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Edward Niedermeyer goes to town on the Chevy Volt:

For starters, G.M.’s vision turned into a car that costs $41,000 before relevant tax breaks … but after billions of dollars of government loans and grants for the Volt’s development and production. And instead of the sleek coupe of 2007, it looks suspiciously similar to a Toyota Prius. It also requires premium gasoline, seats only four people (the battery runs down the center of the car, preventing a rear bench) and has less head and leg room than the $17,000 Chevrolet Cruze, which is more or less the non-electric version of the Volt.

This is actually not as bad as I feared when Jack Shafer pointed me toward Niedermeyer’s blast. Looks like a Prius? Meh. Requires premium gasoline? The whole point is that it doesn’t use much gasoline in the first place (no one buys a Volt if they do a lot of long-distance driving), so meh again. Seats four people? That’s a drawback, but not a big one for most people. And although headroom and legroom are indeed a bit less than the Cruze, reviewers mostly seem to think it’s pretty adequate.

That leaves that $41,000 price tag. Which comes down to maybe $34,000 after the federal rebate and perhaps a bit less if your state also offers a rebate. Either way, it’s still a whole lot more than $17,000, and you’re not going to come close to making that up in fuel costs no matter how long you keep the thing. The rest of the Volt’s drawbacks may be modest (and you can add limited trunk space to Niedermeyer’s list), but they seem a lot worse when you’re paying 15 grand for the privilege of suffering through them.

Not to worry, though. In the software biz we always say that nothing is ever right until v3.0. So by 2018 or so the Volt should be in good shape. Assuming that General Motors still exists by then, of course.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

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