We Should Stop Helping the Silver Scammers

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We’ve all seen ads like this a million times, but for some reason this one finally caught my attention. It’s the usual pitch: there’s a limited supply of silver bars, and California residents can get them cheap if they act fast! “For the next 2 days residents who find their state listed on the Distribution List above in bold are getting individual State Silver Bars at just the state minimum of $57 set by the Federated Mint.” And if you order ten bars, shipping and handling are free!

The current fixing for an ounce of silver is about $15. So if you pay $1,140 for $150 worth of silver, they’ll throw in shipping gratis. What a deal.

Anyway, I know this is all legal because the fine print says yada yada yada, and there’s no law that prevents selling goods for an astronomical price. But really: are we all so desperate for advertising dollars that we have to sell space to folks like this? I guess the answer is yes, but maybe that ought to change. We all know who gets taken in by these kinds of ads, and it doesn’t speak well of any publication that continues to be complicit in this.

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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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