Althouse: Lawrence Lessig says the NYT "'dumbs down' the debate radically to blame Republicans for everything."

October 3, 2015

Lawrence Lessig says the NYT "'dumbs down' the debate radically to blame Republicans for everything."

"No doubt, the Republican leadership often goes where the money is. And so too do the Democrats. The focus shouldn’t be on one of these two money-sensitive-parties. It should be on changing the system that makes money in policy so effective. "

He's criticizing a specific NYT editorial that complains about a provision in the Affordable Care Act that it says, incorrectly, is there "at Republican insistence."

22 comments:

Gahrie said...: Lessig is being entirely too specific here.......; 10/3/15, 9:06 AM
Tank said...: "No doubt, the Republican leadership often goes where the money is. And so too do the Democrats. The focus shouldn’t be on one of these two money-sensitive-parties. It should be on changing the system that makes money in policy so effective. "

As long as government is in the business of taking money from some people and giving to others, and giving some people advantages over others, the money will pour in one way or another, some legal, some not, some visible, some not.

You could greatly reduce this by greatly reducing the size and scope of government. Good luck with that.; 10/3/15, 9:10 AM
Michael K said...: The Times, as usual, is out of ideas on health care. Obamacare is a national expanded form of Medicaid. He and the Democrats have never had the courage of their convictions enough to destroy the employer provided health insurance of 85% of Americans. They know there would be a revolution. Low income Democrat voters think they got a good deal but, like all such supporters of government medicine, the ones who have not had to use it are the most vocal.

I doubt Bernie Sanders has read any of the accounts of horrors in the NHS,

The best health care reform plan in 2008 was by McCain. He just couldn't explain it and nobody was listening then.; 10/3/15, 9:13 AM
gspencer said...: Not one Republican vote for this terrible law; yet, it's claimed, that the GOP insisted that such and such must be in this law.; 10/3/15, 9:14 AM
Sebastian said...: The real money in politics is used to buy votes. Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, ag subsidies, vet pensions, student loans, SSDI, SSI, TANF, green subsidies, GSEs, a bailout here and there: any thoughts, Larry?; 10/3/15, 9:25 AM
Michael K said...: "it's claimed, that the GOP insisted that such and such must be in this law."

Remember when Reagan said the sign his economic plan was working was when the Democrats stopped calling it "Reaganomics ?" Now, they claim Reagan would be a Democrat. Well, he was a Democrat until he learned about economics.

You know they know Obamacare is in trouble when they claim Republicans were responsible.; 10/3/15, 9:25 AM
Bay Area Guy said...: Run, Larry, Run!; 10/3/15, 9:32 AM
David Begley said...: There goes the NYT endorsement.

Larry could have been a contender.; 10/3/15, 9:36 AM
Big Mike said...: Times can't resist rewriting history when historical fact is inconvenient, can it?; 10/3/15, 9:37 AM
clint said...: How could the Republicans have insisted on anything about Obamacare? It got zero Republican votes.; 10/3/15, 9:38 AM
Hammond X. Gritzkofe said...: Money is power. The ONLY way to reduce the power of money in politics is to reduce the power of Government.

What Tank said.

It will happen - has happened in the past. The hope is that it will not be violent. Good luck with that.; 10/3/15, 9:50 AM
Ambrose said...: I could write editorials for NYT: "A conservative think tank once - in a different context - suggested that one element that ended up in Obamacare ought to be considered. Therefore, all of Obamacare is a bipartisan bill. Republican would have all voted for it but they wanted to deny Obama a victory due to their racist legacy of having backed the Confederacy in the Civil War and then imposed Jim Crow. All the bad things of Obamacare are the results of the Republican elements of this bipartisan effort, while all the good things are the Democrat elements. If given a chance, Democrats can "fix" Obamacare by eliminating all the bad Republican elements. They will do this in a similar bipartisan way of course, just in case it doesn't work again."; 10/3/15, 9:58 AM
Original Mike said...: ""No doubt, the Republican leadership often goes where the money is. And so too do the Democrats. The focus shouldn’t be on one of these two money-sensitive-parties. It should be on changing the system that makes money in policy so effective."

And yet this "bright man" isn't smart enough (or honest enough) to embrace the only way to address the problem he identifies.; 10/3/15, 10:07 AM
BN said...: Government, pure and simple, is a protection racket. Originally, they promised protection from invading "barbarians." The genius of modern liberalism has been to convince us that we need to be protected from ourselves.; 10/3/15, 10:40 AM
BN said...: The genius of the founding fathers, of course, was to see that we needed protection from the protection racket.

Genius is one thing; the courage to fight for it is much more important.; 10/3/15, 10:46 AM
Hammond X. Gritzkofe said...: BN @ 10:40. Not bad, but I like H.L. Mencken:

“The state — or, to make matters more concrete, the government — consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can’t get, and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time it is made good by looting ‘A’ to satisfy ‘B’. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advanced auction on stolen goods.”; 10/3/15, 10:53 AM
PB said...: The only way to get money out of politics is to get money away from politicians to spend and prevent them from making laws/regulation the force you to spend money.

Keep the sequestration in place.; 10/3/15, 10:55 AM
dbp said...: "He's criticizing a specific NYT editorial that complains about a provision in the Affordable Care Act that it says, incorrectly, is there "at Republican insistence.""

The funny thing is that people actually believe this: As if Republicans in Congress had any input to the law that not a single one of them voted for.; 10/3/15, 11:23 AM
BN said...: Hammond, I like him too. Except for his fascist parts.; 10/3/15, 11:29 AM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: Very nice of you to point out how blatantly biased this particular media outlet is, Mr. Lessig. Now generalize. Now apply that lesson to your plans to severely limit the ability of politicians to get their message out to the public on their own terms.

Do you see the problem?; 10/3/15, 12:32 PM
Matt Sablan said...: "How could the Republicans have insisted on anything about Obamacare?"

-- They were also literally locked out of most of the meetings where it was written/drafted.; 10/5/15, 5:37 AM
Peter said...: "How could the Republicans have insisted on anything about Obamacare?"

The usual reason for putting something in a bill to appease the opposition party is to obtain a few votes, yet Obamacare was passed with zero Republican votes

Since Republican votes were not needed to pass it, why would anyone have put anything in it for Republicans?; 10/5/15, 9:41 AM