WEBVTT

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So, it turns out exactly a year ago,

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right now, right this minute,
a year ago in Hong Kong,

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an extraordinary protest began.

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Protest begun by students,

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literally, high school
and college students,

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elementary school students,

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then their parents
felt a little embarrassed

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that they had let their kids work so hard
and then they showed up as well.

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And the protest was about a law.

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And the law was proposed by China.

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The law was to determine

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how the Governor of Hong Kong
would be selected.

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The law said, "The ultimate aim
is the selection of the Chief Executive

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by universal suffrage upon nomination

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by a broadly representative
nominating committee

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in accordance with democratic procedures."

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OK, so the idea was,
there's a two step process.

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The first step was nomination,

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and then the second step
was an election.

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The nominating committee
would be comprised of about 1200 people

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which means out of seven million people

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that is .02 percent of Hong Kong.

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Alright, .02% as you can see
is a really tiny number.

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(Laughter)

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Really, really small.

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If you thought about it,
relative to all the people in Hong Kong,

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it would look something like this,

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this tiny little corner is .02 percent.

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So .02% get to pick the candidates,

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that the rest of Hong Kong
gets to vote among.

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And the protest was because the fear
was this filter would be a biased filter.

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The claim was that .02% would be dominated

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by a pro-Beijing business
and political elite.

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So 99.98% would be excluded
from this critical first step

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with the consequence, obviously,
of producing a democracy

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responsive to China only.

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OK, now, it turns out the Chinese
stole this idea from an American.

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Don't worry, there was no patent,
no copyrights,

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there's no IP violations going on here.

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But they stole the idea from an American.

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Maybe the greatest
political philosopher in America -

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a man named Boss Tweed.

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(Laughter)

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Boss Tweed had
a Tammany Hall political party.

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He used to say,
"I don't care who does the electing,

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as long as I get to do the nominating."

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(Laughter)

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So, this conception, this kind of -

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(Laughter)

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(Applause)

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conception of politics
has an obvious logic to it, right

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because, if you control the nomination,

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every candidate was going to worry
what you, the nominator, think.

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So, you practically control the candidate,

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whether or not you control
the ultimate election.

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We can call that genius theory -

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that genius theory for
destroying democracy -

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Tweedism.

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Any two stage process
where the Tweeds get to nominate

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and then the rest get to select
is Tweedism.

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And the consequence
of Tweedism, obviously,

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is producing a system responsive
to Tweeds only.

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Now, Tweedism was practised
not just in the North,

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not just in New York,

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it was practiced in the South too.

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Texas in 1923
practiced Tweedism by a law.

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In 1923 Texas passed statute that said,

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"In the democratic Primary
only whites could vote."

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Only whites could vote.

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Blacks can vote in the General Elections,
if of course they could get registered,

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given all the barriers to registration.

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But only whites
could vote in a democratic Primary.

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And of course, back then,
hard to imagine,

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but back then the only party that mattered
was the Democratic Party in Texas.

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So, in this two stage process,
blacks were excluded from the first stage.

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16% of Texas excluded from
this critical first stage,

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with the consequence obviously

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of producing a democracy
responsive to whites only.

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Now, those cases are obvious to us.

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Everyone looks at that and says,
there is something obviously wrong

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with those so called democracies
to set up their structure in that way.

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So why don't we see it here?

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We take it for granted in the US,
that campaigns will be privately funded.

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But we need to recognize funding
is its own contest,

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funding is its own Primary.

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We have the voting system,
where people vote,

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but in the first stage to that
there is a Money Primary

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that determines which candidates
are allowed to run

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in those voting elections.

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Now, that Money Primary takes time.

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Members of Congress
and candidates for Congress

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spend anywhere between
30 and 70 percent of their time

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dialing for - this is an old telephone,
you might not recognize this -

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but dialing for dollars.

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Calling people all across the country
to get the money they need

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to run their campaigns,
or to get their party back into power.

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B. F. Skinner gave us this wonderful
image of the skinner box

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where any stupid animal could learn
which buttons it needed to push

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for its sustenance.

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This is the picture of the life
of the modern American Congress person

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As the modern American Congress person -

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(Applause)

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comes to learn which buttons
he or she needs to push

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to get the sustenance he or she needs
to make his or her campaign successful.

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This is their life, and it has an effect.

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Each of them, as they do this,
develop a "sixth sense",

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a constant awareness of how what they do
might affect their ability to raise money.

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They become, in the words of "X Files",
"shape shifters",

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as they constantly adjust their views
in light of what they know

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will help them to raise money.

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Not on issues 1-10,
but on issues 11-1000.

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Leslie Byrne, a Democrat from Virginia,
describes that when she went to Congress

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she was told by a colleague,
"Always lean to the green."

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And to clarify, she went on, "You know,
he was not an environmentalist."

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(Laughter)

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So this obviously is a Primary too.

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It is the Money Primary.

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It's not the White Primary,
it's the Green Primary.

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It's the first stage
in a multistage process

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to select the candidates
who will represent us.

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So, if this is the structure,
we should interrogate who are the funders.

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Or we can think about
who the biggest funders are.

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In the 2014, the top 100 gave
as much as the bottom 4.75 million funders

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to congressional campaigns.

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In this election cycle so far,
400 families have given half the money

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in the election contributions
and contributions to Super PAC, so far.

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Four hundred families!

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That is not American democracy.
That is Banana Republic democracy.

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(Laughter)

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And then we can think
not just about the biggest funders

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but think about the relevant funders.

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Of course the people giving
millions of dollars have the attention

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of the members of Congress.

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But how much do you need to give
to be relevant?

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How much do you need to give
to be big enough to matter

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to those Congress people
as they are dialing for dollars

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to raise money from you.

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Let's take people who maxed out in 2014.

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And in 2014 - that means you gave
5,200 dollars to at least one candidate

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in the General Primary
and in the General Election.

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In 2014, it turns out,
57,874 Americans maxed out in that way.

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So we could say,
57,874 gave enough to matter

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to control, to be the dominant force
in this first stage

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of the election process.

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And, some of you out there,
the math genius out there

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might do the numbers.

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54,874, hey wait a minute,
that's .02% -

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(Laughter)

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- of America.

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.02% of America dominate this first stage
in the process of electing the candidates

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who will represent us.

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They pick the candidates,
because you can't be credible

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unless you get their money.

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And we get to vote for those candidates.

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This tiny fraction of the 1%,
this Chinese fraction of the 1%

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dominate the first stage
with the consequence, obviously,

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of producing a democracy responsive
to these funders only.

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It's Princeton study,
which, as a Harvard professor

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I'm not allowed to talk about much,
let's get it off the stage quick.

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By Martin Gilens and Ben Page,
the largest empirical study

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of actual decisions by our government
in the history of political science,

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related the actual decisions 
of our government over the past 40 years

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with the views of the economic elite,
the views of organized interest groups

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and the views of the average voter.

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And what they found was
there was a nice correlation

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between the views of the economic elite
and what our government actually did.

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So, as you go from 0% of the elite
supporting something to 100%,

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the probability of that proposal
being passed, goes up.

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Same thing
with organized special interest groups.

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As the number
of them support something increases,

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the probability
of that proposal being passed, goes up.

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Here is the graph for the average voter.

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It is a flat line.

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Flat line, literally and figuratively.

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What this is saying is,
as the percentage of average voter

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supporting a proposal goes from 0 to 100%

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it doesn't change the probability
that that proposal will be enacted.

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As they put in English,

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"When the preferences
of the economic elites

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and the stands
of organized interest groups

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are controlled for,

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the preferences of the average American
appear to have only a miniscule

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near-zero, statistically non-significant
impact on public policy.

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In a democracy, this is true.

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Alright, here's the picture that we had,
we were told of our democracy.

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There we were, citizens, driving the bus.

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But here is the reality, the reality is --

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(Laughter)

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(Applause)

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the reality is the steering wheel
has become detached from this bus,

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we don't drive the bus anymore.

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We do not, that anecdotally,
in the most aggressive empirical analysis

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have no relationship
to what our government does.

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This is a product of Tweedism.

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And what Tweedism is, is first corruption.

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It's a corruption of the design
of our representative democracy.

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When Madison gave us
our representative democracy

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he described it, in "Federals" 52,
to be a system that would have a branch -

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Congress that would be,
"dependent on the people alone."

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An exclusive dependence.

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But that's not our Congress.

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They are dependent on the people
and dependent on the Tweeds.

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And then to go on, to clarify,
Madison in "Federals" 57 said,

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by the people he means,
"Not the rich, more than the poor."

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Not the rich, more than the poor.

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But that is not our reality.

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The people today mean,
not the rich, more than the poor,

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except for the Tweeds.

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The Tweeds have more power
than the middle class and the poor.

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This is corruption.

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It is not criminals, it is a system
in which decent people

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who come to this city
to do the right thing

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find themselves bent to do the thing
the Tweeds demand -

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because that's the only way
you can survive.

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It is corruption.

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But it is caused by a basic inequality

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that we have allowed to evolve
inside of our representative system.

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An inequality.

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Remember Orwell's, "All animals
are created equal."

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And what we've got here,
all animals are created equal

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but the Tweeds are more equal than others.

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It is inequality.

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But what is critical about recognizing
that it is inequality

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is, if we could remove the inequality;

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if we could address
that fundamental inequality

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in this representative democracy;

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If we could neutralize this Tweedism,
then we could crack the corruption

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that makes it impossible
for our government

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to do any of the things
we want our government to do.

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We could achieve a system dependent
on the people alone

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because only the people
would be having the influence

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inside our government.

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It would be a system where not the rich,
more than the poor were the people

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because every one would,
because of this equality,

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have the capacity to press the government

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in the direction they want
the government pressed.

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Equality.

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I'm not talking about wealth equality,
that's important to worry about too.

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That is not what I'm talking about.

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I'm talking about inequality
we have as citizens.

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And to get that, what I've been arguing,
we need to talk about is a statute,

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that Congress ought to pass tomorrow.

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Statute, let's call it
the Citizen Equality Act.

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What the Citizen Equality Act does first,
it changes the way campaigns are funded.

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To make it so that instead
of this Green Primary

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we have a Money Primary,

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but citizens are funding these campaigns,
as much as anyone else.

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The money comes from all of us
through proposals

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like the American Anti-Corruption Act,

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or John Sarbane's
Government by the People Act

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that would provide
small dollar public funding

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to fund congressional campaigns.

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So that they wouldn't be dependent
on this tiny few, to fund their campaigns.

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That's the critical
first dimension of equality

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we ought to insert back
into this representative democracy.

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And there's other inequalities
inside of our system.

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We need equal representation
inside of our system.

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This article, this fantastic article
written by Christopher Ingraham

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for the Washington Post

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graphs these gerrymandered districts
in the United States.

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These are congressional districts
in the US.

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Here is my favorite example of this.

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You can see the natural community
that bonds these people together here.

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(Laughter)

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This is a system -

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they said it's crimes against geography,
that's kind of a nice way of putting it.

00:14:15.663 --> 00:14:18.671
This is the system where the politicians
are picking the voters.

00:14:18.696 --> 00:14:20.798
The voters
aren't picking the politicians.

00:14:20.845 --> 00:14:23.872
And they pick the voters
to create safe seats.

00:14:23.898 --> 00:14:26.452
Democrats and Republicans
both play this game.

00:14:26.803 --> 00:14:29.552
So, in our Congress today,
90 seats are competitive.

00:14:30.203 --> 00:14:33.620
Which means 345 seats
are these safe seats.

00:14:33.974 --> 00:14:38.217
Which means, if you are minority party
in each of these 345 seats,

00:14:38.244 --> 00:14:40.479
you don't matter to the representative

00:14:40.516 --> 00:14:43.709
because the representative knows
he or she doesn't need you.

00:14:43.747 --> 00:14:48.150
Which means 89 million Americans
are not represented in this system,

00:14:48.189 --> 00:14:51.521
because we structured this in a way
that makes sure

00:14:51.917 --> 00:14:53.966
that these people don't count.

00:14:53.991 --> 00:14:54.997
That is inequality.

00:14:55.022 --> 00:14:57.433
And Fair Vote has a proposal
which is incorporated

00:14:57.433 --> 00:14:59.506
in the Citizen Equality Act

00:14:59.506 --> 00:15:02.722
to radically change the way
we make these districts work

00:15:02.747 --> 00:15:06.650
so that we have proportional
fair representation across the country.

00:15:06.682 --> 00:15:08.745
And finally, an Equal Freedom to Vote.

00:15:08.770 --> 00:15:12.372
The absurd ways in which we make it hard
for people to vote.

00:15:12.718 --> 00:15:16.324
And it is not accidental
how we make it hard for people to vote.

00:15:16.332 --> 00:15:20.326
In the last election 10 million people
had to wait more than 30 minutes to vote.

00:15:20.351 --> 00:15:25.218
Which for people with nannies and iPhones
might not seem like a bad thing

00:15:25.229 --> 00:15:29.892
but if you are a working family
who can't afford that kind of support,

00:15:29.917 --> 00:15:33.536
that's a poll tax
that is too high for too many.

00:15:33.808 --> 00:15:35.149
And of course as the -

00:15:35.375 --> 00:15:39.586
(Applause)

00:15:40.756 --> 00:15:44.303
as the Brennan Center found
in a study that they made of this,

00:15:44.343 --> 00:15:48.512
this poll tax
is correlated strongly with race.

00:15:49.548 --> 00:15:55.109
It is racially correlated in a sense that
where there are black or brown districts

00:15:55.144 --> 00:15:56.537
they are less likely to have

00:15:56.562 --> 00:15:59.742
the resources necessary
to make it possible to vote easily.

00:16:00.019 --> 00:16:03.392
That, of course, I think is more directly
correlated with party

00:16:03.464 --> 00:16:07.321
which leads to many proposals incorporated
in the Citizens Equality Act,

00:16:07.346 --> 00:16:10.181
including
the Voting Rights Advancement Act

00:16:10.206 --> 00:16:14.435
that would attack some of these provisions
that make it hard for people to vote.

00:16:14.483 --> 00:16:17.083
And Bernie Sanders' suggestion
of Democracy Day,

00:16:17.108 --> 00:16:20.478
where we move voting to a holiday
so working people can vote

00:16:20.503 --> 00:16:22.613
just as easily as those who don't have to.

00:16:23.197 --> 00:16:25.932
(Applause)

00:16:27.158 --> 00:16:31.657
So these three ideas
get wrapped into one statute,

00:16:31.682 --> 00:16:35.990
the statute Congress could pass tomorrow
to achieve this equality

00:16:36.259 --> 00:16:39.926
to make
this representative democracy possible.

00:16:39.965 --> 00:16:45.727
OK, now, I push this as the core fight
we ought to have

00:16:45.752 --> 00:16:47.053
and people say, well why?

00:16:47.078 --> 00:16:50.831
There are so many issues out there
why would you pick this one to push?

00:16:51.607 --> 00:16:53.740
And there is a practical reason.

00:16:53.905 --> 00:16:58.199
The practical reason is we will get
nothing from this government,

00:16:58.595 --> 00:16:59.953
until we get this.

00:17:00.564 --> 00:17:04.816
You want this government to address
the problem of climate change,

00:17:05.329 --> 00:17:07.686
we will not get
climate change legislation,

00:17:07.756 --> 00:17:11.010
until we address
this fundamental inequality

00:17:11.021 --> 00:17:12.753
in this broken democracy.

00:17:12.866 --> 00:17:16.278
You want Congress to address
the problem of social security

00:17:16.295 --> 00:17:18.299
to make sure that there is social security

00:17:18.324 --> 00:17:20.763
we will not get a government
to address that problem

00:17:20.789 --> 00:17:22.351
until we fix this democracy.

00:17:22.512 --> 00:17:25.393
You want Congress to address
the problem of student debt.

00:17:25.417 --> 00:17:27.953
We're not going to address
the problem of student debt

00:17:27.978 --> 00:17:30.302
until we address
this problem of democracy.

00:17:30.325 --> 00:17:33.413
So it is not that this
is the most important issue.

00:17:33.438 --> 00:17:36.267
It's not that those issues
are the most important issues,

00:17:36.315 --> 00:17:38.355
this is just the first issue.

00:17:38.414 --> 00:17:42.469
This is the issue we have got to solve,
if we are going to have any chance

00:17:42.560 --> 00:17:45.396
to solve the long list
of critical problems

00:17:45.444 --> 00:17:47.507
that we as a nation must address.

00:17:47.523 --> 00:17:50.524
So practically this is why
we need to put this first.

00:17:50.549 --> 00:17:52.659
But it is not just practical, it is moral.

00:17:54.389 --> 00:17:58.865
400 years after slavery came
to these shores,

00:17:59.595 --> 00:18:03.638
I think it is time we have
a peaceful fight for equality.

00:18:04.652 --> 00:18:08.333
That we have a campaign,
a national campaign,

00:18:08.358 --> 00:18:11.959
everybody who rallies around the idea
that it is finally time

00:18:12.607 --> 00:18:14.749
that we stand up
for this idea of equality.

00:18:14.774 --> 00:18:18.511
It is an embarrassment to our traditions

00:18:19.392 --> 00:18:24.288
that in 2015 we have movements that need
to assert that black lives matter.

00:18:24.313 --> 00:18:26.211
How can that possibly be?

00:18:26.416 --> 00:18:29.735
(Applause)

00:18:33.291 --> 00:18:35.239
Well, I can tell you that it is

00:18:35.264 --> 00:18:38.802
because we have a political system
that doesn’t count us equally.

00:18:39.006 --> 00:18:42.027
We have a political system
that counts some more than others.

00:18:42.027 --> 00:18:44.642
We have a political system that betrays

00:18:44.940 --> 00:18:48.138
the fundamental idea
of a representative democracy.

00:18:48.189 --> 00:18:52.525
54 years ago, Martin Luther King
went to Lincoln University,

00:18:52.992 --> 00:18:56.989
gave a speech in which he said,
"America is essentially a dream,

00:18:57.743 --> 00:19:01.421
the substance of the dream is expressed
in these sublime words

00:19:01.446 --> 00:19:07.739
words lifted to cosmic proportions:
that all are created equal."

00:19:10.631 --> 00:19:14.964
We've heard it said that the Pope
shouldn't talk about climate science,

00:19:15.467 --> 00:19:18.567
so I shouldn't talk about
what the Creator meant,

00:19:19.563 --> 00:19:23.833
but let me tell you about the reality,
whatever the Creator meant,

00:19:24.635 --> 00:19:27.754
reality is we are not equal
in America today.

00:19:28.813 --> 00:19:32.821
Reality is we do have
second class citizens in America today.

00:19:33.268 --> 00:19:38.710
And the reality is until we confront
the fact that this ideal

00:19:39.162 --> 00:19:41.630
is a fantasy in America today,

00:19:42.543 --> 00:19:46.440
we will not begin to have a democracy
that represents us.

00:19:46.472 --> 00:19:47.897
We need to learn

00:19:48.109 --> 00:19:50.673
from our brothers and sisters
fifty years ago

00:19:51.523 --> 00:19:54.817
who risked their lives
to fight for equality.

00:19:55.604 --> 00:19:58.038
And we need to learn
from our brothers and sisters

00:19:58.058 --> 00:20:00.258
from all the way around the world

00:20:00.283 --> 00:20:04.242
who are risking their lives now
to fight for equality.

00:20:04.267 --> 00:20:07.345
To fight for equality,
to love for equality.

00:20:08.532 --> 00:20:13.555
To sacrifice that sense of love,
to sacrifice for equality.

00:20:13.580 --> 00:20:18.267
because if we don't,
how will we look at our children,

00:20:18.797 --> 00:20:20.757
who will look back at us and say,

00:20:20.780 --> 00:20:24.448
"Look at what you inherited
and then squandered.

00:20:25.670 --> 00:20:29.059
Look at what you had and then left to us."

00:20:29.084 --> 00:20:33.370
Because we were given the nation
with the potential

00:20:33.395 --> 00:20:36.259
to be the greatest democracy in the world

00:20:36.529 --> 00:20:39.639
and we have allowed that potential to die.

00:20:39.790 --> 00:20:41.011
Thank you very much.

00:20:41.108 --> 00:20:44.108
(Applause)

00:20:45.991 --> 00:20:46.849
Thank you.

00:20:46.885 --> 00:20:49.857
(Applause)