campaign finance

Bumped. A good opportunity to get some grant money for those working on election year projects. --Mike

I'm excited, and I hope you will be, about the first Democracy 2.0 Grant Summit, launched this week. The first summit is on the impact of money in politics, sponsored by the Sunlight Foundation - so it's free to attend - in partnership with Mobilize.org.

Of course, I work for Mobilize.org but I'm also a Millennial who's experienced the deliberative dialogue process that Mobilize has been working on for the last year - I joined Mobilize in July. This is a major part of why I decided to work for Mobilize.org. I wanted to help build the infrastructure for Millennials to implement the solutions they create to problems that we all face, using peer to peer communications and web 2.0 tools. The success of our democracy in addressing the big, and small, issues of today and the future depends on the creativity and action of our fellow citizens.

The New American Foundation has an excellent blog post up about the Nelson-Burr Amendment.

They've also done the dirty work of finding out just how much Nelson and Burr are receiving from Banks and corporate lenders who stand to benefit from this amendment. Always good to see how our politicians are bought and paid for. Pretty sweet investment on the part of the lenders, too. For a measly 44 Large, Nelnet stands to make over a $100 million. All told - if the amendment passes - corporate lenders are going to see upwards of $3 billion for less than a $1 million investment.

Think maybe its time for some more campaign finance and lobbying reform?