March 23, 2011

The Latest From Karl Rove

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David Corn reports that Karl Rove, that well-known champion of openness in government, has started up a new project called Wikicountability.org, which plans to collect documents about the Obama administration obtained via the Freedom of Information Act and offer them for crowd-sourcing in one, easy-to-access place. David is unimpressed:

This Crossroads GPS project, though, is built upon a profound incongruity. The conservative organization is championing accountability and openness, yet it does not disclose the well-heeled funders and special interests underwriting its own efforts to shape the political system….NBC News reported that a “substantial portion of Crossroads GPS’ money came from a small circle of extremely wealthy Wall Street hedge fund and private equity moguls.” Crossroads GPS is the poster-nonprofit for secret campaign mega-money….But now this secretive organization is deploying the issue of open-government to assail the Obama administration, which has a better record on openness issues than previous administrations.

I don’t really see this. Rove runs a private group that’s not required to release information about itself. The federal government is a public institution that is supposed to release information about itself. Even if Crossroads GPS were required to divulge its major donors (a good idea, I think), it would still be able to keep the vast majority of its inner workings confidential, and rightly so. It’s just not comparable to a government agency that works for the public.

So I guess I’d absolve Rove of any serious hypocrisy here. So far, though, his new project does seem to be trafficking in both idiocy and inaccuracy, which is a little harder to defend. David has more about this at the link. Still, if Rove wants to keep an eagle eye on the Obama administration in order to gain partisan advantage, I can’t complain. Who’s going to keep a better watch on possible government corruption than political opponents, after all? It’s the idiocy and inaccuracy, which I have no doubt are going to continue, that are harder to take.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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