Lessig Launches a Super PAC To End All Super PACs 465
An anonymous reader writes "Lawrence Lessig has announced plans to kickstart a SuperPAC big enough to make it possible to win a Congress committed to fundamental reform by 2016. From the article: 'If you can’t beat them, join them. Then take them down from the inside. That’s the basic idea behind a super PAC launching Thursday that wants to destroy super PACs for good. The Mayday PAC, as it’s called, seeks to raise enough money to sway five House elections in 2014 and elect representatives who have committed to pressing for serious reform of the campaign finance system. If that endeavor—a sort of test case—is successful, the PAC will then try to raise an enormous amount of money for the 2016 cycle—enough, PAC organizers hope, to buy Congress."
I love the idea, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I love the idea, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I love the idea, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I love the idea, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
People forget the massive power in numbers (Score:5, Informative)
This is part of why everyone, not just the really rich, pays taxes because it adds up to a large amount.
So for political spending as a simple example: Suppose Bill Gates put every bit of his wealth, about $76 billion, towards a PAC. Unbeatable right? Not hardly. If each person over 18 gave $320 dollars, they'd outspend him handily.
Now of course it is ridiculous to think that every eligible voter would give that much but it is equally ridiculous to talk about someone spending that amount of money. The point is that even for ridiculous sums, numbers still favour the population.
A more realistic example would be that Romney's campaign cost about $850 million dollars (the most expensive ever). Crunch the numbers and you'd need half of voters to give $7 average to match that. So literally if you could get half of people to give $10, you'd crush the amount spent on the most expensive campaign ever.
People also seem to forget that the rich didn't become, or stay, rich by spending all their money. Ya, they may be willing to kick in a lot, by a normal person's standard, to an election, but it is still only a small fraction of their wealth. Blowing a significant portion of their wealth on an election would be monumentally stupid.
It really IS doable. What's more, politicians really DO care more about a large number of people voting one way than all the contributions in the world because if they get voted out, well the gravy train stops. So doesn't matter how much money they are offered, if their constituents say "Do this or you are out," and mean it, they are extremely likely to do it.
People in the US do have the ultimate power, they just doesn't exercise it effectively.
The point is just possibility (Score:4, Interesting)
Another way to look at it would be if about 10% of voters gave $50 each, which is a fair bit more but still not at all out of the realm of possibility for most people. Also if you are talking house/senate elections, which is what is begin talked about here, then the actual budget isn't nearly as high.
The point is you really DON'T need rich people to fight these big budgets, regular people can do it in large numbers, and really the numbers are in their favour.
The eternal pessimists on places like Slashdot seem to have this view that there is just unimaginable amounts of money being poured in to this that can never be equaled. That is in fact not the case. A number like $800 million sounds just terrifyingly high but then if you spread it across, say, 20 million people you are now talking $40 per person.
That's his point with this. If this is something you care about, you can toss in some money. Not an onerous amount, two figures is fine. However you get millions of people doing that and hey, that's serious dollars you are talking, the kind of thing that is hard to outspend.
Re:I love the idea, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
I think about $10 from everyone would probably do it. I don't think it's easy to get $10 from everyone, but it's not that much money per person.
The problem is not that there isn;t enough money to go against the Koch brothers. The problem is that for the average person, they'd rather have whatever they were going to buy with that $10 than the potential to destroy super PACs.
What would be cool is if this super PAC returned everyone's money if they don't raise the critical mass of dollars to make a difference. Ultimately that's my main worry. I'd rather donate $1000 to a cause that would give me my money back if it failed to raise enough money to make a real difference, than donate $10 that was gone forever regardless of whether it is used effectively.
Most of my charitable donations go to Doctors without borders because every little bit goes a long way. I don't want to donate money to a political campaign that is only going to raise like half a million dollars for the same reason I don't want to donate to a new charity that may or may not get off the ground.
Even my cousin who worked for a small charity said my money was better spent at doctors without borders or oxfam than at his small charity organizations.
Spend what I'm not allowed to spend (Score:5, Informative)
Professor Lessig started in copyright. After his defeat in Eldred v. Ashcroft, he traced the blame for the copyright expansions of the 105th Congress (No Electronic Theft Act, Copyright Term Extension Act, and Digital Millennium Copyright Act) back to the source, and the source ended up being politicians who listen to Hollywood and other special interests over their individual constituents. This lead to Change Congress, which became Fix Congress First, which became Rootstrikers [wikipedia.org]. The $100+ that I'd give to Lessig's organization is $100+ that I would have otherwise spent on something that's illegal to produce solely because of these expansions of copyright.
Re:Spend what I'm not allowed to spend (Score:4)
I'm in complete agreement (and if you know our posting history, tepples and I don't agree on much).
This is cheap at the price. Like the Tea Party before it was co-opted, it takes surprisingly little per-person effort to really shake up incumbents who weren't expecting a fight.
The worry is also like the Tea Party: how will this be co-opted?
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The tea party started as an anti-government (i.e. anti-Bush at the time) organization that was derided by Fox News when it started to gain prominence. In 2008 after Obama was elected, conservatives no longer saw it as a threat once the anti-government sentiment shifted to Obama, and the tea party became easily co-opted.
Within a pretty short time, every sensible person left the movement. Once Sarah Palin became to poster child,the transformation was complete.
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It's understandable a lot of people don't know this, because the media loves to incite emotional responses rather than do reporting.
You're in luck! (Score:5, Informative)
What would be cool is if this super PAC returned everyone's money if they don't raise the critical mass of dollars to make a difference. Ultimately that's my main worry. I'd rather donate $1000 to a cause that would give me my money back if it failed to raise enough money to make a real difference, than donate $10 that was gone forever regardless of whether it is used effectively.
Wasting my already-spent mod points by posting, but I think it's worth it:
That's exactly what they're doing. If you look at their FAQ [mayone.us], the second section explains that they will set certain funding targets, people will "pledge" their contributions, and only if they meet their total pledge target will any money actually change hands. Just like Kickstarter.
I've already pledged $20, and I wish I could give more, but our financial situation isn't super-stable at present :-/ I think what Lessig is doing is probably about the most important political action of our time.
Dan Aris
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I was wondering if this was the case. I would have looked for myself, but the link was blocked from my work computer. Thanks for the info.
You work for the Koch brothers? :-)
For those of us not in the US (Score:5, Interesting)
What's a PAC? It sounds like it's a way of buying politicians, but surely that can't be it.
Re:For those of us not in the US (Score:5, Informative)
PAC is short for Political Action Committee and it is a way of buying politicians. What is boils down to is a way for many people to combine their political contributions into one entity. (sarc) If the PAC supports your issues then that's ok. (/sarc)
Re:For those of us not in the US (Score:5, Funny)
PAC is short for Political Action Committee and it is a way of buying politicians. What is boils down to is a way for many people to combine their political contributions into one entity. (sarc) If the PAC supports your issues then that's ok. (/sarc)
If you have enough money to buy politicians in lots of half a dozen, is it a 6-PAC?
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What's a PAC? It sounds like it's a way of buying politicians, but surely that can't be it.
Yes, it really can be a way to buy politicians, and stop calling me Shirley.
OpenSecrets.org defines a PAC like this:
Political Action Committee (PAC) — A popular term for a political committee organized for the purpose of raising and spending money to elect and defeat candidates. Most PACs represent business, labor or ideological interests.
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What's a PAC? It sounds like it's a way of buying politicians, but surely that can't be it.
It's exactly what it is. "Campaign contributions" is just another word for money. PAC stands for Political Action Committee and is a way to legally handle the outright bribery.
And the American public has proven over and over again that they're gullible enough to vote for those with the biggest coffers, possibly through some cargo cult mechanism in the brain thinking that wealth will rub off.
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While many (most?) people don't change their political beliefs, what does change is their will to get out and vote. This is really how most elections work now, get the opposition voters to stay home and your voters to get out and vote.
Re:For those of us not in the US (Score:5, Informative)
Are they hiring? (Score:3)
I volunteer to determine how much handing an individual unused to wealth a couple billion dollars will affect his moral and ethical judgments. I don't even need the billions.. just a couple million. And I can do this from home.
I signed up (Score:5, Insightful)
Lessig is amazing. I signed up. The question is, will all of you? Everyone here likes to complain about politics and politicians. Everyone agrees there's a problem. Here's a guy we know isn't bought trying to fix it. Put your money where your mouth is, or never open it again.
It's really easy to complain and do nothing. It's really not that difficult to actually do something...
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Re: (Score:2)
And the powers that be are glad you don't vote. The fewer people who vote, the more who are cynical about the process the more power they end up wielding. I personally refuse to let them make me that cynical.
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Ignoring reality makes you less powerful, not more. If you want real political power in the US, you'll have to do more than vote.
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you'll have to do more than vote.
Like give money to, say, some kind of organization dedicated to reform?
questionable axiom (Score:5, Funny)
Lessig appears to implicitly accept the idea that "money in political campaigns" = "corruption". Can it not be that the wealthy love their country enough to volunteer their own hard-earned wealth to improve it (as they see it)? The theory that every money-related act is necessarily self-interested (let alone corrupting) is naive.
Re:questionable axiom (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's not that money itself is the problem. The problem is that the money is overwhelmingly held by a small minority of the population. That minority then effectively gets more representation than they should.
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Except because that rich guy can pay more than 90% of the population put together, he's got more say than that 90%. That's kind of antithetical to the basic tenets of democracy.
Even if you want to say that the politicians are unswayed by huge donations (ha!) it would still be a problem. It's well known that if you don't advertise you aren't going to win anything. So the politicians who are likely to win are all the ones who agree with one rich guy or another. You have to see why this introduces a rather fri
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
"he's got more say than that 90%"
More "say"? Equality of "quantity of speech" is a ludicrous standard. Electorally, the rich are way dis-empowered compared to the masses, whether based on simple capita counts, or contributions to the treasury, or indeed receipts from the treasury.
"It's well known that if you don't advertise you aren't going to win anything."
Then work on that problem: make people less gullible (if that's what you think all those proles really are).
Re:questionable axiom (Score:4, Insightful)
Then work on that problem: make people less gullible (if that's what you think all those proles really are).
Of all the many stupid ideas that have been suggested in this discussion, that has to be the stupidest. Until we can engineer a massive virus that alters the DNA of everyone on the planet (or at least in the USA) good luck changing human nature.
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"volunteer their own hard-earned wealth"
That's called bribery when the money they are 'volunteering' goes to a politician.
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I think that people rich and poor donate money to political campaigns for the purpose of making this country better. Thinking that the vast majority of money spent in politics isn't self interested is naive.
I personally think the influence of money over politics is a symptom rather than a cause for the problems we have. But it's pretty clear that some huge percent of the money spent in politics is basically corruption.
Re: (Score:3)
Let's start with the two assumptions that
Government should be functioning in the best interests of their Citizens.
and
If there needs to be a subset of the group of Citizens, then Government should side with the one that benefits the most Citizens.
The Wealthy love their country enough to volunteer their own money to improve it as they see it. Do they necessarily have the same objectives as the two above? If so, then the Wealthy are not a corrupting force.
If the Wealthy use their influence to deviate the Gov
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Your assumptions make it sound like you want/have utilitarian government focused on generally econmic "benefiting" citizens (no doubt at the cost of un-benefitting others). Others argue that the purpose of government is only to defend people's rights to live in liberty to pursue their happiness. The latter is a less zero-sum-game view.
Re:questionable axiom (Score:4, Informative)
The sheer stupidity in that statement may overwhelm everything else you've said so far. Benefiting society (the citizenry, collectively) is exactly the opposite of a zero-sum game. "Live in liberty to pursue their happiness" sounds real good until you come down with cancer, can barely afford treatment, and are left with the liberty of pursuing your happiness while lying in a ditch because you sold your house trying to stay alive. It's left to somebody to haul away your corpse when you die (what, you didn't expect the government to do it, did you? That's no part of defending people's rights to liberty and the pursuit of happiness...) All your future contributions to society die with you. Even if you manage to get back on your feet, you've wasted years of productivity and probably permanently harmed your health.
Or you could live in a society where the government actually looks after its people. Yeah, you'll earn a bit less money because the government takes some to pay for all those lazy freeloaders getting expensive medical treatments, but you won't go broke trying to survive when you (or your kid, or your parent...) find yourself in the hospital. Instead, society will support you too, and when you're back on your feet you'll still be financially stable and able to resume contributing to society. Your *personal* contributions to this pool may never amount to what your treatment cost (in which case you, personally, came out ahead) or they might (if, say, you go on to develop something really significant), but society will still be better off in the long run than if they let you lie there in that ditch.
It costs less to provide housing to the chronically homeless than it costs the city to deal with the expenses of them living on the street, did you know that?
Who has the biggest Koch? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure people realize how much money is needed.
Re: (Score:3)
[citation needed]
Yeah, you've got nothing.
Re:Who has the biggest Koch? (Score:4, Informative)
Here's a list of the biggest donors over the past 25 years: https://www.opensecrets.org/or... [opensecrets.org] The top group did support democrats (at $100 million). The second highest also went mostly to Democrats (at $61 million, and it wasn't entirely to democrats - 81% to Democrats, 19% to Republicans). Those numbers are the TOTAL donations over the past 25 years. Keep those numbers in mind for context. What about Republican donors?
"this list does not include casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. He and his wife Miriam donated nearly $93 million in 2012 alone to conservative super PACs — enough to put him at No. 2 on this list."
In other words, Sheldon Adelson *alone* has almost topped the highest donation to democrats, and he almost did that in a single election.
How about the Koch brothers? "They have donated more than $196 million to dozens of free-market and advocacy organizations." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P... [wikipedia.org]
One Issue, or Many? (Score:5, Insightful)
Thatâ(TM)s the basic idea behind a super PAC launching Thursday that wants to destroy super PACs for good. The Mayday PAC, as itâ(TM)s called, seeks to raise enough money to sway five House elections in 2014 and elect representatives who have committed to pressing for serious reform of the campaign finance system.
Is that the only issue that they will press for? Or will they also be required to support Lawrence's position on gun regulation, or any of his other issues? I am all for campaign finance reform and would happily give large to the cause, but I don't support everything Mr. Lessig does, and I'm not sure I believe he has the self-discipline to keep his other issues out of his PAC. I'd love to see five campaign finance reformers elected, but despite my respect for him, I would not want five Lawrence Lessig clones.
Re:One Issue, or Many? (Score:5, Informative)
And indeed, you can direct your pledge to be used only to support members of one political party if you wish. We don't get as granular as issue-by-issue, but when you pledge, there is a targeting dropdown menu. That targeting dropdown menu allows you to choose from { Whatever Helps, Democrats Only, Republicans Only }
If you pledge your money to Republicans only, it is statistically very unlikely that they would be for gun control.
I don't agree with Prof. Lessig on all the issues either, but that's the point. No matter what side of the debate you fall upon, you have to make sure that this issue is fixed first, otherwise the decisions made will be those that are in the funders' best interests, not the peoples' best interest.
— Brian Boyko
—CTO, MayDay.US
Soo... (Score:4, Insightful)
He's going to use the, so-called, corrupt system to change the laws to prevent himself from ever doing this again?
I dunno... why not kickstart a super-PAC that would buy candidates that does something productive? Like hire candidates who will restore our rights per the 4th amendment, stop the drug war, stop punitive taxation...yadda, yadda...
No no... gotta use the loophole to close the loophole..
Asking the wrong questions (Score:5, Insightful)
Anybody who wants to ban corporate political speech needs to carefully study similar reforms in India, where about 1/3 of national political candidates are under criminal indictment (and 3% of sitting members of their congress) for campaign finance crimes. Despite what some will claim here, that is notand improvement.
The problem isn't corporate money in campaign finances, the problem is stupid, lazy voters who can't be bothered to find out what or what they're voting for, and just doing what the Magic Box in their living room tells them to. And no amount of campaign finance reform will ever fix that.
Re:Asking the wrong questions (Score:5, Interesting)
We can do this without banning anyone from speaking or spending money to speak, by creating viable alternatives to fundraising that don't involve members of Congress and candidates for Congress spending 30%-70% of their time on the phones raising money from a pool of about 150,000 Americans, who represent private interests. We're interested in reforms like the ones passed in Connecticut where no speech was restricted, but an alternative viable method of fundraising through small-dollar donations was implemented.
-- Brian Boyko
-- CTO, MayOne.US
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so you're telling me that in India 33% of the political CANDIDATES are under indictment for campaign finance infractions, and only 3% of the sitting members of congress are as well?
call me crazy but those numbers sound pretty damn good compared to 100% being up to no good 100% of the time and quietly legalizing any behavior that looks too obviously corrupt.
that actually sounds like a system that is working by comparison
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There are two possibilities with a plan like that:
1) Everybody, and I mean everybody becomes a candidate, and hires their friends to milk the system for every penny it's worth. Instant government bankruptcy. Or
2) Somebody will have to decide who is, and isn't, a "legitimate" candidate. That somebody will be . . . the people currently in charge. Which is to say, your "reform" would make real reform literally impossible, ever, short of violent revolution.
Nice job, Tex. You've solved all the world's problems i
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Nice "excluded middle" fallacy, buddy. You're not really interested in solving the problem, just bitching about it. Whatever.
A simple solution would be to require a certain number of signatures to get on the ballot. I expect a smart person could come up with a number of other possible solutions to that problem, at which point people like you will say "but there's this other problem you haven't thought of yet, THEREFORE WE SHOULD DO NOTHING".
Re:Asking the wrong questions (Score:4, Interesting)
We tried something similar in Canada, only individuals can contribute with a limit of about $1000 and public campaign financing based on results from the last election. Worked until the Conservatives got a majority, then the first thing they did was get rid of the public campaign financing in the name of fiscal responsibility and now through the "Fair Elections Act" they're trying to introduce loopholes, take power away from Elections Canada (traditionally non-partisan) to investigate campaign spending amongst other things including educating people about voting and a bunch of other crap to disenfranchise a good number of citizens.
Sounds suspiciously like the current system (Score:2)
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Yes, you're missing something. Right now, the only way to influence policy is by writing big checks, and they are accepting this as a given. The idea is to write a big check to influence policy in such a way that will prohibit writing big checks to influence policy in the future.
Take them down from the inside? (Score:2)
No, once you are "inside" you are assimilated and become them.
End Corporate Personhood as well. (Score:3)
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Corporations aren't people, they're machines owned and steered by people: vehicles. My car doesn't have citizenship and neither should my corporation.
If you control a corporation and it's a "person" and has the rights of a person and you also act as yourself as a person, that's inherently unfair, because those of us who don't control corporations are only one "person" but the CEO (or whoever) is two "persons".
In reality, of course, it's worse, since a corporation is generally actually comprised of a lot of persons, but the corporate voice and actions aren't equally controlled by the persons in the corporation, only the ones in control. Which is, for exam
How does this fix anything? (Score:3)
Once you buy them out, then what? How will you change the law? They will balk at not being able to receive such funding in the future, esp if your success hinged on the biggest buyout in history. The moment your funding is spent and they're back to business as usual, congress will undo those laws just enough to let funding trickle through again.
The fundamental problem with washington politics (and really, world politics) is that it is more interested in compromise than it is in making correct decisions. Not rocking the boat and risking their 'careers' is of higher concern than treating their positions as duties like they're supposed to. As a result, few politicians nowadays have the testicular fortitude and backbone to LEAD; to make unilateral decisions when the situation calls for it. It's the only way to break the vicious cycle of passive aggressive fallacious attacks that make up the bulk of the 'political process.'
Good luck. You'll need it. The mention of TED however makes me wonder this is just another left wing power grab, same as it might be a neocon power grab if this came from the heritage foundation.
Been there - Done That (Score:3)
http://www.colbertsuperpac.com... [colbertsuperpac.com]
At least the commercials were funny.
A logical flaw (Score:5, Interesting)
If the RIAA, for example, spent $10 million last year on lobbyists, it wasn't because they only had $10 million to spend -- it's because they only needed to spend $10 million to get the results they wanted. If they have to spend more, they will.
Re:what a waste (Score:5, Insightful)
Elections are bought. The general public doesn't have the same cash appeal as single, large sources of money. When properly bribed with campaign contributions, politicians will do what they were paid to do.
elections are bought (Score:5, Insightful)
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And here's a man trying to BUY THEM BACK. Get off your asses and HELP HIM.
But that's the problem. This isn't happening in a vacuum.
At the same time Lessig is trying to buy politicians, a few other organizations who have far more money than Lessig could ever hope to raise, are also buying politicians to do what THEY want.
Re:elections are bought (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine this: A poor person goes to an auction where they sell something that some rich people really want with the sole intent of taking it away from the rich people. The poor person claims to not really want the item, but only wants it so the rich people won't have it. What do you suppose will happen?
What will happen is, the rich people will bid as much as they have to, knowing that the poor people just don't have enough money to win the auction.
Who will win here? The congressional whores will be rolling in money, the poor will be poorer, and the rich will have exactly what they have always had.
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Depends on where they spend it. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Right, and HIS idea was the stupid one...
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Ever think, maybe, the point of the education system from Day 1 is to interfere in your ability to do this? It seems custom made for such a purpose...
It was (Score:4, Informative)
That said, a well educated populace can and will learn to think for itself. It's a by product of the education process. You can't really have one without the other, and China's starting to have problems with their middle class as a result...
Re:elections are bought (Score:5, Insightful)
You are basically advocating violent overthrown of the government, a.k.a. treason - "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them..." which is NOT going to convince a lot of people to join your side. Sure, you'll get the retards but having them in charge after the overthrow, assuming it all works out, would be even worse.
For all the flag-waving Constitution spouting anti-current-government rhetorical BS that gets thrown around here, you fundamentally can't have it both ways. You can't declare the Constitution perfect and the Founding Fathers all geniuses and things would be so much better if we'd just follow it to the letter, and ignore the fact that lobbyists and the money in politics and even political parties themselves were STUFF THEY DIDN'T FORSEE that is currently screwing things up. And the ugly truth is lobbyists have a first amendment right to advocate for their position - the fact they are better funded and more organized than a bunch of keyboard online ranting jihadists in their mom's basement isn't a fault of the system. The 1st Amendment says (paraphased) "Congress shall make no law abridging the right of the people to petition the government". Not "except the ones you don't agree with" or "except the ones with more money and organization" or "but not the people who do it professionally a.k.a. get paid a.k.a. lobbyists" or "not when their point of view makes me butthurt".
Think of it this way, gun nuts: what if lobbyists defended their right to petition the government as much as gun-tards defend their 2nd Amendment right to bear arms?
That is the ongoing clusterfuck of money in politics.
So man up and organize, exactly like Lessig is trying to do. That's working WITH the system, which again so many radical-Republitardian-free-market-gun-flag-waving-freedom-liberty-self-reliance-antitax ooze out of their pores constantly. Except when they don't agree, THEN its OK to throw the whole thing out amirite? You get everything you want OR violent overthrow? Democracy ONLY serves your interests? Fuck you.
Re: elections are bought (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:elections are bought (Score:5, Informative)
> You are basically advocating violent overthrown of the government, a.k.a. treason -
You do realize that Jefferson said this right?
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
Which was interpreted to mean a revolution every generation:
"God forbid we should ever be 20. years without such a rebellion"
Here is the full context:
[1] This sentence has possibly been misquoted as "every generation needs a new revolution."
* http://wiki.monticello.org/med... [monticello.org]
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I only read part of your post but i think something needs pointed out.
The constitution has built with inself several processes to amend it. The founders, while they likely did not foresee things like lobyist, they did foresee the fact that they could not foresee eveeything. The follow the constitution crowd is generally fine with amendments as it follows the constitution. The problem we have is when it gets ignored because it doesn't fit someone's ideology with excuses like its old or they never could fores
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When a government becomes a tool to redistribute wealth, it is natural that people will spend money to prevent the products of their lives from being redistributed to someone else. That is the problem with huge government - it is merely a tool to take from one to give to another by the ballot box. Get the government out of that business and you'll get PACs out of the way too.
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When a government becomes a tool to redistribute wealth, it is natural that people will spend money to prevent the products of their lives from being redistributed to someone else. That is the problem with huge government - it is merely a tool to take from one to give to another by the ballot box. Get the government out of that business and you'll get PACs out of the way too.
Government has always been a tool to redistribute wealth, why else do the wealthy want it. Huge government just means that the poor can finance having their money redistributed to the wealthy.
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This is a stupid idea. Pick up your guns and start a revolution, or don't.
I wonder how many years until the man will hunt down the authors of posts like this and charge them with sedition.
And sad to say, I think that the new millennium government has a track record saying this is likely a "when", not an "if". Today, the tin foil hat wearers are those who believe in the government and agencies.
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I think that there's probably a way to regain control of our country with destroying the world economy.
Re:elections are bought (Score:4)
I think that there's probably a way to regain control of our country with destroying the world economy.
It's only a matter of *who* will crash the Dollar - OPEC, non-aligned petro-states, The Federal Reserve ("neither Federal nor with any reserves"), Germany (gold), bitcoin, Americans, etc. Bretton Woods is no longer meaningful.
Better for it to be done in an orderly fashion, but if it's not, it'll be done is a disorderly fashion. Oh - don't keep your retirement account in USD, m'kay?
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STOP FUCKING SHOPPING.
You go live in your hippy commune. I'm going to live in a modern society where I shop for stuff I like.
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In the meantime the world economy collapses and we'll end up with the rich and powerful running things anyway, just differently.
That's a stupid idea, but unfortunately I don't know of a smart idea to handle this that's got a likelihood of succeeding.
Re:elections are bought (Score:5, Interesting)
Problem with a gun is that pretty soon every problem starts to look like a target.
It sounds like you think it was ever your country to begin with. This is a country that was born as a plutocratic slave state. The only part people like you or I were supposed to have is to work long hours for low wages and STFU. The only reason there's anything like a notion that we have a right to a decent life and a say in things is because a riot that took place on a bridge in Chicago this week back in 1886 sparked a labor movement that ended up with a middle and working class that could expect to live with a little dignity and create lives for their kids that were a little better than the ones they had. The spearhead of the movement to take all that away was a prick with ears named "Reagan" who got to be president on the strength of his dyed hair and acting skill (not unlike a certain prick with bigger ears who sits in the same chair today). There's an effort zooming through the halls of power today to put something called the "TPP" in place that will grind what little remains of a middle class to dust for good and all.
See, the idea is to take the money out of politics, not out of our own pockets. I have no beef with the family that owns the produce market over on Cermak Rd, and I don't have a beef with the guy who just wrote a book I want to read. I don't have a beef with the millionaire that owns the lumber yard or even the billionaire that owns my local hockey team. More importantly, I don't have a beef with the people who work for them.
Now I'm all for strategic consumption, and strikes for all that matter, but it only works if everybody does it at once. It's why my wife and I live walking distance from our work, so we don't have to consume gasoline, and why I'm wearing a nice warm sweatshirt on this 44 degree Chicago night instead of turning the heat on. It's why I make an effort to stay healthy instead of feeding a pharmaceutical industry and it's why I engage in any one of a few dozen boycotts of certain companies (there are almost always options). Hell, it's fun not to buy shit. It's really a pleasure to cruise past a Mobile station on my bike and it's a pleasure not to have a car payment and to live in a house that's paid off when all the much wealthier people on my block have big-ass mortgages because they have to keep up some crazy lifestyle. I'm all for not shopping and only working as much as we need and only consuming what's important. But what's important is important.
A guy comes along, like Lessig, with a proven track record of doing effective things, it might be worth a shot. Maybe for the time being, keep the gun in its (hopefully) well-secured place.
It's better to light a candle than curse the SWAT team that's surrounding your house, waiting for you to commit suicide by cop.
I'm sorry I got off on this rant. I celebrated International Workers Day with a toast to my dad and granddad and all my uncles who were union men (railroad, teamsters, machinists, plumbers and one teacher), who took great personal risk to make sure that working for a living meant you actually got to live with a tiny measure of dignity. And one turned into two, which is about three times my usual limit.
Re:Uh, that doesn't work (Score:4, Insightful)
and I wish people would stop deluding themselves that it does. A bunch of untrained or moderately guys with AR-15s don't stand a chance against a modern military. That's sorta why we didn't lose in Iraq.
Do you think members of the US military will follow orders to shoot their countrymen?
The US government doesn't. That's why they made a treaty with Canada, that if Canada has a revolution, American solders will be sent to quell it, and if America has a revolution, Canadian solders will be sent to quell it.
With the right indoctrination, you can teach a man that his enemy is not human. But most people don't like shooting their neighbours, and will go AWOL if you try to make them.
Re:Uh, that doesn't work (Score:5, Informative)
Do you think members of the US military will follow orders to shoot their countrymen?
Yes. [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That's not what happens. Obviously you weren't in the military. Would soldiers be brought in to "quell rioting"? Sure, look at Katrina.
Do you think many civilians would shoot at their own soldiers? I don't.
What do you think would happen if american civilians fired on US soldiers?
Here's a hint. Go look at ogrish. Anyone who was over there (Iraq, Afghanistan) knows we didn't fuck with anyone unless they shot at us first. (I was Army, not Blackwater.)
Sure we'd probably extract to avoid a massacre. Bu
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So, why did they make the treaty then, do you suppose?
Oh, go on, what treaty is this anyway?
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...Actually, I THINK we may be able to give 'em a run for the money
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Doing nothing certainly isn't going to fix it.... It IS a lot easier though. :/
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Re:What is the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
The ONLY way to have serious reform that sticks is to...
1) Make sure Clinton gets into office in 2016, ...
If you really believe this is the answer, you are deluded. She is a machine politician all the way. Note that saw was Romney and McCane, so this is not partisan...
Re:What is the point? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What is the point? (Score:4, Interesting)
Anytime Congress passes serious reform, it gets struck down by a conservative Supreme Court that has no interest in reform and literally equates money with speech. The ONLY way to have serious reform that sticks is to...
1) Make sure Clinton gets into office in 2016, so she can appoint liberal judges once luddites and philistines like Scalia and Thomas are gone / die off.
2) Focus on an amendment to the Constitution that SPECIFICALLY says money is not speech for purposes of law.
That is it. Nothing else will do, because it will be OVERTURNED. Why is this so hard to understand, Lessig?
Sorry, you're wrong on many points but for the moment I'm only going to answer the cash != speech point. Money is speech when it is used to promote a political view. There simply is no other rational way to say it. The only reason the Left, of which you would appear to be one, are butt hurt about Citizens United is that the case has the effect of putting the Right on more equal footing with the Left's propaganda machine in the form of the majority of the media.
It was all good when Unions and various Left wing groups and causes could scream in the echo chamber but once CU broke the echo chamber and everyone could play now it is a bad thing. I'd think true Liberals, in theory those in favor of liberty one would imagine, would have cheered the ability for anyone to band together and form a PAC to promote their interests.
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Re:What is the point? (Score:5, Interesting)
This has nothing to do with the tea party. If you are a rich person who wants to spend his money on advocating for a particular political cause by buying tv spots, printing signs, etc, I don't see how a free society can make this illegal.
Money is not speech. Money is money. But forbidding someone from spending their own money on bringing their message to more people is a limiting their freedom of speech.
If, for example, someone tried to destroy baseball by making it illegal to purchase all baseball equipment. They might say, I'm not limiting people's freedom to play baseball, I am only regulating how people spend their money. Money isn't baseball. It's trivially true that money isn't baseball. Preventing people from spending their own money on baseball equipment is nonetheless a limitation on people's freedom to play baseball.
"Money is speech" is a trivially false statement if taken literally and is different than "Freedom of speech entails the freedom to spend your money own money on spreading your message". I think it's unfortunate that this is how the debate is framed (or rather misframed), because it discourages people from examining the real issue, and encourages them to simply take a straw man position without realizing it.
I am not in the tea party. I have problems with the citizens united ruling as it pertains to the personhood of corporations, but this oversimplification of "Money != speech" I find very disturbing.
Re:What is the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
The wealthy will remain perfectly Free to shout from the street corner like everyone else. Giving huge sums of money to OTHER people for political speech is poisoning the political process.
The public does not owe the wealthy large chunks of spectrum, airtime or even billboard space just because they have a lot of money on offer.
Re:What is the point? (Score:5, Interesting)
If you think Hillary Clinton is going to do anything beyond furthering the status quo, you're dreaming. Even if you wanted liberal judges, there are lots of people who would do a far better job than Hillary Clinton.
She is a dishonest person willing to lie, and mislead for personal gain. Remember when she circulated pictures of Obama in a "muslim outfit" to get racist democrats to vote for her in the primary? Remember when she claimed that she was under sniper fire in bosnia to try to inflate her foreign policy credentials?
I am not religious, but I will be praying that she does not win the democratic nomination for 2016.
If we want real change, we'll stop voting for the lesser of 2 evils, and break out of this democrat vs. republican false dichotomy. Surely this is easier than a constitutional amendment to stop people from spending their own money how they see fit.
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She's gonna be president. Deal with it. She's going to slaughter any Democrat stupid enough to enter the primaries against her, and the teatard party is preparing to send out idiots like Rick "Hipster-Glasses" Perry and Rand Paul against her. Or maybe they might do something even sillier like have Jeb Bush run. That will be amusing.
No, our next president is almost certainly going to be Clinton.
Re:What is the point? (Score:5, Interesting)
I might vote for Hillary over some person typical dumb hypocrite republican if I lived in a swing state, but let me pose this suggestion:
If you don't live in a swing state, a vote for the lesser of 2 evils doesn't really come with a benefit. I live in california. We haven't been a swing state in a long time. I very much preferred Obama to McCain, but I felt quite free in voting for a someone that was not going to continue the wars in iraq and afghanistan without any guilt that I was adversely affecting the outcome of the election.
I think it's important to vote for something other than the status quo, especially when your vote doesn't really matter in terms of deciding the winner. None of my votes have ever really mattered in this way, and therefore every vote I have every cast has not been for the winner. Luckily it's not a horse race.
In the San Diego mayoral race, my vote probably did have a pretty good chance of counting, but I was so disgusted with both candidates that I wrote in "None of the above", even though there was no spot to write someone in. I made my own "write in spot" filled in my "none of the above" and checked it.
I don't know how productive this was, but it sure made me feel better than voting for either candidate or simply not voting.
Re:What is the point? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm glad to hear someone else pointing this out too. :-)
A secondary benefit to this strategy is that if enough people follow it, if everyone in swing states started voting their true choices instead of buying into the two-party horse-race, because their votes didn't matter anyway, then their votes would start to matter. E.g. if we assume there's a lot of Californians who prefer Democrats over Republicans but would really prefer Greens, and they all start voting that way because their votes don't make a difference since the Democrat is a shoe-in anyway, then the Democrats would be weakened and the Greens would become a viable party and now suddenly it really matters who you vote for. You might (as a left-leaning voter) say that would actually be a bad outcome because then the Republicans might win California, but if the right side of the spectrum was doing the same thing meanwhile (e.g. if a lot of Californians who prefer Republicans over Democrats would really prefer Libertarians over either, and started voting Libertarian cause it's not like the Republican was going to win anyway), you could get an actual contested election with multiple viable options and a third party could possibly win the state.
I really wish the various third parties would get together and run a series of ad campaigns in election season targeting would-be third-party voters in swings states telling them "[Liberals/conservatives] of [state], [shoe-in candidate] is in all probably going to win [state] no matter who you vote for. So why waste your vote on [them/their major-party opponent] if that's not who you'd really prefer? Why not vote for [short list of prominent third-party candidates aligned with target audience] instead? They're even more [liberal/conservative] than [shoe-in candidate / their major-party opponent], and a vote for them will bring attention to the issues you really care about like [issues the major parties are neglecting]. Vote third party this election and make your vote count!"
12 years of Clinton in the White House got us here (Score:3)
Clinton spent 12 years in the White House and this is where we ended up. No thanks. I hear that another Bush may be running - I think I'll pass on the too.
As to CU, so your proposal is that citizens can speak orally, as long as they don't use amicrophone, but cannot make Xerox copies of anything or make a web site, signs, etc. without prior government approval, correct? If you had a blog and paid $35 / for hosting, that would be money, not speech, right? CU was making videos. The government claimed tha
Then the one you want is Wolf PAC (Score:3)
Wolf PAC is working to get the states to call for a convention to pass an amendment saying that corporations do not have the rights of people and limiting the amount of money that a politician can raise from any person or entity.
Wolf PAC [wolf-pac.com]
Re:What is the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes Hillary Clinton is a liar.... But Benghazi? seriously? If ever there was an example of republicans trying to make a controversy out of essentially nothing, this is it.
One of the most corrupt administrations in US history? You must have a very short attention span.
I'm sure by the time we have another democrat president, that administration will be the most corrupt in US history. Have you ever heard of "The boy who cried wolf". These claims that the current administration is the most X in US history start to get pretty old especially when they are obviously false to anyone who has any sense of history.
And I will state for the record that I am not a democrat.
Re: (Score:3)
Yes Hillary Clinton is a liar.... But Benghazi? seriously? If ever there was an example of republicans trying to make a controversy out of essentially nothing, this is it.
I visited foxnews.com for the first time in quite a while. Benghazi was the #1 headline. Frankly, I'd forgotten about it. Things like a couple of hundred drowning Koreans, a hundred or so Malaysian airline passengers, an oil fire, floods, tornadoes wiping out people by the dozen, couple of dozen kidnapped girl students, Russia's hijunks in the Crimea and so forth, and the burning question of whether or not Hilary screwed up a year or so back and got a couple of people killed just didn't seem to be able to k