November 28, 2017

Yet Another Person Bails on the State Department “Redesign”

Mai/Rex Shutterstock via ZUMA

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Like Spinal Tap drummers, the folks tapped to lead Rex Tillerson’s overhaul of the State Department just keep imploding. The latest is Maliz Beams, former CEO of Voya, who lasted only 90 days:

An early leader of the overhaul was William Inglee, a former Lockheed Martin executive, who quickly moved on. Then came Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan, who was confirmed by Congress in May but stopped leading the effort after a listening tour involving 300 interviews of diplomats and civil servants. Then Beams stepped in to begin distilling the various ideas and recommendations of the overhaul into a workable concept, but in her three-month tenure, she never finished the job.

That’s from BuzzFeed. There are two basic possibilities here:

  1. Tillerson is crap at hiring people.
  2. The people are fine, but after they take the job they quickly realize that Tillerson’s plans are unworkable and poorly thought out.

If I had to choose, I’d guess that it’s a little bit of #1 and a lot of #2.

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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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