Slashdot Mirror
Interviews: Ask Lawrence Lessig About His Mayday PAC
samzenpus (5) writes "Lawrence Lessig's list of achievements and areas of influence is not small. He's co-founder of the Creative Commons, but it is his Mayday PAC however that has garnered the most attention recently. The crowdfunded "Super PAC to end all Super PACs" was launched in May with the goal of raising money to elect candidates who would pass campaign finance reform. It raised over $1 million in the first 13 days and has the support of some influential people. With the help of matching contributions, Mayday hopes to raise $12 million by the end of June. Lessig has agreed to answer any questions about the PAC that you might have. As usual, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one question per post."
There are other similar efforts, specifically WolfPAC, which aims to reform using a constitutional amendment. Do you feel that these other efforts are complimentary or just duplication of effort?
So best case scenario is that you lobby away PAC money in the next election cycle. Once you have reached your goal, what do you think is going to prevent lawmakers from finding other loopholes in the laws to do something similar-but-not-equal the cycle after that? As we've seen with FISA/DMCA/... - if they can't do it this year, they'll try and try again until they can get their ways.
In other words, do you think getting rid of PAC's is going to solve anything about corporate money flowing into government. And once you have outlawed the only avenue currently available (a PAC that is run by the people) that can somewhat level the playing field for citizens, what other avenues will there be to fight this corruption?
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Mr. Lessig,
Yours is the first effort I've heard about revamping Government that makes any sense whatsoever. A hearty thank you to you and your staff!
In your estimation, does MaydayPAC have a decades-long plan, to replace as much of Congress as possible, and even reach for the Presidency?
I'm all for it. Even if it takes 30 years.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
Why do you believe statutory reform is necessary, or sufficient to accomplish anything serious? Why do you believe it is a precondition of a constitutional-amendment path?
Mr. Lessig, thanks for taking the time.
My question is about timing and resource allocation: With all the problems in America right now, why did you feel that campaign finance reform was the one issue of many (civil rights, immigration, American poverty, health care, etc.) that deserves this huge P.R. and money push now?
Thank you Dave Raggett
I was just wondering if you were also concerned about money from unions? To me, a millionaire donating is own money is somehow less problematic than unions taking money from their members to donate. Keep in mind that in many states, union membership is required in order to get the job. Therefore, many union members may find their money being used to support candidates that they do not support.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
Your goal is to level the playing field so that some individuals do not have more influence than others on elections. Have you considered the idea of censoring political blogs? Some bloggers have widely disproportionate influence, and by throttling their readership (perhaps by a government controlled internet filter occasionally injecting 404's), together we could take the "celebrity blogger" influence out of politics and level the playing field.
...or would you recognize that as a gross abuse of free speech, much like your plan to make political donations illegal? Seriously, why don't you stop trying to undermine the 1st Amendment?
As there are many shapes and forms to democratic process, can you reference an active government that have 'gotten it right' at least in terms of dealing with campaign / direct contributions that you find working well (or at least as close to what you're proposing to introduce)?
Bye!
What kind of accountability exists with the Mayday PAC to ensure that representatives elected due to this funding actually follow through on promises of campaign finance reform?
Why do you believe that forming a PAC to elect reform-minded candidates is more promising than Wolf PAC's method, of bypassing the typical political process and trying to call an Article V Convention for the purpose of limiting the influence that money has over our political process?
How would you respond to critics that believe that as soon as the Mayday PAC raises a substantial amount of money, all the other PAC's, along with the commercial media (who are the main beneficients of political spending) will jointly work together against the Mayday PAC and overwhelm it with superior resources?
I want to applaud you for making an impressive effort to fight this problem, but at the same time, you're combating the purchase of elections by purchasing elections. This seems morally dubious. I understand the goal is to have one last round of evil and then patch up the laws that allow these things, but what's to prevent lawmakers from undoing these changes later?
Why does the prospect of government regulation of political speech not terrify you to your core? Any "campaign reform" proposal must necessarily result in government deciding which speech is political and which is not, which is permissible and which is not. How do you prevent government from suppressing only political speech that it disapproves of?
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
The two major parties have done everything in their power to make sure that minority candidates have virtually insurmountable obstacles to their getting onto a ballot in the first place, and even then these candidates are rarely given serious coverage by the media. If you were to actually succeed in taking the money out of political campaigning, then how do you keep the news media from completely controlling who gets elected by their control of who is able to get their message out?
Don't suggest that a "Fairness Doctrine" will provide equal coverage to all candidates, because there would certainly be a test for "viability" of candidates before they get any taxpayer-provided funding, and only major-party candidates would ever pass that test.
People should not fear their government. Governments should fear their people.
What kind of a solutions are you seeking from politicians that your SuperPAC will support: A law similar to McCan-Feingold or something more resilient like a constitutional amendment?
If you seek to address the influence of money on our political process via a constitutional amendment, is your SuperPAC up for the task of influencing not just federal legislators but state legislators and governors as well?
Mr. Lessig,
Have you considered the potential side effect that if you are successful in removing "money from politics"? You will likely end up enormously empowering the position of incumbency, establishing a ruling class that once elected, no one will have the capabilities to truly mount a successful campaign against.
Incumbents have huge benefits and a large number of tools to communicate to the voters (who are of course their constituents, so they can even justify it).
My great fear is that campaign finance reform will do nothing to stem the tide of permanent, lifetime, politicians dominating our system. Even in the worst election for incumbents in a half century (2010) over 80% of incumbents won.
Will you support and make your backed candidates support a constitutional amendment to create and enforce term limits on members of Congress?
If Mayday can't support term limits, then I can't support it. In fact I may feel compelled to fight against it. I don't even really want money out of politics if it leads to lifetime memberships in Congress for the lucky ones that achieve office once, and then never lose again until they die.
Lighten up! You have to be amused by the irony of a site which at the top of it: "Help us reduce the influence of money in politics!" just above a button which is labelled "Pledge Now!".
How will your plan reduce the overwhelming advantages enjoyed by incumbents so that challengers have a fair chance of winning more than 10% of the time?
People should not fear their government. Governments should fear their people.
That's easy. A blog is speech. Money isn't.
You're certainly entitled to your opinion. Whatever term you use, it's clear that you want to let the government take away our "freedom to spend our own money to get the word out about something". That means less freedom. Maybe you're happy with that, because governments never, ever abuse their position when given leeway to curtail personal freedoms?
Blogs (and the internet, for the most part still) are fairly democratic institutions.
I think you define "democratic" differently than I do.
Using cash to drown out the majority of voices is tyranny. A more egregious twisting of the intent of the 1st amendment I cannot imagine.
Using the government to outlaw political movies, political blogs (that cost money to operate), newspapers, etc. is exactly contrary to the intent of the 1st Amendment. I would say that you are a very confused individual. Or perhaps merely naive, if you expect that only roses and happiness will result from such a loss of freedom as you advocate.
When your goal is 12,000,000 and have the support of Mr. Wozniak and he believes in your PAC, why not just get the money from him?
(I mean, if I have billions and a topic I support, and 12 million wouldn't make me lose sleep. Just saying.)
Heck, he could start a PR firm that will handle all the ads and such for the PAC and be paid by the PAC. Or you can take a loan from the PAC to pay your bills. Isn't that the way PACs are run currently?
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
anyone who thinks that the first amendment goes to far, should simply find a place that fits their beliefs better, I hear china is nice when it comes to restricting freedom of speech
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Mr. Lessig:
Have you read Crispin Sartwell's article in the latest June issue of The Atlantic? Mr. Sartwell seems to make arguments that imply that efforts such as that of RootStrikers and the Mayday PAC are merely nibbling at the edges of the true problem and not addressing it directly. If the hierarchies of wealth concentration and governance are inextricably linked through a Principle of Hierarchical Coincidence, then will you unlink them merely by legislating campaign finance reforms? For that matter, would even a round of revolutionary head-chopping do the job when so many other heads have been groomed and eagerly await the same chance at dominance?
Given that the Supreme Court has already weighed in twice on the constitutionality of campaign finance reform (money = speech, etc.), is traditional legislation even enough - at this point isn't an actual amendment necessary, to overcome existing rulings?
There's a plausible argument to be made that the 1st Amendment requires that a government can't make it illegal to donate money to their political opponents. There's a plausible argument to be made that exactly zero corporations are owned by robots today -- they are owned and run by people. And finally, there's a plausible argument to be made that you are a somewhat under-informed parroter of left wing talking points.
Because free markets do not exist, and capitalism is not a silver bullet to the world's problems (it may, however, be a silver bullet for the problems of the 1% to get more money, which is why quite a few people like it).
That said, I can't figure out if this is sarcasm, or if someone is serious. The political discussion in this country is seriously fucked.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
I love this idea Dr. Lesseg, was one of the first to donate in May.
I was wondering how difficult it is to get media access to shows? It seems like one or two interviews on Colbert, Daily Show, John Oliver, etc. would propel the campaign to the finish line but it hasn't happened yet. I'm assuming you have tried, and/or would be more than willing to appear if they called?
Concerning the goals and strategy of the Mayday PAC, what unintended results are you most concerned about, and how do you intend to avert them? E.g., further legitimizing the "buying" of elections, or contributing to the escalation of political spending.
I am not a crackpot.
Mr. Lessig,
Since it seems that your PAC espouses the belief that Citizens United is a horrible supreme court ruling, and noting that the key product of the Citizens United LLC was a Documentary, and also noting that almost all documentaries are backed by or produced by corporations of one form or another; aren't you explicitly calling for the total prohibition of political documentaries in our political system? Also, is the publishing by major corporations (this includes all publishing companies) of books that are about politicians or from politicians required to be banned to take money out of politics?
Why do in-kind contributions from media corporations get a pass on contribution limits in your proposal?
MayDay.US promises to "reduce the influence of money". That's a good sound bite, but the reason other people don't like your proposals is not that they like "the influence of money", but that they don't see any way of reducing that that doesn't do more harm than good. So, please be specific: what outcome do you actually envision and desire, and how are the details going to work? You propose "public funding" or "vouchers", but you are vague on who gets to make the decisions about (1) who violates your rules, (2) who the money can go to, and (3) who will still be allowed to use their own resources for political purposes.
(1) If you impose restrictions on political speech, someone needs to be in charge of determining which political speech is in violation of the restrictions you envision. For example, does generally opposing a political ideology count as political speech that I can't spend money on? Is this determined by the courts? The executive branch? Why wouldn't that power be abused by incumbents?
(2) Who can I give the vouchers that pay for political speech to? Just candidates? Not-for-profits? For-profits? Would it be a felony to sell these vouchers for money?
(3) You work for a rich and powerful organization, and many media organizations are rich and powerful too. Will universities and news corporations be subject to the same restrictions on political speech? Will you be prohibited from speaking on political issues? Will the editors of the NYT be prohibited from commenting on candidates? If not, why should they be exempted? Why should the $32+ billion company you work for have rights to engage in political speech that other companies do not?
There are many campaign finance systems around the world, and a lot of experience with them in other countries. Can you provide clear and concrete evidence that the kind of mechanisms you envision work better in practice in other countries?
What, in fact, are your objective criteria for "better democracy"?
Note that it is insufficient to cite factors that you prefer for ideological reasons. For example, particular forms of campaign finance may correlate with lower levels of income inequality, but if that's your argument, you are really arguing that we should change the campaign finance system to achieve your political objectives, not in order to achieve a better democracy (low levels of income inequality are not by themselves an indication of a functioning democracy, since low income inequality exists even in many non-democratic nations).
Mr. Lessig, while I respect your efforts on many levels, I'm curious what strategies you will use to prevent those that you will help will with your Mayday PAC to not go off the reservation should they win.
Either give it away or get top dollar, but never sell yourself cheap.
Perhaps you're oversimplifying this. It's not that "money equals speech"; the problem is that suppressing certain kinds of donations means preventing people from "getting the word out" about something important to them, and thus prevents them from joining in unison with their peers in an act of aggregate, unison political speech. Or something.
There's a plausible argument that people shouldn't lose their free speech rights just because they get together in order to exercise them, or formalize their arrangement by forming a corporation.
There's also a plausible argument to be made that if you can't spend your money on, say, traveling places to speak or buying poster boards for signs, you can't actually speak. In fact, if you can't spend any money related to political speech, your speech is largely limited to speaking to yourself at home.
It's almost intuitive.
This seems like a simpler version of Wolf-Pac.com who aims to pass get a Constitutional Amendment. The problem i see with Mayday is that although it is aiming to elect officials to pass campaign finance reform the problem is those same politicians once in will be spending most of their day (as all other politicans currently do) looking for the next source of campaign funding -- and last i checked the highest funder gets the most attention and sway by these politicians. Mayday is limited in how much influence it can do because there are much wealthier lobbyists who can entice their angels to the dark side quite easily. A smarter approach is to attack the problem at the state level as wolf-pac is doing. Otherwise the problem will persist. My question is: Please convince me that Mayday is a better approach than Wolf-Pac. TYT started Wolf-Pac years ago and is in much further progress than Mayday including the fact that they brought up the flaws of taking a similar approach to what Mayday ended up doing years ago. So again, please talk me down and explain how your approach will work and how because it seems destined to fail to me.
the problem is that suppressing certain kinds of donations means preventing people from "getting the word out" about something important to them
Outright disallowing donations is one thing. It's another to place limits on how much they can give. 196 people shouldn't be allowed to donate 80% of the money that goes to super PACs, that is simply buying political influence by those who can afford it. If the donation limit was capped at $1000 per person, for example, then that would change things. Mayday PAC is a good example - the word is out, and it doesn't require people to donate a million dollars each. People can still get the word out, but the power should be with groups of like-minded people rather than very wealthy individuals. Sheldon Adelson said it best:
"I'm against very wealthy people attempting to or influencing elections," he shrugs. "But as long as it's doable I'm going to do it."
The $11 million he gave to Gingritch is 0.044% of his $25 billion worth. That's the same as a person worth a million dollars donating $440. It doesn't matter to him, but it drowns out everyone else who can't afford to give $11 million. It also drowns out people like those who support Mayday, who combined can only muster a little over $2 million (so far, anyway).
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Why not?
For the same reason a ham sandwich isn't a duck?
"Money" describes tokens of value used in trade for goods and services. "Speech" describes, in its most abstract form, the communication of ideas. The two have entirely different purposes, different modalities, different styles of accountancy/accountability (as appropriate).
Now, if you want to debate whether or not companies can use as much money as they have to directly share their own opinions with the public, such as Chik-Fil-A coming out as anti-gay, we can talk. But Walmart anonymously pumping billions into anti-union candidates or Tyson buying their way into anti-agricultural-whistleblower laws, come about as far from "speech" as that ham sandwich does from a duck.
No, I think I just put my finger on a fallacy on your part. You've made it very clear that it's the disproportionate influence of one person versus lesser influence of the masses of other people on elections that you can't tolerate.
:p
But you still haven't given any reason why Sheldon Adelson's money is any different here than Famous Q. PolitiBlogger's virtual soapbox. In both cases, one person has drastically larger influence on the political debate than the masses of people around them. Why is this imbalance of power OK for Famous Q, but not for Adelson? Why? Why? Why?
Very unconvinced over here....
I've followed your work on behalf of free culture for years sir, and let me just say "Thank you".
The importance of your current campaign cannot be overstated; no country can be truly "free" it is in fact owned by a few tyrants. Corruption was bad before Citizens United and it's almost uncontroversial to say it's the worst in our history. Aside from donating money, how can individuals help? I'm sure you know this crowd has no shortage of technical skills and I'd be happy to volunteer myself.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Proportional influence is an interesting idea. So we should ban unions since their large membership will give their leaders disproportionate influence with politics? How about newspaper editors they have a large readership and their recommendations in elections can be very helpful? How about political bloggers if they write about one candidates negatives and the others positives? These people become disproportionately important to politician election chances and therefore they are given greater access and influence.
So - I really like the idea of the PAC. I want to contribute. BUT, I don't want to undermine my other causes.
Question: Will this PAC be promoting both liberal and conservative politicians who advocate this one very important issue? The mayday.us website says 5 races will be targeted. What races and why those particular races?
Example:
Politician A is "wrong" on every issue but campaign finance reform.
Politician B is "right" on every issue but wrong on campaign finance reform.
How can someone like me - who believes the current campaign finance system is a rot at the heart of our democracy, but also has to balance this issue with other important issues - how can my concerns be assuaged?
Why are you not transparent about which 5 races you will aim to influence? Or at the very least WHEN do you plan to announce that selection?
I was gonna ask why Republic, Lost wasn't available under a Creative Commons license but I see that it has in fact become available under a CC license since the last time I checked a while ago. I suggest all US citizens go to http://republic.lessig.org/ and start reading.
Correct, money is not speech but it provides the means to allow speech to be heard and read. Do you think those horrible terrorist of the 1770s were using magical printing presses that magically produced lead, paper and ink or do you think that maybe, just maybe, they had to spend their money to buy those supplies? Is that not pretty much the same as buying ads in newspapers, magazines and on radio and TV?
INTRO: Money and lobbyists in politics is the symptom, not the solution.
Federal Constitution specifies a census to count people to expand the number of seats in House of Representatives. This was capped in 1913, which allowed lobbyists and money to increase influence. We should have ~80,000 or less people per representative, so each person could conceivably have a group lunch with their rep. Now there are over 1 million people per representative, so only those with money (lobbyists) get access.
QUESTION: Instead of focusing on the symptom of money in politics, why not focus on returning to representative government by allowing the House to grow with population?
RESEARCH LINKS:
424 seats in small state of New Hampshire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Federal House seats capped in 1913 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
435 Representatives Can Not Faithfully Represent 300 Million Americans http://www.thirty-thousand.org...
Before smart-guys-and-gals say "30,000 people won't fit", consider meeting in a stadium once a year with tele-conferences the remainder of the sessions. Real representation, and the follow-on impotency of money and lobbyists, is worth the additional cost of paying 30,000 representatives.