January 29, 2009

Nyet!

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NYET!….The Obama administration wants to extend the February 17 deadline for TV stations to switch from analog to digital transmissions. I don’t have a strong opinion about the merits of this delay, but check out the results of the roll call vote in Congress:

[Joe] Barton led the push to scuttle the bill, which passed the Senate unanimously on Monday night after lawmakers in that chamber struck a bipartisan compromise….But those concessions did not placate most Republicans in the House. Only 22 Republicans voted for the bill, while 155 voted against it.

So here we have a relatively nonideological issue. It went through a modest amount of give-and-take and a compromise was struck. And the result? 100% of Senate Republicans voted in favor but 90% of House Republicans voted against. Shazam!

Apparently the House GOP caucus really has decided to blindly stonewall everything Obama wants, no matter what. This is even more of a wakeup call than the vote on the stimulus bill.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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