Its time has come - A PRO-CANNABIS SuperPAC. Your ideas are needed!

I've mentioned it in a few threads in the last couple of days, but I really like the idea of getting a Pro-Cannabis SuperPAC rolling.

SuperPACs can accept donations from the public as well as private organizations. Plus, money donated to a SuperPAC is anonymous. Someone recently donated $10,000,000 to Romney's SuperPAC, for example.

Anonymous donations means that many people who support our cause could give to us without their conservative supporters knowing about it and vilifying them.

We could also accept donations (the way Steven Colbert and Ron Paul do) from individuals.

The money raised could be put into a series of Pro Cannabis ads that could be run in states where MMJ or cannabis supporting bills are upcoming.

It could also be used on the national stage to potentially influence candidates to discuss the issue.

Looking for ideas, criticism, obstacles and solutions.

Bill Maher recently gave $1,000,000 to Obama's SuperPAC. I wonder how many people like him might donate to a 420PAC?

Might even be possible to get pro-canna celebrities to film little "I use cannabis" vignettes.

Also, we need a name.

Personally, I think it should be a name that sounds respectable like "CannaPAC" (vs. PotPAC or 420PAC). It needs to look completely above the board and not have Cheech and Chong as spokespeople.

Please subscribe to this thread and take part in the discussion. We need to hear from all sides.

Subscribed!

I was thinking idly of this a while back, wondering if such a thing would be possible...
You know Sir Richard Branson is good for a couple million.

Always though the slogan "Please think responsibly", both as a play on the alcohol advertising warning and as an appeal to people's common sense about the risks/benefits to cannabis legalization, might make a good T-shirt.

What does PAC mean? Ixquick search is giving me things like Proxy autonomous servers and the Royal House of PAC....

sub'd PAC= political action committee

Anti- Way to get the joint err... ball rolling. There is a lot of funds to be had and this could be a serious boost for ad campaigns in pre-legalization med states. Respectable name is key for public acceptance and credibility. Good thoughts and has me thinking for sure, fight the system using the system. Sub'd. NS

+Important, Great Idea

Wonderful idea.

Remember when the medical marijuana news was full of articles about grandma easing her pains? That was a winner! This is the voting block we need to target. They've never smoked it and only heard "reefer madness". They're not all voting no because of cultural bias. We need to educate them about how the prison industrial complex wants to get it's claws on their grandkids in order to turn a profit. Teach them that LEO isn't always working in their best interests.

Wikipedia's Segment on SuperPACs (for reference)

Wikipedia's Segment on SuperPACs (for reference)

Here's the segment on Super PACs from the "Political Action Commitee" page at Wikipedia, found here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_action_committee#Super_PACs

Super PACs

In 2010, a few weeks after the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United, the United States Supreme Court Court of Appeals ruled in SpeechNow.org v. Federal Election Commission that PACs that did not make contributions to candidates, parties, or other PACs could accept unlimited contributions from individuals, unions, and corporations (both for profit and not-for-profit) for the purpose of making independent expenditures. The result of the Citizens United and SpeechNow.org decisions was the rise in 2010 of a new type of political action committee, popularly dubbed the "super PAC". Officially known as "independent-expenditure only committees," Super PACs may not make contributions to candidate campaigns or parties, but may engage in unlimited political spending independently of the campaigns. Also unlike traditional PACs, they can raise funds from corporations, unions and other groups, and from individuals, without legal limits.[5]

As noted, Super PACs were made possible by two judicial decisions. First, in January 2010 the U.S. Supreme Court held in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that government may not prohibit unions and corporations from making independent expenditure for political purposes. Two months later, in Speechnow.org v. FEC, the Federal Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit held that contributions to groups that only make independent expenditures could not be limited in the size and source of contributions to the group.[6]

According to Federal Election Commission advisories, Super PACs are not allowed to coordinate directly with candidates or political parties. This is intended to prevent them from operating campaigns that complement or parallel those of the candidates they support or engaging in negotiation that could result in quid pro quo bargaining between donors to the PAC and the candidate or officeholder. However, it is legal for candidates and Super PAC managers to discuss campaign strategy and tactics through the media.[7][8]

Super PACs may support particular candidacies. In the 2012 presidential election, super PACs have played a major role, spending more than the candidates election campaigns in the Republican primaries.[9] As of early April 2012, Restore Our Future—a Super PAC usually described as having been created to help Mitt Romney's presidential campaign—has spent $40 million. Winning Our Future (a pro–Newt Gingrich group) spent $16 million.[5] Super PACs are often run or advised by a candidate's former staff or associates[10].

In the 2012 election campaign, most of the money given to super PACs has come not from corporations but from wealthy individuals[9]. According to data from the Center for Responsive Politics, the top 100 individual super PAC donors in 2011–2012 made up just 3.7% of contributors, but accounted for more than 80% of the total money raised[11], while less than 0.5% of the money given to “the most active Super PACs” was donated by publicly traded corporations.[12] Super PACs have been criticized for relying heavily on negative ads.[13]

The term "Super PAC," was coined by reporter Eliza Newlin Carney, "the first to imbue [the term] with its current meaning of 'political committees that may raise and spend unlimited money to independently support or oppose candidates.'"[14] According to Politico, Carney, a staff writer covering lobbying and influence for CQ Roll Call, "made the first identifiable, published reference to 'super PAC' as it’s known today while working at National Journal, writing on June 26, 2010, of a group called Workers’ Voices, that it was a kind of '"super PAC" that could become increasingly popular in the post-Citizens United world.'"[15]

but whos gonna run it, and decide who to back, what to run and where?

i had a disscusion about somthing similar im just paraphrasing and this is just another option or addition to the topic, but it went like this im not gonna reveal who it was , i dont think they are involved with the facualty on IC so this is un-official.


"It would be interesting to see a icmag superpac seed bay fund raiser for rp,its a investment in freedom and bisnuess.
Thanks."

and the answer was we needed to check with admin.

just replace RP with cannaPAC and i think we are good.

I'll second the CannaPac initiative!

Ok... so forming one looks to be ridiculously easy.. There's a form to fill out and then you need a bank account and you have to list someone as the treasurer.

That's the first major roadblock, and I'm seeking help from all of you to figure out a solution.

I could open a bank account, but it seems to me that anybody who's REAL name gets associated with that account is BOUND to draw some scrutiny. As far as I can tell, everyone else associated with the PAC (administrative staff, etc.) as well as ALL donors can remain completely anonymous.

As a non-medical grower in a non-medical state... I'm not the obvious choice for this mission.

(Unless somebody wants to bankroll me. I'd be willing to shut down my grow and live simply, but I would need a steady supply of herb for my own use and my mortgage/utilities covered at least until a paycheck was justifiable from PAC funds.)

Ideally, we'd need someone who was either beyond prosecution (a non-grower) or with money to throw at lawyers to setup the bank account and act as treasurer.

I need your ideas to help navigate this first hurdle.

we for sure need a clean person to do this safley,or a bisness if IC gave permission it could be done through seedbay,we just need to co-ordinate on specificly where the money would be best spent and gathering seed donations.

Could we contact an established canna organization, like NORML? I'm sure they have the infrastructure already set up to handle something like this.

edit - I'd do it myself, but...

I'm not sure that IC could do it because of the location.

But IC could run certainly host seed-auctions with the proceeds going to do much the same thing (pay for ads, etc.).

The thing about the PAC is that it is (currently) protected ANONYMOUS free speech. You can only donate so much to a candidate. But you can donate UNLIMITED amounts (anonymously) to a PAC. And that PAC can support a candidate if it chooses, without having to disclose the names of the donors.

So... like... last year Barney Frank and Ron Paul had the bill to reclassify cannabis from schedule I. It went nowhere. But what if our PAC had been running ads showing the blatant hypocrisy and the COST of that hypocricy - both to taxpayers and in human terms? What if those ads encouraged people to contact their local representatives (and maybe tailored each ad for each market so that the contact info for their representatives were IN the ad) and push them to get involved in getting it pushed through committee?

That's the kind of thing I see having the fastest impact. Doing all the work for stoners so that they simply have to pick up the phone and dial the number on the screen and have LOTS of people doing it.

MadBuddhaAbuser said:

but whos gonna run it, and decide who to back, what to run and where?

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We should ask former Governor of New Mexico Gary Johnson. He is pro cannabis legalization, out of office so he has nothing to lose, experienced in Washington, and is Libertarian and can get a bill sponsored by Ron Paul and Barney Frank.

KEITH FAGIN, a marijuana activist fighting the good fight for many years mainly alone. www.calgary420.org if he is still around

I submit the name Delta-9-PAC

MadBuddhaAbuser said:

but whos gonna run it, and decide who to back, what to run and where?

Click to expand...

Well... that's why we're here talking about it.

What do you suggest?