Money isn’t exactly new in politics, but it's growing exponentially, the author writes. | JAY WESTCOTT/POLITICO Occupy K Street

I don’t know just where the Washington area ranks in income distribution among American cities. I do know just by looking that it must be high.

Here we are in the midst of the Great Recession and the place is booming. Big, bulky office buildings, prestigious new apartments, McMansions in the suburbs, four-star hotels all over, fancy restaurants, thriving cultural centers, a convention center, on and on.


We also know the main industry. It’s manned by lawyers, lobbyists, trade associations, lots of ex-congressmen. And it concentrates on one product: influence.

Money isn’t exactly new in politics, but it sure is growing exponentially. It shows up not just in elections but day by day, month by month — in a growing flood of finance and talent, to influence laws and regulations and officeholders. The end result in this process is ever more complexity and loss of clarity.

Citizen representation before all levels of governmental authority is a part — an absolutely necessary part — of American democracy. It’s hard to think of a legislative or regulatory process without consultation. But when “representation” is so imbued with money, we are entitled to wonder: Are there no limits?

Can it really be true that our government is for sale?

I hope not.

But the threat makes it worth occupying K Street.

Paul Volcker was chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1979 to 1987 and chairman of the Economic Recovery Advisory Board under President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2011. The so-called Volcker rule, a section of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act that restricts proprietary trading, is named after him. This is an excerpt from “The Occupy Handbook,” due out Tuesday from Little, Brown and Co.