Second Term Revolving Door

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The Center for American Progress has a new report out called “The Second Term Revolving Door,” documenting new Bush administration officials who have ties to business, as well as former officials who are moving on to plush lobbying careers. In a the abstract, it’s hard to see the big deal: clearly a number of appointees in the executive branch are often going to have business experience; nor is it a big deal if civil servants want to cash out after they leave government. This administration, on the other hand, deserves very little benefit of the doubt, especially after it let industry lobbyists infiltrate the Environmental Protection Agency and Food and Drug Administration (see here for a long list) and corporate cronies oversee their former companies in Iraq.

Perhaps most notably among the current batch, both Philip Perry, the General Counsel for the Department of Homeland Security, and Michael P. Jackson, Deputy Secretary for DHS, have ties to Lockheed (Perry a former lobbyist; Jackson a former COO). Tim Wiener reported in the New York Times last fall that Lockheed is “increasingly putting its stamp on the nation’s military policies” through its corporate connections. That process seems to be accelerating.

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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.

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