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It’s a tax cut!

Taxpayers who object to Congress’ plan to beef up military spending and to the U.S.’s rising market share in arms sales (see MoJo’s “USArms,” Sept./Oct. 1994) are joining longtime “war tax” resisters to channel their money to better causes. According to the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee (800-269-7464), the number of folks expressing interest is growing. As of 1994, 39 alternative funds collectively held in escrow nearly $1 million in resisted taxes, loaning out $120,000 to community groups. In 1993, they dispensed $60,000 in grants. Withheld money goes to groups that fight AIDS and hunger and improve rural education, among others.

In April, the California-based New Campaign for Conscience will go to court to gain conscientious objector status for war-tax resisters. In Congress, meanwhile, the push for a Peace Tax Fund has new support: Conservatives now see this as a religious freedom issue.

— Lynn Weiss

Work your MoJo

Celebrate passage of the Violence Against Women Act with the National Organization for Women’s summit and rally, April 8-9 in Washington, D.C. (Call 202-331-0066.)
Stop the insanity: The Violence Prevention Coalition of Greater L.A., Women Against Gun Violence, and other groups are holding their fourth annual peace march in Los Angeles on April 23 (previous marches drew thousands.) (Call 213-240-7785.)

— Jennifer Lind

Foley’s fatal folly

We told you how former Speaker of the House Tom Foley would do almost anything to protect Congressional incumbents (“Foley Flexes,” July/Aug. 1993; “Newtiavelli,” Jan./Feb. 1995). Yet another footnote for historians of hubris: in 1989 Foley cut a deal with the GOP leadership not to fund any challenger who attacked an incumbent on the issue of Congressional pay raises. So when David Worley, who was running against Newt Gingrich and lambasting him on pay raises, asked for a Demo party contribution in 1990, Foley refused. Gingrich beat Worley by fewer than 1,000 votes. How did Newt repay Foley? In 1994, he recruited George Nethercutt to run against Foley and helped raise money for him; Nethercutt won with 51 percent of the vote.

Hot rods

“Faulty Rods” (May/June 1994) has stirred some movement at the top. After reading our story, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission agreed to reassess whistle-blower Chris Hall’s concerns that nuclear fuel rod casings made by Teledyne Wah Chang Albany are flawed. The rods are used in reactors worldwide; bad rods could release radioactivity and contribute to meltdowns.

Newtie exposed!

Get yours now, while they’re still available. “What You Need to Know About Newt” includes our revealing 1984 and 1989 profiles, as well as a 1995 look at Speaker Gingrich. Send $2.95 to NewtPack, Mother Jones, 731 Market St., Suite 600, San Francisco, CA 94103. Bulk discounts: 5-24, $2 each; 25-99, $1.75 each; 100 or more, $1.50 each (CA residents add 7.25 percent tax).

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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 canā€™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.

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 wonā€™t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its futureā€”you.

And we need readers to show up for us big timeā€”again.

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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