September 4, 2009

Michael Steele, Here’s a Newspaper Article You Should Read

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On slow news days—that is, when Dick Cheney or Sarah Palin haven’t said anything—there’s always GOP chairman Michael Steele.

He made website headlines earlier this week when he chastised a 23-year-old woman after she had interrupted him at a Howard University meeting to say that everyone in the country deserved access to good health care, citing the case of her own mother who recently died of cancer because she couldn’t afford chemo medications. Then on Friday, Steele looked particularly out of it within a Washington Post story on the stimulus and the economy.

The front-page article reported that “economists generally agree that the package has played a significant part in stabilizing the economy. They are less certain about the size of the impact.” The piece quoted a former assistant Treasury secretary from the Bush-Cheney administration, Phillip Swagel, who said President Obama’s stimulus package is “starting to play a role, helping us to have slightly positive rather than slightly negative GDP growth.” It cited IHS Global Insight, an economic consulting firm, which estimated the stimulus has added 1 percent to gross domestic product this year. Mark Zandi, chief economist of Economy.com and a former John McCain supporter, told the newspaper, “I don’t think it’s any accident that the economy has gone out of recession and into recovery at the same time stimulus is providing its maximum economic impact.”

So there’s a consensus: the stimulus package has produced results. Enter Steele. The article reported,

On Thursday, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele discounted the impact of the stimulus plan. “Vice President Biden has been trying for 200 days to convince the American people the president’s economic stimulus experiment is working, but just like their government-run health-care scheme, no one is buying it,” he said.

Obviously, Steele had not consulted with Zandi, Swagel, IHS Global Insight, or most economists. There are indeed questions an administration foe can raise about the stimulus. Has it been quick enough? Big enough? Targeted correctly? Is the bang worth the bucks? Only a hack with no regard for reality would insist that it has absolutely not worked and that no one believes it has had an impact. Yet that’s what Steele said, proving once again that he is a guy who’s hard to take seriously.

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That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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