jail or something like that You know that there really is something systemic about it. Where do you stand on that kind of line between? Hobbes and Lessig I guess So I'm you know entirely unoriginal on this I I'm This is just too cheap. I'm entirely unoriginal. I'm just a Madisonian Now I so you know one view of human nature is that people are deeply egoist Another is that they're basically good and can be tempted I tend to view that people as having extraordinary capacities within them for private serving behavior and for public serving behavior and The the structures then define how we are so the structures enable us like it is Possible not that it or anybody's gonna be a saint but it is possible to have people wake up in the morning and Love their public whether their public is peak skill or New York State or The country that that kind of fundamental affection and willing to fight for is a possible human emotional state and in fact the most desirable and That it is our job And I do think of this as the con what the constitution did the best job of and we're failing at now Is to build structures that allow that to happen as often as possible and that right now? We have structures that basically make it so difficult for that to happen So if you're running for office or serving an office as you may know Congress members spend between 30 and 70 percent of their time now Raising money They spend basically, you know at the low-level 15 hours a week in 1988 it was 15 hours a year. I mean it's a total change Yeah So if you then and you know I did this I spent them basically a month raising money on the campaign If it is your job to raise money on the campaign it is hard to wake up with love of peak skill Because you're going to wake up thinking about the people that you're going to spend time talking to for the next You know for for seven hours that day or five hours that day And that you're oriented towards those people that you're going to be calling and raising money from and so then the best part of our human you know a lot of it is like Leveraging the best part of our human natures towards good things or the best part of human natures is to be sympathetic to the People we talk to this is a good thing It's to feel warmly towards people that we get and give gifts from So if you're spending all your time talking to the wealthiest people in really in world history if you're raising money in America right now What or in New York then you are actually it's very difficult. It's almost schizophrenic to carry that to carry that Job along with attitude of public love So I just think we're capable of terrible terrible things and capable of wonderful things and the structures matter enormously, which is why Public financing of elections seems so important to me Let me let's take two people who were elected Two weeks ago, okay, you're gonna make me say yes or no. No, I'm just like how do they Know, yeah, well, I know your answer on one. I'm not sure about the other I'm just like how would they fit into a corruption ration and not not necessarily individuals one Let's say the new governor of Illinois Bruce Rauner, you know enormous personal wealth the other governor Cuomo and You know, there's a great line that somebody used in a you know, wonderful review of Governor Cuomo's book The other day where he talks about Cuomo's particular ideological Configuration what he brags about is being, you know, okay, socially liberal economically conservative and Let me let the point out that's what that's the perfect nexus of issue positions where the big money, right? I mean, that's that's where you get it. How do those two? Figures fit in to a corruption are you like In other words, if we if we reoriented law around a much richer vision of corruption Would it be easy? to build structures that You know change the issue configuration around a Cuomo or make it more difficult for somebody like Rauner to March into. Yes. So first I should just say right off the bat that actually because I bring a psychological view of corruption public and private interest I'm actually far more hesitant to call individuals corrupt not because I think they're not but because I think it's hard to look into their hearts But we can say overall a system encourages certain kinds of self-interested behavior or not self-interested behavior I tend to think Cuomo has no real ideology But So The reason I say this because yeah, I don't think Cuomo has any real ideology at all So the ideology has represents the ideology of a set of donors Transmitted through him. But but the point is that it's not it's not like an earmark for You know some person who has land that they want to railroad to Railroad to buy it's a much bigger You know what seems to be his conception of the public interest is that issue configuration, right? Yeah, I mean I like I said I actually the language he tends to use and I is is Very distant from the language of public interest itself, you know his sort of default is very transactional But let me let me see if I can answer your question. I think I Right, I mean what is the question is it the question is is is a richer? It's not like are they corrupt? It is would a richer vision of corruption be able to Change a world in which in which an elected official is just a Vehicle of the ideology of a subset of people. Yes donors So so right this is where it's a little bit technical is that a richer vision of corruption in the courts Would mean that we would be far freer to pass all kinds of laws that limit corporate spending That limit total spending, you know, we're an outlier in the world and that we don't limit spending in Elections period if we had a different understanding of corruption those laws would be upheld as anti-corruption laws And so we wouldn't see this kind of excessive spending in the first place and so I think it would lead to very different systems, but the One of the things that I focus on in the book is that not just public officials are corrupt in this sense But actually those who are donating or those who are engaging though the the donors themselves as private citizens if they are attempting to use the Public tools for private ends. They are part of this corruption and this is also sort of a founding era Understanding it certainly influenced a lot of the lobbying cases is the idea that we are Citizens and that is an office and the office of citizen means that we should not use our office For entirely selfish ends, but also for public ends And finally, can you say you mentioned at the end put both public financing and monopoly? Say say, you know a few sentences about where monopoly and antitrust fits in yeah to your to your vision Well, you know, it certainly was a concern at the founding and has been an ongoing concern also, you know ironically No, ironically, but the late 70s early 80s. We lost a lot of good ideas It was the drugs what it was the drugs You know Benjamin Franklin thought the Republic would last a couple hundred years. You just hope it wasn't so precise So But the idea that That concentrated unaccountable private power leads to all kinds of corruption in different ways One is that it leads to elected officials serving those private powers. So what we see in who is lobbying? It's not all companies It's a handful of companies who really really aggressively invest in purchasing political power and then indirectly exercising political power and they tend to be Number of just a very small number of highly concentrated companies There's also just a very basic concern about private unaccountable government where Amazon or Comcast or Tyson Plays a governmental role over both its employees and in our system at large and does so in a way that is private Serving as opposed to public serving so it's a pretty direct example of a private serving behavior in a quasi public role Let's um, you know open up the conversation. Please Say who you are if you have an organizational affiliation and make sure whatever you say can reasonably have a question mark at the end of it Please do yes Hi, I'm Daniel Schumann. I'm policy director with crew, but I'm not here representing my organization So you did a great job of laying out you know sort of the institutional factors that the the founders considered when trying to address corruption and You know you sort of laid out how it has fallen apart in the last couple of decades Now there are a number of efforts going on now to try to reach a You know a political response to the to the sort of falling apart that's taking place in the 70s There's the calling for a constitutional convention, which is really an organizing tool not an actual effective policy We you know their calls for public financing, but there's really no Political path to make that happen at least not in the not in the next 10 20 years that we can foresee From a political perspective not from a not from an ideological Oh, and finally of course the Supreme Court as much as you know We would like to think that they would be persuaded perhaps by what's in your book or in other documents there seemed to be fairly set Series of ideologies in that with the recent change in the Senate It seems unlikely that there's going to be more friendly faces on the court for the perspective that you're outlining So having recently run for office and having thought about this for many many years What is your perspective on the path forward to actually achieve? Remediation of some of these corruption problems Not from an academic perspective, but really from a political and from an organizing perspective. Yes So imagine being in 1900 we fought a civil war and African-Americans have no meaningful rights Suffragists have Been organizing for decades. No when we can't vote The populace have been talking about down with monopoly For decades at this point Bryant lost the last campaign McKinley has more money than God There is no path in 1900 to 1910 there is no path in 1900 to 1935 that is impossible and there is no path in 1900 to 1967 There is no path if you do a power map That would actually lead you from that time to where we actually got so You could give up in 1900 And I think we're in a similar situation I do not think That if you look at the existing power structure and everything works rationally we're in good shape. We're in terrible shape I don't see a rational path through just everybody acting in self-interested ways, but people in Unexpected ways act in unself-interested ways Taft makes no sense as a As the reformer that he was But he existed and he came out of a set of ideas and our persistent ideas and persistent organizing that enabled him so Bryant never became president but Taft did and You know Charles Evan he Used who was a great can't such a great campaign finance reformer in 1916 that he himself limited Campaign donations to a thousand dollars a person didn't go so well for it Wilson But what I mean is that I don't know the path and I think anybody who tells you there's a path right now Is it's probably wrong, but I know some essential features of the path Essential features are active organizing active speaking out and embracing an ideology Openly embracing an ideology that resists it and the transactional model is not gonna work So my focus has been well, I mean I'm doing what I can I wrote a book. I ran for governor I think You know I look at what's happening in Hong Kong, and I think okay, so what would they kill for they would kill for our capacity to actually Have elect we still have this access to elections so getting more people to run for office and Using that as a tool. There's a tendency in the left also since the 70s really 60s to eschew electoral politics I think that's a mistake And so active engagement in electoral politics, I think is key actual sort of promote, you know political entrepreneurs and I support almost all of what is happening in terms of the activism around reform my focus has been breaking up the big companies and Passing public funding of elections and that can happen on a state-by-state basis. I mean it can happen in New York after 2016 New York will have a democratic Senate after 2016 the activism there over the last 10 years has created a political climate where You sort of have to support public financing of elections if we get public financing elections in New York State We can get it all over the country. I Would just add to that. I mean where where public financing is in place It's been really resilient and people say people don't like that kind of thing Well, they actually do and it sticks and and and over time will also develop a cadre of people who Understand that that's a better way a better way to live, but on the whole it's also important to use moments like this I think Rick Hayeson has a great point about this like moments like this are the moments where you get where you use the time to Get smarter and really sharpen these ideas and and I think this book is a great contribution to that Jim Snyder former Clearinghouse so I think the great contribution of the book is it's analytical and empirical rigor critiquing others definitions of Corruption specifically the US Supreme Court, but it still leaves a giant area of vagueness in its definition of corruption a positive vision your own vision so that Could be addressed by clearly defining your definition of excess of public private interests or public interests Which are incredibly vague and contested terms in Democratic theory so just to narrow it to a very Concise question. There is the notion of political quality where each individual's private interests or vote should be Tell it equally that's very popular among many democratic theorists But there's another view which is really the rule that rules the world Which is that the intensity of preferences is what? Is really critical and that is actually how practical politicians respond To private interests that if somebody has an intense preference That's more important than if somebody has a vague preference And when I was a politician in verman as a school board member your home state It was constantly an issue for me You would have people come up on special ed or whatever the issue might be with intense preferences And other people with diffuse preferences and how how are those way you can come up with very different definitions of the public interest Versus the private interests and there are many issues Like that when you come up with a positive definition Of the public interest or excessive private interest to underpin your whole theory of corruption. So how that's a great question about If you could address Okay, so the practical that the two practical impacts if the if the court reads the book and if humans read the book is one It will lead to enormous A huge amount of leeway among congress and other elected bodies to pass anti-corruption laws So that's that's the practical effect is that you accept the vagueness, but you basically give congress Acceptant examples where you feel like it's real and compensate protection enormous benefit of the doubt to actually try with a lot of these reforms And so you don't actually have to solve the the vagueness there as much as to say in general We're going to allow for um elected officials to try everything whether it's you know, I'm not a big fan of term limits but whether it's term limits or Experiments in campaign funding or experiments and limits It's a it's a shift of power from the court To elected bodies. That's the practical the other practical impact is that it it's supposed to You know one of the purposes of the book is not just who we are to the court But who we are as americans so that reformers don't feel like they're just sort of post watergate New Reformers but rather falling in an incredibly long tradition that goes back 230 years and that what they are doing is the most american of american work in the sort of best part of our history So those are those are the practical impacts. I don't think That political equality and The anti-corruption principle are incompatible And they are two separate values So um what I would ask of a public official is as much as possible We create a situation where you as your school board member Say I want to know what is best for this School district That is your motive. That is your purpose. So i'm very purpose focused like we want public officials with that purpose And then there's a secondary question Which is in doing that do I give everybody equal interest or do I care about uh, uh intensity of preference and I think Um, it is entirely Compatible with my theory that you could have either the absolute equality theorist or the intensity of preference theorist But the deep motive would be public interest. Does that make sense? um, and so I I um, I think you're asking sort of a version of the the berkian question Like should you serve the public good as you yourself define it or as you think the public should define it And I tend to you know, I'm sorry if this is fuzzy, but I think that they're that a little bit of A little bit of each But that uh, not necessarily intensity But it is fair for an elected official to bring independent judgment as opposed to simply adding up the judgment of the constituents Uh in the way back John polin here for myself, uh the presidential election in 2016 any Anybody out there potentially that could move the needle positively on this issue in your opinion. Yes um And I don't think we even know all of those who are so Um, I have two things to say about it. One is we need a primary That primaries are the essential way in which We actually have representative any kind of representation in the presidency at all It's where real ideas are fought out and whatever you think about whatever candidate the absence of a primary would be a complete democratic tragedy Um, so even if there's even if you love the one candidate There is no single candidate where it is not a democratic tragedy to not have a primary second We need uh, I I hope that somebody comes out with a strong populist approach Talking about breaking up the big companies there. I think we're in an anti-monopoly moment and everybody feels it Just look at the summer There is a story on amazon that took on wildfire The Comcast time Warner merger might be stopped um After 2008 people you know for 2008 it was at least seen as a slightly crazy to talk about breaking up big banks It is one of the top polling issues So whatever area you look you feel this anti-monopoly moment I'll tell you we pulled on monopoly and we found that didn't pull very well But if I got into a room And started talking about concentrated power, it's what everybody wanted to talk about they feel it in their lives They feel it in their employment options. They feel it in their access to Material goods they feel the sort of radical concentration of power So I hope there's a serious anti-monopoly populist candidate and the third is there's so much talk after after this mid-term about messaging We should talk about messaging But it's not just messaging it has to be true so so Sort of figuring out the perfect message But with candidates who people do not believe are actually fighting for them Is is not going to work people aren't that stupid It's not just you know It's like if you're in a relationship with somebody and they keep saying the right thing, but they're lying to you You're still going to leave the relationship So so I don't think this is just a question of messaging I think this is a question of actual genuine policy addressing root issues and I think that that's got to involve Talking about the way we fund elections. It's got to involve talking about big concentrated power And it's got to involve talking about what's happening with classes society This gentleman the second right yeah Robert Schroeder with international investor Um, we try to think of some of these issues in more practical terms Looking for transparency and letting a common sense on the part of the people Decide for themselves whether it's there's corruption involved So my my two specific questions are could more be done in terms of financial statement disclosure Not just on the part of candidates, but in terms of their immediate family members Even staff members Should we push for more disclosure in that sense? Secondly, um in terms of their actual schedules of of of of events Could we ask for public disclosure of who their meetings are with on a regular basis? So I was once the National director of the sunlight foundation and ran a campaign called the punch clock campaign And the punch clock campaign is well, they're working for us. They should punch the clock And so we gave 50 dollar bounties to anybody who could get a candidate for congress or the senate To sign that they would share their um their schedule And 500 dollar bounties to a sitting congressperson and a thousand dollar bounties to a sitting senator It was one of the best campaigns I ever ran because we of course had to spend no money and got lots of press Didn't go to the the elected official went to the citizen. No, we were asking citizens to go around and ask, you know ask for and we actually built in a There was basically like a 15 percent Dark time fund where you like just so that you could have private meetings So that there are 15 percent of your time you select is totally off the record So two senators signed up Uh, neither of them actually kept to it very well. Um, I left the sunlight foundation not because they didn't keep to it well Um, but I I think there is something to the uh public schedule. You know the actual meeting I personally think that uh transparency has limits real limits and that, uh It's essential but not transformational Um, uh source of change and I tend to think about things in terms of power first um, and so I I I actually think there's a temptation often to to Look for more and more and more transparency and that does not mean that we shouldn't be looking there But more and more and more transparency when in fact we actually have to change the basic incentive structures of What it takes to run for office and what it takes to be a public servant Um, so the most exciting transparency stuff. I think now is in the sec Um, sort of demanding uh transparency about political involvement Uh to shareholders, but my own focus is is another area Okay Um chris I'm chris lennard. I'm a fellow here. Good to see you I was wondering if you could address the idea that political spending is in fact a form of speech And you can't really regulate it without bumping up against the first amendment because that seems to be underline a lot Great question. So, um Up until nine the 1970s basically it was a little bit of an issue before but until buckley versus filet This is a new idea But the idea is sympathetic Like the idea is that the government should not be in the business of telling anybody that they cannot Share their anti-abortion views pro-abortion views Uh, you know pick your anti-monopoly views saying you can only spend $5,000 on that and not five million dollars on that is basically muffling Um I tend to I mean this relates to your question about the vagueness Um, I tend to almost see the first amendment as an american tragedy And tragedy in the sense that it is what is best in us has become What is the most dangerous? So this sort of extraordinary tradition of really respecting dissent and the first amendment has now become the the tool which corporations used to strike down laws that we need to protect against concentrated power And um, what I see the court doing is deeply abstract and I think academic um So let me maybe I'll put it this way if I get in a classroom I can convince all my students that we should strike down all campaign finance laws because they are Uh limiting political speech But if you want to talk about what's really happening in the world Like is somebody truly muffled can they not get their ideas out there? That's not happening And so I think that the abstraction the abstract way in which the court has dealt with the first amendment has led to it Growing and growing in size and being used to strike down law after law after law Instead of understanding we got to make sure that the government isn't Making content based discrimination against people so that it's not There's no limits on speech because of what is being said Making sure that people aren't completely getting shut out for their dissent And then also caring about other values like political equality and corruption. So it's softer. It's a little less satisfying I think that justice kennedy sees himself as sort of a first amendment warrior um And understands it in deeply abstract terms actually in the book. I talk about how the increasing number of academics on the court correlates with the A greater likelihood of seeing all of all of these kinds of anti-corruption laws is threatening free speech And and when you see justices on the court who've had political experience They tend to be very very insistent on the importance of these anti-corruption laws And so we actually would be well suited to have more people with political experience on the court because they understand How money and politics really works So I don't have a good abstract answer because I think abstraction is not the way to Engage with the first amendment when it comes to money and politics Well another way to think about I mean I I'm I'm a little more protective of the first amendment and the vision of it that evolved after homes and and so forth Without being an academic I think the other way to put it is like whose speech is muffled in this current system Is people who don't have resources and and if and if people had resources so that other views could be heard You have less of a less of a complexity Yeah, I don't actually don't know where we stand on this but there is like this active debate within the academy and most of the people that I align with say uh The court misunderstands the first amendment And but we should still use the first amendment as the tool through which we evaluate these things and I say Just as a difference There's a first amendment which needs to be balanced against an anti corruption vision And these are different separate both American values And I actually think we shouldn't do all of our political philosophy through the first amendment Because there's been this tendency in the last 30 years to really 40 years to basically do our politics in the court Through the first amendment not through all the other parts of the constitution Good in the front row My name is elizabeth smith brownstein. I'm a writer and historian What concerns me deeply is the teaching of history And political philosophy in our high schools from what I read and gather our students our young people are hopelessly ignorant About the formation and foundation of our government. What have you observed? Is it as bad as I think it is? And what can be done to change because otherwise our democracy is as you imply really gone Well, I I I agree with you that it's critical And I love your phrase hopelessly ignorant because of course the the source of hope that I gave our friend from crew Was the hope of history That history sort of gives you hope because it allows you to understand that things move in unusual ways um, so I I think it's absolutely essential. I think you should run for governor of your local state No, but look look there is um, there is a Battle for the soul of public education that is happening right now and it's happening on about seven different fronts It's happening about testing about teachers unions about tenure About art and music and history and the role of all of these things in public education. It's about the role of school boards I mean this this is a fun at its role charter schools there is a fundamental fight about what public education is and um should be and um, I care deeply about it and um I will be speaking about it a lot So I'll add one I'll add one one other comment Although this book is a is as zephyr says a letter to the supreme court It's extremely readable and I would give it to a high school senior or a college student And it would it would be a good a really good introduction to some of these to some of these issues. Um in the way back row Greetings, i'm thomas warden. I'm an economist. I've been working at the world bank and other places dealing with corruption around the world One a couple comments one thing was kind of interesting regarding the cost of campaigns You might want to look just recently this last campaign They were comparing the cost and the money spent to other expenditures For instance the last campaign was a fraction compared to just what was spent on halloween So when you're really looking real terms, is it really a lot of money? It sounds like a lot, but is it? And then also you got to look at Where is the seat of the problem coming from is it the education? Is it the Greed or the problems, you know coming through if you look at corporate america naturally it always blames that it's a lame duck or it's a Vogue trader who's doing the problem, but is it culturally and internal is the problem And I can give you plenty examples of that Then furthermore you got to look at the politics The politics is on both sides of the corruption But then I also asked the question why Is probably the most difficult states are the ones with the democrats control You got new york california Chicago or notorious and is that played into Hollywood who's made the gangsters a good thing? And so forth just a few comments Well, there's a lot there. It's really interesting When I first started getting involved in politics in 2003. I was struck by what you talked about at first Which is what's what's that movie like waterland or something? Waterworld It's with tom cruise um, that basically what? Basically, we spent less on the 2000 2000 campaign that was spent on water worlds or something Like right the the numbers are so trivial compared to you know, whether it's halloween or christmas or you know pick your um And uh, and so I actually Agree that it's not the numbers But but it is What is the elected official's job? So to me the root of the issue is not whether it's 12 million or 2 million but Look at it like what is their social function in the world? And and and I I think of the change since the late 80s It goes back a little deeper But the change in the late 80s of the job of an elected official is a totally different job description Because the job description is now dominantly fundraising So we basically I was thinking about this because you know, it's true for um Heads of nonprofits as well And honestly, I'm in law school. We're looking for a new dean. It's true for deans We basically select for you know, we've selected for leadership in a thousand ways over the world history like Who fights better? Who's wittier? Who's good-looking? Who your daddy is? And right now we're selecting for like who is Really really really good at selling at a two thousand six hundred dollar price point Like it's basically the same as a vacuum cleaner salesman, you know Like calling and calling and calling calling and we're selecting for fundraising capacity as our leadership capacity But actually I think what's deeper, of course is that there are no long you stop being a leader if you if your job is fundraising So I don't think it's the number. I think it's the job And what the job then does is change who you work for Um, and I think of that as as sort of to me that is the sort that is the root issue Um, I mean you have a lot of other interesting points. I I'm you know, I'm a democrat Um, I want to work at this within the democratic party Um, but I'm no in no way going to be an apologist for democrats all around the around the country so but a bunch of I'm curious what you know, he raised he's he mentioned a couple states Do you think there's any anything meaningful to the practice that some Some studies try to engage in of looking at different say obviously we do it internationally But looking at different states and saying which one has a more corrupt or less corrupt political culture I mean, I think I think the polls tend to be Illinois on one end and Virginia on the other end New York does pretty well, but yeah in in the like very corrupt Yeah You could have fixed that Um, it's really yeah, I mean, I would love to talk to you more about sort of because I I I am Uh, very very American focused in this book And I actually sort of explicitly Resist trying to make a definition of corruption for the world And resist, you know, because I think actually the the problems and diagnosis can be different in different situations I don't know, you know, I've worked with ti transparency international and they do their Rankings and the idea of the rankings is that you then Business is more likely to go to one area. I think there's value in that I think as long as you recognize the deep subjectivity. It's more of a shame. Yeah There's still a lot of hands up. I'm in the middle of the blue tie Hi, my name is Dan Dutis and I'm with ti That worked out well I have I have a couple questions, but first just a point about the money I actually think the the number does matter to a certain extent I lived in France for several years was there for the 2012 presidential election in France Um, every political party is capped at I believe 23 million euro Um, there's no outside spending. There are no packs. Um, even the political parties aren't allowed to spend They also have a many additional rules. Um, you're not allowed to purchase television ads You're not allowed to purchase radio ads internet ads It's really severely limited and I think the effect for someone who's living there is that it's actually a much much richer Conversation and I think it is a much much richer conversation because the money is limited and therefore you are not swamped with All of these ridiculous ads that anyone who lives in a swing state is is swamped with Um, so I think that's an important point But my questions I sort of have two and I think they sort of follow up on what daniel asked The first is sort of strategically when you look at all of the organizations that are In this space in the u.s. Um, you have some that are pushing for transparency It was as was pointed out you have some they're pushing for public financing You have some that are pushing for some form of a constitutional amendment. You have a lot of different ideas um, do you think that this sort of Scattered approach that you have a lot of different organizations working on things and and arguing for different solutions Is detrimental and would it might be more strategically Useful to sort of come together and come up with what appears to be the best solution And then secondly related to that and I think it's also sort of a a how question When you look at at polls people In both parties do very much say they are in favor of campaign finance reform That being said you have many many people who when it comes time to vote Do not vote in accordance with that particular belief obviously when you vote you're voting for many different On many different issues, but this issue does not seem to have an effect And so when you talk about populism you have a whole swath of people who Should be the people because they have been the real losers over the last 30 or 40 years Who are voting against their own interests in a certain sense and how do you reach those people? Yeah, okay, so all three really good points. It's not that I don't think that matter money matters I just think that the sort of the more fundamental thing is who people are working for um, and then just to make it even more complex, I mean The The intermediaries are also part of this ecosystem So who the media is matters enormously. So when you have you have ads and then you have earned media Of what we call earned media and campaigns so the the unpaid media And who those actors are is extremely important extremely different in different countries extremely different different cultures And so yes, if you have less money and good intermediaries that leads to a rich interaction But you also the rich the good intermediaries are part of that story. I I do think that the ads play I mean, I think there's a lot of evidence on this, but Oh, what would you do the ads sort of lead to the What is the night of the body snatchers? I'm making sort of all of these half references. What is it the the Invasion of the body snatchers feeling that ads have fundamentally a disempowering effect because nobody believes any of the ads And so they they sort of lead to a sense of you're with you're hanging out with the body snatchers So who wants to go vote for them? As opposed to a richer political conversation So there's other sort of other effects of the swamp of ads that aren't really direct But are more who am I? What is this? What is politics itself? Is politics itself something I can engage in and think about Okay, so your second one was just remind me That was your first the third one, what was your second Yep Oh, yes, right. So Maybe but it's not going to happen. So And the events that I've been at where they try to have one message we all end up on transparency Which I think is sort of like the last refuge of liberals. It's like it's easy to go to transparency So so if you like if you aim for consensus and end up with transparency and then everybody's focused on transparency That is not as powerful to me as people Making you know strong statements about power and then the third Well What I'd like to see is more people Running on it not just having supporting organizations supporting candidates because they fund it So so what you see across the board is that people don't vote on campaign finance reform but it's actually relatively rare to see candidates who Make that a core issue And I I think that's where we actually learn something So what we know is that people want campaign finance reform and they don't believe it's true Right, so it's and that I believe if they believed it would make a difference They would support it, but they don't believe it's going to make a difference And they don't necessarily believe that candidates who say they want it want it So there's a double non-belief So having true actual electoral champions, I think is the real is one of the real tests And we have so few of those So few people who are running on running on this as a root issue And then also in the media, I don't we don't have a lot of spokespeople or advocates So the the groups tend to sort of work outside of media like run ads run organizing But uh, you know getting more actual It is very old-fashioned ideas about leadership But real leaders in the true sense of leaders In a public way is one thing that I think is really important Yes Hold on Say who you are be brief because we're yeah, uh, I might say a poll from the campaign for america's future Just to quickly follow up on that very point Part of the problem is that when when that issue comes up of i'm going to run a different kind of campaign It's not going to be the big money stuff Then there is no issue of unilateral disarmament because you know, the other side is not going to do that So there is that conundrum And is this a situation where a few people are just going to have to get out there regardless? And my other question is you know in 2016 we're going to be awash in all of this stuff And how do citizens Who are really concerned about this issue? I think the bottom line question How the citizens who are concerned about this issue get Have they make the impact felt in the midst of the deluge? Yeah I mean you guys are all asking really easy questions, right? So I think too much is made maybe maybe not too much is made of the hypocrisy claim Yes, I mean so I I'm not in favor of unilateral disarmament at all. I I think what what Now i'm becoming one of these pundits who says what people want. I don't know Here's my hunch Is they want to know you're really serious about it and not like the hypocrisy is one marker of that Like maybe you're taking in big money. That's one marker, but that's not the only marker Like are you actually going to be a candidate who will go in there and fight to change what they see as a root issue? Which is big money taking over politics and if you can convince a constituency of that Then yeah, like work within the current system use your big donors To enable that campaign to happen. I I guess I think that The the the particular question about whether you're you are Unilaterally disarmed. I I'm not in favor of unilaterally disarming for the most part if the candidate wants to do that That's great. And then your second question is Well, and I want to go back to this belief thing I found on the campaign trail that when I talked about campaign finance and and breaking up big companies together Both were more powerful That they actually and I don't have like a message box for you guys but if you have a few if you have a A little time to talk about the changing structure of power in this country about how there's concentrated power and that concentrated power Is then leading to buying elections and then those elections are leading to greater concentration That's something that really makes sense to people And it's talking about both of those together in some ways It gives a populist angle to campaign finance, which for too long has been seen as this sort of like fussy old white guy things Like a bunch of scolds You know and like really talking about power in a very serious concrete way. I think can get to people I don't know. That's a hunch. That's what I'm experimenting with. I'd like to see a lot more candidates experiment with that 2016 like How to be good in 2016 Well, we've got a couple years First of all getting people to run in 2016 who you can be genuinely excited about like I would love to have leaders in every race in the country But a lot more electoral moments and 90 90 percent of them might fail But to have real fights like this is a tool. We've been given elections. Let's have real fights with them And that means changing who runs for office so You know when I came up the people we thought were going to run for office or the people who were like you know planning Part of the young dams. I love the young dams, but like planning from age 18 on never had a problem with debt You know sort of the squeaky clean kind of politician We need to I think we need a lot more artistic people to be engaging in running for office people who don't think of Politics as something they do people who think I'm just in the nonprofit world. I'm not going to step out So actually changing the biography and temperament and sentimental qualities of people who run for office instead of looking for Perfect biographies because we're talking about taking on real power here. We're not like both playing chess I mean, I have pretty clear populist beliefs about the way the economy should work We're not talking about playing chess where we both have the same number of chess pieces We have far fewer chess pieces. So we need to engage art and morality and a spirited kind of fight In a way that recognizes the the asymmetry of power Beautiful, let's do one more question. You've had your hand up Diane Philburg clinical psychologist Two two questions and other other ends of the thing In order, how do you get better? candidates when 15 percent of the population Is selecting the candidates via primaries and the electorate in general isn't participating and two What about personhood of corporations and how that affects the court So I don't know but one of my personal missions as a person is to Running for office is every bit as terrible as they tell you But what they don't tell you is that it is one of the most extraordinary and magical and inspiring exciting things in the world so To in an honest way one of my personal missions is to get more people to run for office who said I would never do something that dirty That corrupt, you know, right that that sort of cynical that where I have to carry around little message boxes And so actually that's that's a personal mission is to get more people to to run to take on this crazy adventure Not crazy adventure the serious adventure second, I think Well, here's why my book is wrong And corporate personhood is wrong Uh, yeah, there's a problem with corporate personhood in the courts I actually I my ten my view is that isn't actually what's driving citizens united And I think what where my book is wrong is I don't know that a definition of corruption is what's really driving the court here I don't know. It's a genuine question. We don't know What's possible is what's really driving the court here is a very different vision of what government is And a very and so these the first amendment The definition of corruption the definition of equality the definition of personhood all of those are um superficial arguments Covering up a fundamentally different vision of democracy And it may be that this court has really adopted a sort of Corporate vision that was very lively in the early 19th century early 20th century Which is like we should have more corporations actually distributing goods and running and governing our country And so it may be it's a deeper ideological thing that's going on here And we may be getting too distracted in including me in Like lightsabers with scalia instead of like what's what is what is our vision of government? And I I think this this old question of like what is the role of a corporation which relates to your corporate personhood Not is their corporate person that or is there not but what is the appropriate role of a large corporation in a democracy Is a very serious and very important question that that we all have to do a better job of answering Great. Great. Well, that's a great note to end on. Um, I really appreciate you all coming. Appreciate zephyr For for taking this time and sharing the these ideas and I hope you all have a good rest of the day