“There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.”
-Mark Twain
When the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators set up shop in New York City’s Zuccotti Park two months ago they sent a message. Through their signs, slogans, and shouts they represented the noise, anger, and frustration of many Americans who have suffered in our financial crisis. They weren’t neatly organized, didn’t have a spokesperson, and certainly had no truly global organized plan to bring about change that would benefit “the 99%” over “the 1%.” Nevertheless, their demonstrations are popular, spontaneous events that persist in sending a message of dissatisfaction with the way things are. One estimate is that 70% of the occasional marching attendees are actually employed.
Now, however, other voices are providing the facts, the history, and the details that point out some of the unique characteristics of American government that make the protestors and many other Americans so frustrated with Washington and Wall Street. Charlie Rose interviewed Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig last week about his book Republic, Lost–How Money Corrupts Congress and a Plan to Stop It. Essentially, through numerous legal arrangements members of Congress can place stock trades based on information they receive during committee work and hearings. If you or I did that this information would be construed to be nonpublic information and our investments would be seen to be in violation of insider-trading laws. These same legislators have been offered preferential buying opportunities to invest in initial public offerings by firms that are subject to the laws passed or not passed by the Congressional subcommittees these legislators serve on. Again, in other situations these acts would be seen as serious conflicts of interest.
Peter Schweizer, a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, outlines other strategies used by the folks in Congress in their transformations from being ordinary citizens from a variety of working and professional backgrounds to becoming multimillionaires. His book is Throw Them All Out. Very notably his analysis of the portfolio performance of accounts owned by those in Congress outperform those of average folks and of the market indexes themselves.
Democrats and Republicans can continue to wrangle and debate and pontificate about what “the American people want.” What these two authors and others are arguing for is a different system wherein the crushing power of money and its influence is reduced by systems of real-time transparency and disclosure. It isn’t a matter of party politics. It’s more a matter of a system of open government and public debate and elections that can’t be subverted by money and money alone.
