Mayday PAC's Benjamin Singer Explains How You can Help Reform American Politics (Video)

Larry Lessig's Mayday PAC is a SuperPac that is working to eliminate the inherent corruption of having a government run almost entirely by people who manage to raise -- or have their "non-connected" SuperPACs raise -- most of the money they need to run their campaigns. The Mayday PAC isn't about right or left wing or partisan politics at all. It's about finding and supporting candidates who are in favor of something like last year's Government by the People Act. As we noted in our Mayday Pac interview with Larry Lessig last June, a whole panoply of tech luminaries, up to and including Steve Wozniak, are in favor of Mayday PAC.

This interview is being posted, appropriately, just before the 4th of July, but it's also just one day before the Mayday PAC Day of Action to Reform Congress. They're big on calling members of Congress rather than emailing, because our representatives get email by the (digital) bushel, while they get comparatively few issue-oriented phone calls from citizens. So Mayday PAC makes it easy for you to call your Congressional representatives and even, if you're too shy to talk to a legislative aide in person, to record a message Mayday PAC will leave for them after hours.

The five specific pieces of legislation Mayday PAC currently supports are listed at the RepsWith.US/reforms page. Two are sponsored by Republicans, two by Democrats, and one by an Independent. That's about as non-partisan as you can get, so no matter what kind of political beliefs you hold, you can support Mayday PAC with a clear conscience. (Note: the transcript has more information than the video, which is less than six minutes long.)

Comments

Re:I'm surprised this made the front page

[fustakrakich]

Citizens United is a very popular decision here on slashdot...

And it's the right decision, in compliance with the 1st Amendment. Quit your bellyaching and stop voting for politicians who take the money. They are the guilty ones.

Treat causes, not symptoms

[PapayaSF]

I think there's a basic error in this approach. It assumes that government can and will run better with "big money" taken out of campaigning. But there's a lot of money given to campaigns for several reasons. The first is that, as Citizens United confirmed, money is speech, and spending money to support a cause or a candidate is at the heart of political expression.

The second reason is perhaps even more basic. When government is huge and has their fingers in every pie, it creates a great deal of motivation to influence those fingers. Campaign contributions are merely a form of lobbying, and lobbying has a standard message: subsidize me and cut my taxes and regulations, but burden my competitors and enemies with taxes and regulations, if not ban them outright.

If you really want to "get money out of politics," you need to (as much as possible) get politics out of the economy. (Ideologues will always lobby, and that's fine, because it's the crony capitalism and pay-to-play aspects that are most objectionable.) Which, of course, is not what many reformers want to do. Until they do, they are basically advocating spreading sugar around their picnic blanket, and then complaining about all the ants.

Re:Treat causes, not symptoms

[PapayaSF]

No money is not speech. It's money. Putting a limitation on campaign contribution in no way shape or form limits your speech.

Really? Citizens United was about some people who made a movie about Hillary Clinton. If the government forbids you to spend money on making a film (or publishing a book, putting up a website, or buying an ad, or making a sign, etc.), they are certainly limiting your speech.

And note that even the defenders of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law that Citizens United overturned admitted in court that the law would have allowed the government to stop the publication of a book if it was about a candidate. If that isn't suppression of speech, what is?

Let's start by repealing the 17th Amendment...

[PseudoCoder]

If we put Senators back under the control of state legislatures, they'll be less influenced by outside money because the state legislatures can yank the leash when these "law makers" stop representing their constituents appropriately. This would make the Citizens United decision less relevant, at least on the Senate side.

The House reps are another story, because they're still under direct elections by the same public that keeps voting these "luminaries" back into power every time. Like senators, as soon as they finish lying to their constituents to their faces, they turn around and land in DC where they get hypnotized by lobbyists, committee chairmanships, etc. Then they're smooth sailing with their own agenda until it's time to come back home and lie to our faces again.

Re:I'm surprised this made the front page

[fustakrakich]

Only the vote is a vote. People who let money influence their vote is the thing to address. You are attacking an inanimate object.

Awful lot

[oh_my_080980980]

of trolls post in favor of citizens united. Didn't know the Koch Brothers bot army was running so well.

Great idea but look into Wolf-PAC

[FeatherBoa]

I recommend looking into Wolf-PAC -- wolf-pac.com

This effort is focused on states driving a constitutional convention to amend the constitution to ending corporate personhood and publicly financing all elections.

Re:get rid of ALL THE MONEY, every cent

[bondsbw]

This is a deeply unpopular idea. Only 6% of Americans opt to direct a portion of their taxes to public election funding, despite costing them nothing to do so.

I don't know about everyone else, but I don't check that box because I would rather see that $3 go toward improving our infrastructure, reducing our debt, and a host of other things before I want it to go toward a political campaign. Campaigns already have too much funding as it is, why do they need more?

But it's different when campaigns only receive funding through the general budget. The Presidential Election Campaign Fund checkbox would disappear under these new rules, because it would no longer be funded by choice.

I see. So the Nazi Party, and the "Keg Party" would get the same funding as the Democrats and Republicans. We would soon have ten thousand political parties.

Who gets to decide who is a "candidate"?

There already exist ballot access rules that regulate whether someone can get on the ballot. Only candidates who appear on a ballot would be provided with campaign funding.

(Besides, the two party system is a problem, not something to cherish.)