October 15, 2014

Tom Cotton Is Upset That Democrats Ended a Free Money Stream for Banks

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The latest from the campaign trail:

Republican Tom Cotton said during an Arkansas U.S. Senate debate on Tuesday that “Obamacare nationalized the student loan industry.” The first-term congressman added, “That’s right, Obamacare grabbed money to pay for its own programs and took that choice away from you.”

Huh. Does Cotton really think this is a winning issue? I mean, it has the virtue of being kinda sorta semi-true, which is a step up for Cotton, but why would his constituents care? Does Cotton think they’re deeply invested in the old system, where their tax dollars would go to big banks, who would then make tidy profits by doling out risk-free student loans that the federal government guaranteed?

That never made any sense. It would be like paying banks to distribute Social Security checks. What’s the point? The new student loan system saves a lot of money by making the loans directly, and that’s something that fiscal conservatives should appreciate. Instead, they’ve spent the past four years tearing their hair out over the prospect of Wall Street banks being shut out of the free money business. Yeesh.

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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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