It's that time of year: The time when we ask for your money.
Readers may know that TAPPED is a nonprofit institution, scrapping for resources amid the recession just like everybody else, and according to the business folks, the donations we receive from readers make up about a third of our budget. Which is a lot.
There aren't a lot of magazines that write about politics from a policy-first perspective. When arguments about the White House's detainee policies threatened to descend into name-calling, Adam Serwer explored the issue from the ground up, detailing the hard choices to be made. When the rest of the media was freaking out about town halls and tea baggers this summer, Dana Goldstein was ahead of the curve, looking at how health-care reform will affect reproductive rights. It's hard to find a reporter who covers the challenges workers face like Harold Meyerson. And there aren't many venues where you can learn about the people trying to reinvent our economy from the bottom up. If you think those stories are important, I hope you'll give what you can.
Our work is only going to be more important in the weeks to come as serious legislative clashes brew among special interests, members of Congress of every ideological stripe, and President Barack Obama. TAPPED is your place for analysis that ranges from Capitol Hill, the White House, and the executive agencies to the progressive coalition, policy wonks, and people on the ground in the states. Our tagline is "liberal intelligence," not just because we like to think of ourselves as smart lefties but because that's we provide: Information for progressives who care about issues and outcomes, not just bruising political battles. (Although those are fun, too.)
In the next few months, and the years to come, an ambitious liberal president and a fractious Congress will take on health-care reform, fixes for the financial sector, our energy future, and half a dozen other big time -- maybe once-in-a-generation -- issues. Don't you want to know how it all goes down?
--Tim Fernholz
