[SPORK] Political Underwriting Funds

[Jeff Bone]

Okay, so we've got PACs, and look where that's gotten us.  So here's a 
new idea:  The Political Underwriting Fund, or PUF.  Here's how it 
works:

(1)  Set up a 501(c)3 [whatever] corp.
(2)  Set up multiple PayPal accts for said corp, 1 per politician / 
issue of interest
(3)  Define release criteria for funds that accumulate in said account

These could be used in various ways.  For example, I'm sure there are 
50M Americans that would pay $1 on the prospect of paying George W. 
Bush to step down from office.  Would $50M do the trick?  No idea.  
Even if it did not, the interest accumulated on that money could be 
used to prop up the war chests of other candidates, buy stock in FOX 
News in order to exercise shareholder control, etc.

The only problem with paying politicians to resign is that, of course, 
it encourages even worse political mischief.  (Well, that and the fact 
that if you bought Bush off, you'd have to work your way pretty far 
down the line of succession before you got to a desirable candidate.)  
But PUFs could be used in more traditional PAC-like ways, too.  The key 
difference between PACs and PUFs is that PUFs are fine-grained, 
issue-focused, Web-friendly, and extremely low-friction.  You don't 
have to buy into an entire "bundled" agenda to toss a little pocket 
change towards making the world a better place.

Thoughts?

jb