Corruption requires looking into someone's soul and making judgments about their intent.
— Zephyr Teachout
And my whole life I've been focused on questions of anti-corruption laws, on constitutional law, and it's essential that the power of this office be maximized to stop corruption at the national level.
To be fair, money and politics never work in a directly straight line.
Wealthy individuals have always had the capacity to influence politics, of course, but only after two key campaign finance cases - Wisconsin Right to Life and and Citizens United, have they been able to do it in such a large and blatant way.
When elections are not democratic, even the most populist discussions become superficial, disconnected from real power; they are theatre.
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.
We need to pressure lawmakers to hold hearings on pending mergers, and pressure federal and state enforcers to use their full powers.
You may think of Google as a single organic entity, but in 2011 it bought a different company every week.
There is so much we don’t know about Facebook. We know we have a corporate monopoly that has repeated serious violations that are threatening our democracy.
Facebook is a known behemoth corporate monopoly. It has exposed at least 87 million people’s data, enabled foreign propaganda and perpetuated discrimination. We shouldn’t be begging for Facebook’s endorsement of laws, or for Mark Zuckerberg’s promises of self-regulation.
Most of the corruption in Albany is legal corruption, not illegal bribery. It comes from campaigns being funded by millionaires and corporations.
One of the more important things the Bernie Sanders campaign did is reach people who are political but not electorally political. They’re political in either non-profits or community groups, but didn’t see how important it was to get involved in electoral politics.
I have always wanted to run for Attorney General, and I always wanted to have a baby, but I did not think I would be doing them at the same time.
I’m an FDR Democrat, and I really believe that the most important thing is the institutions of political parties, and engaging in those institutions, and, where you disagree with them, speaking up and sharing your disagreement.
Talking to Republicans who aren't leaders - that's not very difficult both on anti-trust and on campaign finance reform. I think it's a lot more complicated when you talk to highly funded leaders - that's the innate, deeply problematic part of our politics.
There's this myth out there that self-perpetuates that candidates believe that although the populace cares about corruption, they're not going to vote on it.
You build massive databases, you learn everything you can about the people in those databases, you figure out exactly how they can be useful to your campaign, and you ask them to donate money, door-knock, the virtual equivalent of being a sort of army of stamp lickers.
Corruption is when people in public office use that public office for private or selfish ends. This is one of the most central debates in the last 40 years in law, what is corruption.
The attorney general of New York state has a special authority and responsibility to preserve the integrity of businesses and nonprofits in New York under the state's own laws as well as under the U.S. Constitution.
If the publicly passed campaign finance laws had not been struck down by the Supreme Court, Club for Growth Action would be illegal, and Heritage Action wouldn't have the SuperPAC threat to back up its small ad purchases.
The key to fixing public financing is to free politics from big money.
If we don’t have a responsive democracy, all the debates about charter schools, and fracking, and high-stakes testing, and the militarization of police forces - all of which are issues I care about – they aren’t real debates.
I don’t think we should reduce the corporate tax rate.
New York state’s Donnelly Act gives power at least as great - many think greater - than that of the Sherman Act. We have strong consumer protection laws that can be used to protect against scams and frauds by corporate monopolists.
We, as lawyers, must point out that unrestrained power is almost always abusive.
In my view, we need to break up Facebook from Instagram and the other potential competitors that Facebook bought up.
A real economic development policy would address the root issues hampering business growth, like access to credit and marketplaces so dominated by giant companies that it is impossible to compete.
The core of my platform is to change the role of money in politics, support public education and break up monopoly power. All of these are fundamental prerequisites to a responsive democracy.
Congress is corrupt, gridlocked, broken, dysfunctional. It’s not working and we need it working again. It’s not going to get fixed by people who are deeply, in one way or another, inside this really broken system.
The way we fund campaigns is a feminist issue and a race issue. If you want more representation, you can’t say it’s going to be really expensive to run for office and you need a rolodex of billionaires.
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.
A lot of organizations have pointed out that under public financing systems, you see a lot more candidates of color and a lot more women. But you also see the power base behind these candidates is more representative and far less exclusively wealthy.
Parties are fun, but they don't create community.
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.
In some states, the attorney general is appointed, but in New York state it's an independently elected position. The New York attorney general has an obligation to the people first, to her conscience and to the rule of law, not to the governor, and not to the legislature.
President Trump is taking foreign money through his businesses, which is in violation of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution.
After Citizens United, unlimited money could go directly to a corporate entity that can tell people who to vote for, with names and polling places included.
I care about dental care, and ending mass private and public surveillance, and funding schools so they can have small class sizes.
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.
Political corruption is eating our democracy out from the inside. Most Americans know that. But democratic and economic health can’t be easily disentangled.
The federal government has shown little willingness to stand up to corporate monopolies, and use its powers under the existing antitrust statutes, including the powerful Clayton Act and Sherman Act.
People traverse the dangerous journey to the US because of deep fear. They are often escaping brutality, even life-or-death situations.
The tools Facebook provides make discrimination easy. Facebook has monopoly profit margins, so it could easily provide real staffing to protect against discrimination, if it wanted to. It doesn’t want to.
The public should have access to unfettered communication and commerce, and the Internet is increasingly the medium where that takes place.
Women’s voices need to be in politics, and shaping politics from the very beginning, not serve as an afterthought.
I’m going to Congress to break down the doors of power.
Every district is going to be different, but if you wanted me to give advice to those candidates: Run your own campaign, the DCCC does not run your campaign. Figure out ways to raise money from small-dollar donors, and put some real energy into that because that will give you freedom to say no to big donors.
I see the job of attorney general as the single most important legal office in the country when you can’t trust the federal government.
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.
And increasingly, as people live online, we are used to making really snap judgments about somebody's character based on their Facebook page or the way their blog feels or look.
