Traffic in LA Is Both Terrible and Kind Of Weird

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Well, it looks like Trump and Clinton are winning just about everything tonight. But you didn’t need me to tell you that. My job is to distract you from the horror show that has become the 2016 presidential primary. So let’s talk about traffic.

For the millionth year in a row, Inrix announced today that Los Angeles has the worst traffic in the nation.1 This isn’t really news, but I did notice something odd about the rankings. Take a look at the table below:

These are the ten worst stretches of highway in the country, and they’re found, unsurprisingly, in our three largest cities. But in Chicago and New York City, the most rage-inducing time of the week on these extended parking lots is Friday. In LA, it’s mostly Tuesday and Wednesday; Friday takes the top spot in only one out of six. Why is that? Please leave your guesses in comments.

1But not the worst anywhere: London beats Los Angeles by a wide margin. And if Inrix collected data for Africa and Asia, I’ll bet no US city would even make the top 100.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

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