September 17, 2009

Watching the Henhouse

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By law, two of the five commissioners of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission can’t be from the president’s party.  To fill those two slots, the president normally defers to senior leaders of the opposition party.  In the senate that would be Mitch McConnell, and for one of the two GOP positions McConnell has recommended one of his own former staffers: Scott O’Malia, the Republican clerk of the Senate Energy and Water Development subcommittee.

But before he worked for the Senate, O’Malia was a lobbyist.  And not just any lobbyist: back in the early 2000s he worked for Mirant, a company engaged in Enron-like misconduct that pushed relentlessly for deregulation of energy trading. Now, though, O’Malia says the Enron debacle opened his eyes to the problems caused by exactly the kind of deregulation his former employer championed.

Maybe so.  But surely the Republican Party can find someone who’s been a little more dedicated to regulation all along?  David Corn and Daniel Schulman have the full story here.

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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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