December 30, 1999

E-feed the hungry

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As long as you’re wasting time idly surfing the Web, why not send some food to hungry people in a foreign country? You can do it for free at the Hunger Site, an independent service launched on June 1 by an Indiana software programmer disturbed by the fact that some 24,000 people worldwide starve to death every day. The site has since teamed up with the United Nations World Food Program, and has taken in the equivalent of millions of dollars in contributions. Just visit the site, click on the donation button under the map of the world, and a batch of rice, wheat, maize or other staple will be sent out, paid for by the sites corporate sponsors such as Blue Mountain Arts, Sprint and InfoSpace.

http://www.thehungersite.com

—VB

_
Oil giant kills domestic partners benefits

Dec. 29

Way back when, the oil companies were enormous monoliths of corporate greed, and gay employees dared not entertain the remotest fantasy that they might be accepted and treated equally by their employers.

Welcome back to the past. Now that Exxon and Mobil have the blessing of the Federal Trade Commssion to merge in an unholy union reminiscent of Standard Oil, the greasy guys in charge have decided to revoke domestic partners benefits from their gay employees, according to the BALTIMORE SUN. Mobil had provided such benefits before the merger; Exxon had not.

That makes ExxonMobil one of the last major oil companies not to provide domestic partners benefits. BP Amoco, Chevron, and Shell do offer such benefits.

http://www.sunspot.net…

—BSB

_
Another multimillion-dollar military mistake

Dec. 28

The US military goofed again. A $45 million unmanned spy plane was taking a test flight over the California desert last March when it received an “abort” signal from a Nevada Air Force base, according to the ASSOCIATED PRESS. The plane nose-dived to the desert floor.

The Air Force says the plane was flying so high that it lost its communications link to Edwards Air Force Base in California and instead responded to the next strongest signal. The Nevada base was apparently testing its flight cancellation signal at an inopportune moment. Your tax dollars at work.

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/…

—BSB

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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.

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.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—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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