Since taking the editorial helm at Mother Jones in late 2006, Clara and her co-editor, Monika Bauerlein, have won two National Magazine Awards for general excellence, relaunched MotherJones.com, founded an nine-person Washington bureau, given birth, and forgotten what it's like to sleep. It probably doesn't help she's on Twitter so much.
Clara Jeffery is co-editor of Mother Jones, where, together with Monika Bauerlein, she has spearheaded an era of editorial growth and innovation, marked by the addition of an eight-person Washington bureau, an overhaul of the organization's digital strategy and a corresponding tripling of traffic, and the winning of two National Magazine Awards for general excellence. Before joining the staff of Mother Jones, she was a senior editor of Harper's magazine. Ten pieces that she personally edited have been finalists for National Magazine Awards, in the categories of essay, profile, reporting, public interest, feature, and fiction. Works she edited have also been selected to appear in various editions of Best American Essays, Best American Travel Writing, Best American Sports Writing, and Best American Science Writing. Clara cut her journalistic teeth at Washington City Paper, where she wrote and edited political, investigative, and narrative features, and was a columnist. Jeffery is a graduate of Carleton College and Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism. Born in Baltimore and raised in Arlington, Virginia, she now resides in the Mission District of San Francisco with her partner Chris Baum and their three-year-old son, Milo. Their burrito joint of choice is El Metate.
After a night of arrests, endless meetings, and hipster cops, the guys manning the Occupy Wall Street livestream finally decided they'd had enough of hoofing it from Washington Square Park all the way back to Wall Street. They caught a cab, camera still rolling. That's when they met Khan from Pakistan, and the rest is TAXI CAB MAGIC:
Among the many ritual ablutions a Republican presidential contender must perform is the signing of Grover Norquist's "Taxpayer Protection Pledge," a document the length and subtlety of a bumper sticker that commits politicians to oppose "any and all efforts to increase taxes." To date, all the GOP hopefuls, save Jon Huntsman, have signed on, as have 238 House members (99 percent of the GOP caucus), 41 senators, and more than 1,200 state legislators (PDF).
Norquist, a professional conservative and Washington salonista, drew up the pledge in 1986 at the behest of Ronald Reagan (who had signed a major federal tax increase a few years earlier, but never mind). It was part of the Republicans' nascent "starve the beast" campaign, which postulated that since cutting public services would always be unpopular, the way to shrink the government was to give it little more than hardtack. The movement erupted into full bloom in 2001, when Congress passed the Bush tax cut package; at the time, Norquist crowed: "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."
Leaving aside the metaphor's casual brutality (what can you really drown in the tub? A puppy? A child?), shrinking government wasn't on the agenda. Not really. Wars of choice, Medicare Part D—George W. Bush cranked up federal spending, and Norquist and his pledges didn't kick.
Maybe you've wondered, on occasion of a press conference announcing another major terrorism bust: Why does it seem as if the FBI's undercover operatives actually encouraged—even thought up—the plot? Why do the targets come off as hapless losers unable to organize so much as a poker game? How come it was the government that provided the fake conspiracy, the fake car bomb or missile, even the fake Al Qaeda oath?
Trevor Aaronson wondered, too, and because he's an investigative reporter, he decided to do something about it: look at every terrorism case the government has prosecuted since 9/11 and dig through the evidence and testimony. The result is the lead story in our new magazine cover package, "Terrorists for the FBI."
Among the project's conclusions:
Nearly half the prosecutions involved the use of informants, many of them incentivized by money (operatives can be paid as much as $100,000 per assignment) or the need to work off criminal or immigration violations.
Sting operations resulted in prosecutions against 158 defendants. Of that total, 49 defendants participated in plots led by an agent provocateur—an FBI operative instigating terrorist action.
With three exceptions, all of the high-profile domestic terror plots of the last decade were actually FBI stings.
In all, this investigation reviewed more than 500 domestic terror prosecutions (for more details, see our charts page and searchable database). How did we identify them? The federal government unwittingly helped with this research in a huge way: Attorney General Eric Holder in March 2010 testified before Congress as the Obama administration sought to put 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed on trial in Manhattan—a plan it ultimately abandoned. One of the documents submitted to Congress was a list of all successful terrorism prosecutions from 9/11 through 2009.
Aaronson took that document, then applied the DOJ's criteria for defining terrorism cases to new federal prosecutions and brought the case list up to date as of summer 2011. Together with researcher Lauren Ellis, he went through court documents for every case—tens of thousands of pages. "We wanted an understanding of what happened in each case," Aaronson says. "But we also wanted to ferret out patterns and connections between cases. This allowed us to identify some informants by name and then link multiple cases to specific informants. It also allowed us to see how sting operations have grown steadily, year after year, since 9/11."
President Obama and Speaker John Boehner at their June "golf summit."
Sometime in the '50s, the story goes, a small plane ran into engine trouble over Bethesda, Maryland, and was forced to crash-land near the 18th hole of a bucolic golf club. Employees rushed to the scene, and—upon discovering that the pilot was a woman—had her "very gingerly and gallantly" removed from the grounds.
Three decades later, when a visiting head of state showed up at the same golf club with a complement of Secret Service agents, the lone woman among them couldn't set foot on the property. In 1981, a new Supreme Court appointee with a love of golf and a 12 handicap—Sandra Day O'Connor—became the first justice not to be offered a membership. That same chivalry has since been extended to Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor.
Burning Tree Club's logo.
Honorary membership at Burning Tree Club is not to be sneezed at, seeing as how the initiation fee is north of $75,000, plus another $6,000 per year and tips for the caddie. Still, not all male Supreme Court justices in recent years have accepted the club's offer, though Antonin Scalia did. So did presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and George H.W. Bush. Indeed, according to an encyclopedic 2003 ESPN.com piece by Greg Garber, Ike was persuaded to run for office by fellow club members and subsequently "spent so much time at 'The Tree' that a hot line was installed between the White House and the pro shop."
Barring some Americans from the clubhouse stems from the same part of the cortex as barring others from the lunch counter.
We were moved to take this detour into archaic Washington folkways because of June's debt ceiling "golf summit" between President Obama and Speaker John Boehner, which, as some reporters noted, took place at the Andrews Air Force Base course because the president couldn't very well play Boehner's regular club—Burning Tree.
Deep breath. Okay. It is 2011. Boehner is the speaker of the House. The body that is supposed to, more than any other, represent the people—all the people—of the United States of America. Yet 91 years after women won the right to vote and 40 years after our mothers fought for more than token access to the levers of power, the signal the man second in line for the presidency intends to send to 51 percent of the nation, 40 percent of Republicans, and his own daughters is...well, we're too ladylike to say.
And yes, intends: The optics of belonging to one of America's last 24 boys-only golf clubs have been brought to Boehner's attention many, many times before. Evidently, Neanderthal sexism is simply another thing he refuses to compromise on.
Photo: Library of CongressBut don't feel left out, guys: The speaker's contempt is not confined to those of the female persuasion. From the glass ceiling to the debt ceiling, Boehner and the rest of the GOP brass are not only ignoring the needs of the majority of Americans, they are actively flipping all of us the bird. And that is something new.
Back in the innocent days of yore—say, six months ago—a politician who did not at least lip-synch concern for the welfare of the American people in the event of an economic tailspin would have gotten a drubbing in the press and a talking-to from his caucus leader. Now? It's the caucus leader himself who brutally spells out the priorities: No. 1, says Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, is ensuring that Obama is "a one-term president." No. 2 is protecting "your [Republican] brand." That's right—the reason to worry about a downturn that could kill millions of jobs and wipe out what's left of our retirement and housing values is that it might interfere with GOP positioning.
Which takes us back to golf. George W. Bush gave up the game after starting the Iraq War. Boehner's cohorts seem less worried about looking out of touch: Just in the past two years, the speaker's Freedom Project PAC has spent more than $170,000 on golf, $64,000 at the Naples, Florida, Ritz-Carlton alone!
It's worth noting here that Boehner doesn't come to this callousness by dint of entitlement—one of 12 siblings, he was the first in his family to go to college—which makes his constant gestures of fealty to elites all the more striking. His attire the night he told the nation that he was protecting "the jobs and savings of Americans" by setting us on the path to economic calamity? Navy blazer, oxford shirt, kelly-green tie. Preppy Handbook, anyone?
So, note to President Obama: golf summit, sure. But don't forget that barring some Americans from the clubhouse stems from the same part of the cortex as barring others from the lunch counter. The foundational impulse for both is that fairness matters less than power.
Boehner may be, as the president has said, "a good man who wants to do right by the country." But it all depends, as a previous president might have noted, on what the definition of "the country" is. In today's Republican Party, that definition has shrunk to its narrowest point in at least half a century. And that, in the end, is John Boehner's true handicap.
The internet has been liking our "Speedup" essay about how Americans are being squeezed at work—no wonder, given that many of you probably read the piece sitting at a stoplight, on the phone to your boss, while firing off a couple of emails. "I haven't felt as 'hell yeah' about an article in a while," tweeted one reader. Commenters dug deep into census stats and the cost of childcare. And then there was a post by one of our favorite conservative bloggers, NRO's Reihan Salam, who in addition to calling the piece "a winner for the progressive mediasphere" (thanks!) and suggesting that we expand it into a book, asked a lot of smart questions including this one (about our point that all this overload merely serves to goose corporate profits):
If most of that 22 percent increase in profits accrued to the financial sector, should we reassess how we think about real economy firms? Could it be that addressing the pathologies of the financial sector is the right approach, not embracing more aggressive labor market regulations, collective bargaining, etc.?
Our answer, you won't be surprised to hear, is: We need both. But Salam is absolutely right that more data is needed on this whole topic—we were quite stunned, in researching the piece, at the lack of detailed research on worker productivity and its role in the economy. Could it have to do with the pollution of the economics profession? We'd dig into this immediately, but... we're slammed. Reihan, it's definitely going into the book (thanks, Ezra!) file.
Beyond the blustering on Benghazi and the budget sequester, there are many serious issues facing the nation. Climate change, gun violence, immigration reform, drone warfare, human rights—Mother Jones is dedicated to serious investigative reporting on all of these. But we need your help. We're a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and our work is mostly funded by donations. Please donate 5 or 10 bucks to the Mother Jones Investigative Fund today to turbocharge our reporting and amplify our voice. Thanks!
