March 14, 2019

Quote of the Day: It’s Great Working For Trump! Really!

Kevin Drum

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From Joe Balash, assistant secretary for land and minerals management, speaking to oil exploration companies last month:

One of the things that I have found absolutely thrilling in working for this administration is the president has a knack for keeping the attention of the media and the public focused somewhere else while we do all the work that needs to be done on behalf of the American people.

I dunno. If I were genuinely doing work on behalf of the American people I’d probably want everyone to know about it. On the other hand, if I were working on behalf of the oil exploration industry I’d probably be pretty happy that no one was paying attention to me. So I think we know what Balash is really thrilled about, don’t we?

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We've never been very good at being conservative.

And usually, that serves us well in doing the ambitious, hard-hitting journalism that you turn to Mother Jones for. But it also means we can't afford to come up short when it comes to scratching together the funds it takes to keep our team firing on all cylinders, and the truth is, we finished our budgeting cycle on June 30 about $100,000 short of our online goal.

This is no time to come up short. It's time to fight like hell, as our namesake would tell us to do, for a democracy where minority rule cannot impose an extreme agenda, where facts matter, and where accountability has a chance at the polls and in the press. If you value our reporting and you can right now, please help us dig out of the $100,000 hole we're starting our new budgeting cycle in with an always-needed and always-appreciated donation today.

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