January 29, 2015

Watch Larry Wilmore Explain How You Can’t Escape the Koch Brothers

After learning that the Koch brothers and their allies plan on spending a whopping $889 million on 2016 elections, Larry Wilmore took to his TV show Wednesday evening to announce his intention to boycott all Koch Industries products.

“I’m sorry, I can’t get behind these guys,” Wilmore explained. “This just doesn’t smell right to me. So what do they make again?”

But after learning that the answer is virtually everything from Dixie cups to greeting cards to Lycra, the Nightly Show host realized that any attempt to free himself from the Koch web of influence was doomed. Wilmore then reminded viewers that it’s not just the Koch brothers who dole out millions to score political advantages, pointing out Michael Bloomberg and George Soros as similar examples. (It’s true that there are big money liberal donors but their networks pale in comparison to the on the Koch brothers maintain.)

“It’s called dark money. Keeping with the white privilege convention of saying that everything bad is dark.”

 
 

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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