Guest thank you. My pleasure. Next, Zephyr Teachout and janine wedel discuss corruption in business. Its an hour and 20. Good evening everybody. Welcome to tonights event. Thank you so much for coming despite the noreaster storm and terrible conditions. We really appreciate and it could not have a more interesting topic or better panel to address it. There are some people who are attracted to sort of neat tiny little problems theyd like to solve, and other types of people are attracted to chronic problems that are as old and deep as politics itself, and curbing corruption is one of those cal helpings. What i want to say about the members of the panel two whom i know very intel one i had the pleasure of meeting just now. Theyre people who managed to talk about this topic which can be quite distressing in an uplifting way, and sometimes can make you almost feel optimistic about corruption if thats possible. So im very honored to introduce our panelists first, Zephyr Teachout, who briefly ran for governor of new york in the democratic primary. I was her running mate. And as the author of many books including corruption of america, which is the book she is talking about today, and have also authored a number of articles on corruption, professor at fordham hall. To her left janine wedel an anthropologist at george mason university. The author of the book unaccountable right here and back there and the author of shadow elite and numerous other books. Our met rater is larry the founder of the may day pact, my mentor in law school my close friend and allaround person who is changing the world. Ill let him take i it from here. Thank you tim. Thank you so much to the two of you for participating in this event, and thank you to new america for hosting this. Which is incredibly timely. And for me, i am incredibly excited because these two books, i have known zephyr and seen zephyr grow for 27 years and ive loved her book every since i started at five. But janines book i just had a chance to read and theyre books that perfectly compliment each other and the culture is fixed on a narrow perception of corruption. As we think of corruption today, its basically rulebreaking quid pro quo what criminals do what bad people do what thirdworlders doom thats what corruption is. So you can know if youre not a third worlder, not a criminal not a quid pro quo type not a rulebreaker, then youre not engaged in corruption. Thats basically the view. That dominates in the political state, dominates in jurisprudence and dominates in so much of popular and professional culture. These two books come at that conception in two very different ways. Zephyrs book historically gives us incredible intrigue into understanding the conception of corruption at the framing at a time when america conceived of itself as defining a vision of a republican in contrast to a corrupted system, which they knew and in some ways loved but believed had collapsed totally and janines account is an account of contemporary conception of corruption in many areas from think tanks to media to government to the academy. Very close to the work im working on at harvard, where we focus on Institutional Corruption. What is striking about these two books, theyre very, very different. Theyre talking about the same thing but different. Zephyrs book is incredibly optimistic in a certain sense. I was struck watching her run for governor that there was a feature of zephyr that was most helpful was her smile. Right . So in this book there is a certain kind of style because the problem which she identified in this book is tied to a mistake, which makes you feel like the problem is solvable if we can just get one or two people on the Supreme Court to change. Whereas janines problem is her book an incredibly depressing what you would do to address this problem. Theres one moment at the end of the book when she described an event incident at a tsa Security Check where she had she didnt want to be bodyscanned so she had to use special screening and of course to punish her they made her wait and wait and wait and wait before they would find a special screener and she was she described herself as focused and very disciplined and positive and polite and kind as she possibly could be, but each five minutes she would ask and they would say, somebody is coming. But nobody came. So she was at the last moment before she was going to be able to catch her flight and she adopted a strategy to break this, which was she started singing as loudly as she could the star spangled banner. And of course the tsa people quickly looked through heir list of relation regulations and its not against the riles to sing the star spangled banner. So they had no reason to tackle her or arrest her so the only thing they do is get her out by finding someone to search her and let her go so i want to talk about that. But the general point, the general problem, the general depression of this is if were in this problem in so many spaces, so many sphereswhat is the lever that we can use . So the way id like to proceed with this most of this conversation i want to have is conversation between these two great authors of these two really great books. And then well have time at the end for questions from the audience. But i want to start with zephyr and allow zephyr to introduce the idea which modern jurists have erased from our history this, idea of corruption at the center of what the framers were talking about, and just help us understand how did they get it . I read janines book and imagine there would have been an equivalent of her book written in britain, so it described the horrible state of the corruption in britain but then someone saw that and then figured out how to flip so it they came to america. Introduce this part. The book is really my far left exciting but effort to stand in the middle of the street and sing the star spangled banner as loud as possible. Deeply patriotic book, and recognizing something i learned from larry is actually started almost quoting you verbatim, larry which the founders of our republic the men who wrote our constitution got many many things wrong. They got race wrong. They got gender wrong. But they had some really powerful insights and part of i think the impulse of the book is to say that if were going to solve some contemporary problems, theres an extraordinary value in identifying the strains within our history in which theres extraordinary wisdom and value and then elevating those because its going to take Something Like singing the star spangled banner, something more than just going along and being cynical to break ute of our Current Crisis of corruption. At the Constitutional Convention as i detail in at the book, many different topics but the topic that comes out more than any other is the question of basically corruption. What you might call now money and politics the different ways in which money and power could lead Public Servants to represent themselves their friend, a small group, instead of representing the public or their constituencies. I came across this because i was starting to try to understand what the Supreme Court was doing how i was defining corruption and some cases in 2006 and 2007. And so i said, lets see what they thought about it back at the beginning. Its actually quite shocking once you read the transcript of the convention, how much this was the focus, the topic. When the the new yorker, Alexander Hamilton later described the Constitutional Convention, he said, we tried to enact every practicable obstacle against corruption and intrigue and that seems like a pretty accurate description. They were in there messing around, how do we put up barriers and walls. Just a few examples and then ill answer your question more fully. One thing thats most striking to me is they had their own version of what we think of as the resolving door problem revolving door problem where 50 of people go into congress now and end up becoming lobbyists huge change from 30 years ago. Then also staffers come in and out. Staffers and, as gentleman do gentleman janine staffers who revolve in and out of public rolfs. At the time the revolving door problem of the Constitutional Convention era, the threat was people who go into office to get a go into elected office in or the to get appointed office. Get a great job at the post office. Get a great you might not have too many obligations. So a way in which the king in england really secured a lot of power to himself because you basically take a parliamentarian and if you can promise a really wellpaid job the parliamentarian would work for the king instead of the people and actually mason, who your school is named after, described the provision in our constitution that prohibits holding an office while Holding Elected Office is the cornerstone of the constitution because you didnt want people going into office and serving other masters. Theres a blend of christian and airs stockcracy thinking in the founders thinking about corruption. I argue the aristocracy thinking prevailed, but really the are bitter and the great thinker and puts virtue and corruption at the core of a successful republic, and talks about not lang that is reminiscent of janines book. If the public it bust underthe corruption of this in office but corruption of citizen happy. You have an only gigs as a citizen to be public oriented in your public actions. Not all actions. And he talks about were going to be in real trouble when the citizens of a country sort of give up and wait patiently for their hire. Basically wait patiently for the moment where they will be hired by one of these private entities. So thats sort of the roots i see coming into the convention. Then when the framers were speaking about the corruption of parliament, that kind of corruption operated differently from thinking about the thing they were worried about was different from worrying about the way in which an individual might go into parliament so he could get a particular appoint right . It was the king having an improper role in parliament. Yes. I think those are related. The king having an improper role in parliament and also concern about what photograph frank talked about. Put the love of money and the love 0 power in the same place it will excite the passion nor love of money and love 0 power in such a great way theyll be confused and their worst kind of people run for office. I focus very much on whats happening in this country and independence at the time was seen as a kind of opposite to corruption and independence as im the opposite of dependence and dependence and corruption are very similar and you can see by the thinkers that the founders relied upon the use. They would use dependence and corruption interchangeably because the problem is you would have institutions and individuals within those institutions who are dependent had an appropriate dependencies outside and were not independent of private power, independent of private money and independent of the king. So they certainly thought about corruption in structural institutional ways you need to build a system which didnt didnt encourage there wrong in dependencies. That is the distinctive blindness of this court. This court will me think of corruption in individual ways. It refuses to think about in structural ways. And one of the puzzles is why they have done that. This is a difference and i want to think about that in relation to your book but this is an interesting difference in the accounts of the two of you give because your book is very much a letter to a Supreme Court justice and part of that letter as i have tried to emphasize it is people who otherwise say we are going to interpret the constitution away the framers would have interpreted it. Zephyrs book is the it is radically inconsistent with a narrow conception of corruption. Thus one part of this message. But another part of the story youre you are telling is the way in which there is a long tradition of protecting institutions like government. All of a sudden it disappears and the question is what is motivating in it. What are leaving the justices to do that collects the motivation for that type of corruption seems to me different from a count you are giving and the motivation to see corruption as quid pro quo. That has an obvious return to the people that are dancing that idea but you think the justices on the Supreme Court are adopting at . I think its one of the great puzzles. I genuinely do in the book has some provisional ideas like why we see 200 years and one of the jobs of the courts in general to protect all these kinds of corruption. And then we see the collapse of that understanding soap why . What is Justice Roberts really thinking and what is Justice Scalia thinking and what is Justice Kennedy thinking . I proposed budget berries and i have no idea if any of them are right. Its a genuinely provisional chapter where im throwing out a bunch of ideas because i want us to engage in this question. One theory is that they are sort of part of a network of what we call in law economics a way of thinking about the world and that way of thinking about the world relies on the vision of the selfish person, the egotist and i tie that back to hobbes. Its a little bit of the hobs arises and the founders were antihobbesian. Hobbs has an egotistic view of the person. Fundamentally selfish thats it. When they wake up in the morning and go to sleep they are thinking about policy and they are thinking about themselves in one way or another so its the law of economics and bets that anisom lava personality. Another is just a belief that the best way to govern a south side of democratic representation like a a market i find it so fantastic i have a hard time expressing it that a market is a better distributor of public goods than a kind of collective public coming together and represent a voice so as much as we can remove politics from the distribution of goods the better it is in that vision is politics and Democratic Politics is itself corrupt and corrupting so we should run away from that as fast as possible. Another sort of argument i put out there not controversial but people disagree with me on this one is that we have been currency report that doesnt have anybody with any political experience on it so they do not know of what they speak. They have a fantasy about the way politics works and they have no idea what it is like to sit in a room make strategy and to think how important that 2000 or 4000 or 6000 is from a donor as they dont realize how corrupting Campaign Financing is. Theres a naivete or distanced what they bring. So they have all these reasons that are tied to some kind of mistake but its hard to see them as doing it for their own personal selfinterest which is different from the kind of account that you are offering in many contexts where it certainly serves the interest of people who will go from government to private interests to conceive of corruption and is very narrow way to celebrate the anticorruption campaigns which are fighting corruption in this way because it makes it easy for them to then have enormous personal gain. So i think you see it as tied to that motive much more. While i talk about structured unaccountability and how accountability gets structured into corporate and government organizations and then about the players and the way in which they very often dont even seem to be aware of whats of the terrain on which they are playing. And of course my background and my approach is as a social anthropologist and as someone who worked in Eastern Europe under communist communism and after communism and i studied the difference between how the system said it worked, how it was supposed to work and how it actually works. Or doesnt work. So one thing that i charted was one thing called the 30 togetherness what polls called 30 togetherness. It was basically working under the table and doing deals in that context people needed to do it in communism in order to get back cut of meat or gasoline or a passport to travel abroad. You needed to have networks and you needed to have the long term sort of informal deals with people. And then after the wall fell and i was still there working and trying to understand what would transpire, what i noticed was what has been called greed corruption as opposed to need corruption which is more this oneonone corruption that takes place in a single venue that the economists like to chart as opposed to people who are working in a systemically and across institutions. So what i saw was the government government, a onetime Government Official who also was working for a western bank who also had his own foundation connecting the dots and overlapping, having multiple and overlapping roles and using the information in one venue for use in another. Fastforward a number of years to the west and i began to see very similar dynamics including the divergence between what the system purports to be and why people on the ground, what we realize its actually happening. So for instance it used to be that retired generals when they retired 20 years ago have a database that shows that predominantly retired generals and admirals would actually retire and golf or play with their kids and now today predominantly it has continued to serve in a variety of ways in the defense industry. So for instance a retired general will sit on a government Advisory Board that affords him access to proprietary information while at the same time serving as a consultant to a Defense Company are even setting up a Venture Capital were being part of a Venture Capital company. At the same time that he maybe has a philanthropic activity as well. This is what i call representational juggling and the problem is that its an information problem. We the public dont know what role or what agenda is being played out in any given context so when that general its a problem as zephyr said in serving multiple masters and that goes back to the bible. You noted that could be a problem way back then. So then when we are seeing a retired general on television we have no way of knowing whether there is some agenda for his actual expertise that is being presented or whether there is some other agenda. This problem is systemic. Unfortunately we see it acrosstheboard in so many different arenas. Economist, academic economists. For instance there was a study that came out a view years ago, a umass study that showed, chartered the activities of 19 academic economists who were testifying before public bodies including congressional subcommittees and so on in the runup to the commercial financial crisis and after. They always palast and are identified by their most prestigious affiliations so it would be their most natural affiliations so it would be think tank or University Professor rather than working as a consultant for a company or an industry and so again there is an information problem. The agenda is obscured and the reason that i think i have been kind of primed to see it going on is because of all those years in Eastern Europe in the 80s and after communism because so much of what went on there was under the radar. It was hidden. In order to get things done you couldnt operate the way the system said you should operate. It was impossible so you have to have networks. You had to use your contacts even if you were working in a state association. The only way you got things done with informally and that is way there were so many of these guys who are managers were drinking all the time. You have to drink with people in order to make deals. So its an institutional systemic problem. We are seeing that sort of thing. We are seeing that in formalization of influence right here in the United States. Its not just with air bnb and the Solutions People are turning to under financial stress. Its a much more endemic problem. We would think that traditionally the media one would think would be there to help us sort this out. This is clearly investigative journalists really should be helping us connect the dots of the networks and helping us to look into peoples roles and so on. But the problem is we know that the Investigative Journalism has been so gutted in the past years and so splintered and despite this vast information in the university we live in another parallel that i see with Eastern Europe and some other scholars as well is that there has been this screwed the station of media messaging and jon stewart actually shows this very well. You know how he will switch from one channel to another channel to another channel and people on different channels are saying the same thing. They are taking across, getting across the same message even using the same words in the same lines. This is exactly what we saw or there are striking parallels to this underlay communism, this screwed nation this formulaic messaging. So how do we respond to that . We the public, we the citizens . We do something that people under communism also did. We turned to parity. We turn to parity so hence the popularity of jon stewart and Stephen Colbert and the seventh that their presentations can convey information and truth that cant be quite stated in the media. Let me get back to thinking about how this might be remedied in your technique. The generals example is a very good one because you describe how in one context its 80 in another context its 90 of these generals are engaged in these consulting relationships where they are trading on their former expertise. Thats a contrast radical contrast to where it was before where very few and its similar the Harvard Medical School talk to professors who were in their 70s or 80s and they would say in the 60s or 70s nobody at the Harvard Medical School whatever have taken money from a drug company if you dont take money from a drug company a signals that you are not very good right now. So everybody feels that they do and must analysis and dynamic he described as the generals. We look around and see what everybodys doing so why would wouldnt i as well pack what distinguished it from the economist is that you describe talking about the mentor generals. Theres a rule that required to disclose that conflict. Almost overnight all of them stopped the relationship because it was too embarrassing. They didnt want to be in the position of defending themselves so for them the behaviors that they had developed that was a pretty effective remedy to force that disclosure. The economist on the other hand they dont care. It doesnt even matter. Its almost a virtue to demonstrate this kind of conflict. So as i point to places where we could think about Something Like transparencies. Right i have actually never thought of it that way. Thats a very interesting, i mean its very important i think to reflect on in what situations can people be named and shamed. Buried very often they can be named but the shaming doesnt stick. Instead it seems like you if you belong to certain elite networks you continue even to get promoted even though by all your performance on the job would indicate that you shouldnt be. One thing ive been wondering about and would be really interested to get feedback on is the whole issue of bringing in outsiders and the role that they can play. We just had a case recently the case with carmens ogara where she was brought in to play institutionally to play this role of the outsider and then of course she was wired and she ended up exposing what she felt was a too cozy relationship between the fed and the banks and she was then of course fired. But in a sense this is what institutions and organizations and circles of people need to be encouraged to do. So that physicians and the opinion leaders who are paid by pharmaceutical companies to influence the opinion of our physicians so we go to a physician and we may not know, our physicians do not know that he or she has been influence by one of these opinion leaders. There are always they very high status people who sit on the board in medical journals and professors in medical schools and so on but think about what about discussions within circles that also involve outsiders. The challenge here is how to get outsiders in and how to encourage the generals or the relevant medical community to understand that hey they really have to Pay Attention to how people think about them. How this revolution happen . Maybe it doesnt. Thats kind of experience that you would have. You are outsiders in a political process and you were defined as outsiders not because you are experienced and qualified and grape represents of the state but because you had no money. So you could be treated as secondclass candidates because you had no money. They wouldnt debate with you and why wouldnt they debate with you . It couldnt possibly win because you had no money. So this feature of the structure of the system that money is so central makes it possible to include days so everybody on the inside than is complicit in the game that you describe complicit in this trade. Now your experience though what was striking about your campaign is that you seem to find a way to get people to react. Of course the view is that people dont care about it. But is that true . Describe what that was like to get people to understand this and to react. If i had the secret sauce id be giving it away. I will say you know i think we were able to get through in part because there is such a sense in the media of a deadness in political language. It feels like the antipoetry to modern politics. People just dont its not that you have to be a poet to be in politics that people speak so many steps away from how they would honestly speak that it feels when they are telling the truth they are lying. And so to be able to have enough freedom which we did have an part because we didnt have big donors that we had to please. We had freedom for other reasons but that freedom might think is very attractive right now and as it relates to the freedom that people feel an outside news sources so different ways of talking. Some of that is just in the structure of talk. Sometimes too much is made of the fact that people arent coming out to vote because they arent carrying the right message. I often think that still focuses on the magical serum of the message formula that will bring people out to vote. I suspect that people are more likely to come out to vote if they feel something more akin to leadership or truth telling. In fact one of the pathologies of power is that it trains you to not be a leader. It trains you to be a better. That is true not just in running for office because your job in running for office insisting over and over that we understand that this is really powerful. 30 to 70 of the time congresspeople spend raising money so it trains you. Forget the number. Think about what that means. Think about what your job is. It trains you to not be a leader and not the scary to be a truth teller but to be a deliverer of messages that resonate with people who give that kind of money but thats true in other areas areas to match. Law school dean to nonprofit heads have the same job. We have something sort of weird at the public which is, to vote for people who did not seem like their leaders because they are trained in following and not trained in leaving. That is part of it that we felt some freedom there. I do think that i talk about is the Sleeping Giant. The reason i think its so important to engage now is it is so weird and rare in World History to have selfgovernment. We should not take that for for granted that all or even see the threats to selfgovernment as odd little incursions that are easily fixed. It is very easy to have an oligarchy and its very rare to have a democracy and that we still have some of that the festive dish vestiges, we still have the philly civic history and culture soap we can tap into a town rouse the Sleeping Giant before people lose their technical legal rights is really important to fix the system. One thing that will strike it in contrasting the problem and as you are describing it is that obviously you and i have been engaged in a common project. Its relatively easy in the sense because when you call out the enemy they are kind of nameless and faceless. We can say its a terrible system to have such a tiny number of people finding elections. Its a corrupting system that you can say it without feeling like you are hurting anybody you know well. Even they would say even some of our friends were big donors would say this is a terrible system. I hate the system. We have to change the system but whats striking about the story you are telling is the enemy is within. They are our friends. There is no good party and bad party. Both parties are just as bad and when you go to the people you named i cringe because i know those people. Its really hard and that was the really tight connection to the communist story. You can imagine in the late part of the communist period people even understood how the thing had to change. It was so hard to act because you are acting against your neighbor and against your friend in some sense. This was who they are but when you talked when you suggestively rally this movement against these people i wonder who is going to stand up and attack them. We are not talking about attacking the party. We are talking about attacking the most successful prominent people in our party. Who has that courage . I think thats the bottom line question. What we have done and what seems to be happening not just in our country but on a much broader scale has created a system of increasingly outsiders where there are just a few insiders and more and more we are living in a world where people are outsiders. You see that in Public Opinion polls acrosstheboard not just in this country that people no longer have faith or have trust in formal institutions whether its the courts or parliament or churches or the media. So its a real issue that we are living with and the response to that is to go informal and to find these informal solutions. The only way to begin to rebuild public trust is through this sort of leadership and leaders standing up. That leaves have to begin to understand that these activities are not going to serve them in a longterm way. There are things that we can do in the meantime and one of them is to really focus on and that might sound farfetched but the whole system of accountability is this checklist accountability that is everywhere. Its in education. Its in finance. Its in the antiencryption industry and the problem is that one lone number, one simple number is supposed to convey the complexity or the health of an entire company or school or country how corrupted country is. This has become so endemic in everything we do and this is seen in practically every system and is seen as accountability and yet it has the same problem we were just talking about. Its accountability from the outside through checklists and measures without ethics without this moral community. Cannot just jump in for a second . Tim and i named names and i think thats essential. And we are continuing to name names. When i look at the populist area and i think the populist areas important absolute concentrated power and credible Networks Informal networks in very similar ways and the journalists really led the fight. Politicians reported that journalists led the fight in a lot of ways and journalists were naming names. It wasnt a corrupt system, with this particular person. Last week i made a name dan loeb. As far as i can tell he has done nothing illegal but hes spending millions of dollars of his own money to take care of the efficiency laws in new york. It is a little bit like the economist as far as the solution goes. What do we do . You know i have concentrated on trying to it takes all of my time to try to figure out how fast things are changing and to try to understand these relationships and what we have seen in finance we also is the and education and these are systemic problems and its crucial to follow the money. And i think it is important for us to follow the players and its not a simple quiz quid pro quo. Longterm relationships and its not a simple dealmaking and its often reanimated. And so michael who is the former Homeland Security chief he has his own firm and he is always on tv is a terrorism expert and now there is the islamic stayed in this is part of brand building. He is not getting paid by the media for those oped. And i know that we have to try to come up with solutions and that is the most important thing here. But the first thing is to really get a much better handle on the systemic nature of the problem and the subtleties and how under the table and under the radar how this legal corruption that is much harder to detect, its more elusive than what we have seen in the past and its not just needbased correction. So the first thing that i think is what you all are doing is to try to get a discussion going. And i think that this. What is striking is that you feel like you do have a solution. Just my view. [laughter] yes, i do as well. This doesnt solve everything. But for elected officials, there is private funding and we have to have Public Financing of elections. And so because the Current System makes it close to impossible to get elected without being dependent on private interest that is a failed the system not doing what it is supposed to do. And that is a plausible and immediate change that can have real impact as you solidify brand builders. But at least there is the free up to be an elected official and not be working for your company of interests. And the other is breaking up the big companies. And dont laugh. [laughter] and i think that [laughter] when we look at this, its absolutely possible. [laughter] and of course i think it is these two tied together in a deep way. And one has a more odious connection heard its not hard and sharing about that but the connection is that one looks at one institution of wealth and how can it be used to influence power and what kinds of institutions and of our economy, and i also think this is an original sin of Political Science is the separation of economics and Political Science. So that if we tried to study either of these, we have a ball of power as it exists and what that means is building a greater distribution and so even then its harder and and this is the way that it works. That this is the united in the way that it is a decentralizing power. What is interesting is that its actually partisan because even an economist like best, like gonzales who writes about this in chicago writing about political antitrust. And they cant just think about the efficiency of the market, they also have to worry about making sure that they can band this in the market. So this is a real reunion of these two branches. But here is the thing is to decentralizing. And so i want to decentralize the conversation. I havent read your book yet but i was wondering when you do your research on the founding fathers, he saw the democracy that is inherently corrupt and that the answer to corruption is not more democracy but less democracy and it certainly seems like that in the way that the system was set up we could use what they had in mind and they can setup a system that really wasnt democratic and that was really the great fear that they had, that the two go handinhand and im wondering if you detected any of that in your historical research. There is no unity of this, if we were just talking about the convention itself is sort of the folks in writing the constitution a unity in the solution to the puzzle of Public Service serving private ends and truly there is a unity and a focus on corruption. So the core argument of the book is that again it starts with a letter to the court and we can disagree about particular solution so we have to understand that the constitution is an anticorruption document and a by anticorruption we mean not to stop a few bribes they there, but to actually build a system that has the best protections against Public Service becoming servants of private ends. And some of the folks that had that, that is not the dominant focus and there are those that push back and there is this active debate within the convention with those who see this as more likely to be corrupt and those who see the exact opposite of the leads and those are the opposite. So there is a double debate and in different institutions in your creating. We have the house of representatives, the reflecting of the different impulses and the madisonian approach is the senate will protect against some kinds of demagoguery and the house of representatives will protect against the corrupting nature of small elite institutions. Because they certainly talked about the corrupting nature of institutions. Thank you very much for a very stimulating and informative debate. And people have always manipulated, look for a better deal, and they have always said that that is the way that we do business. And so what i understand from his perspective is one way around this and some of the decisions along the way were pretty grim and this is what we have god. But in the germane since essentially we dont know in this situation because everything is so on formal. And so its very unorthodox as an approach. And so why outside the rules . And the question essentially is if we are trying to do this with the point of intervention, we so often talk about the nationstate and america is corrupt or not corrupt, we know that one countries probably more corrupt than another. But what are the interventions . Order the institutions . Putting it into an intervention might make it appropriate. I think that we have described some of them already. And the reason i talked about that and i feel like i should talk more about that, but i wont. [laughter] it is because of a little example of this sort of parity and strategy that was used by the yes men and there are different kinds of groups like that that have used basically what they did in one case and they put out in the media that the company that was responsible for this disaster in india in the 80s but that company was suddenly going to pay reparations to all of those people whose lives were ruined or seriously offended by it. And of course that was not true. But it forced the company to respond to that. So there is that crazy thing. But that is obviously ad hoc and piecemeal. Its not systemic and we talked about regulation and one of the things that we need to do is understand that regulation does not end with president s signature. The double is in the details and we have certainly. In the aftermath of doddfrank or the provisions are being watered down and cut out and so on and so forth. And also that the passage of laws then often leads to unintended consequences and we have seen that with regard to lobbyists in 2007 there were restrictions passed on lobbyists when they were put into place and that may be why there has been such a growth in what i call shadow lobbyists. And it has declined by 25 since 2007 and so i hate to say again that we need to inform ourselves, but we really need to have a better grasp and understand that the world around us has changed so quickly and so dramatically that it is very hard. You have talked about this as well with a wide range of experimentation the legislature has been engaged in, how do we address this problem understanding that the consequences of what the Supreme Court has done is to eliminate 90 of those possible interventions. Which makes it so that the only thing that they can address as a part of this. There is far more experimentation and there are things you cannot do, you can have a proper he lies country and said and basically the range and i think not to be glib about it, but i think the democracy is a constant game of whackamole. And there may not be a permanent solution. But each country and each moment in time, we should address that and continue to respond because i dont actually have an end of his review that we can achieve a completely stable world for those in power dont try to again accumulate even more power. Thank you. [inaudible] one thing i think of you all agree upon is to remedy the most hard questions we are facing today, that transparency is overrated and i think all of you agree. You are saying its an information problem, but so often i think they feel that oh, my goodness unless its criminal its like well that was an interesting story and then nothing happens. So theres an article about this and that and unless it involves blocking a bridge. And even then it doesnt always involve something explicitly criminal. So that remedy even the founders series is that nothing would ever really are a part unless you have the right kind of virtue in people. And it sounds naive, but is it possible somehow to try to to institutionalize or encourage people who are just involved in politics themselves . And its like the roman idea of virtue as a starting point of trying to create a better politics or anticorruption mission. Responding first and i think that there are some things that can be done in that area. Now we are in the game of thrones and we are still reporting like in the west wing with a few exceptions. And so it changes the way that we report. So instead of a single story about Institutional Corruption that should be the ongoing story and its not watergate reporting, it is steffens reporting and theres different kinds of reporting and you are a great example of that kind of the stomach machine recording, instead of acting like we are a winwin. And i think that that helps. I think that art is key as well and sort of engaging people in this poetic sensibility so that we dont put up running for office is something you do as a martyrdom or if you are a really inspired soul. But Something Like joy and a rowdy. It is important to recognize a bunch of the corruption that you are talking about. What is understandable as good versus bad . When you think about the academics to become experts in a case forcing her to do things that she otherwise wouldnt do but shes doing it because this is the best way she can get her kids into private school. That person is motivated and sometimes for the best possible reason of taking care of their family. The idea of being virtuous [inaudible] and so its hard for us to imagine that you will yourself out of this without thinking of structural changes. I was going to say that is why i think there needs to be sort of a real discussion. Within the community, professional and otherwise playing this overlapping roll lets talk about it because it is subtle and it is often very ambiguous and we know that we tend to respond to most of what our peers do and take our cues from our peers and hence the structural problem. But i do think that again it is not easily seen as good and bad. One thing that i noticed that i think is kind of a part of this, a lot of the things youre talking about the general economist if you notice an absence of hard choices anymore in the sense that an economist fully accredited that has a great title, mentioning this and also writing for newspapers when i have an opinion on something, theres never an point in which you have to choose, i want to see this, and i see that you dont have to choose. But its hard to get this in an oped in some ways. Well, you need the think tank perhaps. I think that it plays a very Important Role in theres nobodys hand that i wouldnt shake or have a conversation with. But i think that there is a value in calling out and shaming individuals because otherwise i think its hard to create that hard choice. So the solution can still be structural. But i think in the interim creating a sense that there is a cost to engaging in some of these nonillegal or legal corruptions, i think that there is a value in that. I think i agree with both of you. [laughter] well, we dont disagree. [laughter] in the interest of full disclosure i am the publisher of janine wedel. [laughter] but i think one of the chapters talks about this and there are different ways to have this under in a public position and you donated money to fund their policy goals, can you elaborate on how we as individuals talk about this and this idea of naming and shaming that we all talk about . That is where we really need the investigative reporters. And it has become a lot more complicated because so much more governing and policy these days is outside of formal government and people do play overlapping roles and there is the ethical problem coming in when the roles are not exposed. When someone is testifying or a Public Committee and using the more neutral prestigious part of the think tank without disclosing the corporate role. And so i think the reason i agree with both of you is because what you are suggesting as a step to the naming and shaming is a depth to addressing the more structural and systemic correction at the caveat to that potentially is that shaming doesnt always work, but that as has been pointed out, i think that depends upon something to do with the nature of the network. You say the economy dozen give a darn and they are going to do it anyway, but that is the way that it is seen. And that is the more general point. This is in our own field and there are other academics to do consulting and they say that that is outrageous, you are behaving unethically. And then you would say to you invoke this theory as to why you would create the wrong influence. But the point is that it doesnt engage at the same place of shame that might engage when someone is taking a bribe. So this is a challenge in defining the wrong and we have to believe it before you can actually invoke the emotional power of correcting this. Yes, yes. Please talk into the microphone. Okay. [inaudible question] we go from discussions and conversations, im sick and tired of things happening racially and government problems in School Shootings and all the rest of it. [inaudible] [inaudible] how do we check that . [inaudible] the only way to have a conversation is in this way which is controlled by money. [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] that was the most important thing to me. But they talk about this every day and its all about money. The issues are being confused. Its all about money. So i dont see how you get around that to have these conversations. [inaudible] [inaudible] thank you for your support. [laughter] well, i dont know. I dont know except by doing. So in the last week ive had about these conversations and most of them are not televised. And that is sort of what i do. And they are about different things. One is about access, digital corruption and access to capital by black entrepreneurs in new york state, one was about education policy and one was about questions of constitutional law. So im sort of personally playing around with these moments. A great passage to india only connecting this and both will be exalted. And so my own personal strategy is to sort of have a persistent connection and hope that something can happen there. [laughter] okay. First as someone who is in a different field, i am glad to hear this talk. And i would like to ask about the rapidity of making public funding and i think that the cost of engaging in those things, i wonder about the cost of citizens not engaging because even though public funded campaigns would give us a better selection of people to vote for i feel that it often feels like there is no cost to voting or not voting because its going to be rigged. So even if you have a better person to vote for it feels like it often do you feel what is the remedy to the lower levels and have you crap that as well . I am on a kick to get more people to run for office. But not one of the reasons the reason is because they do not currently have to raise money its the biggest barrier. Public finance is a key feminist issue and we know more women run for office and its a color issue, we know that we need people of color to run for office and along with all of this, we know people do not have a preexisting circle of friends who can finance verse 200000. Attorneys general are banding together for republicans and dfa has been sending emails for two days about helping Elizabeth Warren because she is under attack. What is the risk in the Current System that people like Elizabeth Warren will be knocked out in what can we do to preserve them and keep them in . Massachusetts will keep Elizabeth Warren and that i think its an important question because there are people who are great representatives in that slice who are not as powerful as Elizabeth Warren and who are easily swamped by an incredible amount of money they can be voted against them. You get to a place where its not a tiny few who have this concentrated power in the first stage of an election which is the money election but instead its all of us who have the power. This is the parallel that i think people miss that is so compelling. You think about the protests in hong kong. Those kids were presented with a system of quote democracy democracy. The system was a community of 1200 who were going to pick the candidates that the rest of hong kong could then vote for. The kids in hong kong said this is not democracy. This is crazy. 2 of hong kong will get to pick who we vote for . No we should be able to pick who we get to vote for. We should be able to participate in the nominations as well as the elections. Of course the system we have here is exactly that system because there are two elections. The first election is the green primary. In the green primary at tiny number get to pick who the candidates are. The people who fund these elections. 150,000 americans in the United States. So we have the same tiny number who have this extraordinary power that they took to the streets for. Why cant we take to the streets for it . I think part of that is just giving us to see how we have been denied this democracy because of this concentration. Its not just going to block Elizabeth Warren. Its going to block any sensible person who wants to participate. I think we are coming to time. Lets take one more. I had to in the first one was going to be and if corruption is the same as dependence does the fact that we have a very different set of labor in United States and how does that change things but instead im going to ask what do you think of what do all three of you think of the approach of tackling corporate personhood is an issue . Is it effective or is it misguided in some why . I used to think it was misguided because i dont think its the key issue. Its certainly not what the court is turning on. The Supreme Court, if the Citizens United decision is not dependent upon corporate personhood. Their logic is somewhat different. He goes to the idea of the right to hear regardless of the creator of the speech. That said i guess i have seen the Energy Around it and i think that energy is worth following. And so the fact that it may not be the technical reason for Citizens United but there is something about the way the court anthropomorphize his corporations directly that somewhat disturbing and Extraordinary Energy suggests that this is the way Many Americans understand their own experience of being completely out of power. I think its worth connecting on that my own focus of courses on is concentrated wealth, not the corporate form itself. I tend towards a move to antitrust antimonopoly and celebrating because i think its worth celebrating a vibrant Small Business marketplace. I think it can be a thing that is lost, the celebration of the decentralized economic marketplace. I would just add to that in statement that the biggest problem i think or a huge problem for our country, our society is the intertwining of corporate and state power and to see corporations and government as separate is a real mistake. Threequarters of people who work for the federal government are actually private contractors. You see this when that government on all levels. So i just wanted to speak to that point. I appreciate you including me. That was nice. [laughter] i think strongly, i feel strongly this is one of those things that rallies people and thats exciting and powerful. And second the corporate personhood issue is a problem and a bunch of various. Its not so much a problem in the Campaign Finance area. For example its a problem if you want to force the corporation to label a product in a certain way. The Supreme Court has a series of stupid decisions which would strip the ability to have that labeling requirement thats not directly tied to candidate funding but its a problem that would be great to solve too. The thing that i worry about when we focus on corporations are not persons the money is not speech it seems only way we solve this problem is to amend the constitution and though i think there are lots of ways we can fix the constitution the truth is we could solve 90 of this problem before we get around to amending the constitution. If you tell people they have got to amend the constitution once people think thats just not going to happen so i might as well go back to the problems that i think you can make progress on but if you focus on something that doesnt require the impossible lift of the constitution there might be a way to get more people engage. What i found exciting about what sever was doing in her campaign when she did talk about money she was talking about changing the way elections are funded thats a completely constitutional publicly funded system that almost did last year passed Something Like this. Thats the sort of thing that gave people a sense of hope. Statistics have found that 90 of americans think its important to reduce the influence of money in politics. 91 dont think its possible. Those two numbers together are the politics of resignation is learned helplessness here. So we have got halfyear. We just have to find more things to give people a reason to believe its not impossible. One of those things is candidates like saffer so im extremely happy to be oval to celebrate her being here. [applause] and secondly this really powerful depressing but flower powerful person subfive. Maybe we should all sing the star spangled banner now. [applause]