June 18, 2012

Conservatives Decide Not to Take Obama’s Mini-DREAM Bait

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WARNING: I didn’t watch any Fox News this weekend so I might be wrong about this. But so far, it seems to me that the leading lights of conservatism have managed to keep their troops under control on the immigration front. President Obama announced his mini-DREAM DHS directive on Friday, and Time’s Massimo Calabresi describes Mitt Romney’s choices:

He could play it safe, accentuating whatever slight differences might exist between the nascent Rubio plan and the one Obama had just unveiled with full fanfare. That would be a tough sell, since Obama appeared to have crafted his measure explicitly to steal Rubio’s thunder. Alternatively, Romney could go bold, embrace the President’s plan, perhaps even go a step further, become a champion of immigration reform and shift his bets from the base to Latinos.

In an interview for Sunday’s Face the Nation on CBS, taped Saturday in Pennsylvania where Romney was campaigning, Romney showed he was opting for the cautious response.

Other conservatives seem to have mostly followed suit. I did read several items over the weekend complaining that Obama was abusing presidential power by declaring which laws he’d enforce and which ones he wouldn’t, but frankly, even those seemed a little pro forma. For the most part, everyone seemed to be lying low, afraid that furious denunciations of the usual sort would torpedo their chance of winning any Latino votes this November.

So have conservatives really decided to back down on this? Have they kept their troops pretty much in line? Is the spittle-flecked stuff being restricted to private email lists? Any Fox News watchers out there care to weigh in?

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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