June 10, 2008

Hey, a Brand New Bush Administration Scandal!

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Who would have thought it was possible, at this late date?

Apparently, the DOJ’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention has been handing out its National Juvenile Justice Grants not based on the interests of America’s at-risk kids, but on cronyism and fraud.

Programs ranked as highly effective by DOJ staff were ignored and denied funding, sometimes because they taught sex ed or because they catered to gay and lesbian teens. Meanwhile, poorly ranked programs were awarded millions of dollars because they had political, social, or religious connections to the Bush Administration. None of the top six programs received money, but the World Golf Foundation, ranked 47 out of 104, was funded. Former President George H. W. Bush sits on its board.

The full report is at ABC News. Embedding seems impossible. TNR notes that this exact scandal happened during the Reagan Administration.

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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.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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