March 2, 2009

Food Politics

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Ezra Klein glosses a story from Haaretz:

Israel, it seems, has been denying shipments of pasta headed for Gaza. Senator John Kerry, who’d been visiting Israel, heard about the idle trucks filled with food aid and asked around. “Israel does not define pasta as part of humanitarian aid,” he was told. “Only rice shipments.” A call Kerry made to Ehud Barak quickly got the pasta added to the list of acceptable humanitarian aid. Comments from Representative Brian Laird helped lentils onto the list of officially allowed foods. American politicians do not like seeing starvation used to change electoral outcomes.

Of course, there’s another way we could guarantee that food gets through to Gaza: tell the Sixth Fleet to escort UN aid ships into Gaza.  It’ll never happen, but it would work, wouldn’t it?

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From the desk of Mother Jones CEO, Monika Bauerlein...

Newsrooms can be funded in many ways. One of the most controversial (and volatile) ways is by a for-profit corporation or a billionaire owner. We see it across the headlines on a weekly basis: the claw backs in public media, the gutting of The Washington Post, the bending over backwards to appeal to Trump and his allies.

But not here.

When Mother Jones first started publishing 50 years ago, our founders made a critical decision: to be a reader-supported nonprofit. They knew that no corporate owner would be interested in a muckraking newsroom; they also knew that no muckraking newsroom would be interested in following the agenda of a corporate owner.

And so, we’ve been reader-funded for half a century. We rely on contributions from our readers—readers like you—whether it’s $50, or $15 a month, or whatever fits your budget. People give what they can, and every donation makes a difference for our newsroom, which has grown tremendously—in size and reach and renown—since its inception in 1976.

You may be wondering: What does it take to publish an investigation? And what does my donation actually fund? The answers are one and the same: It takes people, resources, and time. And that’s what your donation funds directly.

Every donation Mother Jones receives from readers fortifies our newsroom, whether we’re covering underreported scandals out of Washington, DC, or the most important news of the day. And right now, each donation will be doubled because of our $50,000 match. So when you make a donation—$5, $50, any amount—it’ll go twice as far.

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