November 16, 2011

Obama Worth Less Than $51,000 in “Croc Attack Insurance”

Cold-blooded. Reptilian. Assassin?<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/briangratwicke/5110912142/">Brian Gratwicke</a>/Flickr

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If Barack Obama were attacked by a man-eating crocodile during this week’s visit to Australia, you’d think that his life would be worth significantly more than $51,000, right?

Right?

Well, AFP reports:

Obama will be the fifth president to visit…Australia, and his flying two-day visit will take in the staid capital Canberra as well as the Northern Territory town of Darwin, in the heart of “Crocodile Dundee” country.

Local firm TIO has snapped up the opportunity to insure the high-profile visitor, issuing a [sic] him with a Crocodile Attack Insurance policy which will pay out Aus$50,000 (US$50,870) if the president is fatally attacked by a reptile. …

The company, which has been providing crocodile cover for more than 20 years, hopes to present a framed copy of the policy — which features a menacing photo of the deadly predator — to Obama in Darwin on Thursday.

Just to be perfectly clear, if the Secret Service can’t prevent this from happening to the President of the United States…

…at least the First Family will be $50,870 in the black.

Thankfully, the chances of anyone (leader of the free world, or not) getting terminally wrecked by a croc in Australia are fairly slim, with an average of two reported fatalities each year. And if this BBC headline from summer 2010 is any indication—”Australian drunk survives attempt to ride crocodile“—Obama will have to do a little more than just show up to get assassinated by an Aussie crocodile.

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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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