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Government

Video Mayday PAC's Benjamin Singer Explains How You can Help Reform American Politics (Video) 233

Posted by Roblimo from the if-it's-our-government-why-doesn't-it-do-what-we-want-it-to-do? dept.
Video no longer available.
Larry Lessig's Mayday PAC is a SuperPac that is working to eliminate the inherent corruption of having a government run almost entirely by people who manage to raise -- or have their "non-connected" SuperPACs raise -- most of the money they need to run their campaigns. The Mayday PAC isn't about right or left wing or partisan politics at all. It's about finding and supporting candidates who are in favor of something like last year's Government by the People Act. As we noted in our Mayday Pac interview with Larry Lessig last June, a whole panoply of tech luminaries, up to and including Steve Wozniak, are in favor of Mayday PAC.

This interview is being posted, appropriately, just before the 4th of July, but it's also just one day before the Mayday PAC Day of Action to Reform Congress. They're big on calling members of Congress rather than emailing, because our representatives get email by the (digital) bushel, while they get comparatively few issue-oriented phone calls from citizens. So Mayday PAC makes it easy for you to call your Congressional representatives and even, if you're too shy to talk to a legislative aide in person, to record a message Mayday PAC will leave for them after hours.

The five specific pieces of legislation Mayday PAC currently supports are listed at the RepsWith.US/reforms page. Two are sponsored by Republicans, two by Democrats, and one by an Independent. That's about as non-partisan as you can get, so no matter what kind of political beliefs you hold, you can support Mayday PAC with a clear conscience. (Note: the transcript has more information than the video, which is less than six minutes long.)

Benjamin Singer for Mayday PAC: Mayday was founded with the idea that for too long a reform has been something we can all agree is the right thing to do, but it's hard to figure out how that’s actually in the interests of elected officials to pass. For a lot of people it seems counterintuitive to think that we can really get people to change the system that got them elected. And so the idea with Mayday has always been, let's make it clearly in their political self-interest to pass reform to change the way elections are funded, to make them accountable to the people, and as our founder said, not the rich more than the poor. So what we're trying to do is get a majority of Congress to support fundamentally changing the way our campaigns are funded. Last year when we launched that was completely an electoral proposition. We ran a test of sorts in eight congressional districts to see how different ways of spending money on races in this issue would go and we won a few, but we lost a few as well and we learned a lot in the process. And because it didn't go as planned, we changed strategy.

Robin Miller for Slashdot: Wise. Very wise.

Ben: Yeah, we’re still very much an electoral organization. We are a crowd-funded people's Super PAC, and when I tell people we're a Super PAC supporting fundamentally changing the way campaigns are funded, they catch on right away, they say, wow, you are a Super PAC to end Super PACs, that is so cool, and I love that they just come up with our sort of informal tagline without my even having to use it. So what we're doing this year because the strategy last year didn't go quite as planned is we are running an advocacy campaign which is a little untraditional for a Super PAC, although “traditionally” only going back four years, there isn't really a lot of tradition to work with. So what we're doing is we want to show that it's possible to move the needle and put ourselves within striking distance of a majority for reform before the election season even kicks into high gear. And that way it can be even more credible for people that if you get involved and you help us to win races to elect champions of reform over those who are not leading reform effortsthat this could put us over the edge in terms of getting a majority for Congress for reform.

Slashdot: Wait, so all right, those are big words. What specifically are you doing and how can we help?

Ben: Within that frame, that structure, here's what we're doing. We are very much a nimble organization and so we are running a lot of different efforts across the country in very targeted ways, to see what moves the needle. So a few examples of that. We've ramped up our local action stuff. So in key districts where we think members of Congress can move on this issue, we're having citizens write letters to the editors, we are organizing meetings with congressional staff and sometimes with members of Congress themselves and asking these members to come on board with the legislation in their chambers. So in the House right now the one that has the most traction is the government by the people act and has 148 cosponsors I believe, nearly a third of Congress.

Slashdot: Wow.

Ben: Yeah. In the Senate there’s a Fair Elections Now Act, which was just introduced last week and already has 20 cosponsors. So for a lot of people this issue seems totally intractable, but we're showing that when you get involved there is traction and we can change it. So actually it was just this week we got a new cosponsor in the House, a Texas Democrat, who we drove a lot of calls to her office and she came on board. I don't know that we can take full credit for it, but the fact that we are driving dozens of calls to her office regularly and in a specific time period, I have to think helped elevate that to a priority within her congressional office.

Slashdot: Okay. One thing, we talk of dozens of calls, now a lot of people on Slashdot right now are not aware of how few calls it takes to make yourself known to even a senator who is one of two people representing a whole state. But I've done some political work in my time, and I've learned that 50 calls – if they are not petition-style all identical -- 50 calls is huge. So I assume you want us to jump in there.

Ben: Yeah, I mean we've developed a way that people can use this more effective tactic without even having to be afraid of talking to a legislative staffer, afraid to answer any tough questions. I mean, like you said, it really is an open secret that 50 calls can be a magic number, that somewhere in that area really elevates an issue. Because a lot of groups are writing e-mails, right, and they're doing these standard e-mails, but the congressional staff get tons of those, they actually filter those out. So we identified with some of our people who are experienced and have relationships on the Hill, that calls are the easiest way people can make an impact. So we've developed call-aid tool. We rolled it out over the last few weeks. You can go to mayday.us/record and you can type in your info, hit the button. It calls you and you actually record a message and we will deliver that to the answering machines as a voicemail for the appropriate representatives who should hear that message. And it's really increased our volume. We found that a lot of people were hesitant to speak to staff even though staff are not going to ask constituents tough questions. They're just going to hear what you have to say. But regardless we found that people were apprehensive and we adjusted and we created a tool that now a lot of people are using and it's making an impact on the Hill. So we're really excited about that. And I definitely would encourage everyone to join those who've already used the voicemail tool at mayday.us/record. And thanks to everyone who has already done it.

Slashdot: Let me make one thing, let’s clarify one thing, political agenda. Now I personally and this is full disclosure, I personally support the Mayday Super PAC and its goals. And I am, depending on how you view things, ether a moderate liberal or a flaming communist. So, you know, because I kind of like – I don't want to live in a country where everybody except a few rich people are living in dirt. So that makes me a communist to some. On the other hand, Timothy Lord, coworker, Slashdot editor of long standing, an all-round great guy and my friend, is quite the libertarian and we totally agree on Mayday PAC.

Ben: Right.

Slashdot: So do you have any political agenda?

Ben: When we were getting involved in both Republican and Democratic races last year, some people who were firmly on one side of the aisle cried out, what are you doing supporting this person I completely disagree with on immigration and marriage equality, taxes, whatever it was, and we said well, we believe that this issue of who our elected officials are accountable to because of campaign contributions really guides everything else. So, if you're part of Mayday because you believe that this is the most important issue, and we need bipartisan support to make this possible, then let's work on that one issue and do it in a bipartisan way. So we're not here to elect more Republicans or elect more Democrats, we're here to elect more leaders for reform. We're here to elect more candidates of Congress who believes that our elections are the public's elections and they shouldn't be privately owned.

Slashdot: Okay. Talking of which a last question... we all know that you can't run a big campaign in the United States today without some billionaires behind you. Is George Soros financing this out of his pocket? how about the oil brothers, Koch brothers? So who's your billionaire?

Ben: A great question. So last year we raised money from 60,000 people with an average donation of under $200. We did have 75 major donors. But we had 60,000 other donors who I think donated more, collectively, than any billionaires to our organization. I can dig into the numbers and I could get back to you exactly. But I'm very confident that our small donors actually made up the bulk of our contributions, which is more than I bet any other Super PAC can say.

Slashdot: Hey, and I am one of those donors from last year.

Ben: Thank you so much, me too.

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Mayday PAC's Benjamin Singer Explains How You can Help Reform American Politics (Video) More

Mayday PAC's Benjamin Singer Explains How You can Help Reform American Politics (Video)

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  • Citizens United is a very popular decision here on slashdot (even though the vast overwhelming majority of slashdot readers will never be helped by it). I would expect this PAC to be only marginally more popular than Diane Feinstein with this crowd.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by fustakrakich ( 1673220 )

      Citizens United is a very popular decision here on slashdot...

      And it's the right decision, in compliance with the 1st Amendment. Quit your bellyaching and stop voting for politicians who take the money. They are the guilty ones.

      • And it's the right decision, in compliance with the 1st Amendment.

        What did you do with the real Fustakrakich?

    • Citizens United is a very popular decision here on slashdot (even though the vast overwhelming majority of slashdot readers will never be helped by it).

      Incumbents of any party in any political office hold massive advantages in winning re-election. Very few Americans think that this is a good thing, let alone say that the incumbent advantage should be strengthened.

      The real question is why so many people wish to confer additional advantages upon incumbents by neutralizing their political opponents. You'd th

  • Nope. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by thedonger ( 1317951 ) on Monday June 22, 2015 @01:45PM (#49963967)
    So the big complaint is that we can't turn on our television and be guaranteed to see fair campaign commercials? News flash: If that is how you make decisions then you will always be susceptible to being lied to or otherwise taken advantage of.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      It isn't about how YOU make decisions, but how many Americans can be reached by big money. Advertising works, and allowing it to be so lopsided on the side of wealth is disgusting. Newsflash: If you think moralizing at Americans about not responding to billions of dollars in political advertising will work YOU are the idiot.

    • Yeah that's what people are complaining about - moron...

  • I'd be in favor of this coupled with... (Score:3)

    by xxxJonBoyxxx ( 565205 ) on Monday June 22, 2015 @01:45PM (#49963971)

    I'd be in favor of this coupled with initiatives to decentralize power out of Washington DC (i.e., regionalize agency HQs) and thin the ranks of bureaucrats.

    (If you eliminated PACs and similar organizations that act on particular citizen interests, its likely that the people actually running the government would be even more inclined to ignore the masses.)

    • Less videos on Slashdot. As someone explained a few days ago, Slashdot readers are not business suits, we prefer to read our information. It's just plain faster.

      Videos such as these are the news equivalent of a photo diaporama of your relatives that are back from their vacation.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Roblimo ( 357 )

        Less videos on Slashdot. As someone explained a few days ago, Slashdot readers are not business suits, we prefer to read our information. It's just plain faster.

        This is the old "Slashdot ran a story that didn't interest me personally" complaint that's been going around since 1999. If you don't want to watch videos, don't watch them. If you want some or all of the information contained in a video, but don't want to watch the video, we give you transcripts.

        Slashdot typically runs 20+ stories every day, and around 3 videos per week which may (gasp) go up to 4 or even 5 at some point. Thousands of people watch those videos and seem to like them, while 5 or 10 complain.

        On the gripping hand, you seem interested in Bitcoins and that sort of thing. I've had people tell me that stories about digital currency don't interest them, so they don't belong on Slashdot. Ummm..... okay....

        The sad secret is that there are many Slashdot readers with different tastes and desires. I figure that if anyone -- including me -- finds 80% of the stories on the site interesting, that's pretty good.

        Thanks for caring,

        - Rob

        • Thousands of people watch those videos and seem to like them, while 5 or 10 complain.

          I don't have a problem with linking to a video as long as you have a transcript, but the fact that "thousands" of people watched them without complaining doesn't prove anything about whether they liked them. In fact, every single comment I've seen about the sort of "webcam interview" videos which are nothing but somebody talking is negative, which leads me to believe that very few people actually like them.

          This is as opposed to videos that actually show something graphically that you're not going to get fr

  • How about we just outlaw bribes in the first place?

    • >> How about we just outlaw bribes in the first place?

      You must live in a pretty innocent place - Equestria maybe?

      Where I come from people get around the whole "no bribes" thing by steering contracts to brother-in-laws (different family name), buying boats for cousins (ditto), funding vacations to traveling companions, etc. (I remember my first couple of contract negotiations in Illinois: the guy across the table would often start things off by announcing that gifts of any kind were illegal and then e

  • Treat causes, not symptoms (Score:5, Insightful)

    by PapayaSF ( 721268 ) on Monday June 22, 2015 @01:52PM (#49964045) Journal

    I think there's a basic error in this approach. It assumes that government can and will run better with "big money" taken out of campaigning. But there's a lot of money given to campaigns for several reasons. The first is that, as Citizens United confirmed, money is speech, and spending money to support a cause or a candidate is at the heart of political expression.

    The second reason is perhaps even more basic. When government is huge and has their fingers in every pie, it creates a great deal of motivation to influence those fingers. Campaign contributions are merely a form of lobbying, and lobbying has a standard message: subsidize me and cut my taxes and regulations, but burden my competitors and enemies with taxes and regulations, if not ban them outright.

    If you really want to "get money out of politics," you need to (as much as possible) get politics out of the economy. (Ideologues will always lobby, and that's fine, because it's the crony capitalism and pay-to-play aspects that are most objectionable.) Which, of course, is not what many reformers want to do. Until they do, they are basically advocating spreading sugar around their picnic blanket, and then complaining about all the ants.

    • Exactly.

      High school really should include some courses on political economics, rent seeking, and regulatory capture so that more people understand this.

      • Perhaps staring with corporations aren't people.

        • Perhaps staring with corporations aren't people.

          Corporations are people, in the same way that beaches are sand and school classes are children. That is, corporations are just shared property between a bunch of individuals. If those individuals want to use their property to speak out on political matters, what possible reason should there be to deny them that right?

          Furthermore, if you really think that Citizens United should be reversed, why should corporations like MSNBC, NYT, be permitted to speak on polit

          • Corporations are people, in the same way that beaches are sand and school classes are children. That is, corporations are just shared property between a bunch of individuals. If those individuals want to use their property to speak out on political matters, what possible reason should there be to deny them that right?

            I am an employee (and a stockholder) of a rather large corporation. No one ever asked me if I agree with using corporate funds to support political positions and I don't agree with all of the positions my corporation holds. I and none of my other fellow employees have given up our individual rights to speak freely (outside of the office of course) but it irks me when the corporation purports to speak on my behalf without consulting me first.

            On top of that if I happen to agree with my corporations politica

    • If you really want to "get money out of politics," you need to (as much as possible) get politics out of the economy. (Ideologues will always lobby, and that's fine, because it's the crony capitalism and pay-to-play aspects that are most objectionable.) Which, of course, is not what many reformers want to do.

      That's exactly the problem, and I've said it many times. The only reason lobbyists buy off government officials is because the government has enough power to be worth being bought. Power needs to be decentralized from the feds & given back to the state & local level, where people have much more say in the matter.

      "Reformers" want to live in a land of make-believe, thinking if we removed campaign financing, there wouldn't be any corruption, but they don't want to remove the reason for the corruption.

    • No money is not speech. It's money. Putting a limitation on campaign contribution in no way shape or form limits your speech.

      The rest of your post is rant that doesn't understand the problem of Super PACs colluding with politicians. For your education - look up Stephen Colbert and Super PACs.

      • Re:Treat causes, not symptoms (Score:4, Insightful)

        by PapayaSF ( 721268 ) on Monday June 22, 2015 @02:49PM (#49964497) Journal

        No money is not speech. It's money. Putting a limitation on campaign contribution in no way shape or form limits your speech.

        Really? Citizens United was about some people who made a movie about Hillary Clinton. If the government forbids you to spend money on making a film (or publishing a book, putting up a website, or buying an ad, or making a sign, etc.), they are certainly limiting your speech.

        And note that even the defenders of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law that Citizens United overturned admitted in court that the law would have allowed the government to stop the publication of a book if it was about a candidate. If that isn't suppression of speech, what is?

  • Money seeks out Power, not the other way around. The reason there is a lot of money in politics is due to the obscene amount of Power our government now wields. When the #1 return on your investment is no longer R&D, training your employees, hiring better employees, but is instead lobbyists (to either reward your company or punish your competitors) there is a sickness. Taking money out of politics will not change this. In fact, it will just mean the money will ooze in around the cracks and crevices of

  • Let's start by repealing the 17th Amendment... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by PseudoCoder ( 1642383 ) on Monday June 22, 2015 @02:02PM (#49964121)

    If we put Senators back under the control of state legislatures, they'll be less influenced by outside money because the state legislatures can yank the leash when these "law makers" stop representing their constituents appropriately. This would make the Citizens United decision less relevant, at least on the Senate side.

    The House reps are another story, because they're still under direct elections by the same public that keeps voting these "luminaries" back into power every time. Like senators, as soon as they finish lying to their constituents to their faces, they turn around and land in DC where they get hypnotized by lobbyists, committee chairmanships, etc. Then they're smooth sailing with their own agenda until it's time to come back home and lie to our faces again.

    • If we put Senators back under the control of state legislatures, they'll be less influenced by outside money because the state legislatures can yank the leash when these "law makers" stop representing their constituents appropriately.

      This sounds good, but the reason they changed the system in the first place was due to the extreme corruption under the old method of selecting senators. Personally I'd like to see the senate switched to proportional representation. First, it helps break up the two party politics lockgrip by giving smaller parties something to shoot for. Secondly due to there being more parties it spreads the graft around and makes it harder to influence things so much.

    • > If we put Senators back under the control of state legislatures, they'll be less influenced by outside money because the state legislatures can yank the leash when these "law makers" stop representing their constituents appropriately. This would make the Citizens United decision less relevant, at least on the Senate side.

      No, all that'll do is move the lobbyists to influence the state legislatures again.

      • It's harder to influence an entire legislature, as opposed to just one person. Plus it's easier to keep tabs on the state legislators in your own state than a senator that flies away to DC and has a 14 year old intern answering the phones for them reading off pre-scripted answers to your questions. It's at least tougher to let the lobbyists completely run away with your senator.

    • It will never happen but what I'd like to see is the Senate transformed to a national body where the members are elected based on their parties proportion of the vote received for the party. In other words in the Senatorial election I would vote for a party rather than an individual and the number of Senators that party has is equal to their percentage of the vote. That would free voters to vote for the party that most closely matches their politics. No doubt Libertarians would make up 5 or 10% of the Se

  • The Mayday PAC isn't about right or left wing or partisan politics at all.

    Pretty sure they don't believe Corporations are People, thus: *not* Right Wing.

  • The solution to speech you don't like is not censorship, it's more speech. I have no problem with newspapers editorializing on political subjects and recommending candidates for office. I further have no problem with people banding together to make their joined voice louder by creating documentaries, websites, etc. The slippery slope of trying to chop people down to all be the same sizes is ultimately misguided and works against free speech.
    • Because money isn't speech - limiting contributions would not limit your speech. Funny how that works.
      • Isn't it wonderful to simplify an issue down to one sentence? You can solve all the problems in the world that way. /sarcasm

        So answer me this: is a newspaper recommendation of a political candidate speech? Deny companies political speech, and you have all kinds of unpleasant fallout. You are suggesting censoring the NYT. (Were you aware of that?)

  • how can I stop it? (Score:3)

    by NostalgiaForInfinity ( 4001831 ) on Monday June 22, 2015 @02:13PM (#49964205)

    Most of the moral panic surrounding campaign finance is based on correlation, not causation. In reality, large donations don't cause politicians to win, but politicians that are likely to win receive large donations. Furthermore, the fact that lobbyists, corporations, unions, and other special interests get to write legislation has little to do with campaign donations, and more with regulatory capture and the complexity of regulation.

    And that brings us to these legislative proposals. The intent is to somehow make political speech more fair and egalitarian. The net result will, however, be that political power will be traded in even less transparent ways. In the worst case of fully publicly financed campaigns, you end up with government effectively deciding who can run against them.

    I don't think these proposals have a snowball's chance in hell. But if they were to pass, the US would be screwed. So, I'll be donating to, and supporting, candidates who oppose them.

    • Yeah because it doesn't affect legislation. You might want to look up "carried interest" and how Congress tried close that loop-hole and how that effort was killed even though people supported it.

      • You might want to look up "carried interest" and how Congress tried close that loop-hole and how that effort was killed even though people supported it.

        Who killed it? Space aliens? Brain slugs? Stop such weaselwords. Congress "didn't try to close that loophole and it got killed", Congress voted not to close that loophole.

        Why did the choose not to close it? Because what you said is wrong: the majority of Americans didn't support closing it because the majority of Americans didn't know about, and to many of t

  • Disclamer: I will not research how well they keep their promises, or acts they voted for and against or sponsored. I do not endorse or oppose any of these candidates.

    I looked at their website, mayday.us It referred me to a different site, repswith.us describing five proposals they support. The plan of Democrat Mr. Sarbanes [house.gov] was first. His site seems to directly address various issues, with little double-speak. The Government By the People Act is its own section of his site, listed under "issues", but in its

  • If as some say money equals speech, then I will vote for the candidate that makes the most compelling argument to me using ONLY that form of speech.

    Any and all flyers, emails, and/or commercials will be relegated to the waste bin.

  • Awful lot (Score:5, Insightful)

    by oh_my_080980980 ( 773867 ) on Monday June 22, 2015 @02:39PM (#49964447)
    of trolls post in favor of citizens united. Didn't know the Koch Brothers bot army was running so well.

  • Great idea but look into Wolf-PAC (Score:5, Informative)

    by FeatherBoa ( 469218 ) on Monday June 22, 2015 @03:18PM (#49964711)

    I recommend looking into Wolf-PAC -- wolf-pac.com

    This effort is focused on states driving a constitutional convention to amend the constitution to ending corporate personhood and publicly financing all elections.

  • My Mother-in-Law told me after a trip to the US that she liked Americans, she said they're kind and good natured and very friendly, but she could never get over how everything in the US is for sale. She was a practicing Catholic, but would go to any Christian church if she felt the need. She told me she always felt a little dirty after attending church in some of the evangelical churches she came across, as if she had just done business with the mafia. I think that is how your political system works, sold t

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