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A new Pew poll is out, and it can be summarized pretty easily: everybody hates Washington DC. “By almost every conceivable measure,” says Pew, “Americans are less positive and more critical of government these days.”

No surprise there. The good news comes in two places. First, if you take a look at this chart, you’ll see that trust in government rebounded strongly during the Clinton administation and then sank like a stone during the Bush administration. So it’s far from impossible for Obama to turn things around once the economy starts to pick up. Second, in addition to hating the government, people also hate banks and large corporations these days. This suggests a pretty obvious way for Congress and the president to get back on the public’s good side, no?
 

So that’s the poll. And now to random kvetching. I went ahead and took their “How satisfied are you with government?” quiz, and it turned out that I was surprisingly satisfied. More on that later. For now, though, I just want to highlight question #6 as a sign of how impoverished our discourse has become. When Pew asked about your preferred size of government, the answers ranged from “way smaller” to “the same as now.” Apparently the folks who designed the poll were literally unable to believe that any significant number of people might want government services expanded. This is despite the fact that their own surveys have shown that about 40% of Americans would prefer a bigger government that offered more services. We liberals still have some work to do.

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.

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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.

payment methods

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