September 19, 2012

It Turns Out That Mitt Romney Really Does Enjoy Firing People

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Reading a bit more through the full transcript of the Romney fundraiser, we come to this passage:

Audience member: The government in Washington right now is just permeated by cronyism, outright corruption….And I think people are fed up with that….Nancy Pelosi was supposed to give us an honest Congress and has given us just the opposite as speaker. And I think that’s a campaign issue that can work well. I’m optimistic that you’ll be elected president. And my recommendation would be clean house, immediately. The SEC, the CFTC are disaster areas.

Romney: I wish they weren’t unionized, so we could go a lot deeper than you’re actually allowed to go. Yeah.

Sadly, Romney didn’t elaborate on just which civil service slackers he wishes he could fire with the stroke of a pen, but this might be a fruitful area for someone to explore further. Does he specifically want to fire lots of people at the SEC and the CFTC? Or just fire lots of low-level workers in general? Inquiring minds want to know.

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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.

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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.

payment methods

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