Lawrence Lessing

[blithe spirit]

A thinker...has a lot is say about the current state of our politics and government...provided a link for his crenditials...course I will admit he's might be a little too elitest for some... which automatically makes him suspect...right?

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/llessig

[blithe spirit]

trying this again....

third times the charm...

[Wayne Goodwin]

Haven't a clue what he's talking about but enjoyed hearing him speak ...

[frenchy]

and it ain't gonna change till we take the corporate money out of politics .. and get total transparency as to who gave how much to whom .. and then hold our reps in congress and the senate accountable .. the more i think about it maybe term limits ain't such a bad idea .. 

[Lifesighs]

I would be ok with them lobbying but first they would have to give up all the retirement and benefits they got while in office.

I could see them now, what to do? what to do? Giving up money for money.

[ProblemAgain]

give a listen

Thousands Petition SEC To Disclose Corporate Political Spending

http://www.npr.org/2013/04/12/177067538/thousands-petition-sec-to-d...

OVERBY: Among the leading opponents are the National Association of Manufacturers, the Business Roundtable and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The chamber raised and spent more than $35 million during last year's campaigns. In January, it led a coalition in filing comments against the disclosure petition. Lawyer lobbyist Andrew Pincus helped write the comments. He says the SEC should deal with congressional mandates.

ANDREW PINCUS: If you look at the agenda, there are a number of things - I think more than a dozen rule-makings from the Dodd-Frank Act and the Jobs Act - that are now either overdue or close to overdue and haven't even been started.

OVERBY: It's worth asking how much money corporations actually spend on politics. The nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics says that for the 2012 elections, the absolute minimum was $55 million. Pincus says investors have no need or right to know anything about that.

PINCUS: Corporations are not Athenian democracies. That's not our structure.

OVERBY: And he scoffs at the comment-writing campaign for the petition.

PINCUS: It's Washington, you know? It got a half million form letters, what people in Washington would call a grass tops or Astroturf campaign.

[ProblemAgain]

Congress Repeals Financial Disclosure Requirements For Senior U.S. Officials

April 12, 2013

by: Eyder Peralta, NPR

The House and Senate acted quietly without a vote. Instead, they sent the measure to the president's desk by unanimous consent.

A tourist takes cover underneath an umbrella while snapping a photo of the U.S. Capitol on March 6, 2013 in Washington, DC.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Joining the Senate, the House of Representatives approved a measure today that repeals a requirement that top government officials post financial disclosures on the Internet.

The House, like the Senate, acted quietly without a vote. Instead, they sent the measure to the president's desk by unanimous consent.

The provision was part of the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act (Stock), which became law in March of 2012. The act was intended to stop members of congress from profiting from nonpublic information.

As NPR's Tamara Keith reported, at the time, Sen. Joe Lieberman called the law "the most significant congressional ethics reform legislation to pass Congress in at least five years."

The Washington Post explains:

"That law mainly addressed conflict-of-interest policies for members of Congress and their staffs, but it also included a requirement that the financial disclosure forms filed by some 28,000 high-ranking federal employees be posted online.

"While those forms are public records, they must be requested individually from employing agencies. The Stock Act envisions online posting first on agency sites and later in a central, searchable database.

"The posting requirement was delayed three times out of concerns about the potential for identity theft and other crimes against career employees, as well as security risks to the government."

The Sunlight Foundation, which advocates for a more open government, called today's repeal an "epic failure."

http://app1.kuhf.org/articles/npr1365800717-Congress-Repeals-Financ...