May One - Lawrence Lessig's Anti-Corruption SuperPAC

Rym

For those not paying attention, Lawrence Lessig launched, with a fairly prestigious board, a superpac aimed at forcing political/electoral reform using the same aggressive tactics that have been so effected elsewhere in US politics.

https://mayone.us/

So far, they're going to push a small number of specific reforms at the candidate level.

http://reform.to/#/reforms


The veiled threat is that they'll basically tank anyone who opposes basic reform, using intelligence, research, technology, and aggressive advertising, intervening in individual elections.

I pledged money to this.

Apreche

Will it work? I have no idea. But it's the best shot I've ever seen of actually doing something to fight against our corrupt government. Better to shoot and miss than not shoot at all. How much money would you pay if we were certain it would succeed and remove corporate influence from politics? Pay that much. We won't know if we don't even try, and I don't see any realistic hope for change anywhere else.

Rym

I trust Lessig to a higher degree than I trust most people who have every tried something like this.

Apreche

Rym said:

I trust Lessig to a higher degree than I trust most people who have every tried something like this.

Larry is a certified Good Smart Person (TM)

YoshoKatana

Rym said:

I trust Lessig to a higher degree than I trust most people who have every tried something like this.

Yup. I'm going to put some money towards this. I don't know if it'll work (especially with only a million dollars), but hopefully that million will do some good in races at the local level.

EDIT: Or rather, in the races they're committing to.

Rym

I filled out their little form to volunteer more than just money.
https://mayone.us/more-ways-to-help/

YoshoKatana

Just filled out the form. Under specific skills, I said:

web development, some campaign experience, was in talks to do Anthony Weiner's tech stuff before his mayoral campaign self destructed.

I am pro at politics.

Rite_of_Spring

Donation and volunteer form sent. This has me really excited. If you haven't read Republic Lost its worth reading. It might even make a good book club book.

Rym

In case you never read his previous constitutional proposal on the subject:

http://oneway.lessig.org/

Banta

A week in and $612K funded. Not bad.

Banta

And the first milestone has been hit.

Rite_of_Spring

I got the email today with the list of donors who matched the original 1,000,000. Thats a pretty star studded cast of donors...

johndis

Rite_of_Spring said:

I got the email today with the list of donors who matched the original 1,000,000. Thats a pretty star studded cast of donors...

Post the list!!

Rite_of_Spring

We made the match! The more than $1M you helped us raise is now over $2M. Which means the Mayday experiment continues -- and needs to get much, much bigger.

More on the match in a moment. First, we need your help. To launch the second stage of Mayday on June 4, we're planning a Thunderclap -- a way for all of us to join together and commit to broadcasting the same message, at the same time, on our social media networks. If enough of us do it, we can make a huge statement for our launch.

Click here to join next week's Mayday Thunderclap -- your participation is crucial for making it a success.

Thunderclap doesn't keep any of your personal information, and certainly doesn't keep the list of your friends. Think of it like a free Super Bowl ad. The potential network effect can be enormous, but it depends on your joining the effort.

Now for the match. Before we go public with this, I wanted to share with you the names of the people who made the match. We’ll make our public announcement next week, but because they’re matching you, you should know first. I am incredibly proud of the mix and diversity in this match.

Here’s who they are:
Chris Anderson, curator of TED, where the story of this SuperPAC began
Brad Burnham, partner at Union Square Ventures (which gave us Twitter, Tumblr, Kickstarter and tons more)
Reid Hoffman, president of Linkedin, and on the original PayPal team
Vin Ryan, founder of Iron Mountain
Peter Thiel, entrepreneur and cofounder of PayPal
Fred & Joanne Wilson, Fred is also a partner at Union Square Ventures.
And to top it off, I’m grateful to my friend of almost 20 years, David Milner, president of NuGen Capital Management, a private equity renewable energy fund, who has committed to match the stretch we raised over our original $1M goal.

This is an amazing mix who have joined the amazing 13,000 of you. This means stage one is finished. Now on to stage two. Help us celebrate in the best way you can:

Join next week's Mayday Thunderclap right now.

Thank you for getting us this far. I'll be back in touch very soon about our plans for stage two of Mayday.

Now, it’s on.

- Lessig
Paid for by:
Mayday PAC
Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee
www.MayOne.us

Our mailing address is:
Mayday PAC
PO Box 380444
Cambridge, MA 02238

Rym

George Patches

There's no way we're making that $5M. >_>

Apreche

George Patches said:

There's no way we're making that $5M. >_>

DotA 2 made 10 million in a similar time period.

Luke Burrage

$4,677,061 pledged of $5,000,000 goal and 14 hours to go. If this was a work day, it would probably make it. Ending on a holiday means it's probably going to be close.

lackofcheese

$4,907,958

Looks like it's quite unlikely *not* to make it to me.

Apreche

That's crazy. It's typical to expect donations to accelerate towards the end. There's also probably someone making big pledges to push it over. Lots of slick starter projects will self-pledge to push it over the top. That being said, getting a million in a day when 4 million took all month. Pretty crazy.

Rym

They'd better not fuck this up. I suspect a lot of the people who have donated are fed up, and see this as a last-ditch effort. If this is mismanaged, those people might disengage forever from politics.

Apreche

Rym said:

They'd better not fuck this up. I suspect a lot of the people who have donated are fed up, and see this as a last-ditch effort. If this is mismanaged, those people might disengage forever from politics.

Even if they succeed in winning some elections, without meaningful legislation in the nearish future, people will definitely lose hope and revert to apathy.

Luke Burrage

It’s now scientifically proven… You have no voice. You have no power.

Apreche

Luke Burrage said:

It’s now scientifically proven… You have no voice. You have no power.

We knew that already.

SWATrous

The article also poses the thought that until we change something... it will remain so. But by its own admission the average citizen has no power to change anything. I think that qualifies for Catch 22 status.

So until some massive upswell happens outside the normal bounds of discourse, whether a peaceful protest of millions or an armed uprising or a foreign incursion or a massive failure of the top... it seems we're beyond the political event horizon.

And that's not any sort of 'new' thought just not there's more evidence to support the actuality of it and not just the seemingness of it.

It's like in some games: You can sense that you're probably behind, but then you can count up the points and know if you're too far behind to possibly pull ahead.

Rite_of_Spring

It's really not surprising given the way the Constitution was framed. The framers wanted to ensure that tyranny would not prevail, yet they designed a system that was weak to factions and benefited land owning white males.

Tying this back to Lessig's topic of corruption, these were well intentioned men with a flaw that soured the system. Lessig's goal of removing money from politics gives lower and middle class citizens a better shot at influencing the national policy scene but doesn't address the institutional structures that ensure this exclusion.

What blows me away is that the one place citizens with a mailing address have substantial power is county and city elections, yet very few people vote for these positions / many are uncontested.