December 18, 2012

Video: Colbert Super-PAC Donates Its Leftovers

"If you eat a ham in the shape of a rival's head you gain all their knowledge…and all their sodium too."<a href="http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/398530/september-29-2011/colbert-super-pac---ham-rove-s-comeback">Colbert Nation</a>

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The Ham Rove Memorial Fund, rumored to be linked to Stephen Colbert’s super-PAC (okay, definitely linked), announced it will donate more than $135,000 to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit organization that aims to expose money’s effect on elections and public policy. Colbert, host of Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report, won a Peabody Award this year for his work in educating the American public about the implications of the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling through Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow (ABTT), his satirical super-PAC.

On his December 13 show, Colbert announced that he legally wasn’t required to disclose the whereabouts of the nearly $774,000 remaining in the war chest of his super-PAC after the election. Coincidentally, the same exact amount was just donated to a new memorial fund named in honor of ABTT’s former chief strategist Ham Rove, a bespectacled slab of ham who suffered a tragic end when he fell upon a knife that Colbert happened to be swinging wildly in his immediate vicinity.

The Ham Rove Memorial Fund then divvied up the cash to the CRP as well as the Campaign Legal Center, another organization that fights for transparency in politics, several Hurricane Sandy relief organizations, and the Yellow Ribbon Fund, which helps wounded troops returning home from war.

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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.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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