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."'

Re:interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

It won't get money out of politics. If this group manages to accomplish everything they propose, we'll just go back to the old way of unlimited donation options for unions, limited or no donations options for anyone else.

Since there is a distinct effort to hide any actual details about what this PAC supports, here's some information on the founder [wikipedia.org]. He's not a caricature of a political philosophy, but the timings and his biography make it pretty clear what he's trying to do.

So, it's just another Democrat PAC masquerading

[jnaujok]

This "Anti-PAC" is just a PAC supporting the two largest Democrat campaign finance bills which are more properly termed the "Silence Dissent Acts" or "Incumbent Protection Act" then any kind of real campaign finance reform.

So, all they are is another Democrat PAC masquerading under a fake name. Oh, they claim to support three other bills with bi-partisan support, which are bills sponsored by four back-benchers (Tom Petrie anyone? 30+ years in Congress and I don't think he's successfully sponsored one bill.) that will never make it out of sub-committee.

So, two hyper-left (Barbara Boxer, Henry Waxman, Dianne Feinstein type) proposals, and three non-events.

Anti-PAC, it's another way of saying "Democrat".

Makes you wonder why they feel they have to lie about their intentions.

Re:So, it's just another Democrat PAC masquerading

[gstoddart]

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.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed

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.

Re:How does it work?

[Charliemopps]

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.

Re:How does it work?

[hweimer]

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?

Re:interesting

[Electricity Likes Me]

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?

Re:Trying to move America to the Left

[Anonymous Coward]

MAYDAY (one word) is also widely known as a distress call.

Re:term limits don't matter

[JWW]

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.