People ... Lawrence Lessig
USA Campaign Finance Reform

USA Campaign Finance Reform ... an initiative from 2012

Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

http://politics.slashdot.org/story/14/07/01/1757223/lawrence-lessig-answers-your-questions-about-his-mayday-pac-part-2-video?continuous_video=1

[11:35:35 AM] Jerome Peloquin: Peter please look at this interview with Lawrence Lessig.

The original Mayday PAC goal was to raise $1 million. Now Larry is working on a second -- and more ambitious -- goal: To raise $5 million by July 4. We called for your questions on June 23, and you sent a bunch of them. This time, instead of using email, we used Google Hangout to ask via video, with an attached transcript for those who can't or won't watch the video. In today's video, Larry tells us that some of the impetus for Mayday PAC came from the late Aaron Swartz, and goes deeper into the group's goals and hopes than he did in yesterday's video. (Alternate Video Link)

Hide/Show Transcript Tim: Now you’ve certainly been involved in things that are very political in nature before. You can think of the Creative Commons as having a lot of political implications. You’ve also described “law as code”—where does this fit in? I think you’ve called this “trying to change the operating system.” Can you explain a little bit about where the analogy falls when you talk about how much this sort of change affects everything else?

Larry: Yeah. I mean, I was pushed to do this, by Aaron, by Aaron Swartz. Seven years ago he came to me and he said, “How are you going to make any progress on the internet issues, or the corporate issues, until we fix this corruption?” So what I recognized at that point was: All these other issues that as passionately as I cared about them, they were not going to get solved or addressed until we solved this issue. So this is fundamental. In the sense, it is the operating system. Because this democracy depends upon this operating system functioning in a way that is reliable and encourages people to participate in it. Now once you begin to think about that analogy, there is a lot that connects to the internet community. There is a great piece by Noam Scheiber in ‘The New Republic’ that basically says why Silicon Valley should care about this issue. He makes the point this is both metaphorically and actually the network neutrality debate. It is actually a network neutrality debate, because what we realize is: Unless we can deal with the money in politics problem, we are never going to have enough resources to step up and take on the cable companies and things like that. That is not the interesting point. The interesting point is: What we need is a democracy on the same model as a neutral network, right? We want a democracy that is in some sense is end to end—it is allowing people, all the people to participate in selecting the things they want. It is trying to disable the kind of entities in the middle that have the capacity to block or control how things are developing. And so, in that sense, I think that this project is fundamental to, is analogous to the work that I have always been doing in the context of internet politics. But even if it weren’t, the thing that is absolute is that: People have got to recognize that if we don’t fix this, we don’t fix anything. And we’ve got a whole slew of things that have to be fixed.

Tim: Are there any countries in the world right now that have a system that is, in your mind, close to what you are proposing? I don’t know of any countries that for instance use a voucher system to let people express what they believe in that way—I am wondering: Is there any place or country or two that actually does something like this?

Larry: Well, most other mature democracies are different in two really important ways: 1) They are parliaments. 2) They don’t have a First Amendment the way we do. Because they are parliaments, elections are not regular. So there is not a permanent campaign, there is a time when they govern, and the majority party actually can govern, and then there is an election. The election could be six weeks or two months or something like that. That’s a really important difference. And number two, no other country has interpreted their free speech provision to be as restrictive as our Supreme Court has interpreted ours. So what those two constraints mean is there won’t be any country that has something precisely analogous to what we have. But here’s the thing that every other successful democracy has, that we need—the members of parliament, or the members of those congresses do not spend 30% to 70% of their time raising money from the tiniest fraction of the 1% in those countries. In parliaments, I spoke in the Swedish parliament about Creative Commons, but I also talked about this issue. A member of parliament came up to me—in fact, he was a geek, he was a free software coder, he worked on the GNU Linux kernel, the Linux kernel, and he said to me, “In my eight years in parliament, I’ve never, literally never once asked anybody for money. Never. That’s just not what we do.” It kind of struck me, as a shocking idea. Imagine a congress filled with people who are not constantly thinking, “What does that rich fat cat want me to do so that he or she is going to fund my campaign so that I can get back into getting into power?” It seems impossible to Americans to imagine a different system. But the reality is no other democracy comes close to the craziness of this system. And it is completely trivially possible to create this alternative. If we had a voucher system, that would cost $3 to $4 billion a year. Now the Cato Institute the libertarian think tank estimates that last year the amount of corporate welfare the United States government spent was $100 billion. So if we could spend $3 to $4 billion a year, and cut that corporate welfare by 10%, we would have paid for it two to three times over, right? So this is a trivial problem to solve from a financial perspective. But it would radically change the incentives of our government to be answering to these crazy extreme crony capitalist like demands or to the bailout demands. Whatever your complaint is, it would refuse, it would remove those kinds of crazy constraints.

Tim: I think a lot of people might object in the same way that they do that they fail to check the boxes as they contribute to the electoral campaign on taxes, and say, “I will support it if I want, but I don’t want to be required to give money to anyone else’s campaign systematically. I don’t want to be part of it.”

Larry: Yeah. That’s a great great concern. And that’s why I really personally favor vouchers. The presidential campaign fund is basically a system where the federal government decides how much money each candidate gets and then writes them a check. And people aren't happy with this, right? We say, “Hey, why is my money being used to subsidize speech I don’t believe in?”, “And why does the federal government get to decide how much people get to spend on a political campaign? It seems just wrong.” Now the voucher system is fundamentally different. What a voucher system says is we are going to rebate the first, in my proposal, $50 of your taxes in the form of a voucher. And then you can use that voucher—either tear it up if you want—but you can use that voucher to find candidates who agree to fund their campaigns with small dollar vouchers and maybe contributions up to $100.

Tim: They are not using the Federal Election Commission as a sort of intermediary in that way, like the current checkoff vote?

Larry: Exactly. You, the individual, are choosing who gets the money. And it is your money you are giving to them, right? Well, people say, “No, no it is tax money you are getting back.” Now you got to embrace your inner tea party—“What do you mean tax money? It is my money. The government had it, it is giving it back to me. And I’m taking that money and I’m giving it to the candidate I care about.” And everybody else is doing the same thing. So nobody is subsidizing anything. There is no government bureaucrat who is deciding how much anybody gets. There is no equality norm that says everybody gets the same amount—it is just like voting. But instead of my resource being a ballot, my resource is a voucher. It is exactly the same idea but now extended to the funding of campaigns as well as to the selecting of a candidate.

Tim: Let me ask one more question that may also be about people’s inner tea party here: The biggest comparison people have drawn in our comments is, they say there is this effort called the Wolf PAC, and that is aiming for constitutional as opposed to legislative reform. Can you briefly distinguish why it is that you are going for something slightly different? They also have in mind fairness of elections, and fairness of the way they are paid for, but you’ve decided that constitutional reform directly is not the way to start.

Larry: So I love Wolf PAC. I work with Wolf PAC. I flung myself to every corner to the country to testify on Wolf PAC’s behalf in favor of the call that Wolf PAC is making for state legislators to vote to demand Congress created Article 5 convention—I am all for that. But we’ve got to move on a number of different fronts at the same time. Even if we got a constitutional change tomorrow that said that Congress had the power to limit the amount of money that was given to Super PACs or something like that, we still would need to pass a law to change the way elections are funded. The Supreme Court has no doubt made this problem much worse. But even if the Court had gotten every decision right, we still would have a system where the tiniest fraction of the 1% funds campaigns. So nothing we are doing is against Wolf PAC. I support Wolf PAC. But we’ve got to both change the statutory regime that makes it possible for us to have citizen funded elections where everybody is funding elections, not just the tiniest fraction of the 1%, and also back-stop that change with whatever constitutional reform as necessary. That’s why the plan that we’ve set up is four steps. The fourth step is: After we’ve got a Congress that is elected under the right way, pass the kind of constitutional reforms that is necessary to preserve the changes that we had enacted through legislation.

Tim: Do you see any irony in Super PAC with the stated goal of removing the sort of influence that Super PACs have had?

Larry: Yeah. It’s ironic. Our slogan is “Embrace the Irony”. But it is not anything more than ironic. Because if you think of the history of reforms that have made this a more just democracy, you know there was a time when only white males could vote. And a bunch of people thought, “That’s unjust.” So they brought about an amendment that in theory at least (it took a hundred years before this was relevant) but in theory at least, that blacks could vote too. Of course, it was only black males. But there it was—blacks could vote too. Now when they did that, they used an unjust system to produce a more just system. If somebody had said, “Why do you want to use this unjust system to give blacks the right to vote?” I would have said, “Oh yeah, why not? Let’s use whatever we can to get a more just system.” The same thing when women did not have the right to vote. And then men, pushed on by women of course, but men said, “Okay, let’s change the law to give women the right to vote.” That was an unjust system being used to create a more unjust system. So too here. My view is: A system that allows people to contribute unlimited amounts of money to Super PACs is an unjust system—we need to change it. But we are going to change it using the system that exists. We are going to use whatever legal means we can to bring about a more just system. And when we get to that more just system, people will be able to create PACs, independent PACs too—they just won’t be able to contribute unlimited amounts to these PACs. Because that system produces a world like what we saw in 2012, where 132 people contributed 60% of the money spent by these Super PACs. So we need to create changes. We are going to do that in every legal way we can, including by employing this unjust device to produce a more just system.

Share ← Related Links → The New 501(c)(3) and the Future of Open Source In the US Interviews: Ask Lawrence Lessig About His Mayday PAC Lawrence Lessig Answers Your Questions About His Mayday PAC (Video) Nathan Myhrvold's Recipe For a Better Oven Lawrence Lessig Answers Your Questions About His Mayday PAC, Part 2 (Video) Archived Discussion Load All Comments 6 Full26 Abbreviated10 Hidden /Sea

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Re:Good idea (Score:4, Informative) by Joe Gillian (3683399) on Tuesday July 01, 2014 @03:24PM (#47362819) From what I understand, the difference between Mayday and Wolf-PAC Is that Wolf-PAC is specifically calling for an Article V Constitutional Convention, while Mayday plans to fund politicians to get campaign finance reform legislation passed without the use of a constitutional amendment. Same basic goal, very different methods. Parent Share Re:

Ah - so it's basically the Tea Party for left wingers?Remember, the Tea Party came into existence out of a call for massive reform and a return to Constitutional values. And we all see how that turned out - most TP Congresscritters changed their tone and toed the line the second they got into office, my own representative included. 2 hidden comments Re:

About a year into it's life the TP got taken over by the Church republicans. Imagine the Occutards were greater in number, sober, organized and had taken control of the D parties locally. Now you (assuming your not a red) understand what non church republicans (and former republicans) feel like. 1 hidden comment Re:

Those would be the reds and other leftists. 1 hidden comment Re: Damn those lefties and their workers' rights, rights for minorities and women, universal education and universal vaccination.

Re: I thought that church republicans effectively took over, you know, the republicans -- over the course of the 80s/90s? More specifically weren't those evangelical church republicans? Then it should not really be surprising that subsequently emerging factions within that party reflect this situation, seems to me.

Re: And lost control in to 00s, finishing their credibility off, once and for all, with Palin and with pissing contests over 'heathen Mormons'. Of course they will continue to do what they do. My point was that the Ds also have a lunatic fringe. Fortunately for the Ds they are too fucked up and stupid to be effective at much of anything more complicated then noodle dancing.

Re:Good idea (Score:4, Informative) by guises (2423402) on Tuesday July 01, 2014 @05:47PM (#47363991) No, that's wholly inaccurate. Mayday is strictly about campaign finance reform and nothing else. It's not about a return to constitutional values, it has nothing to do with the constitution, and it's not right or left wing. Parent Share

Re: It's not about a return to constitutional values, it has nothing to do with the constitution, and it's not right or left wing.It has nothing to do with the Constitution? They want a Constitutional Amendment, for Christ's sake!

Re: That's the WolfPAC, Mayday doesn't have an explicit goal of a constitutional amendment. Though, granted, I don't see how they intend to achieve anything without one. If you'd prefer: 'it has nothing to do with the existing constitution.' Better?

Re: Just to clarify, while an amendment would be nice, it isn't necessary to put some of the proposed fixes, such as the the voucher system, in place.

Re: If you assume I was comparing talking point to talking point, then yes, it is wildly inaccurate.That's not what I was doing, though - I was pointing out that, like Mayday, the Tea Party began as an idealistic grassroots movement... and considering what the TP ended up turning in to (just another arm of the established oligarchy), it's not unreasonable to expect the same thing will happen with Mayday, albeit leaning towards the opposite end of the extremist spectrum.I don't fault these guys for wanting to fi

Re: Thomas Payne's pamphlets cost money to produce. There goes your _whole_ argument.

Re: So, if that is accurate, the plan is to bribe the crooks in Congress, in a one-time deal with -- let's not kid ourselves -- a small grassroots movement, out of accepting bribes and career prospects from multinational conglomerates over the mid- to long-term future?Good luck with that. Seriously, I support the goal but this seems pointless. Would love to be wrong here. 1 hidden comment

Re: The idea of a Constitutional Convention subject to domination by Kochsuckers, Lobbyists and other varieties of Fundamentalists (Economic, Religious, Structural) should frighten the everloving crap out of all of us.

Re: Yeah, God forbid a balanced budget amendment could come about from it.After all we just have to get the money out of political campaigns, political spending by those wielding government power and government money must remain unencumbered, right?

Re: Actually, yes. A 'balanced budget' amendment would be about as cretinous as possible. Ditto for 'return to gold standard' amendment. Didn't answer anyone's questions directly, did he? (Score:5, Insightful) by macraig (621737) on Tuesday July 01, 2014 @04:53PM (#47363575) Was this more of the new-and-improved Slashdot we can expect in the future? Historically these answers-your-questions posts were just that, direct responses from the interviewee to users who asked questions. What did we get here? A video chat with very generalized non-specific answers and primarily just an opportunity for Lessig to promote his cause and himself. It was one big spammy two-part advertisement, essentially. Could you be any more disingenuous, Slashdot and Dice? Forget the silly mutinous talk over the Beta redesign; this is behavior deserving of a pitchfork-wielding geek mob. Share 1 hidden comment

Re:Didn't answer anyone's questions directly, did (Score:5, Insightful) by funwithBSD (245349) on Tuesday July 01, 2014 @06:55PM (#47364493) Too long, didn't watch. I want to read my information, not listen to some windbag read it. Parent Share

Re: Ditto. Textual information trapped in a linear non-searchable video has always pissed me off. It serves the interests of the talking head and his masters more than it does my interest of having maximal access to information. Talking-head videos are a means of controlling and limiting access to information. But I digress and was trying to stay focused in my rant....

Re: Your complaint seems wildly off-topic as there's an easily searchable transcript that can be read / searched via the 'hide/show transcript' link right below the video.

Re: I was speaking in general, you nutter! Of course I noticed the transcript in this instance. None of which is relevant to my original rant.

Re: Err... have you tried clicking on the 'hide/show transcript' link right below the video?

Re: Amen. I was looking for a direct answer to my pointed question, and all I got were mealy-mouthed platitudes.

Re: Exactly.Worst. Fucking. Slashdot. Q&A. Ever.I got a +5 rated question about whether Mayday would support term limits on congress, and you didn't even fucking ask it and Larry sure as hell didn't say anything to indicate Mayday's stance on it.Also, in the first video he sidestepped the answer about corporations making movies and writing books about candidates. Citizens United was a fucking LLC that made a political documentary, that's what Mayday is ostensibly fighting against. So don't fucking tell me

Re: And once again the minority voice - you and I and perhaps two other people - will get buried under a mountain of dogma and apathy. Nothing will change with Slashdot for the better (common good), which is the result Lessig should expect from all his efforts attacking symptoms rather than the 'root' causes. 'RootStrikers' is a misnomer and Lessig a fragment of the problem rather than a solution incarnate. This is Money On The Table (Score:2) Think how much of this money would have gone to any candidate with the slightest shred of dignity and spine to stand up for their constituents. Inferior format (Score:3)

by werepants (1912634) on Tuesday July 01, 2014 @07:29PM (#47364769) Others have said it, but I'll repeat: This video format sucks compared to the usual slashdot interview approach. I usually look forward to Slashdot Q&A's because there's an opportunity to have your exact question answered by someone, and so it gives lots of us who comment the next best thing to direct correspondence, assuming that your question is worthwhile enough to get upmodded. This video, in contrast, is annoying to parse. Yes, there's the transcript, but I don't see him answering my specific questions, and it is a pain to read through a bunch of general and less articulate speech-to-text rather than getting a concise and direct response. I could've forgiven you using this format if you still actually read him the questions that were written and voted on by us, but it seems like instead Tim decided to shit on that so he could have a Google hangout and feel important. Share 1 hidden comment

Re: I don't think it's apathy, it's that the video format is so worthless for this, and perhaps that the plan Lessig is apparently describing doesn't even begin to address the problem he claims it solves. A voucher system doesn't take money out of the campaign process, it only gives the government control of who gets the money - which means government controls who gets elected. That's far worse than the system we have now. These other countries that he points to have something that we don't have in the US, and

Title is wrong (Score:5, Insightful) by JWW (79176) on Tuesday July 01, 2014 @11:12PM (#47365899) The title to this article is wrong it should be: Slashdot throws your questions in the fucking garbage and asks Lawrence Lessig a bunch of other stuff. The trashing of any and all questions about term limits was unacceptable. I was actually really looking forward to getting Larry's answers to OUR questions. I couldn't be more disappointed.