Lobbyists (E5)
In this episode, Front Running looks at the promises of draining the swamp that Trump had made and failed to implement. Lobbyists continue to write legislation and get whatever it is they want often over the will of the people.
For this episode of Front Running, Max and Stacy are joined by guests, Tyson Slocum, head of Public Citizen’s Energy Program and Ellen Brown, a public banking activist. They discuss the various swamp draining ideas which have been proposed from some of the candidates for president. Andrew Yang, for example, proposes ‘Democracy Dollars’ — a policy in which every voter would receive the same amount of cash to be used only to support their favored political candidates. If this does, indeed, give the citizen eight times more economic power than corporations and their lobbyists, will this help? Tyson believes that corporations would just up their expenditure on buying political loyalty. Elizabeth Warren proposes a lobbyist tax on ‘bads’ above a certain threshold which would, thus, not harm public interest lobbying groups like Public Citizen, but dissuade corporations from outspending activists by so much. Could this combine with Bernie Sanders’ idea of banning for life any member of Congress from lobbying in the future to finally put an end to corporate influence over our politics? Tune in to learn more about the race to drain the swamp.