Dramatic Change is “Radical”

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Ezra Klein says “I’m not sure I’d term calls for procedural reform ‘radical,’ much less ‘revolutionary.'” Here’s what I said when Matt Yglesias said something similar:

Just because a reform is possible or even theoretically easy (i.e., doing away with the filibuster or carving out a federal district and making the rest of DC a state) doesn’t mean it has any realistic chance of being enacted. So that puts pragmatists like Yglesias and Ezra Klein back in the same spot. If what the country needs is unlikely to happen without political reform, and political reform is very unlikely to happen, what is a pragmatist to do?

This conversation has drifted somewhat far afield from its original topic, which was Democracy in America’s claim that Yglesias and Klein are not the “fundamentally moderate, process-oriented wonks” the conventional wisdom says they are. I took that claim to mean that such people would be incrementalist third way types who think that change can be accomplished by working within the system and the existing process. But that’s not what the young progressive blogosphere is calling for. Instead, Klein and Yglesias are advocating for fairly dramatic changes to the way American politics works in practice. Right now, their message is largely that the system doesn’t work, and Barack Obama can’t get anything done because the system is flawed. Wouldn’t making that system work be a pretty big change? Maybe we’re just getting caught up in semantics here. But changing the way the President is elected, or changing the way powerful Senate committee chairs are picked, or making DC a state—as opposed to working within the system we have—all seem like pretty radical changes to me.

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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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