Joe the Plumber Creates a Crisis of Confidence

Membership Thermometer

Mother Jones’ union co-chair Patrick Caldwell connects the dots: Facebook's decision to throttle our content cost Mother Jones at least $400,000—the same amount we had to cut from our payroll this year. Please read his post, and if you can, chip in to help us finish our fall fundraising drive strong and hit our big goal by Saturday's deadline.

$350,000

We still need to raise about 400,000

Let our journalists help you make sense of the noise: Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily newsletter and get a recap of news that matters.

Is this what we’ve come to? Republicans lawmakers listen to conservative experts and Democratic lawmakers listen to liberal experts, and because everyone listens to people who will tell them what they want to hear the idea of expertise is rendered meaningless, thus opening the door for Joe the freaking Plumber to advise the Conservative Working Group in Congress on how to proceed on the stimulus bill.

This isn’t a single, random, insanely silly moment. This is a sign that something is deeply wrong with the way we make policy in this country. It shouldn’t make you laugh. It should make you cry. (Okay, maybe laugh and cry.)