Show HN: We made a site to crowd fund lobbying.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3510173

by sankho • 15 years ago

50 28 15 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Hey guys,

So we made this site with the goal of funding a lobbyist to represent the 99%. The money comes from small pledges of $5 and up. So far we've raised nearly $10k in under a week. We're focusing fund raising efforts on causes.

I'm the founder and lead developer, and I'd love to hear this community's thoughts on the project as well as answer any questions.

Thanks guys!

http://www.wethelobby.com/

DevX101• 15 years ago

You should lobby to limit the influence of lobbying. Seriously.

sankho9• 15 years ago

Well, last night Obama did urge congress to write legislation in that vein... so if there is legislation proposed, feel free to submit that as a cause on our site!

mapster• 15 years ago

that will become a Supreme Court ruling, and based on recent trends, lobbying will continue to be Constitutionally legal. If there was a watchdog agency like SEC, that would be a start.

teeray• 15 years ago

Clickable: http://www.wethelobby.com/

zipizap3• 15 years ago

I'm portuguese (not a USA citizen), and I spend and send my own money to support investigations against lobby, bribery, political-corruption, and such parasite-fenomenons that deter democracy. Do that instead, and I'll fund you. It would even be funny, as private investigators could be contracted, and the reports could be released in internet, as if were episodes of a serie - it could also be amusing!

zipizap3• 15 years ago

..."and I would spend and send"...

sankho9• 15 years ago

Firstly, once lobbying efforts begin we do intend to post video updates as often as possible.

We don't feel that lobbying is inherently evil - it is just unbalanced and mis-guided. We wish to cast an example of how lobbying can be positive, as well as provide an argument for it's need to be regulated and more closely watched.

The general constituency of a democracy should not have to pool money just to be heard by it's government, but the current lack of regulations over gov't lobbying have forced the hand of the people.

zipizap3• 15 years ago

I understand your noble efforth to go in as a player to change the vicious-game, but be aware that the "adversaries" have much more money to put in (by orders of magnitude), and so in that game, they lead by advantage... Also, the "corporate" player offers more money/media-support/carreer-influence/discretion, so I undestand that for a corrupt politician, it can be hard to turn your back at "corporate", even if by a bigger (one-time) amount of money... But I just cannot shake from my head the absurdity of the reality: citizens pay taxes for politicians to govern the country in their interest, and now again would have to re-pay for lobbying ?!? Would not be easier to fight corruption and lobby in a stroke? It will have to happen sooner or later? Or would it go forever offering money for politicians to decide?

thinkcomp3• 15 years ago

We thought of doing this for PlainSite (http://www.plainsite.org) but unfortunately the law precludes it. We'd love to work with you though. aaron.greenspan at plainsite.org

kevs• 15 years ago

Could you elaborate why the law precludes it?

thinkcomp3• 15 years ago

Collecting money to transmit to a third party is money transmission and requires a license in 46 states + Washington, D.C.

http://www.plainsite.org/issues/index.html?id=1

kevination• 15 years ago

Isn't this what PACs are for?

sankho9• 15 years ago

To a point, but PACs are focused on a candidate or a specific cause. We The Lobby allows for multiple causes, and will not be defined as an organization by any one cause.

JayNeely• 15 years ago

Who's doing the actual lobbying? How are you ensuring accountability that the groups receiving the funds are advocating actively enough, and doing it in a way that you support (e.g. no backroom deals, future consulting jobs for politicians, negative ads)?

sankho9• 15 years ago

We are working on securing partners to receive the funding.

Lobbying firms are in fact by law transparent about their finances - but we will also draft agreements with any partners demanding transparency and analysis of any financial data be updated on the site, available to the public.

On top of this, we are setting up a system to update users on the activities of the lobbyists, where they will disclose what they've been up to.

As for "backroom deals" and the like - if you research lobbying, you'll find it's not quite as shady as it's made out to be. It's just controlled by one small portion of the population, which owns a majority of the wealth. We The Lobby wishes to balance that.

caller9• 15 years ago

I had been considering a site called "Rent A Rep" where you would donate money to a pool tied to an outcome of a vote. So a No vote on SOPA would have a pool. Once the votes were in, the Legislators voting that way would get a cut of the pool. Contribution limits would be at $100 and no companies could take part. With something so enraging as SOPA, the pool could get pretty huge.

Direct monetary democracy.

I dismissed the idea as too cynical and possibly illegal? A promise of monetary compensation for your vote is probably illegal. Monetary compensation with a suggestion of what the vote should be is completely different. The payment is not contingent on the action. I'm not sure that the money pool with no named recipient in advance abstracts that away enough.

sankho9• 15 years ago

While buying votes is probably illegal, I've had the same thought but instead of crowd funding to buy votes, we crowd fund to support politicians in elections, with one MAJOR stipulation -

Taking the money crowd funded means you can accept no other form of donations.

Just a thought, not related to We The Lobby, but perhaps a future project?

taphangum• 15 years ago

I don't know know what the legal issues associated with this are. But this is an excellent idea.

Mizza• 15 years ago

I applaud your effort, please open source your code! As the founder, you'll be too busy to keep the code flowing with all the other stuff to be done, and lots may want to help with this.

Also, this was an Onion article: http://www.theonion.com/articles/american-people-hire-highpo...

Life imitates satire.

sankho9• 15 years ago

You're not the first person to ask, and we are heavily considering putting it on GitHub soon. If you'd like to contribute when that happens, shoot an email over to contact@wethelobby.com so we can alert you.

In the vein of the Onion article, I hope you've been watching the hilarity of Colbert's super PAC.

r00fus• 15 years ago

> Life imitates satire.

The Onion stands on the precipice of prescience with their humor. I'm reminded of this article (note the date):

http://www.theonion.com/articles/bush-our-long-national-nigh...

newbusox• 15 years ago

As others have mentioned, if you don't have an attorney helping you with election law matters, I'd recommend hiring one or consulting with one. You really want to make sure you don't run afoul of election and campaign finance laws (there might be personal liability for you, if you do)--and, if you state that you do comply with these laws, you'll give people that donate a lot more faith that their money will actually be delivered to the correct groups. These laws all exist in a nebulous area which requires some time/effort to sift through.

I'm an attorney and, although I can't give you legal advice, I can try to steer you in the right direction, presuming you're not already in touch with a lawyer.

saizai• 14 years ago

I'm working on a related project: http://makeyourlaws.org / https://plus.google.com/100183759660923071401

Unlike PlainSite, it's open source and AGPL. Also some differences of approach which are hard to summarize here. Happy to collaborate with anyone interested.

andr3w321• 14 years ago

You should replace "K" with ,000 it's not clear that you're talking about dollars and not # of signatures or something.

Show HN: We made a site to crowd fund lobbying.

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