December 10, 2008

So Where Does the Blago Situation Go From Here?

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Rod Blagojevich woke up today as the head of the Illinois government, fully vested with the ability to appoint someone to fill Barack Obama’s vacated Senate seat. It’s unlikely, of course, that the Senate would allow a Blago-appointee to actually take office, but the fact remains that Illinois still has a crazy man in power. Worse, he’s a crazy man with a clear history of audacious actions and nothing to lose.

So what can be done to get the midwestern Tony Soprano out of power? Progress Illinois runs down the options. At current, it looks like Blago can resign, the General Assembly can impeach him, and the Supreme Court can use a little-known state judiciary rule to boot him from office. Click the link for a full explanation. Also note that the legislature in Illinois has made noises about passing a bill instituting a special election for the Senate seat, but such a bill would have to be signed by Blago himself.

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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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