"The New Machine" is a Marketplace Special Series, reported by John Dimsdale and Lisa Napoli, and produced/edited by Liza Tucker. "The New Machine" was produced by special arrangement with The Economist magazine.

Part One: Faceless Funding The average citizen can't sell his or her vote... but corporate America is anything but average. Powerful lobbies in Washington have blurred the distinction between honest lobbying and corrupt politicking for time immemorial. Commentator Ian Ayres makes the case for anonymous funding in election campaigns. Broadcast Date: Wednesday, June 23 Part Two: Turning the Tables Are politicians turning the tables? Take social security. You might have heard talk of its privatization the last few years. What happens to social security after November? Marketplace's John Dimsdale went from Wall Street to K Street, the ancestral home of lobbyists, to find out who's influencing whom in Washington. And he discovered that GOP is shaping the direction of business far more than the other way around. Broadcast Date: Wednesday, June 23

Part Three: The Carrot and the Stick The GOP's influence has not gone unnoticed elsewhere. Marketplace's host David Brown talks with Nick Confessore, an editor at The Washington Monthly, who says Republican control over lobbying groups is revolutionary and unprecedented. He says the party of the elephant is populating K Street with Republican partisans through a two-part scheme: Allowing favored lobbyists to write legislation, and threatening "misbehavior" with being cut out of the next lucrative bill. Broadcast Date: Wednesday, June 23

The promise of new technology has Jonathan Askin running all over Capitol Hill, the lone voice of a small start-up business, in a sea of entrenched interests with deep pockets. Photo: Lisa Napoli Part Four: The Little Guy Yesterday, we looked at the Grand Old Party's efforts to enlist lobbyists for big businesses in their causes. As we heard, it's a powerful new machine. Today, we're looking at what it's like to be a drop in the sea of some 20,000 lobbyists in Washington. And to be a lobbyist without a lot of money who represents an emerging, new technology at that. How does someone like that operate? It takes some faith, as Marketplace's Lisa Napoli discovered after spending a day in The New Machine. Broadcast Date: Thursday, June 24

Part Five: Irony in the Foundry But there's a danger that the voices of innovation might be drowned out by the roar of the New Machine. There's a certain irony to this, says John Mickelthwaite. He co-author of the book "The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America" and the U.S. editor of The Economist. According to Mickelthwaite, the Republican way of doing business in Washington these days betrays the ideals of GOP architects like Barry Goldwater. Broadcast Date: Thursday, June 24 Send your comments to Marketplace Our special series, THE NEW MACHINE, was reported by Lisa Napoli and John Dimsdale, and produced by Liza Tucker.