Plan B: Relieve the Rich, Screw the Poor

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The kabuki theater going on over John Boehner’s Plan B is truly a wonder. Unlike some others, I don’t think there’s any mystery about why Boehner suddenly abandoned negotiations with President Obama and introduced his Plan B legislation. It’s because, once again, he got sabotaged by his own party. The same way that Eric Cantor and the tea party caucus just flatly wouldn’t vote for a compromise debt ceiling bill last year, they flatly won’t vote for a compromise fiscal cliff bill this year. Without the votes of the crazies, Boehner was stuck, so he introduced Plan B as a face-saving way of wriggling out of negotiations with the White House.

But it turns out that the crazies won’t even support Plan B. So now Boehner is larding it up with conservative catnip to try and pry loose some votes. And just what is it that conservatives want? Cuts in entitlements, as they’ve been claiming? Nope. Matt Yglesias takes a look at what’s been tacked on:

When John Boehner needs to add spending cuts to a deficit reduction bill to make his most conservative members happy, they don’t want to reindex Social Security benefits. They don’t want to monkey with the Medicare eligibility age. That’s not the stuff that gets them jazzed up. Taking food out of the mouths of hungry children, by contrast, is something they’re excited about. They’re eager to reduce regulation on banks and cut back on poor people’s health care. Cutting spending on the elderly is something they’ll maybe consider as part of a deal with Obama. Cutting spending on the poor is their idea of Christmas.

Conservatives don’t want to cut entitlements. They don’t want to cut defense. They don’t really want to cut spending on the FBI or roads or ag subsidies. Actions speak louder than words, and it turns out that what they really want is goodies for corporations and the rich and fewer of their tax dollars going to the indolent, undeserving poor. Ho ho ho.

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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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