March 19, 2018

DC Councilman Believes Rich People Control the Weather

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This is an actual headline from earlier today:

D.C. Councilman Apologizes for Claiming That Jews Control the Weather

This is being played as a guy who’s such a moron he didn’t realize that “Rothschilds control _____” is code for “Jews control _____ .” After reading his muddled apology, I can believe that. But that leaves one teensy little problem. This guy is a DC city councilman. Before that he was on the Board of Education. And he believes that rich people are controlling the weather so they can make lots of money by creating natural disasters. He’s just decided it’s not specificially Jewish rich people who are doing this.

Does anyone care about that? Neither of the two stories I read even bothered to mention it. Is this what we’ve come to in the era of Trump? WTF?

POSTSCRIPT: If anyone’s defense of White is that lots of politicians believe batshit crazy stuff, then I guess I have to say…

…that, um, you’ve got a point. We h. sapiens are a helluva species, aren’t we?

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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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