August 17, 2005

Oh, This is Too Good

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Jack Abramoff, before he (yeah, allegedly) made a career out of bilking Native Americans and bribing Senators, was an executive producer for Red Scorpion, a crappy shoot-em-up film. It was a Cold War allegory about a Soviet killing machine sent to fight in Angola, who after seeing the crimes of his adopted army switched sides.

It seems that Abramoff saw the movie as his contribution to amuch larger anti-Communist campaign by Ronald Reagan’s “New Right.” At the time Abramoff, an ex-Chairman of the College Republicans, was chummy (still is, actually) with anti-government activist Grover Norquist who was giving economic advice to Angola’s murderous anti-government rebel group. Go read the Salon article, and see if you can’t find a few chuckles amongst the details of a troubled production that likely relied on illegal Apartheid-era South African funding. And if you can take it, watch the theatrical trailer.

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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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