We need to ban outside income for elected officials. Transparency alone is not enough; it doesn't solve the problem of creating outside dependencies.
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.
I think a lot of campaigns mis-learned the lessons of Obama 2008. They overly focused on the particular tools, and less so on the fact that the Internet enables a kind of culture of trust to be translated into real power.
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.
People traverse the dangerous journey to the US because of deep fear. They are often escaping brutality, even life-or-death situations.
I represented a man on death row whose lawyers had spent all of eight hours looking into his claim of innocence. I met men whose lawyers had never looked into their backgrounds.
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.
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.
Everybody's always going to have some self-interest. When it passes a certain point, that's when it become corruption.
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.
President Trump is taking foreign money through his businesses, which is in violation of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.