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A Third Way report made the rounds yesterday touting the idea of providing taxpayers with a “receipt” when they pay their tax bills every year. They provide an example, which looks like this:

Put aside the technical details for the moment. I don’t know for sure if all their calculations are right. I don’t know why national defense is left off their sample receipt. Medicare and Social Security are funded from a different set of taxes than everything else and therefore have to be calculated differently. I don’t know how you’d divvy up the share of revenue from corporate income taxes, excise taxes, etc. For now, though, let’s assume we could work out all that stuff to everyone’s satisfaction.

My question is this: who would be in favor of this and who would be opposed? Would everyone’s receipt show the same items, or would everyone get, say, the same top five or six and then a random mix of other stuff? Who would decide how to break things out? Would liberals be afraid that people might look at the welfare-related spending and be outraged? Would conservatives be afraid that people might look at the startlingly low numbers for everything after the Big Five (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Defense, interest on the debt) and lose some of their outrage over federal spending?

Technical details aside, this is the kind of idea that everyone should support. Taxpayers should know where their tax dollars are going, after all. And yet, I’ll bet that neither party would actually be in favor of this. Why do you suppose that is?

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.

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