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Prior to the 1970s, a member of Congress who aspired to a position such as a committee chair got it mainly through seniority and service. But the system changed — they started having to put money into the party coffers in order to get ahead, a topic studied by political scientist Thomas Ferguson.
“Both major parties now operate virtually a ‘posted price’ system in which representatives essentially have to buy their committee chair slots by raising money for their colleagues and, crucially, for the national party political committees,” states Ferguson, a professor at the University of Massachusetts in Boston.
The whole political system has become dangerously corrupted. Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig calls it “dependency corruption.”
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