Enviros Take Aim at Michele Bachmann (R-Crazytown)

Photo by theqspeaks, <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/theqspeaks/4456177298/">via Flickr</a>.

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On Wednesday, the League of Conservation Voters added Minnesota Republican Michele Bachmann to its annual list of Congress’ worst environmental offenders. The group selects members of their “Dirty Dozen” list to target for electoral defeat, and this year they decided to add a special “people’s choice” category with an online vote—and Bachmann won by a “landslide,” the League said.

Bachamann’s take on global warming is among the more creative in Congress. See, for example, her floor speech on the subject during last summer’s debate of a climate bill:

Carbon dioxide is natural. It occurs in Earth. It is a part of the regular lifecycle of Earth. In fact, life on planet Earth can’t even exist without carbon dioxide. So necessary is it to human life, to animal life, to plant life, to the oceans, to the vegetation that’s on the Earth, to the, to the fowl that—that flies in the air, we need to have carbon dioxide as part of the fundamental lifecycle of Earth.

Global warming, she says, is “all voodoo, nonsense, hokum, a hoax.” Last April, she called for an “armed and dangerous” revolution against measures to curb greenhouse-gas emissions. She also believes that the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge “is the most perfect place on the planet to drill.” For all of this and more, she has received a 2 percent lifetime score from LCV.

Bachmann fired back yesterday, calling LCV an “ultra-liberal group obsessed with arcane restrictions that do little to help the environment and a great deal to harm the economy.”

Unseating Bachmann might be an environmental victory, but who else will provide such colorful commentary on climate?

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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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