At the intersection of tech and politics
Erik Speckman (a Salonista) and Dave Winer propose the formation of a new political action committee composed of Those Who Get It to support like-minded candidates and to defeat the candidates who represent the interests of Those Who Don't, particularly in opposition to some of the DMCA madness currently being proposed. They suggest that those who would support them could contribute as much as $5 million to this fund.
One would think that the Electronic Frontier Foundation had already organized a PAC, but apparently it has not seen the wisdom of doing so. EFF has had some success as an advocacy-group amicus in the judicial sphere, but it has been entirely ineffective in influencing players in the political sphere. Its efforts in that area seem to have been limited to organizing letter-writing campaigns, which are regarded as no more than an annoyance to Senators and members of congress. (An organization that cannot find $2,000 to hire someone to teach its staff the rudiments of word processing software is not in a position to lead an effective political movement at any rate.)
While checking on the foregoing, I noted that Brock Meeks had said, way back in 1994:
"The Communications & Electronics sector gave a total of $9.71 million in campaign contributions through their Political Action Committees (PAC) during the full 1990-1992 election cycle, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics (CRP)."
The CRP is the sponsor of OpenSecrets.org ("Your Guide to the Money in the U.S. Elections"), one of two sites where an amazing amount of information can be found about campaign contributions. The other is the National Institute on Money in State Politics, which focuses its attention where its name suggests. The OpenSecrets site tells us that:
- PACs in the Communications/Electronics sector have contributed $8.8 million to Federal candidates so far in the 2001-2002 election cycle
- They contributed $14.7 million in the 1999-2000 election cycle
- PACs in the entertainment industry (TV-movies-music) have given $1.85 million to Federal candidates so far this cycle
- They contributed $3.36 million in the 1999-2000 election cycle.
These figures cover only contributions to political candidates. It does not include the money spent for lobbyists, those $500 per hour types whose job it is to wine and dine officeholders and remind them of where the largess comes from and what their clients want to see happen on the floor of the House and the Senate.
This has been the spending by these industries without any organized and financed opposition. Does anyone doubt that these industries can ratchet up the spending to ten or twenty times the 1999-2000 amounts if they need to?
Five million isn't going to do it, my friends. An effective counter to that much political money power would require at least $15 million and perhaps as much as $30 million. And the difficulty, as always, in putting that much wind in your sails is that you had better know well in advance where your ship is going to be sailing.
1:59:53 PM 
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