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Mayday PAC Goes 2 For 8
An anonymous reader writes: Lawrence Lessig's Mayday.us project had a bold goal: create a super PAC to end all super PACs. It generated significant support and raised over $10 million, which it spent endorsing a group of candidates for the recent mid-term elections and the primaries beforehand. The results weren't kind. Only two of the eight candidates backed by Mayday won their elections, and both of those candidates were quite likely to win anyway. Lessig was understandably displeased with the results. In a post on the Mayday site, he said, "What 2014 shows most clearly is the power of partisanship in our elections. Whatever else voters wanted, they wanted first their team to win."
Kenneth Vogel, author of Big Money, a recent book on the rise of super PACs, was critical of of Mayday's efforts, saying, "While voters do express high levels of disgust about the state of campaign finance and the level of corruption in Washington, they tend to actually cast votes more on bread-and-butter economic issues." Still, Lessig is hopeful for the future: "We moved voters on the basis of that message. Not enough. Not cheaply enough. But they moved."
Kenneth Vogel, author of Big Money, a recent book on the rise of super PACs, was critical of of Mayday's efforts, saying, "While voters do express high levels of disgust about the state of campaign finance and the level of corruption in Washington, they tend to actually cast votes more on bread-and-butter economic issues." Still, Lessig is hopeful for the future: "We moved voters on the basis of that message. Not enough. Not cheaply enough. But they moved."
I think the biggest thing Mayday PAC did wrong is that they were, in the end, massive hypocrites.
Their "competition" for the best video about the effect of big money was such an enormous debacle and a clear showing that their true goal was not to get money out of politics, but to get Conservative (and even libertarian) money out of politics. Their embracing and providing cover for Tom Steyer, who openly talked about influencing elections with large amounts of his money, makes Mayday PAC a bunch of liars.
http://freebeacon.com/politics...
If Mayday were true to its stated vision, they would have condemned Steyer's actions. That they did not condemn him like they constantly did the Koch brothers proves that they don't really want what they say they want.
On top of this, their support for a constitutional amendment that would allow congress to restrict speech, makes them a contemptable organization.
I really respect Lessig's views on copyrights and patents. His efforts with his Mayday PAC have made me lose great amounts of respect for him.
You really should spend some time learning about that which you speak. Citizens United was a group formed to oppose Hillary Clinton's run for President. They made a documentary about her career that they intended to distribute leading up to the primaries (and then the general election) in 2008. When the FEC told them that they were not allowed to do so within a certain number of days of the election because it violated campaign finance laws, they sued.
I remember reading about them as they gathered support and money to make the movie. Several prominent members in Citizens United had been speaking out against a Hillary Clinton presidency for several years at that point. So, the idea that this group was formed solely to challenge election finance law is ludicrous.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Democrats have fucked Kansas every time they accidentally get elected. No miracles here. This is a red state and going to stay that way, because of that.
You think that's why Brownback got re-elected as governor? If your analysis were even remotely correct, he would have had absolutely no chance at winning on Tuesday: he's led your state to huge upcoming budget deficits, an increased poverty rate, much lower economic growth than all four neighboring states, and a downgraded state credit rating.
Yet, despite all of the above, Brownback still kept his job, because, you know... "liberals and taxes are bad." Never mind if the alternative is flushing your state down the toilet.
If Ted Cruze is saying the opposite of what you want done, then I'll start listening to him.
The supreme court did not rip the first amendment at all. It simply said that some forms of speech costs money and that people can pool together in order to afford that costs. It said that people who have already pooled together for other reasons can spend their resources on speech too.
Stopping that from happening is in fact denying free speech to those people in the same way you think it is bad. When people cannot pool their resources together to speak about their candidate or against another candidate, they have lost their ability to make speech that has any impact. This has nothing to do with corporate donations- when you tell people or corporations which are run by people and owned by people, that they can have all the free speech they want except when you do not agree with it or the way they are speaking- you have ripped the first amendment yourself.