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I wrote a fundraising letter the other day.  Here’s how it started:

Have you noticed the virtual flood tide of crap floating around these days?  Me too.  Turn on the TV and Lou Dobbs is noodling on the air about whether or not Barack Obama was really born in the United States.  Open the newspaper and George Will is telling his readers that global warming is just a sham.  Listen to Fred Thompson’s radio show and Betsy McCaughey is warning listeners that the House healthcare bill would “absolutely require” end-of-life counseling sessions every five years for senior citizens.

Everyone who reads this blog knows the rest of this story, so I won’t repeat it here.  But the past couple of weeks have really brought some things into focus, and one of them is how difficult it is for any of us to make a difference all by ourselves.  I mean, what can you do when you’re competing against Lou Dobbs and FreedomWorks and the entire cast of Fox News?

Answer: contribute a few bucks to Mother Jones!  It helps sustain this blog.  It helps sustain the magazine.  It helps sustain the website.  It helps sustain our Washington bureau.  Basically, it helps sustain an operation big enough to fight back against the conservative noise machine.

So help us out if you can.  You can contribute via credit card here, and if you give more than $35 we’ll throw in a subscription to the magazine.  If you prefer PayPal, hit the tip jar at the bottom of the post.  You’ll help make the world a better place.

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.

payment methods

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.

payment methods

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