September 19, 2016

Today’s Boring Policy Number: 16%

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Remember all that stuff about how Donald Trump’s tax plan treats pass-through income? (Quick refresher here if you don’t.) Apparently the Tax Foundation gave up on getting a straight answer about how this works, so they’re now giving two estimates of the impact of Trump’s plan. If we assume he’s going to keep the low pass-through rate—the one that would benefit his own businesses—they figure his plan would create a whopping 215,000 new jobs per year over the next decade. And that’s with lots of dynamic scoring pixie dust sprinkled around.

In other words, I think we can safely say that Trump’s plan would create approximately zero jobs. However it would blow a huge hole in the deficit (about $6 trillion without pixie dust) and it would be a huge windfall for the rich, increasing their after-tax income by a whopping 16 percent. And make no mistake: unlike a lot of Donald Trump’s fanciful ideas, a Republican Congress would be delighted to pass something like this. And they’d do it in a way that couldn’t be stopped by a filibuster.

Once again, I get it. This is BORING. It’s policy stuff. Ugh. We really don’t want a bunch of dull numbers like this mucking up our beautiful front pages or our lovingly hand-crafted nightly news programs. That’s why I kept this post short.

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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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