Here is a spreadsheet of all the senators who voted for Kavanaugh, along with the money they have been given by the "liberal" tech giants in Silicon Valley. Let me respond to a few questions I've seen posted about this. docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d…
1. "What does it matter if these dollar amounts are so small?" Election law limits PACs to giving $10,000 per election cycle. In absolute terms, it's not a lot. But if it doesn't matter, why do corporations take such pains to do it? Clearly it has value beyond the raw dollars.
2. "Why aren't you posting what these companies give to Democrats?". Most political giving is configured to be roughly equal to both parties. But if I write a $1000 check to the KKK, it doesn't balance out if I write the same check to the NAACP. These are uniquely bad politicians
3. "More of a question than a comment. Everyone is doing this, it's part of doing business. Don't be naive, snowflake." Except that Apple does absolutely fine without a PAC. Twitter's seems to exist just to humiliate the company—they barely give. We have proof by counterexample
4. "Isn't it unfair to cherry-pick donations? They give to both sides equally." Political giving is NOT symmetrical, even beyond my argument up in (2). When Facebook gave to Devin Nunes in May, they didn't also give to his opponent Andrew Janz. And if they had, why give at all?
5. "These donations are from employees who give to their PAC. Why aren't they allowed to have opinions?". The way PAC donations work at a tech company is that you are STRONGLY encouraged to take a paycheck deduction. You have no voice in how the money is allocated after that.
5.1 ...if you look at the donor lists to things like Facebook PAC, you'll see some of the most liberal people in Silicon Valley, including a bunch of Great Slate donors! And yet they fund Roger Wicker and Jim Risch. The PAC is a private payroll tax imposed by management pressure
5.2 Some tech company PACs (I won't name names because lawyers) even do shady things like hold a raffle if you sign up for political giving. Participating in the company PAC is highly encouraged once you are a sufficiently high-level executive. The pressure is real
6. "Where do I look all this stuff up?" Go to the FEC's magnificent website, right here, and use the 'Recipient' and 'Contributor' boxes. You can see who donated to a corporate PAC, or which candidates it gave to. The autocomplete feature will help you. fec.gov/data/receipts/…
7. "How do I fix it?" Two good ways! If you work at a tech company that runs a PAC, *organize* with co-workers to get it shut down. Talk to @michelleimiller about how! And for anyone with means, *donate* to candidates who will make corporate PACs illegal: secure.actblue.com/donate/great_s…
