ZEPHYR TEACHOUT

Our current Supreme Court, in the Citizens United case, took that which had been named corrupt for over 200 years [gifts to politicians] and renamed it legitimate..

Until the 1980s, candidates spent a fraction of their time talking to donors; just a few weeks a year, a little more right before an election. True, they'd fund raise from the wealthy interests, as they do now, but it was a minuscule part of their job: policy and constituent services were the heart of the work.

Amazon's capitulation to those opposed to their expansion in New York City is an epic moment for people power over an enormous corporate bully.

Creating systems where people feel like they're being punished for things they didn't do wrong breaks all kinds of trust and makes people feel like they're not being treated with dignity.

Refusing to grant clemency is a failure of one of the most basic jobs of being governor.

The Internet is an important organizing tool. But the goal of a campaign isn't to use the Internet for organizing; the goal is always to win, and to change policy and politics.

So paid media is when you buy an ad - typically in a presidential campaign that will be in Iowa, New Hampshire, the early states. It costs some money to make the ad, but the greatest cost is in actually placing the ad on TV.

Anti-corruption is a core constitutional value. It always has been.

One of the things that is so important, critical I think, in reading not just the founders but thousands of years as you put it, that discussion about corruption, is that you can't talk about the problem of corruption without talking about human nature.

I hope the true public servants learn from this that they should not be afraid and they will get incredible grass-roots support if they call out corruption.

We need to pressure lawmakers to hold hearings on pending mergers, and pressure federal and state enforcers to use their full powers.

The public should have access to unfettered communication and commerce, and the Internet is increasingly the medium where that takes place.

In the absence of relative equality - quid pro quo - a court might question whether there was an actual contract. If I give you a dollar, and you give me a mansion, our contract would lack quid pro quo.

To be fair, money and politics never work in a directly straight line.

The structure of private campaign finance has essentially pre-corrupted our politicians, so that they can't even recognize explicit bribery because it feels the same as what they do every day.

Dependence on private money to run campaigns causes pain to Republicans and Democrats alike - and business owners. It's time we did something about it. And public financing of elections should be the first step.

So one of the things I want to focus on is how we can show how taking on private financing is taking on this fundamental democratic threat.

Everybody's always going to have some self-interest. When it passes a certain point, that's when it become corruption.

At a policy level, we can support protecting and serving as opposed to militarization or disproportionate response. Step one is making sure we don't militarize and actually call for a review of military equipment in New York police forces.

It's said that history inevitably marches toward democracy, but it only leaves the possibility of democracy, and the constant threat that it would be eroded by big money.

At their best, new media are chaotic. The new technologies disrupt political pomp and glamour and engage people in an unpolished and unpredictable give-and-take. They also give citizens access to a surprising depth of raw information.

When elections are not democratic, even the most populist discussions become superficial, disconnected from real power; they are theatre.

I propose a full day of live one-on-one debates on unannounced issues, with no aides to help or reply. Each candidate would be paired with another candidate for seven 60-minute sessions.

I mean this is a revolution in how campaigns work - more money was spent by super PACs than by either myself or John Faso. So what that means is that if you're a voter in this district you are more likely to have heard from a super PAC than from me or my opponent.

I hope that we increasingly shift power to local governments.