October 1, 2013

Sad Birthday Cards for Yosemite and NASA, 123 and 55 Today


It’s your party, and we’ll shut it down if we want to.

That’s the message congressional Republicans sent Yosemite National Park and NASA today, on their respective 123rd and 55th birthdays. 

Yosemite’s special day will now include such celebratory activities as instructing all day visitors to immediately leave the park and kicking out overnight RVs and campers. Worst surprise party ever.

NASA put out a cheery graphic today celebrating its five decades of astronomic successes, from putting 12 people on the moon, four landers on Mars, and one craft in interstellar space. To honor their hard work, the government gave 97 percent of NASA staffers unpaid vacations. The space program effectively got grounded on its own birthday. Robots got the shaft too; Curiosity Rover poked at H2O molecules in Mars dust on Thursday, and got furloughed on Tuesday. 

Congress may be giving them the Sixteen Candles treatment, but we wanted to let Yosemite and NASA know we care.

 

WE CAME UP SHORT.

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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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