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Lessig's Mayday PAC Scrambling To Cross Crowd Funding Finish Line
First time accepted submitter SingleEntendre (1273012) writes "Time is running out for the Mayday PAC to reach its latest crowd funding goal of $5M. The total currently stands at $4.5M. Led by Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Lessig, the Mayday PAC seeks to reduce the influence of money in US politics by 2016, primarily by identifying and supporting congressional candidates who share this vision. If phase 2 is successful, with matching funds the total raised will be $12M. A self-imposed deadline arrives at of midnight tonight, July 4th, Hawaii-Aleutian Standard Time (HAST)." (And now the total's at $4,700,066.)
The Tea Party? You mean the religiots bent on turning our country into Saudi Arabia with crosses? No thank you.
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
Is the other group that they're oppressing money?
No matter what you think of Lessig, I think that the experiment in and of itself is interesting.
It's something that hasn't been tried before. If it doesn't work, a bunch of people are out parts of $5mil. If by some miracle it DOES work... well, then what's the use of decrying it?
The only real downside I can see to this PAC is that people who might have put their time/money into some competing and more effective project put it into this one, pinning more hope on the strategy than maybe they should have.
But unless we see it attempted at least once, we won't really know what effect it will have on the political climate.
So go for it, Larry & Gang! I hope it works.
Oh, and:
$4,738,863
pledged of $5,000,000 goal
11 hours left
time remaining to pledge
Are you reading the same article as me?
43651
pledges
$4,744,105
pledged of $5,000,000 goal
11 hours left
time remaining to pledge
Interesting... averaging at $100/pledge.
So we're going to elect some politicians that promise to do something different? Where have I heard that before? (Every 2-6 years)
I'm more a fan of the Wolf-PAC strategy - get a constitutional convention by having non-corrupt state-level politicians pass an amendment.
I just can't support someone whose idea of freedom is allegedly protecting the rights of one group by oppressing another group.
Are you a US citizen? If so, you're likely supporting the current government structure by paying taxes. Just saying.
If you can get similar momentum behind some solution that has a chance of making any difference, and doesn't oppress anyone, go for it.
You have absolutely no idea what the Tea Party movement represents.
I know what they CLAIM to represent, and I know what they represent in their words and deeds.
Most of the ones who I've heard open their mouths are blatant christofascists, historical revisionists, racists, sexists, etc. My assessment that they want to turn us into a "Christian Saudi Arabia" is based on their words and deeds (listen to their talking points, there's a lot of Christian nation, Seven Mountains Mandate and the like talk).
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
43986
pledges
$4,762,949
pledged of $5,000,000 goal
11 hours left
You know, they might just do it.
But isn't this only phase 2 of 3? It'll be interesting to see how far that $12mil actually goes.
Lessig is the guy who helped get Creative Commons off the ground. He actually does stuff. This isn't the same old story.
If you take the bait, and this ends up getting funded, do not be surprised when we replace one "ocracy" with another "ocracy."
That's all this guy is after - putting power in his own court by using the government to oppress people who do not agree with his point of view.
At least Lessig has a track record and is putting his name and reputation to this.
Then again, AC has a track record and , er, oh well.
Are you kidding me? It's called the MAYDAY PAC.
MAYDAY, as in, "OMG this is an emergency! You have to do this or people are going to DIE!"
The very name of the thing is designed to elicit an unnecessary sense of urgency and an irrational emotional state in order to extract money.
It's classic self-serving political behavior.
The difference here is that the politicians know that votes are fickle, but money is money.
I just thought of another problem with this though: for money to really speak, it has to at least have the appearance of being a continual stream. That means that once this $12mil warchest is used up, there has to be assurances that there will be ANOTHER war chest lined up to keep supporting things. Otherwise, it's easier to go with the other PAC who wants to keep things as they are, but will only donate $3mil/year.... for the next 20 years.
Lessig has to ensure this thing stays funded not just until the PAC's goals are realized, but until the goals of those being funded are realized. Otherwise, other deeper-running money may speak louder.
That's right. We can't forget the invariable dipping that must come later. I get such pleas in emails from various PACs every single day.
"We've accomplished so much, but we must have your continued support to keep going! Send us even MOAR MONEEZ!"
If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, and acts like a duck, guess what...
If you think the system's broken now, try later when the only people who get to run are those who can cobble together enough votes to get government funding, which is to say, the two main parties as they currently stand.
The only people to even touch on that percentage the past fifty years were Ross Perot, who funded himself (this will be illegal now???) and John Anderson, the libertarian candidate in 1980.
Yes, this will fix the problem...in the sense of entrenching the status quo even more.
Thanks but no thanks.
The entire front page of that kickstarter is nothing but generic fix the government platitudes...by design...as many politicians have blabbered about in innumerable campaigns of the past...for the purpose of getting you onboard fantasizing what *you* care about is what *they're* talking about.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
it has to at least have the appearance of being a continual stream
Yes I think you are right. I, personally, am willing to support the fund year after year. I hope others will too.
To have any use they need to continualy get money - so yes, ofcourse they will keep asking for money. Do you think solving problems can just be done with a one-time fee? so this is exactly what they are supposed to do, keep raising money for their cause. (you do not have to agree with their cause, but that does not mean they are scamming you, it means the currents system is set up to require a continious stream of money - even when doing "good")
This quacks distinctively unlike a duck
Oh, those poor corporations! Who are we, the people, to try and stop them from running our country?
It's their God-given right to buy laws!
You should donate, since you obviously hate grass roots campaigns to reduce the size of the government. You obviously are either benefiting from government corruption or are a retard. This PAC ensures that small grass roots groups are illegal and only the current corrupt organizations are allowed.
Is /. being raided by neocon trolls?
And if we meet that goal, we'll get it matched, for a total of $12 million raised.
Grassroots campaigns? You mean Koch Industries-driven corporate astroturf?
By the way, I receive SSI disability (because as a result of diagnosed mental issues I am unemployable, and I have effectively no family); furthermore I am under the LGBT umbrella - the Tea Party types have been very vocal in saying that they consider my type to be a waste of oxygen, and wouldn't want my support even if I were willing to give it to them.
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
Exactly! I refuse it to support Mayday until they stand up for term limits. I asked a question about this in the "Ask Larry about Mayday" story. Then they used a "new and improved format" for his responses and dumped my +5 rated question.
Mayday, if they succeed will give us the same thing we have now, lifetime legislators. Their voucher system will end up a Massive advantage to incumbents.
Sorry, I'm Caucasian. :P
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
It's a witch?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_Day not http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayday
Nirvana fallacy - Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien (The perfect is the enemy of the good) - Voltaire
The counter just tipped over $5M a moment ago. Let's see what Lessig et al. can do with our (mine and 47K other people's) money.
Except it is a duck! It is completely indistinguishable from every other sleazeball PAC out there that has its own self-interest at heart.
Well Done All Around.
It sickens me that we must "buy back" our democracy.
comment directly in my journal
I am Canadian and actually wanted to pledge for this. :-)
Hope this works out for you guys.
"Sockets are the standard networking API, also useful for stopping your eyes from falling onto your cheeks" zeromq.org
Most of the ones who I've heard open their mouths are blatant christofascists, historical revisionists, racists, sexists, etc.
This.
I keep hearing the "But, but, that's not really the Tea Party!" nonsense. I tell them the same thing every other group gets told:
These people are operating under your colors. They represent you, whether you like it or not. Don't like it? Do something about it. Or you can play at being the Catholic church, sweep it under the rug, say, "But, but, it's only a comparatively few..." and have everyone make altar boy jokes about you, forever.
Kick the Koch-suckers out of the Tea Party. Or deal with the fact that your Party is reprehensible.
"Allegedly" is right. The level of rhetoric here is nuts: Mayday's stated goal is to change the way that campaigns are funded such that each person (voter) can contribute equally to the campaigns of their choice. This is in opposition to the current method, where each person can contribute an amount limited only be their means, giving drastically more influence (or speech, as the supreme court sees it) to those of significant means.
There is no group being oppressed here, though I'm starting to think that these common sense campaigns could do better by taking some sort of crazy position like that. It's all that people hear nowadays.
Am i the only one who thought the may day was about the soviet style communist celebrations?
I have trouble trusting it on name alone. But you have a good point as well ss many others.
The grandparent was talking about some kind of fictional first-past-the-post campaign funding system that no one has proposed. You are saying that the voucher system will give a massive advantage to incumbents. Could you explain your position? Vouchers are given by voters to the candidates of their choosing - how does this give an advantage to incumbents?
And this is worse than the current system how?
At 20:00 (8:00 PM), July 4 Mountain Standard Time, the total is $5,039,693. Apparently the extra ~300,000.- came in between when it was posted and now. I don't know if Lessig's PAC is as widely known as it could be, but online support will spread to wider sources. He will likely need them if he is going to his his next goal (and I *really* would like him to his his next goal).
He'll probably take a bullet for his efforts, but bravo.
Yup. Its good to allow Chinese gov to control our politician. I know that Coffman is on the take from Chinese business wholly owned by Chinese gov.
If you are going to get this into name-calling and shouting of drivel, at least come out from behind the AC mask. The only folks I can see that are preaching oppression of others are the TeaPubs. Please, save me from them.
Where in this is someone oppressing anyone else? I don't see it.
Am i the only one who thought the may day was about the soviet style communist celebrations?
I have trouble trusting it on name alone. But you have a good point as well ss many others.
You're not the only one who noticed that. The utter cluelessness to start with "May One" and they move to calling it "May Day" is staggering.
Do you have ESP?
yeah, Lessig always correctly identifies the corruption thst results ftom power being for sale, and then he proposes creating more power to solve it, 'cause, honest, it'll be different this time. He and his well-meaning friends will make sure of that.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
If the people don't put effort into democracy, it will disappear. By definition. Voting is cool but it's not enough to make a democracy.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
... because if you can't fix everything, you'd better not try to fix anything? Guess we'll find out what really happens.
As I'm typing this, the Mayday PAC has successfully garnered $5,086,226 of donation
Congrats !
No, you made a grammar mistake there. It's not that we don't want your support, it's that we don't want to support you. Forever.
If you want to know how well term limits works, you should read up a little on Mexican politics. It's not called the Institutional Party for nothing.
Lessig's position is bullshit. He want to stomp all over the 1st Amendment. Money has no influence of its own. It's people's desire for it, and that is not being addressed.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Congress has wasted far more than the cost of our donations in the last year alone. I'm happy that I will soon have the opportunity, hopefully, to stop paying government buffoons to steal/waste/divert the money we pay in taxes. I don't know about you, but my contribution to Mayday.us pales in comparison.
NR
"Voting is cool but it's not enough to make a democracy." True in so many ways.
You did read the bits about the fact that voting seems to have no effect most of the time? (Or how about this one.)
Anecdotal evidence could work here just as well. Citizens United represents everything you need to know about politics in the United States. If you don't have enough money, you don't have enough "free speech." The polls say more than 90% of the country does not want Comcast to buy Time Warner Cable, and for some good reasons. Do you think that'll sway the regulators, who are being smooched up the ass by Comcast lobbyists?
Or what about what happened to Obama's election promises about getting rid of lobbyists and being transparent? I do believe he was pressured by the incumbents into changing his mind. He might have been honest when he first got elected, but, as they say, the system is too strong. He got borged into it.
Yes, we mustn't suppress Hitler. We have to somehow raise everybody else up.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
That's the exact problem I have with it. It's an effective tax raise, and what happens to the money raised? It goes to support candidates I might vehemently disagree with. To buy them TV commercials. I find that pretty objectionable.
I have no issue with Lessig's end-goal here, I think it's noble and needed. But the way he's going about it is awful, and I won't be contributing money to it.
Comment of the year
> It goes to support candidates I might vehemently disagree with.
Only in the same way your tax dollars pays for lawyers to work as public defenders of heinous criminals.
In other words the fact that money goes to people you disagree with is part of the price of a fair system. You want a fair system? You have to pay for it one way or the other. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
Try looking at it this way: the 2012 election cost our economy just shy of $2 billion. If we do it through the voucher system, one of Mayday's proposed solutions, we can set that amount to whatever we like. Say $200 million, roughly the same as funded through FECA. That's a dramatic improvement in efficiency.
Now how you see that depends on your attitude towards money: the efficient method comes out of taxes (partially paid for by you), while the inefficient method is paid by third parties. In other words, the cost of the election in the inefficient case effects you indirectly rather than directly. As long as you are in any way connected to this economy though, you would feel it.
I actually did some minor volunteer work for the Anderson campaign in '80. He ran as an Independent, not as a Libertarian.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
I'd rather have $50 of my tax money go towards solving corruption and reducing the influence of special interests than whatever wasteful spending is going on now.
> I refuse it to support Mayday until they stand up for term limits.
Term limits sound great. But as is the case with every simplistic solution, they are no panacea. Term limits will enable professional lobbyists - they will be the experts with decades of experience and contacts and our elected representatives will be perpetual newbies - easily fooled and manipulated.
The only real answer is more engaged electorate, there are no short-cuts for better governance. But there are impediments and the imbalance of influence enabled by wealth is the biggest one there is.
> It's people's desire for it, and that is not being addressed.
So lessig is the one spouting bullshit because the sane approach is to fundamentally change human nature.
Fucking geektards.
Citation needed.
Does any mention of a candidate in the news come out of the hypothetical $200M?
If not, then the incumbent has an enormous advantage in that he/she can get into the news just by proposing a piece of legislation.
If so, then a news entity can burn through a disliked candidate's share of the $200M by doing a bunch of stories maligning the candidate, leaving no money for positive PR.
Or were you planning on suspending Freedom of the Press for campaigns?
Or did Lessig just forget that news people have political beliefs too, and are willing to act on them?
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
May Day is an ancient spring festival, and long predates the Soviet Union. It is still celebrated in Western Europe, where it is free of any overt political overtones.
You're stuck in Cold War thinking...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_Day
Then you shouldn't have allowed it to be sold in the first place.
The whole thing is still silly, a single person like Bill Gates, Larry Ellison or Steve Job's wife (to pick the popular easy to recognize names) can easily out fund this PAC with nothing more than a signature and a laugh about it ... there are thousands of people who can do it. This PAC is one.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
> MAYDAY, as in, "OMG this is an emergency! You have to do this or people are going to DIE!"
OK that's it, /. is being raided by some retarded conservative site because only you would be dumb enough to think that's what the name refers to.
It's MAY. DAY. A DAY in MAY. The month. It refers to a point in time. I'll let you figure out why that time is important.
I wish you luck in educating the users of Slashdot, however after all these years they still don't fucking understand the difference between copyright and trademark, so good luck getting them to understand the difference between mayday and May Day. (And the significant socialist/communist connection in the name they chose is why I have no interest in supporting them.)
Doesn't sicken me. Price isn't blood.
Yet.
I hope America starts to realize how important this is. We are not a democracy any more. We are an oligarchy. And if you don't agree to that, atleast agree that we have swayed towards an oligarchy over the past 20 years.
Or what about what happened to Obama's election promises about getting rid of lobbyists and being transparent? I do believe he was pressured by the incumbents into changing his mind. He might have been honest when he first got elected, but, as they say, the system is too strong. He got borged into it.
Or, he was a lying, conniving SOB from the start, and like any other politician said anything he had to to get elected. Our only option is to cut off the air supply (taxes.)
It's all about the power, baby.
Was it clueless, or was it deliberate?
Mayday, incidentally, should be a strikingly American day on the calendar, as it commemorates the May Day Massacre which happened in Chicago. The people killed were Communists and Anarchists, though, so it isn't gonna go on the Official Holiday Calendar in the US.
> Is the other group that they're oppressing money?
Please! You're talking about that guy's religion!
Corporations:people
Money:speech
Bribery:conversation
That's Mayday the event, not the sound of alarm. Mayday is also known as International Workingman's Day.
Don't you remember the old newsreels of Soviet tanks and trucks bearing missiles, rolling through Moscow for the annual Mayday Parade?
Beats the hell out of prohibition. Maybe you should study how well that works also.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
And so is te swatzstika or however it is spelled. Still, when i see someone walking down the street with one tatoo'd to his forehead, i think charlie manson.
Events more recent tend to carry more weight to peoplr. Saying i'm sruck in the cold war whrn you reference something ancient is a bit odd isn't it?
Incumbents will always have the publicity advantage - though that also applies to bad publicity. If you think that carpet bombing the public with corporate-funded messages is an appropriate way to counter that, then where's the room for non-corporate messages. Somebody's still got an unfair advantage. Candidates of all stripes are well enough versed in media manipulation to largely counter the encumbent's 'newsworthiness' advantage - though I guess the media (and the public) are slow to pay attention until a candidate manages to get nominated into a high-stakes race. Still, the problems of a corrupt and lazy media and a lazy electorate are nothing compared to the wholesale undermining of the principle of one person one vote democracy that we have now.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
The left already has enough PAC money from billionaire foreigners. No thanks!
Presumably the matching funds come from Very Rich People. I don't see how a plan tha depends on VRP can suucced in freeing politics from them.
`Perche non reggi tu, o sacra fame de l'oro,l'appetito de' mortali?'
Pst, if you give your Voucher to Obama I hear they will give you a free phone...
This PAC purposes to spend $ in the political process, thereby furthering the institutions that depend on that flow of cash, in order to oppose spending $ in the political process.
It is not a system view of things. It is a lot like killing for peace, buying slaves to oppose slavery, increasing subsidies to support the economy, ...
Your term limit issue is secondary, as are many other issues.
Whether or not we have term limits is a matter of reasoned public debate. Right now, we can't have that due to the money in politics problem.
It is unreasonable for you to connect your issue to the core, systemic problem of how elections are funded.
That is perhaps the biggest misconception and hangup people have. This isn't transactional politics. It's not like you get something in return, or trade-offs get made. We do that now, and the money biases it away from the overall best interests of the people.
Really, if we reform money in politics, a fair, reasoned discussion will happen. Or, at least a much better one will happen.
Term limits, and other things get decided then, not now.
This is a single issue effort. It is systemic, not partisan, and not intended to remedy anything other than the basic issue of money in politics.
Blogging because I can...
This isn't an attempt to "buy back" our democracy. It's an attempt by another group of politically-motivated individuals to gain more influence and power in Washington.
Yeah, I get it. Sometimes how they approached those kinds of questions seemed a bit abrupt for some people, and I think they misunderstand how deeply people feel the need to not trust, and question, and everybody is wondering "what's in it for me?"
A better overall debate really, and that isn't too sexy. Credit Larry for at least framing it up reasonably enough to make an attempt.
Really, it doesn't matter what his answer is. If we actually do reform money in politics, term limits along with a pile of other things will then get debated and legislated in a way we are very highly likely to find better than they would now, if they are addressed at all.