October 22, 2008

Slush Fund?

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SLUSH FUND?….Politico reports that the Republican National Committee has apparently spent $150,000 (so far!) to outfit Sarah Palin for the rigors of vice presidential campaigning. Her expenses included $5,000 on hair and makeup, $5,000 at Atelier for men’s clothing (for Todd? Track? Levi?), and $140,000 on a series of shopping trips to Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, Barney’s, Bloomingdale’s, and Macy’s. Matt Yglesias comments:

I’m a little bit surprised to learn that expenditures of that sort are legal. They appear on the disclosure forms, so apparently they are, but this seems to open the door to candidates using party committee money as a personal slush fund.

This just goes to show how cynical our younger generation has become. I’m sure that after the campaign is over the RNC plans to donate the clothing to homeless shelters in small towns around the country where they don’t have stores like Saks or Barney’s. That’s no slush fund. It’s just people helping people.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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