Lessig's Campaign To Restart U.S. Reform

You may or may not have heard Lawrence Lessig's name around - one of his crusades recently is how to fix the horribly corrupted U.S. political system. These days, the only people that truly matter are the ones spending the most money. Although we really do vote people into office, the vast majority of people in the U.S. are either easily swayed by TV ads or don't vote at all.

This is a campaign to make it all stop. His goal is to elect a handful of congress people that will do literally nothing but push forward a handful of laws to fix the system. Nothing else. Every vote blocked, every angle halted. Campaign reform and nothing else. It's bold, but given how many people hate Congress right now, it might work.

If you can afford to give money, please do so:

Mayday SuperPAC

Your political affiliations don't matter here - there are no biases or reasons to not support this. The only people that don't like this are the 500-1000 (literally) that finance the majority of political spending in the U.S.

A do nothing Congress? We already have that.

A do nothing congress is not what we have, we have a do what someone with a ton of money wants congress.

I'm in favor of this idea, but as a reality, it's naive to think that this crusade will have any real impact.

Bump!

This is no laughing matter, just like I mentioned before. They have now raised $12 million dollars, and that's no pocket change. I told you this was real!

Expect to see real results from this. The politicians that are controlled exclusively by the handful of people with money are going to start losing their races. We're going to have real change, for a change.

So, most of the primaries are over. And you were right, the House Majority Leader lost his own primary. As a result, even less is happening!

Two states on the board to call for a constitutional convention to repeal citizens united and instate publicly funded elections.

Wolf-pac.com

hmm so instead of going with the congress that can do almost everything but can actually do nothing, the guy is trying to get a one-time only congress that can only do 1 thing instead?

Canada prime minister tried to do something similar by changing its own election into something similar to US but he got spanked by the court. They pretty much said 'get over 50% of the whole population in the country to vote yes to this scheme of yours 1st'. Maybe the US thing will work if they can ease up on the voting rights requirements.

Not at all. What's he's doing is more reasonable than that. Many (but not all) elections feature democrat vs. republican. This PAC is going to go to elections where one of the two has signed on to support the house bill that enforces and promotes publicly-funded elections, but the other does not. Then, ad blitz to support the public-fund politician, regardless of what the party affiliation is.

A large portion of existing congress is actually fine - it's the ones that have been in for a long time, and hold a lot of power, that are the problem. Remove them, and you have your window. This PAC is going to accomplish that. Removing Cantor was a lucky fluke, but not a result of this.

The hope is that by removing some of the most important money-hoarding congress during this term, we can make real headway towards the 2016 elections, and do even more damage then (not all senators are elected every 2 years). This is the next step forward in a long term plan to recover the government, but it's going to take ~6 years to get all the problem children gone.

It is pocket change.

There are billionaires who are planning to dump $100 million and more into the next election cycle.

Mind you I like the idea, but $12 million isn't enough to elect anyone to congress.

It should be enough to accomplish the current goal - flipping the results of 5 races, spread across the country, that are unexpected. It would take more, right now, to flip the whole country, but that's not the goal.

Update: Two of the five candidate targets have been chosen.

#1: Support Jim Rubens against other Republican primary candidates, especially Scott Brown (and later the final election, although that would be secondary). Race is for a New Hampshire Senate seat.

#2: Support Staci Appel against David Young for Iowa's 3rd congressional district.

The other three targets will be named next week. In the two races above, they are both underdogs, and the issue of public finance is one of the main topics. Of course, Scott Brown and David Young are vocally for keeping lobbying in place as it currently stands.

We'll see how they do. If they win, it will be a clear signal to the rest of Congress they had shape up or get out of the way.

Edit: Article about the choices. Indeed, all that matters is whether or not they're willing to upend the way elections are financed. Since all other issues hinge upon who's in power, and who's in power hinge on who's footing the bill, campaign finance has to come first.

Ron Paul looks exactly like my Grandfather, it's really creepy.