

We Did It! - frostmatthew
https://mayday.us/2014/07/04/WeDidIt/

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slantedview
Lessig's last e-mail:
[http://pastebin.com/AUdh8Dav](http://pastebin.com/AUdh8Dav)

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matias-a
Not from the US, but I wanted to congratulate everyone involved in this
historic event. I think it is inspiring, apart from being inherently relevant
worldwide.

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pedalpete
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.

~~~
smsm42
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_%22Elim...](http://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_8,_the_%22Eliminates_Right_of_Same-
Sex_Couples_to_Marry%22_Initiative_\(2008\))

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dbloom
Just to be clear: they raised $5 million, not $5 billion. (I think the
original commenter mixed up the two)

~~~
kbaker
Also, they are receiving matching funding for the 5 million and the original 1
million raised, for a total of $12 million.

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onewaystreet
A couple years too late. With the two Supreme Court decisions there really are
no reforms that can stop Super PACs in any meaningful way.

~~~
smsm42
You think if this happened earlier the Supreme Court would have different view
on the First Amendment? The SC has powers to overturn any legislation,
including one proposed by people supported by this campaign. Short of FDR-
style tricks I don't see how you could overcome that.

~~~
dragonwriter
"Legislation" initiated by Congress isn't limited to statutes, it can include
Constitutional Amendments.

~~~
smsm42
True, but the chance of passing an amendment of such a controversial topic is
virtually nil, so I did not consider this as a real option. The bar for the
Constitutional Amendment is very high.

~~~
dragonwriter
A Constitutional Amendment is where the legislative effort on the issue in
Congress is focussed _now_ ; if MayDay.US is successful in pushing the
legislative balance _farther_ in favor of efforts to reverse the effect of
Citizen's United, I hardly imagine that the effort would shift to _less_
powerful remedies than those that are already the focus.

~~~
smsm42
For Constitution Amendment to pass, it's not enough to get a couple of House
members. You need 38 states to sign.

~~~
dragonwriter
> For Constitution Amendment to pass, it's not enough to get a couple of House
> members.

True, but so what? First, the Constitutional Amendment _currently on the table
in Congress_ has a lot more support than that (the version in the Senate has,
IIRC, 43 cosponsors), and, second, a PAC aiming to _increase_ legislative
support can target both Congress and state legislatures, and, _third_ , as the
issue _cannot_ be addressed legislatively except by a Constitutional
Amendment, since the Supreme Court has _already determined_ that legislation
in this area violates the Constitution as it currently stands, so no other
mechanism is meaningful.

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ramigb
You did what??

~~~
imron
The impossible, and that makes them mighty.

Edit: For those downvoting, I was just quoting the article (I realise this was
perhaps not the best quote, but felt it was the one most fitting given the
question).

~~~
ramigb
The downvotes that you got and i got are something normal, internet trolls are
everywhere, although i asked a real 100% valid question, the title of this
post and the first couple of paragraphs didn't give me a background about why
this is in the front page, those who downvoted me obviously thought i was
trolling so they whipped out their swords and fought like real knights ...
dumb motherfuckers.

