Topic: Pledge to support MAYDAY PAC to end the power of money in American politics (Read 2482 times)

Dark Money Behind Campaign Finance Reform Push

A liberal campaign finance reformer with ties to one of the left’s leading dark money outfits succeeded last week in raising $5 million to elect politicians who will pledge to reduce the influence of money in the American political process.

While Lawrence Lessig and others work to present the effort of his group, Mayday PAC, as bipartisan and politically neutral, Lessig’s most recent efforts as well as his past work with leading liberal activists and financiers suggest a more esoteric agenda.

Lessig pitched wealthy donors in the tech community last week on the utility of restricting corporate political speech, saying their political agenda would be much easier to advance if opposing forces were restricted from influencing the political process.

“We have no protection for network neutrality because of the enormous influence of cable companies’ money in the political system,” he told TechCrunch. “If NN is your issue, then this is why you should see that politic$ is your issue too.”

Net neutrality, the concept that internet service providers must provide the same level of bandwidth for all types of content, is a controversial issue. Many technology companies and Silicon Valley venture capitalists—a number of which are financially supporting Mayday—could benefit financially from such measures.

Lessig insists that his group is not simply advancing the financial interests of its donors, the precise practice that he claims to be combatting.

It is “ironic” that Mayday is spending millions to elect politicians in an effort to get money out of politics, according to the group’s website. “Embrace the irony.”

Mayday has raised more than $7 million for its electoral efforts, according to the website.

Lessig has been explicit about the ideological nature of his campaign finance reform position. Liberal political ideas would prevail, he insists, but for the ability of their detractors to spend money opposing those ideas.

Lessig took a similar tack with respect to climate energy policy. Environmentalists, Lessig said in 2012, spent “hundreds of millions of dollars … to get global warming legislation, and they got nothing.”

“If money didn’t buy results in Washington,” he said, environmentalists would have been able to achieve their goals by injecting substantially less money into the political process.

“They begin to think, jeez, one-tenth, you know, one-twentieth of what we actually deployed would have been enough to educate … lobby, uh, policymakers to get them to the right position,” he added.

That attitude towards campaign finance reform as a means to advance a left-of-center agenda is seemingly at odds with efforts by Lessig and others to present reform effort as politically and ideologically neutral.

Lessig is an adviser to the Fund for the Republic (FFR), a campaign finance reform outfit that has worked in recent years to couch its agenda in bipartisan terms and to attempt to court conservative and Republican supporters.

Lessig signed on in 2011, when United Republic, then FFR’s 501(c)(4) arm, acquired Rootstrikers, an activist group that at the time boasted roughly 275,000 members.

Over the next few years, FFR worked to promote its message among conservatives. It hired a “Republican chief investment officer” and a “Republican strategist” in an effort “to increase bipartisan work.”

Those hires were noted prominently in promotional materials provided this year to members of the Democracy Alliance, a shadowy left-wing dark money outfit that works to elect Democratic candidates and promote a liberal policy agenda.

The Democracy Alliance network plans to spend $374 million advancing liberal political and policy efforts during the 2014 election cycle, even as it supports groups, such as FFR, that decry the corrosive influence of money in politics.

“We value those DA members who support us, as we do many other donors—both foundations and individuals—who believe that rebalancing American democracy is everyone’s cause (not just for liberals),” said FFR spokeswoman Leigh Beasley in an emailed statement.

Beasley noted that FFR goes “above and beyond what most organizations do to disclose our (c)3 and (c)4 donors. Per our disclosure policy, we provide the names of any donor who gives $250 or more upon request.”

Beasley also noted that the Alliance does not, as an organization, donate money to FFR. It is not institutionally responsible for donations to any of its supported organizations.

Instead, the Alliance connects effective liberal organizations with high dollar donors, who then contribute directly to those organizations. To the extent that those organizations disclose their donors – and many do not – the Democracy Alliance’s name never appears as part of the transaction.

That means that many hoped-for campaign finance regulations, such as spending restrictions and disclosure requirements on 501(c)(4) groups, would not directly affect the Alliance’s transparency or operations.

The Democracy Alliance materials detail FFR’s efforts to “engage 25 conservatives identified as being pro-[campaign finance] reform to act as advisory committee for establishment of Conservative Lighthouse for Reform,” a project designed to make a right-of-center case for such reforms.

However, the Democracy Alliance document, designed to promote FFR and 20 other DA-supported organizations to its ranks of high-dollar liberal donors, portrays the group as explicitly advancing a liberal ideological agenda, notwithstanding its conservative outreach efforts.

“Given the Right’s limitless ability to pour money into elections and influence policy, FFR and [its 501(c)(4) arm] work to engage more donors and organizations in the money in politics fight is critical,” Democracy Alliance noted.

According to the DA documents, 14 Alliance “partners” provided $1.39 million in financing for FFR and its sister organization last year. The Alliance hopes to increase that support to $1.6 million this year, which would amount to more than a third of its projected budget.

The Republican outreach described in the DA documents may also be less bipartisan than it appears. They tout Kahlil Byrd, FFR’s new CIO, as a Republican, but his resume suggests more malleable political allegiances.

Byrd was previously the communications director for Massachusetts Democrat Deval Patrick’s gubernatorial campaign, according to his LinkedIn page. After Patrick was elected Byrd served as his director of appointments.

http://freebeacon.com/politics/dark-money-behind-campaign-finance-reform-push/

Does he also propose to get the union money out of politics as well? How about Soros's billions?

Q&A with the Harvard law professor raising millions to end financial political corruption


Harvard law Professor Lawrence Lessig is out to raise millions of dollars to end financial political corruption. With enough money, he believes he can create a political action committee (PAC) that wins enough congressional elections to make campaign finance reform a top issue.

http://venturebeat.com/2014/07/04/qa-with-the-harvard-law-professor-raising-millions-to-end-financial-political-corruption/

If $$$ corrupts absolutely how can we believe his (superPAC) will be untouchable, white as snow with his 5M?

Make the donations in bitcoin only. Make all the transactions transparent. Then, maybe his concept will have legs.

I like this packing May Day better....



 

So for him to fight $$$ he needs people to send him $$$ so he will represent them with their $$$. Isn't what we already have?

How about an injection from Ron Paul's biggest funder? (http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2012/02/investor_peter_thiel_is_the_billionaire_behind_ron_paul_s_presidential_campaign_.html)

Peter Thiel has contributed $150,000 to Mayday PAC (so far): http://venturebeat.com/2014/06/08/can-crowdfunding-end-the-corrupt-influence-of-money-in-u-s-politics-1-5m-in-donations-say-yes/

You may also have heard of Mayday supporter, Steve Wozniak.

This big money exists on both sides of the isle and goes towards establishment candidates. It is a worthy effort but this dynamic of big money vs the grassroots/liberty element is going on mostly in GOP primaries. If there's matching funds going on here, clearly there's big money in good hands right now that should be leveraged in an already existing battle of electing liberty republicans over the chamber of commerce republicans (democrat lite in only certain instances, otherwise the same or worse). Similarly, get active in your local and state GOPs as precinct delegates; that way you can attend county, district and state conventions to determine the party leadership (state and local), state cmte members and your Nat'l cmte members that go to the RNC. Also, pass resolutions to hold nominating sessions at state conventions so your nominees (US Senate, Congress, statewide) are picked by internal party delegates and not by democrats voting in GOP primaries (the recent US Senate campaign in MS where the incumbent payed democrats to vote for him against the liberty/tea party favorite, McDaniel) or by allowing this big establishment money to buy off low info voters at the last minute during these charade primaries. My .02$ but worthy advice as that's what many active liberty movement people are  focusing on between now and 2016 when Rand runs.

Jason Alexander (advocate of "gun control" aka disarming only innocents for criminals' safety) is listed as a supporter, so it's going to need a Ron Paul injection to make any self-respecting libertarian give a shit...

I found this on posted in the comments of Zerohedge... http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-04/give-me-liberty
Anyways... The MAYDAY PAC take bitcoin donations.  

Here is the comment, I'm just going to copy and paste, because I'm lazy.

To the Americans in the audience:

What we have now is a plutocracy, not a democracy.  Our Republic has been hijacked by the 0.1% elite.

Our political system is a pay-to-play racket where the popular will no longer matters.  Money is now the determinate factor for decision making.  It was never supposed to be this way but our equally hijacked SCOTUS thinks otherwise.

This country is in ruins only it doesn't know it yet.

Dear ZH fans, help America return to the democratic republic it once was.  Are you sending money to progressive or conservative or populist causes?  STOP!

Make your money count.  Pledge to support Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Lessig's MAYDAY PAC to end the power of money in politics: Go to the MAYDAY PAC website and make a donation!

https://mayday.us/newpledge/?utm_source=All+Supporters+List&utm_campaign...

Wiki:

Mayday PAC began in May 2014.[2] Its long-term goal is to raise sufficient funds to elect a majority in the House and 60 senators to vote for fundamental reform of the system of campaign finance, according to Lessig.[3]

Yes, we want to spend big money to end the influence of big money... Ironic, I get it. But embrace the irony.
—Lawrence Lessig in May 2014[2]
The fund-raising plan is a variation on traditional crowd funding approaches in that specified fund-raising targets must be met by certain dates.[10] Lessig explained that the immediate goal is to raise enough money to sway five elections to Congress.[4] He said:

We’ve structured this as a series of matched-contingent goals. We’ve got to raise $1 million in 30 days; if we do, we’ll get that $1 million matched. Then we’ve got to raise $5 million in 30 days; if we do, we’ll get that $5 million matched as well. If both challenges are successful, then we’ll have the money we need to compete in 5 races in 2014. Based on those results, we’ll launch a (much much) bigger effort in 2016 — big enough to win.
—Lessig, May 2014[10]