This Week in Dark Money

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/hikingartist/5727282498/">Frits Ahlefeldt-Laurvig</a>/Flickr

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For the first installment of a new weekly feature, here’s a quick look at the week that was in the world of political dark money:

Dudes dominate super-PAC giving: No surprise here: Super-PAC contributions, like certain magazine award nominations, are dominated by men. The Houston Chronicle reported that women account for just 14 percent of super-PAC donors, citing it as an example of the “link between the underrepresentation of women in the political money chase and the underrepresentation of women in U.S. elected office.”

Colbert wins award for dark-money mockery: On Wednesday’s Colbert Report, Stephen announced that his show had won a Peabody award for it satirization of super-PACs. To poke fun at the runaway campaign spending following the Citizens United ruling, the Colbert Report founded its own super-PAC, Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow, which ran bizarro political ads in early primary states. 

 

Romney hires GOP guru: As MoJo‘s Andy Kroll reported, Ed Gillespie, the man who created the powerhouse American Crossroads super-PAC with Karl Rove, has hopped aboard Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign. The move calls into question the supposed ban on coordination between super-PACs and candidates’ campaign operations.

“Take the Money and Run for Office”: Last week’s episode of This American Life explored the world of campaign finance. Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) and former Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) discussed the campaign reform bill they championed, which the Supreme Court ultimately ruled unconstitutional. NPR’s Planet Money blog published a companion piece charting the delicious ways politicians woo megadonors.

Congressional fundraisers: NPRAppetite for seduction: Congressional fundraisers, by meal NPR

 

Romney’s radioactive supporter: Texas billionaire Harold Simmons, who has pumped at least $700,000 into the pro-Romney Restore Our Future super-PAC, is pressuring the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to allow him to dump radioactive materials including depleted uranium into his giant West Texas landfill. The “King of Superfund Sites” is hoping for Republican victories in November, having invested $16 million in the 2012 elections, including $12 million in American Crossroads.

Small banks launch super-PAC: Friends of Traditional Banking, a new super-PAC representing the interests of “traditional banks,” says it plans to raise money through small contributions. “Everyone knows that traditional banks didn’t cause the economic crisis, but that didn’t stop Congress from heaping massive new regulations on them and their customers,” the group, which like most banks opposes Dodd-Frank’s “massive new regulations,” said in a mission statement.

More Mother Jones reporting on Dark Money

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

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