May 10, 2010

Senate Drilling Warfare Starts Tomorrow

Photo courtesy Mary Landrieu, <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/marylandrieudotcom/2942684242/in/photostream/">via Flickr</a>.


Tomorrow, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will hold the first of several hearings this week on the BP oil spill. And you can expect fireworks on the subject in the committee, which includes both staunch offshore drilling opponent Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Mary Landrieu (D-La.), who has remained a stalwart defender of the oil industry even as the Gulf spill encroaches upon her state.

The offshore drilling debate only portends to get more intense on Wednesday, as senators roll out a climate and energy bill. What (if anything) that bill may say about offshore drilling is likely to be among the most contentious issues for Democrats. And lest you start to think the Gulf spill has put a damper on Landrieu’s support for oil drilling, here’s the latest from her on that front via The Hill:

“I’m not inflexible, but facts are inflexible … And the facts are that we’ve drilled 1,000 wells in the Gulf, and all of them have been drilled with safety and with no disruption,” she said.

“I don’t believe we should shut down an industry because we had one accident, even as bad as this one is. It would be like asking if an airliner falls out of the sky, do we stop flying all planes?”

I’ll be live-tweeting from the hearing tomorrow, which you can follow here.

More Mother Jones reporting on Climate Desk

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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