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It will cost up to $100 billion to repair and replace Army equipment damaged in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the former head of Army Materiel Command. ??? As of last May, 59% of National Guard units had the minimum amount of equipment necessary for deployment, down from 87% two years earlier. ??? In the weeks before Hurricane Katrina, the Louisiana National Guard reported that it lacked about 350 essential items for hurricane response, including trucks, Humvees, and water trailers. ??? Almost two years into the war, only 30% of the nearly 20,000 Humvees in Iraq were fully armored. Another 24% had no armor at all. ??? A year later, the 3rd Infantry Division, which has taken most of the Army?s casualties, had less than 20% of the armored Humvees it needed. ??? A Defense Department study found that 80% of Marines killed by upper-body wounds in Iraq between 2003 and 2005 could have been saved if their vests had had $260 armor plates. ??? 18,000 military protective vests were recalled in November because they weren?t adequately bulletproof. ??? In a December poll, half of active-duty military disagreed that ?the civilian leadership in the Department of Defense has my best interests at heart.? ??? Late last year, President Bush sent the family of a soldier killed in a Humvee explosion a condolence letter with the typo ?God less you.?

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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.

payment methods

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