September 9, 2005

Human Waste

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The latest edition of the Bonehead Compendium is up, this week focusing exclusively on the tragedy of Katrina and the federal mismanagement it has exposed:

It now appears that when presented with some 1400 firefighters and paramedics from around the country and who possessed expertise in search and rescue and hazmat operations, FEMA saw fit to assign this regiment of life-saving men and women to wander around the devastated regions of the south and hand out information fliers to already rescued hurricane victims. But within this frustrating waste of human capital an even more egregious abuse of these good people occurred. As Bush made his way to New Orleans for some priceless footage of him hugging black people, FEMA had 50 of these firefighters flown to Louisiana to walk around with the President while he toured the wreckage.

Maybe the government figures rescue and cleanup personnel have been overcommitted to operations since, as former first lady Barbara Bush so tactfully stated this week of the underprivileged victims, the hurricane “is working very well for them.”

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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.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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