Ignorance

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I want to draw everyone’s attention to two particularly depressing news items. The first is from the New York Times, which wants us to feel sorry for rich people whose taxes will go up under President Barack Obama’s tax plan:

As the political battle drags on… it has also veered into a more basic matter of fairness, whether a person who earns more than $200,000 a year should be taxed at rates similar to those who make $5 million.

As Jon Chait points out, this is just wrong. In America, we have something called marginal tax rates. If you move into a higher tax bracket, you’re not taxed at a higher rate on all your income—just the income above the minimum for that bracket. The poor, benighted individuals who make $200,001 will only pay a higher taxes on the $1 they make that’s over $200,000. Because of this, people who make $5 million pay (and, under the Obama plan, will continue to pay) taxes at a significantly higher effective rate than people who make, say, $270,000. Socialism!

The second item comes via the New York city tabloids (the Post and the Daily News), which both have stories on how annoyed New Yorkers are that the government is mandating a font change on street signs. Dan Amira of the New York magazine’s wonderful Daily Intel blog does the honors on this silliness. As Amira points out, the change was mandated in 2003 in order to improve safety (the new font has been proven to reduce accidents), cities and states have 15 years to switch out the old signs, and the change isn’t likely to cost the city much of anything in terms of extra money or work since 8,000 signs are replaced each year due to wear and tear anyway. But, you know, big government is evil!

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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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