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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 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 12y ago
*million dollars, a little correction
yowmamasita 12y ago
$5 Million
kennywinker 12y 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.
smsm42 12y 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/ http://www.cnbc.com/id/49550998/ [2] http://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_8,_the_%22Eliminates_Right_of_Same-Sex_Couples_to_Marry%22_Initiative_(2008) http://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_8,_the_%22Elim...
- dbloom 12y ago
  Just to be clear: they raised $5 million, not $5 billion. (I think the original commenter mixed up the two)
  - kbaker 12y ago
    Also, they are receiving matching funding for the 5 million and the original 1 million raised, for a total of $12 million.
- dangoor 12y 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.
  - smsm42 12y ago
    1.5 billion of public funding? That's quite fat piece of change from public coffers, and that's just for one presidential campaign. But more importantly, availability of public funding does not solve the problem of restricting political speech in any way. So imagine we put 1.5 bn of public spending in the campaign. What prevents the candidates from spending another 1.5 bn of private money? The private money spending is limited only by the amounts people are willing to spend to support their causes. Adding public money to that does not change it (unless you somehow conclude people would not be willing to donate anymore, but this is an unsupported assumption). So unless you prohibit people from spending money on political speech - I do not see how public funding changes the picture.
    - hackuser 12y ago
      That may very well be true. A few considerations: 1) Most likely there are diminishing marginal returns from more advertising. That is true in most industries, based on may understanding (I have no expertise in the field). I suspect, though I have no evidence, that the returns diminish significantly. 2) Public funding would remove large amounts of money as a barrier to entry into campaigns. Even if the candidate didn't have much as those with other sources, they could run a realistic campaign. 3) Public funding would greatly reduce the need for elected officials to spend time fundraising, which many say takes significant time from their responsibilities of governing. 4) "1.5 billion of public funding? That's quite fat piece of change from public coffers": It's not a small number, but it's $5/citizen. I think (and I think many Americans would agree) that it's a very small price for removing money from politics. Happy July 4th!

bennettfeely 12y ago

*million dollars, a little correction

yowmamasita 12y ago

$5 Million

kennywinker 12y 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.

smsm42 12y 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/ http://www.cnbc.com/id/49550998/ [2] http://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_8,_the_%22Eliminates_Right_of_Same-Sex_Couples_to_Marry%22_Initiative_(2008) http://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_8,_the_%22Elim...

dbloom 12y ago
Just to be clear: they raised $5 million, not $5 billion. (I think the original commenter mixed up the two)
- kbaker 12y ago
  Also, they are receiving matching funding for the 5 million and the original 1 million raised, for a total of $12 million.
dangoor 12y 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.
- smsm42 12y ago
  1.5 billion of public funding? That's quite fat piece of change from public coffers, and that's just for one presidential campaign. But more importantly, availability of public funding does not solve the problem of restricting political speech in any way. So imagine we put 1.5 bn of public spending in the campaign. What prevents the candidates from spending another 1.5 bn of private money? The private money spending is limited only by the amounts people are willing to spend to support their causes. Adding public money to that does not change it (unless you somehow conclude people would not be willing to donate anymore, but this is an unsupported assumption). So unless you prohibit people from spending money on political speech - I do not see how public funding changes the picture.
  - hackuser 12y ago
    That may very well be true. A few considerations: 1) Most likely there are diminishing marginal returns from more advertising. That is true in most industries, based on may understanding (I have no expertise in the field). I suspect, though I have no evidence, that the returns diminish significantly. 2) Public funding would remove large amounts of money as a barrier to entry into campaigns. Even if the candidate didn't have much as those with other sources, they could run a realistic campaign. 3) Public funding would greatly reduce the need for elected officials to spend time fundraising, which many say takes significant time from their responsibilities of governing. 4) "1.5 billion of public funding? That's quite fat piece of change from public coffers": It's not a small number, but it's $5/citizen. I think (and I think many Americans would agree) that it's a very small price for removing money from politics. Happy July 4th!