November 16, 2010

DC Ticker on ABC News: Shuler, Buy; Rangel, Sell

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I’ve previously explained the DC Ticker I compile most days, which is now being featured weekly on ABC News’ website show, Political Punch, hosted by Jake Tapper. Here are the picks featured on the latest PP:

* Heath Shuler, buy—This House Democrat is challenging Nancy Pelosi to be the House Democratic leader but says he doesn’t expect to win. He probably does expect his TV bookings to increase.

* Charlie Rangel, sell—What’s the old saying about a lawyer who represents himself? Oh yeah, he has a fool for a client.

* Kristi Noem, buy—She’s one of a hundred incoming House Republican freshmen, but she’s quickly standing out as a potential House leader. It doesn’t hurt that Politico named her one of the most “crushworthy” Hill newcomers.

* Bill Thomas, buy—This former House Republican used to be chair of the House Ways and Means Committee; now he works for a major lobbying and law firm. Thomas, in a way, represents all the Republican lawmakers-and-staffers-turned lobbyists-and-consultants who will make a mint peddling influence in the new Congress.

You can receive the almost-daily DC Ticker report by following my Twitter feed. (#DCticker is the Twitter hashtag.) Please feel free to argue with my selections—though all decisions of the judges are final. And please feel free to make suggestions for buy or sell orders in the comments below or on Twitter (by replying to @DavidCornDC). Don’t forget: DC Ticker is merely an advisory service. It and its author cannot be held liable for any investments made in politicians, policy wonks, or government officials on the basis of the information presented. Invest in politics at your own risk.

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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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