Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Since we examined the pros and cons of biotechnology (“A Growing Concern,” January/February), another dietary staple—corn—moved further into genetically altered terrain.

Tomato

Monsanto won EPA approval in late December to sell a transgenic corn seed, and immediately took full advantage, buying Holden’s Foundation Seeds—whose seed is used in 35 percent of U.S. cornfields—for $1 billion.

But Wall Street took heed of continued protests in Europe, where consumer groups worry about the health risks of genetically engineered crops. Investment bank NatWest Securities warned that the protests threatened the company’s seed sales.

Social Security

 

When we exposed the backdoor lobbying effort to privatize Social Security (“Up in Smoke,” November/December 1996), President Clinton’s Social Security Advisory Council was still keeping its study of privatization quiet—and out of the 1996 presidential race.

But in early January, the council endorsed a general plan to privatize, Social Securityand stories of the securities industry’s massive lobbying began to surface. One council member, Thomas Jones of TIAA-CREF, the country’s largest private pension system, says he was pressured by the mutual fund industry’s trade group to support an extreme privatization plan. “My response,” Jones told the Washington Post, “was that I was appointed as a public member of the advisory council, not as a representative of a company or an industry.”

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate