Bobby Jindal Outfoxes Everyone

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Well, don’t I feel stupid. Last week I said that Governor Bobby Jindal’s claim that he was considering turning down stimulus cash because of his fiscally conservative principles was just so much political grandstanding. To lay the groundwork for a future national campaign, I argued, Jindal was using the press generated by his objections to position himself as the most conservative member of the GOP’s presidential wannabe crowd. But when push came to shove, he’d obviously take the money. Right?

Wrong. Bobby Jindal is smarter than me. He figured out a way to take the vast majority of the funding set out for Louisiana (about 98 percent, according to TPM) while still earning headlines like “Jindal rejects $98 million in stimulus spending.”

What’s more, the funding that Jindal is turning down is slated for unemployment benefits, a favorite punching bag of the conservative Right. Jindal has already issued quotes about how the stimulus funding would force Louisiana to raise business taxes in order to hand cash out to lazy slobs who can’t be bothered to get a job. (That’s not actually true; Jindal could sunset the increased unemployment benefits when the federal funding runs out.) If you read Stephanie Mencimer’s excellent piece on welfare from the last issue of MoJo, you know that the entitlement systems in the South are badly perverted, and that an extra $98 million could do a lot of good in a state like Louisiana. But who cares, right? This way, future candidate Jindal gets to push all the right buttons.

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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.

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