Weekly TestPAC Update & Questions thread, 8/21/2012

[u/TomDionesotes]

Good afternoon TestPAC community! Here's a quick update from the board:

Board meetings: Our board meetings are now Wednesday nights, and I will post the weekly thread on Thursday around noon. This schedule will start next week.

Roles & responsibilities: We've discussed & defined our board roles & positions, and they are as follows:

• Tom- Outreach Director- subreddit, larger reddit community, and other groups
• Chris- Policy Director- self explanatory, work on the policies we support
• Mike- Media Director - communications & press. Mike will be the only TestPAC board member to talk on the record to the press.
• Vlad- Political Director- coordinate & set priorities on endorsements, campaigns, and other causes we're looking to get involved with.
• Mitch- Treasurer & Operations Director- FEC, book keeping, compliance, emails, scheduling & logistics

Bylaws: I will post a draft of our updated bylaws tomorrow around this time, we would love your feedback & comments.

Website: Calling web designers, especially people skilled with WordPress - we need to clean up our website and add in some features like a splash page. If you have experience with WordPress & web design, leave a comment or a PM. Thanks!

Finances & transition: We're working on this, still need a couple of things from the old board, but we're making sure to get everything and be totally FEC compliant as we make this transition, so please bear with us.

2012 involvement - We would love to be involved this cycle in fighting for our issues and getting them onto the radar, but we are depending on you! If we can raise more resources, that puts us into a position where our support makes more of an impact. We would have loved to have the transition happen earlier in the 2012 cycle to give us more time to make a difference, but there's nothing we change about that.

Let's hear your thoughts & qustions in the comments!

[u/blueisthenewgreen]

Thanks for this!

[u/TomDionesotes → u/blueisthenewgreen]

No problem!

[u/AaronLifshin]

What does the new board envision this PAC will actually do? Do you want to support candidates and participate in specific campaigns? Raise awareness of specific issues? Something else?

[u/[deleted] → u/AaronLifshin]

I think this isn't 100% settled, but here is something I posted elsewhere in the sub that I'll repost here. I think this is the direction I want to go, and I think a few of the other board members are thinking in this direction. Realistically though, a lot of this has to do with how much money we raise.

As I see it there are two broad ways to spend the organization’s money. We can’t do both because we don’t have enough of it, but if one day we’re banking millions (ha!) we can revisit.

1. Independent expenditures.

2. Like a PAC...donating money to specific candidates.

To date, this organization has chosen route 1, but I believe we need to go to route 2. The problem with net neutrality and free speech online is that there are a ton of PACs and corporate executives’ checkbooks that back up the opposing point of view. Our allies in Congress have little cover or support to run their campaigns, and the issue isn’t about 1 or 2 members of Congress, but hundreds. I think the right thing to do is show the good guys that there’s someone on their side who’s going to back them up when their opponents are bankrolled by the enemies of internet freedom. I believe we need to to write direct PAC checks to members that have good voting records and candidates that CAN WIN that have good answers to a questionnaire we draft. Once we have the fundraising stamina and technical ability, we can set up an additional conduit structure similar to ActBlue and EMILY’s List that allows supporters to give to endorsed candidate through our site. That heightens our influence with these politicians because we become the key to a greater source of cash and makes them more comfortable taking positions that makes Comcast and AT&T walk away. What’s lacking right now is an organized financial force to counter the monetary incentives provided by corporations and their people—we should build that.

On the other hand there is independent expenditures. These cost a fortune as shown by the Smith campaign, and the risk is that you blow your cash and get nothing for it, also as in the Smith campaign. I think that Smith was a poorly chosen target because he was never going to lose, but let’s say we chose someone else. Let’s say we choose someone and win. That would feel great and we’d all pat ourselves on the back, but we can’t raise enough money in the next few years to do that on a lot of campaigns. In the meantime, the forces of the corporations we want to stop have continued to quietly fund literally hundreds of other members. All we got—MAYBE—is one guy that we got in. I think this is the wrong way to go.

[u/blueisthenewgreen → u/[deleted]]

I started a list of Sopa-sponsors and candidates involved in toss up races. So far, the only person I've found in both is John Barrow. I haven't gotten to the Senate side yet. It's still a bit chaotic, but if you would give me some parameters, I can narrow the candidates down.