October 30, 2015

Obamacare Performs Miracle Time Machine Destruction of Past Economy

Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP

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In Wednesday’s debate, Carly Fiorina said this: “We have 400,000 small businesses forming every year in this country….The bad news is, we have 470,000 going out of business every year. And why? They cite Obamacare.”

Later that night, I spent more time than I’m willing to admit trying to track down that number for business closures. Today, via Steve Benen and the Washington Post, I found it: it’s from a 2014 Brookings study about business dynamism. Annotated chart below. So there we have it. Mystery solved. Small business closures have been rising steadily since Reagan was president, and in 2011 the number hit 470,000. And the reason they closed is because of Obamacare. Who would have guessed?

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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