August 30, 2015

Soon We Will All Be Little More Than Organic FedEx Packages

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On Saturday the New York Times ran this headline: “Christie Proposes Tracking Immigrants Like FedEx Packages.” We are, of course, supposed to be scandalized by this. After all, if “anchor babies” is dehumanizing to immigrants, surely treating them like FedEx packages is nothing short of brutalizing. The article goes on to explain:

Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey said on Saturday that if he were elected president he would combat illegal immigration by creating a system to track foreign visitors the way FedEx tracks packages. Mr. Christie, who is far back in the pack of candidates for the Republican presidential nomination, said at a campaign event in New Hampshire that he would ask the chief executive of FedEx, Frederick W. Smith, to devise the tracking system.

Uh huh. This is, of course, part of the Trump-inspired “can you top this” game of being tough on illegal immigration. That’s a bit of a yawn, though, since we went through the same thing during the 2012 primaries. What’s more interesting is that Christie’s schtick is Trump-inspired in an entirely different way: pretending that business people can be slotted effortlessly into government positions where they’ll kick some free-market ass and get our government moving again. Trump started this by claiming that he’d send Carl Icahn over to China because he’s a “killer” and would quickly put the Chinese in their place. Now Christie is following suit.

So what’s next?

  • Hillary Clinton says she’ll hire Bill Gates to run Obamacare.
  • Ted Cruz says he’ll get the Koch Brothers to whip the EPA into shape.
  • Ben Carson says he’ll ask Warren Buffett to run the IRS.
  • Scott Walker says that Jeff Bezos is the man to fix the GSA.
  • Bernie Sanders says he’ll pick Oprah Winfrey as his education czar.
  • Jeb Bush says he’ll bring in Sergei Brin to run the CIA.
  • John Kasich says he’ll nominate Mitt Romney to get the VA on track.

Who else would be able to fix up an inept government agency in a few months? Or maybe it should be the other way around: Are there any government agencies that couldn’t be reformed in short order by the right kind of steely-eyed business leader?

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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.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

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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.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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