NH Rebellion and Larry Lessig? Sorry I Just Don't Trust Them - Granite Grok

NH Rebellion and Larry Lessig? Sorry I Just Don’t Trust Them

pot-of-MoneyA group calling itself NH Rebellion has picked up the crusade of the anti-corporate-speech left.  They held an event in Hanover, NH recently, at which their spiritual leader, Larry Lessig was the keynote speaker.

Members of NH Rebellion are going to walk across New Hampshire preaching the psalms of the Democrat and RINO prophets.  They will say things that appeal to folks who are concerned (or have been told to be concerned)  about money and its corrupting effect on politics.  They will talk about cutting off the revolving door with K-Street Lobbyists and ending special interest money.

The goal is “publicly funded” elections and campaign money transparency, all under the assumption that the Founders never intended corporations to have the same unalienable rights as individuals.

They and other so-called “campaign finance reform” groups have proposed any number of legislative solutions and or constitutional amendments to “fix” this “problem,” but we don’t need a slew of new reforms to fix this.   The answer is very simple.  We just need to Repeal one amendment we already have.

Before the 17th amendment, US Senators were responsible to their respective state legislators–people so directly elected by the people of the several states that these Senators were meant to represent that the only “special interest” that mattered was the people who elected those state legislatures.

State legislatures that ignored the acts of US Senators could expect to be changed quickly by the people who elected them, every two years in New Hampshire.  It was, therefore, incumbent on state legislators to pay attention to how US senators voted in Congress.  If they ignored their own state’s interests in favor of corporations or special interests outside their home state, at a cost or disadvantage to that state, they could and should have expected to be called back.  If that senator could not comport their votes with the best interests of their home state, that legislature could remove and replace that Senator immediately with someone who would put the state’s interest first.

It was a self-correcting system that prevented the very thing that NH Rebellion, Rootstrikers, Call A Convention, Americans for Campaign Finance Reform, Fund for the Republic, American’s United to Rebuild Democracy, and all the other so-called non-partisan, non-profits insist they seek when they call for removing or limiting corporate “speech” from political campaigns.

The 17th amendment is the root of the problem with campaign finance reform.  Everything else is just dickering around the edges; over-complicating a process with new layers of rules whose interpretation will ultimately be subject to the whim of lawyers, jurists, and other interests who will still be able to affect the interests of US senators who know they can do what they please for six years and then use the power of incumbency to sweet talk their way back to Washington, knowing that no one can match or even challenge their powers of political influence.

Then there is, of course, the modern reality that above and beyond taxes on property, tariffs, and other forms of Founding-Era revenue generation are those that the founders also did not envision.  Businesses, small and large, pay taxes on their personal and business incomes.  Some of them pay a large number of taxes.    (So many, in fact, they need lobbyists to attract the attention of distant and distracted Senators in the far away land of DC).  Taxes taken by force, by the government, under threat of fines or imprisonment.  Shouldn’t this threat give them the right to engage in the political process, at least equal to their risk of having the expression of their mutual labors taxed under threat of force against them by that government?

They have a vested interest in legislation that affects the costs forced on them by government.  Costs that affect their ability to compete, and more so to hire, retain, and pay employees based on how much it costs them to stay in business.   How can this be less of a right than those of the individuals who choose to associate in those or any other assembly of persons?

I place the debate in this context because Larry Lessig, a primary mover behind (and often in front of) many of these groups, NH Rebellion most recently, likes to argue that the founders never intended corporations to have the same rights as individuals.   I’m not certain that I can agree with that–for all the reasons I have mentioned and others–but I do know this.  The founders never intended for the direct election of US Senators either which is, in fact, the root of this particular problem.

You can’t fix it until you fix that.

If you want to impress me with your genuine concern for the K-Street influence peddlers, walk across New Hampshire preaching the repeal of the 17th amendment, which would immediately return “special Interest” power over these legislators to the states and the people to whom they are meant to answer.

Until you do that I will continue to view your campaign finance reform agenda as complicit with that of the radical left, who seek first to empower the government to redefine speech in terms that tend to advantage government and incumbents,  followed by a gradual redefining of what ‘corporations’ are and what “businesses” and “business owners” can do and say, and what ‘paid speech’ means in that context, until the only people “speaking” are the government elites, government itself, unions, exempted non-profits, and other special interests, all of whom will just happen to be benefactors of bigger government.

And for the record: Campaign finance reform is an Orwellian phrase whose goal is a two-class system for political speech.  Those inside who can speak, and those who do not know if they dare speak, as campaigns, funded by taxpayers and labeled as publicly financed, go about exercising speech at your expense whether you object to the speech you are paying for or not.

Repeal the 17th amendment, wait a few years, then come back to me with your case against the effects of special interest money in politics.   The states and the people will have solved it for us, by returning to something the founders did intend.  Constant State oversight and control of their own sitting US Senators.  Senators who knew that millions from X-corp in state Y could never guarantee them the office if they refused to vote in the best interests of their own state.

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