February 3, 2009

Joe the Plumber Creates a Crisis of Confidence

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Is this what we’ve come to? Republicans lawmakers listen to conservative experts and Democratic lawmakers listen to liberal experts, and because everyone listens to people who will tell them what they want to hear the idea of expertise is rendered meaningless, thus opening the door for Joe the freaking Plumber to advise the Conservative Working Group in Congress on how to proceed on the stimulus bill.

This isn’t a single, random, insanely silly moment. This is a sign that something is deeply wrong with the way we make policy in this country. It shouldn’t make you laugh. It should make you cry. (Okay, maybe laugh and cry.)

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GREAT JOURNALISM, SLOW FUNDRAISING

Our team has been on fire lately—publishing sweeping, one-of-a-kind investigations, ambitious, groundbreaking projects, and even releasing “the holy shit documentary of the year.” And that’s on top of protecting free and fair elections and standing up to bullies and BS when others in the media don’t.

Yet, we just came up pretty short on our first big fundraising campaign since Mother Jones and the Center for Investigative Reporting joined forces.

So, two things:

1) If you value the journalism we do but haven’t pitched in over the last few months, please consider doing so now—we urgently need a lot of help to make up for lost ground.

2) If you’re not ready to donate but you’re interested enough in our work to be reading this, please consider signing up for our free Mother Jones Daily newsletter to get to know us and our reporting better. Maybe once you do, you’ll see it’s something worth supporting.

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