MayDay

MayDay is a cry for help–an internationally-recognized distress symbol.

It’s also the name of a new–and very different– crowdsourced SuperPac to end all SuperPacs, intended to get money out of politics. MayDay is the brainchild of Lawrence Lessig. Most of us know of Lessig through Creative Commons, and his work to keep information free, but he has also had a longstanding concern about political corruption and the influence of money in politics. Here’s his bio:

Lawrence Lessig is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard Law School, director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University, and founder of Rootstrikers, a network of activists leading the fight against government corruption. He has authored numerous books, including Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Our Congress — and a Plan to Stop It, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, Free Culture, and Remix.

Lessig serves on the Board of Creative Commons, AXA Research Fund and iCommons.org, and on the Advisory Boards of the Sunlight Foundation and the Better Future Project. He is a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Association, and has received numerous awards, including the Free Software Foundation’s Freedom Award, Fastcase 50 Award and being named one of Scientific American’s Top 50 Visionaries.

Lessig holds a BA in economics and a BS in management from the University of Pennsylvania, an MA in philosophy from Cambridge, and a JD from Yale. Prior to rejoining the Harvard faculty, Lessig was a professor at Stanford Law School, where he founded the school’s Center for Internet and Society, and at the University of Chicago. He clerked for Judge Richard Posner on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals and Justice Antonin Scalia on the United States Supreme Court.

This is not a lightweight, nor someone interested in gaining political celebrity. (He’s also not someone who can be labeled and dismissed as just another Leftist academic; he would hardly have clerked for Posner and Scalia if he were.) You can find  his video explanation of what MayDay is trying to do–the Plan to Get our Democracy Back–here, along with several other videos.  Early this month, MayDay passed the $5 million dollar mark and ceased fundraising for this cycle.

Will this plan work? Who knows? Lessig is the founder, and probably the best-known of the MayDay group, but several of the other participants listed on the website are equally impressive. I noted Trevor Potter–previously head of the FEC (not to mention the Colbert Report’s satirical SuperPac series)–and a number of younger entrepreneurs adept in social media.

I sent a few bucks. Couldn’t hurt.

I can’t remember a time when yelling “MayDay” seemed more appropriate…

Comments

Joseph Stiglitz: Myth Buster

In a recent essay, Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz considered “The Myth of America’s Golden Age” and the measures taken by government in 2008 and after to avert another Depression.

The entire piece is well worth reading, but the following paragraph struck me as a perceptive–and straightforward–explanation of this country’s growing inequality.

If our politics leads to preferential taxation of those who earn income from capital; to an education system in which the children of the rich have access to the best schools, but the children of the poor go to mediocre ones; to exclusive access by the wealthy to talented tax lawyers and offshore banking centers to avoid paying a fair share of taxes—then it is not surprising that there will be a high level of inequality and a low level of opportunity. And that these conditions will grow even worse…
…

When I was a new lawyer, the partner I was assigned to told me something I’ve always remembered: there is only one legal question, and it is “what should we do?”

What’s true for the practice of law is equally true for the crafting of public policies. If Stiglitz is correct–and he clearly is–what should we do?

And in a system that has been profoundly corrupted by money, a system where even well-meaning lawmakers are beholden to rabid base voters whose fears have been expertly manipulated by the oligarchs, how do we do it?

Comments

At a Loss for Words About a Loss

My friend Paul Chase died last week in a senseless automobile accident. He was only 58. Wednesday, I attended a memorial for him–as did several hundred other people.

Paul wasn’t famous, wasn’t a celebrity, wasn’t rich–He wasn’t the sort of person whose memorial attracts wanna-be hangers-on or people who are there to be seen. The people who attended were grieving the loss of a genuinely good person.

What can I say about Paul? Even for someone who writes all the time, it’s hard to find the words.

Paul was a handsome, brilliant lawyer who chose to work for social justice and sound public health policies rather than joining a silk-stocking law firm and making a lot of money. But he was never strident, never holier-than-thou, never anything but incredibly funny and thoughtful and kind.  A look around the crowd confirmed the breadth of his impact–legislators from both parties, statehouse lobbyists, representatives of nonprofit organizations, and lots and lots of friends–white, black, gay, straight, young and old.

As coworkers, friends and relatives shared their memories, I couldn’t help thinking that Paul Chase was a poster child for the “family values” that intolerant folks insist they are “protecting” by discriminating against LGBT people. He’d met his partner Terry when they were 18-year-old college students, and they’d been a devoted and loving couple for 40 years. Their respective families continued to love and embrace them both  (Terry’s sister reminisced that her mother had adored Paul so much that she made every dessert he liked when they came to visit–and served them all at the same meal).

The day of his death, the Federal Court struck down Indiana’s ban on same-sex marriage, and Paul was thrilled that he and Terry could finally get married. It wasn’t to be.

There was no hate in Paul, no evident resentment of the people who would deny him a place at the civic table, no vitriol for the vitriolic. Just an abundant kindness, an inner serenity and a killer sense of humor.

The memorial program carried a favorite quote from the Dalai Lama: “To be kind, honest and have positive thoughts; to forgive those who harm us and treat everyone as a friend; to help those who are suffering and never to consider ourselves superior to anyone else; even if this advice seems rather simplistic, make the effort of seeing whether by following it you can find greater happiness.”

Paul lived by that creed. He left us much, much too soon, but very few people–even those who have lived much longer–have left as enduring a legacy in the hearts and minds of those left behind.

He will be missed.

Comments

Did John Locke Doom America’s Social Safety Net?

The first issue of the Journal of Civic Literacy has been published, and is available at the link. We’re pretty proud of it; it features an introductory essay from former Supreme Court Justice Souter, several academic articles, a book review by Steve Sanders, and an argument for/example of effective civics instruction by Charles Dunlap, head of Indiana’s Bar Foundation.

It also includes an article–you might even say a meditation–on America’s difficulty with the concept of the social safety net.  The thesis is that Americans have internalized John Locke’s libertarianism in a way that does not accurately reflect his philosophy, and by doing so have made it incredibly difficult to have reasonable public conversations about programs like Social Security, Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare).

Given the abysmal level of civic knowledge these days, it may seem almost fanciful to revisit Hobbes, Locke and other towering Enlightenment figures (we can hardly encourage people to reread works they’ve clearly never read or even heard of), but a careful consideration of where we come from can often illuminate how in the hell we got where we are.

Anyway, if you’re interested in a somewhat wonky deliberation on our intellectual forebears, I hope you’ll give the article–and the others in the issue– a read. (Admission/disclosure: I am a co-author of the Locke article.)

And if you want to remind yourselves what a really good Supreme Court Justice sounds like, read Justice Souter’s essay.

Comments

It’s About the Rule of Law, Not Religion

Okay–this will be my last effort to explain why I am so appalled by the decision in Hobby Lobby, and it has little or nothing to do with warring definitions of religious liberty.

If Hobby Lobby were a sole proprietorship or partnership, and the Court had ruled that the Free Exercise Clause gave the owners the right to disregard a law of general application based upon their religious beliefs, I might or might not agree with the decision, but I would  see the issue as one falling properly within a long line of jurisprudence.

But Hobby Lobby–“closely held” or not–is a for-profit corporation.

When people choose to do business using the corporate form, the law grants them certain benefits that are unavailable to individuals. Most significantly, they are shielded from personal liability. If someone sues Hobby Lobby and wins a huge judgment, they can recover from whatever assets the corporation owns, but they cannot “pierce the corporate veil” and take the owners’ personal assets.

That protection against personal liability is the main reason for the legal fiction we call a corporation, and it is meant to encourage people to go into business. In effect, the government says to potential entrepreneurs “If you’ll engage in economic activity, we’ll protect you from a significant measure of risk. You may lose the business, but you won’t lose your house.”

In return for that protection, however–in return for limiting both your risk and the amount that someone you may harm can recover–the public has a right to expect you will follow laws passed by Congress that are applicable to corporate commercial ventures, whether you like them or not.

The owners of Hobby Lobby want the benefits of corporate form, but not the obligations. Their argument was essentially that the rule they didn’t like shouldn’t apply to a company with “sincerely” religious shareholders.  They asked the Court to pierce the corporate veil and treat the company as a sole proprietorship, for this purpose only. (At one point, the majority explicitly noted that the company wanted to act in accordance with its owners’ religion without losing the benefits of the corporate form.)

The rule of law and the Equal Protection Clause both require government to treat equally-situated people (fictional or real) equally. In its ham-fisted effort to advantage certain religions (does anyone think the outcome would have been the same if a Muslim-owned corporation had wanted an exception from laws inconsistent with Sharia?), the Court’s majority has announced its willingness to apply the rules selectively and arbitrarily.

There are many things wrong with this decision, and Justice Ginsburg’s scathing dissent identifies most of them. But in my opinion, the damage done to the rule of law is the worst.

Comments