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Hiding the Bad News
Potatoes for the People?

POLITICS
Hiding the Bad News

Some may wonder: if the Bush administration is so confident of its handling of the US economy in 2002, why then has it discreetly done away with a federal program that tracks employment statistics?

David Lazarus reports in the San Francisco Chronicle that the administration has killed a program run by the Labor Department which compiled statistics on mass layoffs by companies state-by-state. The data supplied “an easy-to-understand overview of which industries are in the greatest distress and which workers are bearing the brunt of the turmoil.” Lazarus contends that the program was curtailed because of White House fears that economic realities don’t corroborate claims that “prosperity is right around the corner.” The first George Bush had similarly axed the program in 1992, also during charges that he had mismanaged the economy; President Clinton later revived the program. The recent termination was hidden in a pro-forma press-release and little publicized.

According to the final report last month, US companies layed off some 240,028 workers in November of 2002; and, in the first 11 months of 2002, nearly two million workers lost their jobs.

GLOBAL ECONOMY
Potatoes for the People?

A dispute over a souped-up potato has pushed India into the frontlines of the genetically-modified food wars, Charles Arthur writes in The Independent. Dubbed the “protato” because it has one-third more protein than its unenhanced cousins, this experimental super-potato is being touted by the Indian government as a partial solution to India’s — and the world’s — hunger crisis.

The protato’s proponents take pains to distinguish it from the US-produced “frankenfoods” that have bitterly divided manufacturers and environmentalists in the West. The locally-developed technology, they say, is intended to improve the diets of India’s poorest citizens, not merely to give pharmaceutical companies a stranglehold over the developing world’s agricultural production. “The requirements of developing countries are very different from those of rich countries. I think it would be morally indefensible to oppose [GM potatoes],” an Indian researcher said. Environmental groups like Greenpeace, however, aren’t persuaded.

“The cause of hunger isn’t lack of food. It’s lack of cash and of access to the food. Creating these GM crops is something to make them look attractive when actually the utility of eating them is very, very low. It’s very difficult to see how this on its own will change the face of poverty.”

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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.

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

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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