The legislation includes tighter contribution limits and beefed-up enforcement of New York's campaign finance laws. But its centerpiece is a "fair elections" program that would boost the clout of small-dollar campaign donors by supplementing their modest contributions with public matching funds.

To explain why Congress has failed to address the climate change crisis we need look no further than to the biases caused by the way we fund our politics.

Given its success, Maine should stand out as a paragon for the country to follow. Instead, Mainers are fighting to save their clean elections law.

What happened in Albany last week has major implications for national anti-corruption efforts that are central to making progress on the issues that you care about most, yet keep losing. Health care, climate change, education, financial oversight, military spending... the list goes on.

"It's not that the system is broken," says the conservative populist Governor Buddy Roemer, "it's that it's bought." The question that logically follows is what we, the American people, can do about it. How can we remove the corroding influence of money in politics?

The state of New York has become an embarrassing example of what can happen when money is allowed to rule politics. But New York and its governor, Andrew Cuomo, now have an opportunity to shed the state's pay-to-play image.