TPM Muckraker captured some great audio of Sen. Ted Stevens lashing out at constituents asking questions about his current legal predicament. To me, the last question was by far the most interesting. There’s a transcript of the last Q&A after the video.

Q: I’ve been following the news lately and they were mentioning that you supported an ethics bill in 1989 that Congress had passed, it was an amended ethics and government bill that said that members of Congress needed to disclose their financial reports, anything exceeding $200, and now your defense team is saying that’s unconstitutional, and I’m just wondering if you can talk to us Alaskans about how that’s unconstitutional in 2008 but in 1989 that was satisfactory.
A: As I’ve said before, I haven’t seen that pleading, it was filed by my lawyers in Washington, they’ve been hired to do it-
Q: OK well why don’t you give us your opinion, aside from what your lawyers are saying-
A: I’m sorry I’m not going to give my opinion about what my lawyers have done that I haven’t read. So thank you very much, I don’t know who gave you that amendment, that question, but whoever gave you that question ask them.

That’s a pretty good question. From what I can tell, the Government Ethics Reform Act of 1989 passed the Senate by voice vote with an amendment attached. Also interesting, Sen. Stevens was an original cosponsor of the Ethics in Government Act of 1977, the law under which he is being prosecuted.

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Sen. Ted Stevens has served as senator from Alaska for most of his life and nearly all of the state’s existence. Stevens greatest accomplishments have been as a patronage chief; bringing home federal dollars for Alaska and protecting and expanding the extraction industries in the state, particularly the oil industry. In many ways, Stevens is Alaska. It comes as no surprise that Stevens would run his current reelection campaign on a message that says, “Without Ted, we’re toast.”

As some have noted already, Stevens - a “patronage-distributing warlord” - may be a dying breed of politician. There are others who still exclusively practice this kind of politics, most notably Alaska’s lone representative Don Young, but few to the degree that Stevens has over the years. Stevens’ undying support for earmarking and the oil industry may have brought on investigative scrutiny and, ultimately, an indictment. But they also appear to have muddled the water in the investigation, prompting prosecutors to charge Stevens with seemingly lesser felonies - for now. (more…)

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Twice this year I’ve been astonished to see Ralph Reed’s mug appear in election coverage. After the New Hampshire primaries the man who received over $4 million in Indian casino cash from Jack Abramoff was talking politics on CNN. Viewer reaction was intensely negative and CNN, embarrassed, canned him. While his campaign is not answering questions about it, it looks like John McCain decided that it wasn’t the best idea to appear at a fundraiser with a participant in one of the biggest corruption scandals in history. Or perhaps Reed decided that he didn’t need to be an undue distraction.

Either way, smart move.

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There are two prime negative stereotypes of elected officials. One is of the official who sticks their finger to the wind and goes whichever way it blows. The other is the official who takes a position based on who can fill their campaign coffers, their pockets, or pay for their own extreme home makeover. In New York, those two stereotypes are literally coming together as local elected officials line their pockets with largess from wind power companies as they help them erect wind turbines across the rural parts of the state.

Lured by state subsidies and buoyed by high oil prices, the wind industry has arrived in force in upstate New York, promising to bring jobs, tax revenue and cutting-edge energy to the long-struggling region. But in town after town, some residents say, the companies have delivered something else: an epidemic of corruption and intimidation, as they rush to acquire enough land to make the wind farms a reality. (more…)

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Yesterday, the Senate opened their arms and hearts to Sen. Ted Stevens while vulnerable Republicans simultaneously emptied their campaign coffers of his contributions. In an age reversal, the 90-year old Robert Byrd took on the role of PeeWee from Eight Men Out, crying to Stevens, “Say it ain’t so.” According to Dana Milbank’s take, many other senators expressed condolences and embraced the disgraced senator.

Present at the moment of Stevens’ senatorial embrace were a few reminders of why this scene is so appalling. Sens. Larry Craig and David Vitter, both cast out, particularly Craig, for personal failings that in no way involved them using their position as senator to enrich themselves. Sen. Craig’s use of a public restroom as a “closet” led fellow Republicans to force him to retire. Sen. Vitter, who slept with prostitutes, was initially shunned and subsequently welcomed back into the Republican conference. (more…)

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Bribes, congressional wives, lobbyist children, far-flung countries, and jet-setting congressmen. Add it all together and you’re reading the ingredient label of a old fashioned congressional scandal, circa 2004-2006. Hot off the shelf is the investigation into former-Rep. Curt Weldon’s dealings with Russia companies with ties to Vladimir Putin’s inner circle.

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal added new dynamite to an investigation that led to FBI raids on Weldon’s offices, the lobbying offices of his daughter - a lobbyist, and the offices of her employer, the shady Russian energy giant, Itera. One of Weldon’s ex-staffers, Russell Caso, is currently cooperating with the Feds after pleading guilty for failing to disclose payments made to his wife from a firm “helping American businesses operate in Russia.” That firm is now identified as the International Exchange Group, an organization with deep ties to Weldon. (more…)

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(From the Open House Project blog.)

I’m reading Politics in Time by Paul Pierson (link), and am struck by how little academic political science seems to affect government policy and political discussion. I find political and social analysis incredibly stimulating, especially given how tiresome I find the current presidential punditizing.

I’m particularly interested in Pierson’s purportedly novel conception of how political institutions develop over time, apparently filling the gaps that other models fail to address. (He sets his conceptions against "historical institutionalism" and "rational choice theory".) His analysis is abstract enough to be rigorous and challenging at first, but takes a broad enough view that he can abstract common elements out of disparate systems in a useful, applicable manner. He seeks to "explicate different ways in which things happen over time in social life, drawing attention to processes that are unlikely to be visible without specifically addressing questions of temporality" (p. 10). (more)

In reading just the first few chapters, I’m surprised at how well the concept of "path dependence" maps onto congressional reform efforts. A concept I would probably have referred to as a "positive feedback loop", path dependence is self reinforcing behavior — development whose onset disproportionately influences further development. Basic examples that come to mind are both debt and wealth, which tend to feed off of themselves.

Pierson applies path dependence to economic theory, illuminating situations that may be well explained by examining self reinforcing structures. For example, various national economies develop divergently, and, rather than taking advantage of each other’s successful strategies, produce very different situations. "Once in place, institutions are hard to change, and they have a tremendous effect on the possibilities for generating sustained economic growth. Individuals and organizations adapt to existing institutions. If the institutional matrix creates incentives for piracy, North observes, then people will invest in becoming good pirates. When institutions fail to provide incentives to be economically productive, there is unlikely to be much economic growth." (p. 27)

Pierson argues that the political sphere is particularly subject to self-reinforcing behavior (aka positive feedback, path dependence, or increasing returns). He outlines four mechanisms that render the political particularly influenced by whatever the current state of affairs is. They are: "(1) the central role of collective action; (2) the high density of institutions; (3) the possibilities for using political authority to enhance asymmetries of power; and (4) its intrinsic complexity and opacity… Each of these features makes positive feedback processes prevalent in politics". (p. 30)

Each of these mechanisms seems to easily map onto Congress in a useful way.

Collective action problems make feedback loops because both politicians and constituents (or any political actor) are largely unable to act alone, and must constantly assess the winning strategy, and what is perceived as the winning strategy. This privileges existing organizations, giving established parties, coalitions, and institutions the distinct advantage of clearing the first hurdle of viability. When effectiveness can be found in groups, and groups are hard to form (and political organizing is insufficiently agile), then those groups’ existence will tend to exhibit self reinforcement. The Internet, and blogging, however, are a productively destabilizing force, giving ad-hoc coalitions and unproved institutions an equal voice, where reputations matter less than well sourced convincing arguments. The Internet also reduces the amount to which political activism involves collective action problems: there is a rather low barrier to participation (digital divide notwithstanding). Broader participation and competition means greater alternatives, leading to more agility and easier transitions, meaning we’re less likely to stay stuck on some self-reinforcing pathway.

A dense realm of institutions similarly exists around Congress and the federal government; they sort of approach being the essence of the institution, the defining meta-institution, comprised of departments about departments, creating the conditions for all other institutions. With such far-reaching work, this complex of institutions will be justifiably risk-averse, weighted down by the seriousness of their task, and the high price of failure. The sheer mass of institutions at play gives reform a much higher cost (and renders them path-dependent.)

Third is the "possibilities for using political authority to enhance asymmetries of power." Congress is full of power begetting itself, as is government generally. Societal expectations and checks and balances are supposed to help define the terms of the equalibria controlling this power. The legislative and executive periodically switch in dominance, as do the parties. The incentives created by elections are enhanced by an information-empowered electorate, helping to reign in self-reinforcing political power structures.

The last political mechanism of path-dependence is "its intrinsic complexity and opacity." Complexity and opacity make political institutions and agents less susceptible to any societal pressure, which is more likely to be mediated through sympathetic agents (the media, lobbyists). While complexity is often necessary, and has a high cost of shedding (see #2, institutional path-dependence), it can be countered by information availability. In other words, while Senate procedures provide an effective shield against criticism for questionable votes only as long as those procedures are hard to explain. Insofar as Congress is inscrutable, it’s less likely to feel real pressure, and more likely to reinforce itself. Insofar as the Internet helps make Congress scrutable and transparent, pressure becomes productive.

I’m looking forward to going through more of Pierson’s research, finding it similarly helpful to Harvard’s Transparency Policy Project or Congress’s own best attempts to survey itself.

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The San Diego Union Tribune, without whom this would not have happened, is reporting that corrupt contractor Brent Wilkes was found guilty by a jury on 13 of 13 counts related to his bribery of imprisoned ex-Rep. Duke Cunningham. The story of Brent Wilkes is perhaps one of the more telling tales of political corruption for our time. Here is a man who set up a series of bogus companies, many which appeared to be nothing but a name with similar addresses, and received million dollar contracts for important work including the bottling of water for troops in Iraq and providing “commercial cover for CIA operations,” despite having no background in air cover. This is the story of the atmosphere of corruption, embodied by the wanton abandon to cash in on political connections, which must have permeated Congress in the late-90s and early-00s.

So far, what we refer to as the Duke Cunningham scandal has brought down one sitting member of Congress, Cunningham; three contractors, Wilkes, MZM head Mitchell Wade, and Robert Fromm, the former program manager at the Army’s National Ground Intelligence Center; and one international fraudster, Thomas Kontagiannis. K. Dusty Foggo, the former number three at the CIA, is set to face trial in a couple of weeks. That trial could be just as juicy as was the Wilkes trial. Foggo, of course, attended Wilkes’ hotel poker parties that may or may not have included escorts. Foggo also helped provide Wilkes with special access to confidential and top secret CIA materials. The Foggo storyline could be the most interesting part of this corruption drama. With the TV and Film writers on strike this could be the best entertainment this side of YouTube.

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Last Friday, Paul posted an interview with Larry Lessig from Danish TV. Today, I received a link to the lecture I heard him deliver at Stanford Law School just a couple of weeks ago. It’s worth devoting the time to watch this. It’s a remarkable analysis. Update: Lessig has now posted the slides.

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Larry Lessig talks about money in politics, public information on the Internet, political corruption, and gives a shout of to the Sunlight Foundation.

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