May 20, 2010
Congress Says Goodbye to $2 Million
By: Steve Kirsch
After just one week, people all across the country have promised to withhold nearly $2 million from Congress members who refuse to support the Fair Elections Now Act. Read More »
Blog 
May 14, 2010
Support reform, receive half as much money in return
Yesterday, MAPLight.org reported that five Senate Republicans who supported a measure to end predatory loan practices received half as much money from the mortgage brokerage industry as party members who refused to back the measure. Read More »
May 12, 2010
Today we launch the Funders Pledge
By: Lawrence Lessig
Today, FixCongressFirst.org is launching an effort to build the biggest lobby in the history of American politics—one that will beat out Exxon Mobile, SEIU, and the NRA for influence and remake Washington in its own image. Who are these shadowy powerbrokers going to be, exactly? You and me—we the people. Read More »
May 04, 2010
Tonight: Casino Jack panel
Tonight at 9pm Eastern, Change Congress member Mark McKinnon will be joining other experts on a panel to discuss the new film Casino Jack, that tells the story of Jack Abramoff and the economy of influence in Washington, D.C. You can watch the livestream here, after the jump.... Read More »
April 26, 2010
This is exactly why we need to Change Congress
By: Lawrence Lessig
Scott Brown, Massachusetts' new senator, opposes legislation in Congress that would strengthen regulations for Wall Street. But when a reporter recently asked him why he's against this bill, Brown couldn't give an answer. He's against financial reform, but he has no idea why. Read More »
April 21, 2010
We need your vote!
Change Congress has been named a 2010 Working Assets/CREDO donations recipient. We need your vote to make sure we get the funding we need! Read More »
April 19, 2010
How to Sober Up Washington
The latest from CallaConvention.org, Change Congress's project to amend the Constitution Read More »
April 07, 2010
How to Sober Up Washington
Washington is hopelessly broken. There’s only one way to fix it. Mark McKinnon and Lawrence Lessig have an article on The Daily Beast on why right and left alike should call for a constitutional convention. Read More »
March 23, 2010
The Moment
By: Lawrence Lessig
President Obama will savor, and rightly so, his extraordinary achievement in enacting fundamental health care reform. He has done something few thought possible, and he may well have revived the enormous faith that his election gave millions. But we should not miss the lesson in this fight. Nor the opportunity to rally this rebounded presidency to its real potential for reform. Read More »
March 17, 2010
Citizens Unite
Change Congress founder Lawrence Lessig has an article at TNR.com, titled "Citizens Unite." Read More »
March 05, 2010
Systemic Denial
By: Lawrence Lessig
We need to admit our (democracy's) problem. We need to get beyond this stage of denial. We need to recognize that until we release our leaders from a system that forces them to ignore good sense when there is an opportunity for large campaign cash, we won't have policy that makes sense. Wall Street continues unchanged because the Congress that would change it is already shuttling to Wall Street fundraisers. Both parties are already pandering to this power, so they can find the fix to fund the next cycle of campaigns. Read More »
February 26, 2010
A Choice You Won’t Get Anywhere Else
I hate feeling that someone is pretending to talk to me when they're really asking me for money. I hate feeling that the only reason I'm receiving an email from some organization is because they hope I'm going to click the "DONATE NOW" button. Maybe you're different. Maybe you like being asked for money. But if you're like me, read on. Read More »
February 17, 2010
“A Dose of Realism”? How About This for “Realism”: We Need Leadership
By: Lawrence Lessig
Larry Tribe criticizes my February 15 post, which itself had criticized the Democratic Leadership's planned response to Citizens United as not good enough. He agrees that the Leadership's response is "incomplete," but, he argues, it at least has "the virtue of being potentially attainable." More importantly, he believes that the key provisions of the Leadership's proposal are not necessarily unconstitutional. As he writes... Read More »
February 17, 2010
Lawrence Lessig on Bloggingheads
Change Congress founder Lawrence Lessig appeared on Bloggingheads.tv with the Washington Post's Ezra Klein to discuss reforming Congress. Read More »
February 16, 2010
The Democrats’ Response to Citizens United: Not (Even Close to) Good Enough
By: Lawrence Lessig
The Democratic Leadership in Congress announced its response to the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United last week. Their plan builds upon "talking points" released by the President shortly after his State of the Union, describing his strategy for "cracking down on special interests" in light of the new threat created by the Court. "For too long," the White House wrote, "hardworking folks doing everything they can do to stay afloat have not been heard over the powerful voices of the special interests and their lobbyists in Washington." The Leadership and the President want to do something about this. Read More »
February 11, 2010
BREAKING: Congress’s response to Citizens United
The Democratic leadership in Congress just announced its response to the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United, the case that struck down limits on independent corporate campaign expenditures.
In a word: hopeless. Read More »
February 10, 2010
New installment of the Change Congress Chronicles
By: Change Congress
Monica Walsh, Development Director for Change Congress, sent out the following email yesterday to Change Congress supporters, including a new video from Lawrence Lessig. Read More »
February 04, 2010
A Call for a Convention
By: Lawrence Lessig
The Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United has sparked a furious debate across the Nation. At least a half a dozen organizations, and just as many Members of Congress, are now pushing for a constitutional amendment to overturn it. Others are frantically trying to convince the Nation that the speech of Exxon is as central to democracy as the protest of Rosa Parks.
But in my view, the greatest danger of Citizens United is distraction. There are fundamental problems with America's democracy. An overly diverse speech market is not high on that list. And while the decision in Citizens United -- if things stay as they are -- could create a critical threat to American democracy, that is not because corporations get to speak. The danger in this decision is that it will further cement the corrupting dependency on private funding of public campaigns that already infects our Congress. The problem in our democracy is not diversity; the problem is a Congress dependent upon the fundraisers. The problem is not corporate speech. The problem is the fundraising Congress.
Read More »
February 04, 2010
“How to Get Our Democracy Back”
By: Change Congress
Change Congress founder Lawrence Lessig has the cover article in the new issue of The Nation, titled "How to Get Our Democracy Back." An excerpt after the jump. Read More »
February 03, 2010
Introducing FixCongressFirst.org
By: Lawrence Lessig
The Supreme Court's Citizens United decision has already had a remarkable impact. Across the country, people are outraged by the prospect of our political system being subject even further to the influence of special interest money. In the streets, in our newspapers and TV talk shows, in the President's State of the Union address -- people are fed up and demanding action. We've got a tremendous opportunity to harness this momentum, to direct this palpable sense of outrage toward a positive effort to restore public trust in our democracy. Read More »
Organize!
Call a Convention
Passing the Fair Elections Now Act is an essential first step toward restoring trust in our democracy. But if we want to guarantee that nothing will stand in the way of fundamental reform, then we have to write this reform into our founding document, the Constitution itself. Learn more.
