Michele Bachmann’s Fact-Checking Pays Off

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Last week, Rep. Michele Bachmann’s campaign manager, Ed Rollins, caused a bit of a stir when he promised that everything his candidate says on the trail will be “100-percent fact-checked.” This seemed like a pretty daunting challenge; we noted at the time that the non-partisan fact-checking site PolitiFact had never fact-checked a Bachmann statement and found it to be anything but “false” or “very false”—the only major political figure for which that was the case.

No longer. Via PolitiFact:

Michele Bachmann said she would not support increasing the debt ceiling if it didn’t include major reductions in government spending. 

“I’ve already voted no on raising the debt ceiling in the past. And unless there are serious cuts, I can’t,” she said at debate June 13, 2011, in New Hampshire…

Bachmann said Obama refused to approve an increase in the debt limit when he was a senator, and that he blamed President Bush for failed leadership, as well as Bush’s supporters in Congress. She’s right on both counts, and we rate her statement True. 

Clearly, Rollins’ political savvy is paying off.

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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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