Lessig, not introduced, oddly enuf.
lonely planet policies. money breeding mistrust.
wikipedia, leaving $100 million dollars on the table. asked jimmy wales about it: the one thing people don’t say about trust is that it’s all advertising fluff.
anti-vaccination crazies; parents ignoring doctors, because of trust gap. the character of the context of science and the effect of money.
issue of an anti-stroke drug, company sponsoring drug gave AHA $11 million, appearance of dispassionate review brought into doubt. conflicts of interest. video of rfk jr invoking “classic tobacco science” — can grab onto the meme and promote an idea (that’s INSANE).
film Maxed Out (which made me cry, honestly); bankruptcy abuse prevention statute, making it impossible to escape credit card debt thru bankruptcy. (vs bethlehem steel or enron) Clinton originally in favor, but then Hillary read something in the NYT and spoke against it helped keep it from being passed…then. As senator, after contributions, voted for it, said it’s not about the money. he believes her, but what do other people believe? can they trust that she’s given the right answer for the right reason? and will people even listen to.
not that money is EVIL, but that it poisons trust.
does money change the actual result? “even gifts like pens & coffee mugs affect prescription decisions” !!!!
sonny bono copyright extension act. does that advance the public good? (ah, the case he lost. so sad.) milton friedman would only sign if the word “no brainer” was included in a whatever by a bunch of nobel prize winners.
world health organization established standard no more than 10% of diet shd come from added sugar. sugar council got congress to write & complain. actual govt standard here is 25%
consensus around global warming. big gore quote. study of 1000 articles from 93-03, 0 not in agreement with basic consensus, vs 53% in popular media.
either they get it wrong because they’re idiots or because they’re guided by something other than reason.
is this anything new?
framers obessed with this problem. 1785, people beginning to think america was a failure; extraordinary spread of corruption. lovely jefferson quote, tl;dr. then, constitutions.
19th century cesspool of corruption. stern stern daniel webster, employed by bank of the us. bribery not a crime in congress until 1853. same now? abramoff, cunningham, series of tubes guy, rod b (lego hair man). a different kind of corruption, mostly. actual integrity greater than at any time in the past. conyers crazy anti-OA bill. no publishers in detroit, mainly foreign publishers. so, why? “good souls corruption” don’t have to believe that anybody is actually cheating/bribing. money to secure tenure, dynamic of constant attention. 30-70% of time spent raising money. 6th sense of how actions will affect fundraising. an addiction. book: so damn much money. economy of influence. since 2000, # of lobbyists doubled, price also doubled. so must mean increase in productivity on the part of lobbyist. “farm league for K street” no one has any interest in fighting against that system.
costs, from the right: title VII of telecom act(?) “how are we going to raise money from the telecoms if we deregulate?” intentionally regulating as a form of extortion. if you are anti-regulation, ask how much of that is there?
from the left: econ disasters; single thread: poor regulatory oversight, campaign of deregulation, follow the money. ah, enron.
the point both sides are missing: problem is not big govt or deregulation, but mistrust. 9% of public believed that congress was doing a good job last year; now has doubled, but dude, under 20%!
want to believe. that it’s not because of money.
digression about what he had been doing with internet/copyright policy, realizing that the corruption/dependency thing was under everything. restore trust? by removing improper dependence.
increasingly convinced that only way to do this: citizens’ funding of nation’s elections. cap of $250/person, or indirectly thru dept of the treasury (or whatever). isn’t there a move for that in city of oly elections? as way of taking doubt out of the picture. change congress (.org?)
easy to get people to do what they want to do on the internet. 🙂 asking people not to give money until politicians agree to public financing. strike4change.org? ah, it makes sense if you have actually given money, which I can’t say that I ever have.
email between him & fundraiser guy.
(I’m not impressed, frankly. Not that I have an alternative.)
man-crush on al gore. excerpt of ted lecture. in changing behavior, sometimes leave out the citizenship part & democracy. “democracy crisis” side joke about counting votes. democracy as a tool for solving public problems. (why is he reminding me of emmett right now?)
everybody can understand the problem of dependency. no one who hasn’t been affected in some way by alcoholism. have to solve alcohol problem before dealing with probs with job, family, health. so too with us.
call to action! privilaged passive people, do something for crying out loud. standing ovation. (srsly?)
(things to chew on here. starting to wonder if starting this on the local level instead is the way to go.)
q about k street, what to do! lobbyists not neccesarily the problem, but the money is the underlying issue. joking about lawyers.
q from baratunde abt the conyers thing, and fun with stats! he has enormous respect for conyers, last guy around who voted to impeach nixon! doesn’t actually believe that he was bought off. lego hair & series of tubes (actual corruption) vs this other thing. no quid pro quo, but the PERCEPTION and the breeding of cynicism. (he should be going back to the vaccine thing, and how doubt is bred by the introduction of money.)
ok, gonna take off now.