Dear Readers,
Last year the June Water Cooler mini-fundraiser was very successful, and we need you to help us make it just as much a success this year as last. Water Cooler provides both business and political coverage and commentary, and in both realms the torrent of propaganda and sheer bullsh*t has become almost overwhelming. Water Cooler helps all of us maintain our footing in that torrent.
Besides providing general business news, Water Cooler files all the scamming and grifting and phishing under the heading of “The Bezzle,” provides a contextual view of official statistics, maintains a watch on important indices, and follows shipping and supply chain news as a non-financial window into globalization. In politics, Water Cooler provides detailed, gritty coverage of important races, like the one Jon Ossoff just lost, of sausage-making on policy, especially health care, and tracks the continuing legitimacy crisis of the political class as a whole, especially out in the “flyover states.” In addition, Water Cooler covers ecological news under climate change, gives dispatches from the front of Class Warfare. That’s a lot of material to cover and bullshit to wade through on a daily basis!
Independent funding is key to having an independent editorial point of view. As Matt Stoller wrote in 2011:
The truth is, you can get lies for free. Wall Street is only too happy to buy advertising, to make sure you hear from their well-credentialed experts. If you are not paying for your media, though, then they are. And you aren’t the customer, you are the product being sold. While this arrangement works, what it means is that you’ll get lies for free. And this is a very expensive proposition. So I hope that you’ll consider, if you haven’t already, putting some dollars towards the Naked Capitalism fundraiser. If you can’t afford much, give only a few bucks. If you can afford more, give more. If you can afford to give a lot, give a lot. It will pay for itself, I guarantee you. This isn’t just giving, it’s a statement that you are want a different debate, a different society, and a different culture. It’s about saying you are tired of the lies you are being fed for free, and are willing to put your valuable resources into reshaping how information in our society flows. It will help policy-makers understand that if they make good decisions, they have allies, and if they don’t, they have enemies.
We’ve been able to deliver independent, hard-hitting commentary, analysis, and original reporting because we are independently funded. Lambert volunteered to add Water Cooler as an additional feature so we could be more timely and comprehensive. But Water Cooler is a separate store front within Naked Capitalism to pay for his considerable effort on it over and above all the work he already does on the site (and for which he is paid out of the annual fundraiser). Lambert has a separate Tip Jar in Water Cooler, under the Plantidotes that you all send in.
Despite Water Cooler getting consistently high traffic levels all this year and plenty of comments, donations to it fell sharply since the shock of the election wore off, and have remained flat ever since. To be crass, Lambert is making well under a living wage for his work on Water Cooler and that is not right. We need you to live up to what we hope is one of the widely-held values in the commentariat, that people should be paid fairly for their work, especially work that has already been done! That means digging into your wallets, whether a little or for a lot, and chipping in for Water Cooler.
We’d like to get broad-based participation from the NC community. So even if you can only make a small contribution, we’d still appreciate that, because we also have readers who can make much bigger donations. Our target is 250 donors, and we’d like to return to our regularly scheduled programming as soon as possible. I thank you; Lambert thanks you.
Here is the link to Lambert’s Tip Jar. Please click the hat!
If you are allergic to PayPal (note that you can use a credit card or debit card on PayPal), you can send mail to lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, and he will give you directions on how to send a check.
___
* Yes, Lambert also gets paid out of the annual fundraiser, but that is for the considerable amount of work he does besides Water Cooler, such as DJing the site, helping manage the comments section, managing a lot of the tech issues, and helping in tooth-gnashing over other “business of running the business” matters.
42 comments
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Thanks for the reminder. My good intentions are now transformed into right action! Thanks for all you do, Lambert.
You’re welcome!
Thanks for all you do Lambert. No one has been a more vital voice these past couple years. (I’m sure that’s been true for longer, but some of us are latecomers.)
Even on my busiest days I always try to make time to read the Water Cooler. Between Lambert’s cogent commentary and reader’s insightful comments, it’s one of my primary and most rewarding news sources. Well done, Lambert, and thanks. Contribution made.
Count me as one of those Luddites who’s going to send a check. Thanks for all you do, Lambert and the rest of the NC crew!
I am a Luddite, too, in that I don’t like “contactless payment.” OTOH, things (especially thanks) are so much easier in PayPal!
I forgot to ask Yves to say that one of my goals this summer is to have several meetups in the Northeast (“The Naked Capitalism Summer Offensive,” or some such), but to do that I need to have some loose cash floating about. So cast your bread upon the waters, as it were…
Followed by winter meetups in the Southwest? (Hint-hint!)
Just did my tiny part in keeping the water that little bit cooler. ¡Muchas gracias, Lamberto!
Lambert,
I don’t always comment, but I do read the Water Cooler religiously. I love your commentary on each article, and your biting sarcasm often has me in stitches. The best is when you do the weekend links and they get “water cooler-ized” with lots of colorful “Lambertisms.” I just stuck a C-note in your tip hat and encourage all other members of the commenteriat to give whatever they can afford to Comrade Lambert.
Truly yours,
The Kingfish
> colorful “Lambertisms
I try to keep the irony light. Even fluffy!
Being an allergic Luddite, I held my nose and tried using a CC on PP. No dice. Appears to require creating an account to donate. Am I missing something ? Got plenty of abhorrence of PP, so that’s not it…
Googling around “how to donate via paypal without an account”
An older stackoverflow entry says to look for “Don’t have a PayPal account?” on the page…not seeing it.
Bitcoin is so much easier and leaves no ring around the soul:)
Help me (help you).
Probably simplest just to mail me at the address above. Please put “donation” in the subject line so I don’t miss it. Thank you!
Oops. I used a truncated version of the post title.
Thank you! Just got to figure out how to put a check in an email with subject “donation”…unless you are pointing me to a street address???
Just one more punch to that dead horse. Perusing PP FAQ’s, I find
Maybe you could fix it by using a different “button”. I cannot be the only one reluctant to create a PP account, can I? How many have turned away at that point?
Could you have more than one button? I do like the top hat … maybe an akubra slouch hat for us slackers:)
Didn’t need an account. When you click on the top hat, above, you get taken to a screen that has two choices. The first is with a paypal account, the second is “donate with a debit or credit card”. You’ll want the second if you don’t want to create a paypal account.
By “donation” in the subject line, he means by sending him an email to get his snail mail address.
HTH.
Thank you Wobbly.
I will send email to get his address.
Picking that dead horse up once more, just to punch the poor gal,
There is indeed the words “Donate with a debit or credit card” and one can dutifully fill it all in and then … ??? I can only find one “button” to finish at the bottom of the page, below the “Create a PayPal Account”. Clicking that gets a stern warning that you must provide a name and password for a new account. The FAQ I quoted indicates this could be the expected behavior, depending on your button type.
Sorry to carry on this far. I will contact da boss for a physical address. Just thought it good to remove as much friction as possible.
One more observation: On one attempt, the top hat button was only a place holder, as correntewire.com was down (verified with downforeveryoneorjustme.com). This prevented the button from working at all. No clicky no ticky.
Thanks again for your patience.
Hmm. It’s up now. Thank you for struggling through the Intertubes!
It intrigues me that some people aren’t able to find the way to use PayPal to pay without a PayPal account. Perhaps the PayPal website doesn’t work correctly with some browser versions. I don’t have a PayPal account, and I’ve always been able to pay using a credit card, including yesterday evening.
I tried to find info at this web site, but without success:
https://www.paypal.com/us/selfhelp/home
Intriguing and puzzling, yes. FWIW, I tried Palemoon, Chrome, and IE with the same results. Pretty sure I was able to do this a few years ago.
But, then again, random rewards are a key part of operant conditioning!
Just made my donation by created the account with a throwaway email. Duh, shoulda done that from the start!
Thank you NC team.
I began the steps to make an e-credit-donation to a very different website and it also demanded that I set up an account with pay pal.
Never. Ever. NO PayPal.
So I will re-read the above thread and see if I can understand how to send Mr. Strether an email that results in my being sent back a genuine land mail address to which a physical analog ink on analog paper may be sent.
Done. Thanks for the ongoing healthcare debacle analysis and commentary. Thanks for the terrible trade deals analysis, and political commentary and analysis.
You got it, Lambert! I will celebrate the R debacle over getting a Senate vote on health care this week with a contribution in honor of that estimable turtle, Mitch McConnell.
Thank you!
Happily donated to the Water Cooler!
Daily NC reader, infrequent commenter, and future self-sustaining Maine homesteader ready to unplug. Maine meet-up would be great. Appreciate the sane place you, Yves, and Jerri-Lynn provide in the increasingly insane political and economic environment.
Wasn’t certain if the donation should be in Rubles or Dollars.
First day on the new job for my wife! Daughter needs a bit of help this week, but stand by…we might get the Spruce Goose of family finance air-born, so stand by. Cannot begin to express how much I love your team’s work at NC. Contribution coming….
To be honest, one day I’d like to read an explainer on how the hell y’all do what you do. On the other hand, I do NOT want you to give away the recipe for the secret sauce that makes NC #1 on my list.
Sounds like you are having a busy day, so thanks!
Done! I don’t comment often but I read daily. I love that it hits right before lunch out west so I have reading material while I eat. :)
It’s a pleasure to kick in for the cause.
Done. Thanks so much Lambert!
Most people I know these days use Venmo for person to person payments. I’m a luddite so I haven’t tried it myself.
I have heard of Venmo, but I am very very conservative in my technical choices, and PayPal has worked for a decade at least, so….
Come on all you lurkers, send Lambert a few bucks so he can keep giving us those incredible insights and depth of knowledge that he has.
If it weren’t for donations from readers, principally the regular visitors, NC would not exist, Yves would’ve had to return to consulting, and the insights that we get into the true beauty and viciousness of this world would less visible to us.
(But, we’d have more free time.)
Click the hat
Thank you all!
Had a question… might sound naive…. and do not want the discussion to veer into the why and why nots… and away from the water cooler donation drive…
but do you guys have an formal method of accepting cash during the meetups ?
Bring your own paper sack!
Kidding. So far as I know, we do not. I suppose we could bring along a receipt book. I’m not so sure that’s a good idea, especially because it’s just one more avenue to keep track of (and possibly screw up). But there are surely readers more knowledgeable than I am on this topic?
Done via PAYPAL Lambert. Wish it could be more. Thank you so much for all that you do. I so look forward to water cooler (and NC) every day. Don’t read any of that other stuff. As one person here has already said I don’t know how you all do what you do.
Thank you! And every little bit helps. Don’t worry about the amount!
Never too late — appreciate the reminder, even though I didn’t see it till the next day!
Done. A day late but no dollars short.
Like Paul Manafort, I’m retroactively announcing that I
acted as an unregistered foreign agentam supporting Lambert’s fundraiser.
But the WC fundraiser really needs a tag line – something like I’m With Him.
Can I donate at the end of Jul? Love you but am zero-ed out from debt. Reading here’s all that’s keeping me alive so I wanna do what I can too.