You’ll have a chance Tuesday to hear Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig discuss “Raging Cronyism” during a noon luncheon at the John Locke Foundation, co-sponsored by Common Cause.
Meanwhile, a multipage feature on lobbying reform in the latest Bloomberg Businessweek quotes Lessig:
Critics of lobbyists’ influence in the Capitol are open to Marlowe’s ideas, but many are skeptical that they are sufficient to change the process. “I think we’ve had enough reform efforts that move the chairs around the deck of the Titanic,” says Jack Abramoff, the former superlobbyist who got out of prison in 2010 after serving 3½ years for defrauding Indian tribes.
Lawrence Lessig, who directs a vast research project into public corruption at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University, says: “There’s all the difference in the world between a lawyer making an argument to the jury and a lawyer handing out $100 bills to the jurors. That’s a distinction the system doesn’t understand right now.”
Regular Carolina Journal Radio listeners might remember Lessig’s prediction in 2010 that the U.S. Supreme Court would strike down the type of election matching funds — or “rescue funds” — that characterized taxpayer-financed elections in North Carolina and other states. That prediction came true.
