We Did It!

https://mayday.us/2014/07/04/WeDidIt/

by frostmatthew • 12 years ago

112 23 12 years ago

mayday.us

ramigb2• 12 years ago

You did what??

imron• 12 years ago

The impossible, and that makes them mighty.

Edit: For those downvoting, I was just quoting the article (I realise this was perhaps not the best quote, but felt it was the one most fitting given the question).

ramigb2• 12 years ago

The downvotes that you got and i got are something normal, internet trolls are everywhere, although i asked a real 100% valid question, the title of this post and the first couple of paragraphs didn't give me a background about why this is in the front page, those who downvoted me obviously thought i was trolling so they whipped out their swords and fought like real knights ... dumb motherfuckers.

pedalpete• 12 years ago

I like the irony of raising money to "reduce the influence of money in politics".

At the same time, well done. $5 Billion dollars raised is an incredible feat. I'm not American, but hopefully if they are successful in actually implementing the changes they propose, other countries will follow suit.

My concern is that if corporate $$ buys less influence in Washington, it might enable them to buy more influence in other places (eg. Canada), and that corporate influence could have a negative effect not only on Canada itself, but retaliatory effects on the US. Think if the Oil industry doesn't get it's way in the US, they start influencing Canadian policy to not ship Canadian oil (or less of it) to the US, resulting in a cost spike for the states. Similar things could happen with other natural resources.

But well done for Lawrence Lessig and the rest of the MayDay gang. As he states, this is just the beginning of a very challenging and amazing initiative.

bennettfeely• 12 years ago

*million dollars, a little correction

yowmamasita• 12 years ago

$5 Million

kennywinker• 12 years ago

$5 Million. With an M. Hopefully that's a typo on your part ;)

Could be true. Not to say Canada's campaign financing is perfect.. it is not. But we don't have Super PACs, which is nice.

smsm426• 12 years ago

I was really surprised for a second. 5 billion raised is a huge sum which would mean either mass contributions from extremely wealthy individuals or that pretty much everybody is US chipped in. 5 million though is less than 1% of what was spent on presidential elections alone by each side (Obama side spent 779M, Romney side 704M [1]). This is not counting what is being spent in congressional, state, local, etc. elections and what is being spent on one-issue campaigns. For example, just prop 8 campaign in California took 70M [2].

I am not sure what exactly these guys plan to do (my conviction is any law compatible with the First Amendment can not prevent political spending as public speech on national scale costs a lot of money and content-based regulations on such speech to exclude political speech are in direct contradiction with current understanding of First Amendment both by the courts and the public) and their descriptions are very vague ("agnostic about the specific legislation") - I don't think 5 million is going to take them too far. They might support some candidates from the left that already campaign on the issue of "big money stole our politics" (while taking big money like everybody else of course) but those guys were already for it anyway, and I don't think you can tip too many congressional elections with 5 million. We'll see I guess.

[1] http://www.cnbc.com/id/49550998/ [2] http://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_8,_the_%22Elim...

dbloom• 12 years ago

Just to be clear: they raised $5 million, not $5 billion. (I think the original commenter mixed up the two)

dangoor• 12 years ago

The most recent bills that I saw Lessig speaking in favor of provided candidates with public funding that was equivalent to what they could get from the PACs and gave voters vouchers that they could give to the candidate of their choice who agreed to the public funding.

It's compatible with the idea that super PACs are legal, but provides a more voter-friendly alternative source of funding.

slantedview• 12 years ago

Lessig's last e-mail: http://pastebin.com/AUdh8Dav

matias-a• 12 years ago

Not from the US, but I wanted to congratulate everyone involved in this historic event. I think it is inspiring, apart from being inherently relevant worldwide.

onewaystreet• 12 years ago

A couple years too late. With the two Supreme Court decisions there really are no reforms that can stop Super PACs in any meaningful way.

smsm426• 12 years ago

You think if this happened earlier the Supreme Court would have different view on the First Amendment? The SC has powers to overturn any legislation, including one proposed by people supported by this campaign. Short of FDR-style tricks I don't see how you could overcome that.

dragonwriter3• 12 years ago

"Legislation" initiated by Congress isn't limited to statutes, it can include Constitutional Amendments.

We Did It!

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