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Yesterday the LA Times ran a story about a special parking ticket service for local VIPs that it called “Gold Card” service. I didn’t actually read the story and assumed that was just a catchy name the Times was using. But no. It turns out there is, literally, a Gold Card:

The service, which few outside of city government appear to know about, partly involves a plastic parking bureau “Gold Card” that is distributed to city offices. It includes a special phone number to call and on the back side notes that the holder may have an “urgent need to resolve any parking citation matter which requires special attention.” It promises “you will be immediately connected to our Gold Card Specialist.”

….[City controller Wendy] Greuel’s audit said the Gold Card referral service is provided exclusively to the mayor’s office and council district offices.

….Sarah Hamilton, a spokeswoman for Villaraigosa, said the mayor’s office had periodically used the program as one of many ways to help constituents. Callers who thought they didn’t deserve certain citations are referred to the Gold Card Desk, she said, adding that the program is open to anyone, not just VIPs or insiders.

“Any resident of the city who feels they received a citation in error, or who needs a sidewalk repaired or graffiti removed can call the mayor’s office for assistance,” Hamilton said. The Gold Card Desk is a comparable “resource for constituents.”

I just love that line. As the Times story makes clear, however, virtually no one who’s a non-insider even knows this program exists, let alone uses it.1 And the most common reason for tossing out tickets? Inability to pay — “a complaint Greuel’s investigation portrayed as a dubious reason for dismissal.” Indeed. Isn’t life wonderful for the rich and famous?

1Take Danny Legans, for example. “I wish they did let us know about it,” he told a Times reporter as he was paying an $88 ticket. Legans then asked officials inside about the program but was told it did not exist. “They said there is no such thing. You can’t appeal. They told me: You have 30 days to pay this ticket or it will be doubled.”

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

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