February 12, 2009

The FEC Brings Down the Hammer (Belatedly)

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I was encouraged to see this, kind of:

…the Federal Election Commission has closed the books on 17 more campaign finance investigations… Among those fined were Sen. Mel Martinez and former House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt.

Martinez, R-Fla., was fined $99,000 for exceeding contribution
limits in his 2004 campaign by some $313,000, and for not properly
filing required forms.

Gephardt, D-Mo., was fined $42,000 for accepting $211,000 in
donations beyond the limit in his 2004 presidential bid and for
spending $163,000 more on the Iowa caucuses than allowed.

These fines are hefty, and I’m happy to see the FEC extract them. But this highlights a major shortcoming in the way the FEC does business — fining politicians five years after they violate elections law does not provide them with a serious disincentive for doing it again. If you’re a special interest group and you desperately want to see a proposition defeated or a candidate booted from office, you are far more likely to circumvent the law in order to do so if you know you can tie the FEC up in legal knots for years and only pay a fine way down the road.

And let’s say you do get hit with a serious fine five years on. Half a decade’s worth of beneficial policy that you got by cheating the electoral system is almost certainly worth a couple hundred thousand bucks, right? For more on how/why the FEC doesn’t work like it should, see here and here.

WE CAME UP SHORT.

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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.

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