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Mayday Anti-PAC On Its Second Round of Funding
wonkavader (605434) writes 'Lawrence Lessig's MAYDAY.US Super PAC to end all Super PACs (and more) is now on its second round of funding. The PAC has been reported on here before, but now the numbers are bigger. They hit their $1 million first goal easily, but now they aim to get another $5 million in the same time period. Lessig says that he's arranged for matching, again. It seems like the goals will be even higher in 2016: "For 2014, our goal is to raise $12 million and use it to make fundamental reform the key issue in five congressional races. And we'll apply what we learn then to 2016."'
I've always been curious if it was possible for our system to eventually work itself out without the need for a bloody revolution. There has been so much malinvestment lately at the hands of entrenched political groups. I would be thrilled to see the US fix itself through its own system. My pessimism says otherwise though, but who knows.
From what I understand, their goal as a SuperPAC is to pour money into congressional races to help reform candidates win, with the ultimate goal of having them pass campaign finance laws that limit the influence of SuperPACs. They're essentially working against themselves, but that's the entire point - if SuperPACs are done away with, they'll have done their job.
Took me a few minutes to find out what they support, http://reform.to/#/reforms.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
So, do you really believe you get a good system of government when the more money you have the more access you have to political speech?
Or do you end up with a system which is heavily skewed to the wishes of a handful of wealthy people -- which is pretty much what you have now.
If rich people can pay lots of money to convince government to lower their taxes while cutting services for everybody else ... well, sooner or later, that 'everybody else' might decide they've had enough and do something about it.
And that didn't work out so well for Marie Antoinette and others who felt they should be entitled to cal the shots.
Unless you have lots of money, in which case you're more equal, and the governed be damned because you can make what you want happens. So, we're back to "four legs good, two legs better".
And then the governed decide that they're tired of putting up with your shit.
If you're going to build your society around what the wealthy can afford to buy in terms of political action, you will end up with an inherently unjust society.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
How does an anti-pac work? Do they pay the TV stations not to run the ads from the other super-pacs?
They will have a hit list. If you don't support reform, they will fund your opponent. This is how Super Pacs work, they use their money to influence small changes in policy on the part of candidates. Like reform... it's an easy thing to support with very little opposition. The candidate doesn't even have to make a big deal out of it. He just changes some wording on his website and viola, he doesn't have to worry about this PAC giving his opponent money. His opponents thinking the same thing so now BOTH sides of race are pro-reform.
They will likely do well at first. But when an actual reform bill comes up, the Eye of Sauron will be on them. When this comes up for a vote every other Super Pac in the country will realize their power is being challenged and the full weight of the political establishment will turn on them. They will face literally billions of dollars of opposition. I really doubt their ability to fundraise that kind of cash.
Really? You're going to end the corrupting influence of corporate money in politics by out-fundraising them?
Having money is the one thing corporations are good at, and they're really, really good at it. If your strategy hinges on using money as influence, you're always going to lose, because they are FAR better and more practiced at that game than you are.
The only way to advance this particular agenda is to exploit the strengths that we have which corporations don't. We can fill the streets with real people, we can make disruptive spectacles and speak earnestly about social problems. Unlike corporations, we don't need to hide behind spokespeople and PACs, because we have authenticity. We are genuinely concerned about the future of our democracy, and though corporations can try hard to simulate that concern, it's never as authentic as the real thing.
The MAYDAY PAC is like David trying to beat Goliath in a fist fight. Don't fight on his terms, use the sling, idiot!
From what I understand, their goal as a SuperPAC is to pour money into congressional races to help reform candidates win, with the ultimate goal of having them pass campaign finance laws that limit the influence of SuperPACs.
So, the winning move for any candidate is to support reform until elected and then make a reversal and enjoy the windfall from the status quo. How are they going to prevent that?
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Naturally he means it's totally unfair that a union, with hundreds of thousands of members, can tell all those members that they think it would be really great to donate to party X.
And then all those members can go and donate up to the individual maximum, and tend to do so because they actually like their union.
And it's totally unfair that the CEO of the company they all work for, can't use the profits of their labor, to unilaterally decide to give an unlimited amount of money from the company's coffers to the opposing party, and call it a business expense, that also just so happens to align to his personal interests as well.
I mean, how is that democracy? When the masses of people can popularly choose to support a politician and not be completely overridden by individual capital interests?
The issue is that the US has always been an oligarchy of the rich, realistically it came into being due to a tax revolt.
Money out of politics is not only possible, if you look else where in the world with functioning democracies and functioning electoral systems you can find examples:
In Germany
http://www.theatlantic.com/int...
In Canada (with legislated limits)
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politic...
or see Frances new laws limiting funding
http://www.loc.gov/law/help/ca...
If you believe that money is the only power then you have already been brainwashed to give up your democratic rights.
The average US Senate seat apparently costs ~ $7 million.
The entire Canadian Election spending per party ~ $21 million.
Obama spent well over $400 million for just his presidential campaign.
Think about what could be done with $379 million to address real problems in the US like education, healthcare etc....
The reason the rich are willing to waste their money is because they have too much of it (mainly because of tax law changes).
The average CEO salary in the US is now $10 million per year! Yet they pay less than 20% in taxes!
Even Warren Buffet thinks its time to tax the rich.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11...
If you did that the money that might otherwise be spent on political campaigns might actually do some good like funding education or public healthcare etc...
But then according to your brainwashing program the only power is money and any country that tries to democratically regulate the market (an artificial construct that only exists because of the enforcement of property laws) must a communist country (Canada) how else can we have publicly funded healthcare...
keep drinking the kool-aid, in the mean time we'll outlive you. Yes life expectancy is higher here, as is quality of life.
----- "Profanity is the one language that all programmers understand."
The elephant in the room is that the money in politics really isn't campaign money.
The reason so much is being spent on campaigns now days is because so much is being spent by government.
There is an immense amount of power involved in generating TRILLIONS of dollars in tax revenue and borrowing BILLIONS more and then determining what that should be spent on.
That power is desired mightily, which is what is driving the campaign spending.
Think of it this way. Every member in congress is voting on bills to spend ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE more money each year than they have control over in their campaign funds.
The campaign funds are just the ante to get in the game of playing with the much bigger piles of money.
The Anti-Corruption Act would go a long way towards helping. Lobbying is the major way that corporations influence legislation, and it needs to be completely stopped. It needs to be criminalized.
they must include implementing term limits on congress
I completely agree, that is long overdue. We have people currently in Congress who have been there for 40 or 50 years and have become millionaires because of it. That is not public service, that is a career. That needs to end also, there needs to be a strict limit of years of service covering both branches of Congress. If you've served 20 years in Congress, you are not eligible to get elected again. All the way back to the beginning, George Washington refused to run for a third term. A few others ran, but no one succeeded until FDR. After his death, the 22nd Amendment made the 2 term limit permanent instead of tradition. Term limits for Congress are long, long overdue.
The difficult thing about implementing any of this, whether it is banning lobbying or establishing term limits or banning corporate donations or whatever needs to happen in order to help, is that we are relying on Congress to limit themselves. Since the obvious goal for many of them is to remain in power, that's clearly an uphill battle.
I'm not waiting for a perfect solution. The Mayday PAC is a good start and I want to (and have) shown support. If it fails, and someone else decides to step up and take the leadership role, I'll support them too. If you're going to sit there and wait for a perfect solution then, well, you'll die before that happens. Many, many people want to see change, what we need is a good leader.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black