Democracy Under Threat: The Soft Hum of Corruption

Exhausted. But welcome to The Weekly Show with John Stewart. I am John Stewart, and we are going to be doing this podcast for the year. We thought a little bit about what is the thrust of this? What is the kind of thing that we're trying to explore during this?

Because, as you know, your podcast time is valuable. It is a valuable part of your, let's say, four-hour commute, or I don't know how you get to work, but I'm assuming that's the time that you might listen to a podcast, because otherwise, I mean, the fucking TV is right there. So why would you need to get the whole narratives and things?

But what I want to talk about as we get into this is that the biggest issue of our time right now appears to be the threats to healthy, functioning democracies. And I think we generally view those threats as specific to people or movements. Donald Trump, autocracy, authoritarians, Christian nationalism. The idea, though, is let's look at it from the flip side. What are the vulnerabilities in our democratic systems that makes them maybe less resilient to those kinds of threats?

Corruption, maybe the idea that it's not as responsive to the needs of the people. And that dissatisfaction leads some to want to lean in other directions. Or maybe it's just the easy candy and drug of government is bad for the people. And maybe that's just something inherent in any kind of system that purports to be a part of regulating our lives. And maybe that's just what it is, and we just have to deal with that at some level.

But I don't think that's correct. I think there are steps that can be taken, from the banal to the drastic, that can help make our democratic system more resilient, less vulnerable to these kinds of attacks that come around it, and ways that the government can function in a manner that brings more satisfaction, less crony capitalism, less corruption to those that are, listen, man, it's all about the consent of the governed. And you don't want to kiss the governed's ass, but you want to make it more responsive, I would think.

And we're going to do our best to do it. We got a great team with us. I want to introduce you to some of the folks that you'll become familiar with and that you'll get to know. We got Lauren Walker. Hello.

We got Brittany Mamedovic. Brittany, hello. Hello, John. Catherine Newhand is going to be with us. Hello.

They are going to be producing these shows. They are going to be researching these shows. They are supremely talented. I trust them explicitly and implicitly. So this is the premise.

I hope you guys are along for the ride. I hope you enjoy the different episodes that we're going to be giving. Today's episode is about those that have been on the front lines of trying to get to the heart of public corruption and what are some of the things we can do about it. And, without further ado, that's right, I'll be using some French words in our podcast universe. I'm going to get to our guests.

We have with us Noah Bookbinder, who is president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which I didn't know. any of those words existed in Washington. The acronym is CREW, all capitals. Noah Bookbinder, welcome.

democracy is under threat. And generally, the threats that we hear about, as most pronounced, have to do with authoritarianism, autocracy, Donald Trump, Christian radical, you know, all of these different things. What I want to get to is sort of the more banal death by a thousand cuts to democracy that is represented by the things that we don't think about as much that make authoritarianism more appealing or more possible. And that is democratic dysfunction, the sort of low level hum of corruption, a system that is having difficulty meeting the needs of the people it purports to represent. It's not the sexy version that is the threats to democracy.

But I think it's equally as dangerous and damaging to the system. So what I would like to start with you guys, and I'll start with you, Noah, does that resonate with you in any way? that the real threat to our democracy is its increasing inability to meet the needs of its, let's, for lack of a better word, call them its customers? Is that resonant?

I think a major cause of that is this sense that our government isn't working for regular people. It is working for corporations. It's working for people with a lot of money. And that's because we now have this system where money in politics has been institutionalized. The Supreme Court, as a lot of folks know, a number of years ago in the Citizens United case, but that's really just one case among many, said that corporations could give unlimited money to politics.

They paved the way for dark money, for nonprofits that can spend money on politics without disclosing their donors. And since that time, not only has the amount of money been increasing, but there's been this constant pushing the boundary to allow more money in different ways to make sure that there's less disclosure, there's less enforcement. So that's the thing that's going on. at the same time, the Supreme Court has been doing something that's getting a lot less notice, which is, they've been gradually chipping away at our anti-corruption laws.

those are the things that have eroded the foundation of the democracy for you?

this has been something the table was set, I say, beginning around 40 years ago. And and that one of the other things that's been going on is the people who have funded the kind of the undermining of democracy have also launched a pretty constant attack on just the idea of government. So a lot of Americans have lost their trough in it.

what were they trying to do?

There was a growing EPA, which was environmentalists were beginning to say, we want clean water,

And they blew it. They had this blueprint. And pretty soon, if you kind of watch it, it was put into action step by step. And what it did was try to empower business in a way to push back against the rest of the sort of public interest movements.

The 70s ushers in a movement with the EPA, by the way, Richard Nixon, who today, I would assume, would be considered left wing, oddly enough, other than, maybe communist, other than his enjoyment of wars and bombing. But the point being, this regulatory state begins to take shape in the hopes of empowering the citizens, of making the government more responsive to its citizens. So the question now becomes, yes, there is a concerted effort now to disassemble that for people. But I think the more interesting question that I kind of want to get to is how has that regulatory state also let us down? Because we always talk, well, they made the water clean, they made the air clean.

But are there things that have occurred, that have overexpanded it, that have made it right for those who would be dissatisfied? Has the regulation in some ways tied our hands and made solving urgent problems more difficult? And the example I'll give you is, do you remember? This was maybe a year ago, maybe a half a year ago, a collapse of a highway in Philadelphia. Yeah.

Yeah. There was a huge fire.

If we had gone along the normal governmental regulatory routes to solve that problem, you would not be able to probably drive into Philadelphia until, I would say, 2035.

. If we went along with, you can only use contractors of this, everything has to meet the bar of this, we can't fix it unless that. I think, the governor of Pennsylvania said, we don't have time for this nonsense. I have to just do this. And he went and did it.

Is there something to the critique that the regulatory state itself has contributed in some ways to the dissatisfaction? No.

And so, as we started to get more rules, and often they're sort of blunt object rules, I think that probably has contributed over time to this idea that government's not responsive. It's not working for people. And again, you talk about how do we get Donald Trump. Some of it is like, hey, we want someone who's just going to cut through the rules, pretend they don't exist, and do whatever the heck he wants, basically, because that's more efficient. I think one of the things we saw there, what we ended up with, was not something more efficient.

We ended up with something even more corrupt, where then rules were ignored, and cronies were put in, and industries were catered to just more directly. So I think that's sort of the challenge, right? How do you make things effective and efficient without creating a system where it's some guy doing whatever the heck he wants, which is ultimately going to be what benefits him and his buddies? That's something-.

Because, look, his first lawyer was Roy Cohn. The lawyer for Joe McCarthy. His only two clients later were, I think, Donald Trump and Satan. I think Satan was his other client. And Satan used to say to Roy Cohn, take it down a notch, Roy.

I don't feel comfortable with the tactics you're using.

And if you remember, back in 2016,, I actually think part of the appeal of Trump in 2016 was he slammed the big money donors. I don't know if you remember this, but he went after specifically the Cotton Brothers.

I've been in it, and I know it better than anyone else. And it's a dirty thing, and there's the deep state and the swamp, and I'm going to go drain it. And he went after the big donors, actually, at that point, rhetorically, largely because they weren't giving him their money at that point. So it was a kind of no-cost thing to take on. I don't think he's right.

I mean, I will push back against this. I've been covering politics a long time, since, like 84 in Washington. And what I've seen is the money has become bigger and bigger and bigger, and it is corrupting the government. But it wasn't always this way. It's not the whole story.

There are incredible numbers of people in Washington who are really dedicated to doing the right thing for the right reasons, both Republicans and Democrats. They're interested in policy. They're interested in serving the country. And he's really bad-mouthing that whole possibility. And again, I see this as part of this effort to attack the government and not appreciate the things that it does right.

And it does a lot of things right, from my standpoint.

As far as he's concerned, he doesn't care about any of this. as long as it's for him. An election result that is rigged is one where he doesn't win. The deep state is rigged if it gives a decision against him. And the court system is rigged if it goes against him.

But my point is, he's identifying, though, a dissatisfaction. And two things can be true. One is, there are a lot of really good, dedicated policy people and good-hearted, with great integrity people working in Washington every day to make the country work better. And number two is, the system is so removed from the needs of its people and so insulated and isolated within the Beltway, and within that very peculiar system within the Beltway, that it can't actually accomplish the goal that even those good-hearted people of integrity want it to. And I, you know, we can talk about examples, but, you know, Noah, does that contradiction resonate with you?

Jane brought up a great point. There's tons of people down there working their asses off every day.

I do think that where, you know, where Donald Trump is not just the latest example of sort of what everybody's doing, I'd say there are two things. One is that there are folks in Washington who may be, who are raising tons of campaign money, you know, doing all the things that are problematic, but who are also working on a policy level to change that. In 2021,.

I believe it was, legislation passed the House of Representatives and came two votes away from passing the Senate. that would have not just protected voting rights and a lot around that, but also would have made really major strides on money in politics, would have required disclosure of who the donors are to. dark money groups, would have started matching campaign contributions that give more power to regular people. That almost passed. Donald Trump and his supporters were all on the other side of that.

They were all trying to stand in the way of reform. So that's one piece. The other is the way that Donald Trump has pushed things to a really dangerous extreme. So with Donald Trump, it's not just give money to my campaign and you'll get what you want. Now he's doing that too, even though he used to be against that, now he's meeting with oil executives.

And then he walks out in the country and goes, I left it to the States because everybody's happy with that. There is no ideology there. That was my point is, there's no ideology other than I would like more power and control, whatever that means.

look at Russia today. Putin decides which of his cronies he's going to give the oil and gas, you know, franchise to become billionaires. And then they owe him and then they have to do what he wants.

And and he started this really from the time he took office. What are, what are the independent barriers that try to stop somebody like Trump?

But what I'm saying is, what if we take the information that he's delivering us, which is here, are the vulnerabilities in your system that I can exploit? Can't we reverse, engineer that and bolster those very institutions in a way that makes them much less fragile to these kinds of attacks? And that's where we get into. I think the more interesting conversation, I think the more interesting conversation has less to do with Trump and his excesses and his exploitation, and more to do with how do we. Turn the light on our own beautiful, flawed, confounding system.

And begin to rebuild it with more resilience and stability, and that's where we get to. This isn't about criticizing Trump. This is about the constructive look at what. Is making this system so much more vulnerable. So now let's flip that back into our talk about the money, the money that I think I.

And then, when they're in office, they're afraid of not getting reelected unless they serve the people with the money. So it's actually not that the government doesn't work. I don't think, I think it's. the government works very well, but for a handful of people who are funding it and not for everybody else.

Sponsorship message.

You know, running a business is a, is not easy. You got to keep track, all the different systems of platforms help you get the job done. You got a lot of passwords there and they all end with exclamation point. Anyway, efficiency is one of the many reasons businesses choose net suite by Oracle. net suite is the number one financial system, bringing together accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one unified business management suite.

And I'm assuming in that suite is also some kind of buffet, because why else would you be in a suite? And it's all in the cloud, accessible from anywhere. No hardware required, reduce the login headaches, bring all your major business processes into one proven platform, along with cutting down on it costs, maintenance costs, and manual errors. Yeah. Manual errors.

I'm looking at you, Craig, with your manual errors, plus. the less your business spends, the more margin you keep. over 37,000 companies have already made the move to net suite. backed by popular demand. Net suite has extended.

It's one of a kind flexible financing program for a few more weeks. Dot com slash weekly. net suite.com slash weekly.

Uh, we're back. So I want to push back a little bit to both of you about this conventional wisdom that it was the floodgates of electioneering. Now, I'm not, you know, I'm not going to give you the kind of, uh, libertarian view of like, that's why government should not have its hands in anything. I think government is essential. You know, we have a system built on checks and balances, and government can be the only entity powerful enough to balance out corporate power, which would exploit all of us, you know, to the best of their ability, if not for some of those checks and balances, but are there things?

I'll, I'll, I'll give you the example, like, uh, you know, we talked to Rose Delora, who is a congressman from Connecticut, and she was talking about how, in the, I think it might've been a, a Medicare discussion. They were trying to pass legislation in the halls of Congress. during that discussion, there were more lobbyists for the healthcare companies and the pharmaceutical companies than there are Congress people and sick people and regular people and people who are trying not to go bankrupt based on an illness. We're not represented in any way during that discussion. So how could you, possibly, even without a dark money or things that flow on there, how could you have a healthy legislative session without that input?

Lobbying is another form of, uh, of money in politics and that can be regulated also. And I, and I know that sort of more regulation, uh, is, is, is an answer, that, that creates some of its own problems. But I think we've been moving so far in this anti-regulation direction, um, that money is, is running roughshod. And I think you have to be really aggressive about it. And one of the things that we've found, and Jane has, uh, has had similar experiences, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but is that you've got to be really aggressive on the regulatory front, because if you tweak the rules,

Um, she's has, I think they, they found something like 59 violations. She should be fired. Um, and Donald Trump essentially came in and said, I decide who, who gets fired in my white house, and I'm fine with this, and she's not going to get fired. and, and, and the violations continue. Um, there's now a guy who's running the office of special counsel who very quietly a few weeks ago said, we looked at the law and we think that even if it's someone in the white house who's violating this, um, that actually we can take steps to, uh, to, to actually have that person disciplined or even fired, just as we do with anybody else in the government.

Um, and you know, that's a tiny thing, probably 10 people noticed that, but that's a change in regulations that actually could make the government less corrupt.

All those things I'm talking about more basic, foundational, that will resonate with the customers of our government. Like even the idea of removing money feels like for people disconnected from what their lives are.

Where, where are the people who are supposed to keep us safe from this? And, and I think what people need to understand is that all these problems, you know, there's so many problems that ordinary people have just getting to the end of the year, whether they can't, you know, figure out how to pay their taxes or their medical bills, or, you know, everything else that fit their reasons for this, it's not just like accidental. We have agency to fix some of these things, but, and the other thing I just want to say is that it may seem far away as an issue, what to do about big money and corrupt money, but actually, if you look at polls, it is an issue that has overwhelming bipartisan support. People hate Citizens United and they hate the idea that billionaires are owning their government and that they are, and, and deciding, you know, all these major issues. I mean, it's, it's like 90% of people feel that way.

and it, and it listed like 10 really interesting ways in which children learn the best. And then it listed the 10 ways that schools teach, and they were utterly disconnected. And that's how I feel. And you can't change it. And it's how I feel about if you talk to people about their lives and what they want from the government, what they would say is, all right, my kids are in college right now, just as my parents are getting older, and I'm having to put that in there, and I've got medical expenses.

So it would be childcare, healthcare, eldercare, education, and yet the direct policies of government don't, in their minds, make a clear difference for those things. And even the programs that are in place to do that are oftentimes corporate subsidies, food stamps, you know, uh, you can pay a low wage and the employees of a company will still be on public assistance. You know, food stamps is kind of a subsidy to craft and Nabisco and all those other kinds of things. You know, we're not responding, and I'll give you an example of what I think is a much more crucial aspect to it. And it doesn't have to do with regulation or education of the public.

When we went down to try and get something together for toxic exposures for veterans, right. Who had, who had been exposed to burn pits. We had some advocate groups that had been banging down doors for 10 years and not really getting anywhere. We brought in a meeting, a bipartisan group of Congress people, almost all veterans, who had absolute interest and, and desire to do something about it. We educated them in the room.

We got access, which you normally can't do, to this group. We're not lobbyists. We're door open. We laid out the case very compellingly to a bipartisan group. They were in agreement that something needed to be done.

When the meeting was over, this is at the very beginning of this process, they pulled us aside and said, this is fantastic, but we're really busy. Could you write it?

Now think about that. We're the legislative body, we're Congress, but we're so busy that we can't write the urgent legislation that you need. So will you write it now? We're just a group of ragtag idiots who are down there trying to get this thing done, but now imagine you're a pharmaceutical company, or now imagine you're a giant bank and you're the representatives that you're lobbying. Are busy.

And you know that, and you can exploit that. And so the legislation that is crafted is actually crafted. I think, by the very entities that we should be restricting or we should be regulated, you're absolutely right.

And then he says, well, give me a billion dollars and then we can make a deal. Basically, you want to know why not enough is happening about climate change? That's it. And you know, one sentence, uh, you know, I mean, but what are those legislators so busy doing? Look, take a look.

I mean, I'm sure no one knows this. Every afternoon they get on the phone and they dial for dollars. I, they have to raise money all the time.

Part of it has to do with, um, take a look at what's happened over the last 40 years in terms of taxation and those tax bills that get passed by Congress. In, in the last 40 years, $50 trillion was transferred from the bottom 90% to the top 1% through taxation. So people are really feeling stretched on the bottom, the top, the bottom 90% of the.

Well, it's not an accident. Look who's running the government. Why are, why does the, who makes the tax policy?

And they, and they cut it off. All right. I hate to break the flow here, but we got to do a quick sponsorship message.

We're back. Noah, as you, you know, you're pounding away at these sort of corrupt dynamics in your mind. What you see is, is money that beating heart of what controls all of this?

So we need to be, uh, kind of finding ways to say institutions, you gotta, uh, you gotta get it together. You gotta do better.

Uh, populist rage.

we have money in two ways here, one is the money that's poured into the system by corporate to try and gain leverage and crony capitalism, but there's another money thing, and that is the money that the government extracts from the people that they feel is not spent in a manner that they feel the value of, you know? Yeah. Go ahead, Jane.

And you could see, oh, the public swimming pool down the street. Oh, well, how much goes into the school system? You know, all you ought to be able to know what's, what are you getting back?

I love that. Has, has that been attempted? Cause I will say this in a lot of other countries that pay much higher taxes, the satisfaction that they have with the services they receive are much greater, but transparency in tax money. Boy, has that been done? Jane?

Do you know?

I don't, I mean, I think it's a, I'll tell you why he thought it was thinking about this. Sure. What he did, it was actually kind of a great little anecdote. He went to a small town and he wanted to ask people about their views, about government. And he wanted to find out what it, you know, how much money was coming from the federal and local state government into that one community.

And the thing that he discovered was there was no way to find out. There was no, there's no place you could look. So people have no idea what they're getting.

I feel like we're on shark tank right now and you just threw something out there and I'm like, I'm in, I'm back in.

It's a reform map that could be created.

Policymakers and to the programs that benefit people, but you're cutting and that's going to be expensive, but you're cutting out the ways that billionaires and corporations can pour billions of dollars into the system.

It's lobbying. It's, you know, there was this crazy Supreme court decision a few years back. There was this guy, Bob McDonald, who was governor of Virginia. Sure.

As long as all you're getting is access. You know, it's not tied to a specific act. It's just, you're setting up a meeting at your list. And you know, all of us who have had jobs in the world understand how it works. If your boss comes and say, says, I want you to take a meeting with this person and give careful consideration to what he says, right?

So what, what you're, what you're doing there is the Supreme court is giving a blueprint for corruption. Uh, you can give this guy a watch and then you get a privileged meeting with his, his or her top aid and you can make your pitch there.

regulation is great, unless it makes no sense and it's overregulation and it has no bearing on anything. So, uh, you know, ultimately the NIL comes in and college athletes who've been exploited for their labor forever and under these ridiculous rules. And this is why it reminds me of government ethics. In government ethics, a lobbyist cannot give you a sandwich. You cannot, you cannot give a Congress person a sandwich or something over $25, something along those lines.

Can't give them theater tickets. What you can do is pay for a luxury vacation for them in a resort and bring along 10 lobbyists and airfare and meal and everything else. And you can treat them to this, as long as it's through a certain pack, a 5, 0, 1, 3, 8, 9, a thing. So the idea is it's regular. It's meaningless, arcane nonsense, but the heart of it is still carved out and protected of access and corruption.

It, it, that's what, how do you bridge that gap? Jane's idea, Tomasky's idea to do it for taxes is brilliant. Now we have to attack it for government regulation as well.

And, uh, you know, I can't thank you both enough for, for lending your expertise to this.

I had an interview for, I was at a forum called the war horse forum in a university of Chicago, run by this guy, Thomas Brennan, who has started this. The idea is to get military reporting that is more geared towards the veteran and their families and sort of a grassroots, it's a wonderful project that he's embarked on. So I got to interview the deputy secretary of defense. Now I didn't know much about her. I didn't, I didn't really have much prepared, to be perfectly frank.

And I just started out with what I thought was a simple, you know, the idea is, here's the department of defense at a forum about better military reporting, you know, the Pentagon's got kind of a very complicated relationship with transparency and reporting. First thing she says is we welcome transparency. And I was like, Oh, we're just going to fucking lie right off the bat. Like that's just, that's just nonsense. But what I said was the, you know, every organization in the government, every department has to undergo an audit and they've all passed them except for one organization.

And it's the organization that has an $850 billion budget, and that's the department of defense. And they failed it every time. And each time they fail it, they get a, like a $40 billion bump. What came back at me was so shocking.

Her, do you even know what an audit is?

Uh, isn't it? I thought it was when, like you, check the money versus what you got and they don't match up. Is that like, I'm not an accountant, but that, that, that, that you don't understand? that does it. But so now we start going back and forth.

And at one point she says to me, you seem awfully concerned about the money.

And I thought, am I in crazy town? First of all, it's $850 billion. And second of all, it's our money.

But what struck me was the utter disregard for those concerns. And the idea that, to be called on it is outrageous. And you should look up the interview. It's, I think it's online. I think you'd be stunned.

I was utterly stunned by the attitude, and that's, and that's a Democrat, and it seems pervasive. And, and is that part of the problem? that they're so insulate that oversight seems like persecution.

That never works. That's never worked in human history. Um, but we have the situation where, despite this utter lack of oversight, despite, uh, constant documentation of abuses, not only are the people, the, you know, Samuel Alito, Clarence, Thomas, the people who have these abuses, uh, documented, not only are they affronted, um, but all of them, all over, you know, across the political spectrum, seem to be affronted, that these questions are being asked and that they're not being trusted to, uh, take care of their own business. And so I think we, we need a situation where we do rebuild trust in government, um, which in some cases deserves it and needs to deserve it, but it's only going to be able to deserve it. If we put in place rules and mechanisms that check, you know, what's, what's happening, that, that make that hold people to account and, and hold them to the high standards that we deserve as American people and American taxpayers.

They'll fix it. And, and I think, you know, so. I, I've maintained, I'm still hopeful, always hopeful, Jane.

It erodes the good people in the trenches of activism that do it. It erodes them to a nub. Sometimes they pay an enormous price, physically and mentally, but I've seen it work and I think it has to work, but the issue is identifying those pressure points and strategies. And that's why I love Jane's idea so much. And, and, uh, oh, great.

And it's so thoughtful and interesting. And thank you both very much for starting this journey for me. Cause it's, it's going to be a learning experience for me about where are the gaps and, and holes. What is that roadmap to reform? And how do we, even in the reform movement, get out of the institutional thinking that has sometimes, and the conventional thinking that has sometimes held us back and got us stuck in place.

We can crack this nut. I'm sure of it. And thank you both for, for being a part of that.

When, Jane, boy, that epiphany about a roadmap provided for your dollars. And exactly, boy, could that boy, would that be, I think, a slight embarrassment to those that are the keepers of the money? And boy, do I love that idea? It would be incredibly illuminating. We should, we should find.

maybe that's another episode is, is where we find that. But as the season goes on, we're going to talk about corruption in industries, pharmaceutical industry, our food industry, the way everything is incentivized for ultra processing and all those other things. And the defense industry and government and the confluence of government and these industries. Uh, I, I'm, I'm excited. now during the conversation.

Were you guys, this is our first one. Were you guys nervous? I was going to go off the rails and say something crazy.

This is the weekly show. Uh, and we will be out there on Thursdays with other episodes. Are there ways for them to contact us with, like story, thoughts or ideas or things like that?

So thank you all for listening the weekly show. I'm John Stewart, and we will see you next time. Goodbye.

Uh, the weekly show with John Stewart is a comedy central podcast. It's produced by Paramount audio and busboy productions.