It's time once again for ye olde fundraising appeal.

Yes, Eat the State! is asking for your money. Not all of it, not even a lot of it. Less even than a typical family can "expect" to receive from his fraudulency, the pretender, Bush Jr.'s promised tax cut.

In the two years I have been associated with this zine, it has lived a chronic hand to mouth existence. That is to say, barely scraping by, week after week, year after year. (Sound familiar?)

In the meantime, ETS! Has garnered kudos, congratulations, acknowledgements, prestigious nods and numerous comments along the lines of "I love Eat the State!," and "I discovered it right after I moved to Seattle, and it made me feel like we really could do something about the mess we're in."

Being barely solvent (and sometimes not even that) doesn't bother us exactly, it's just that we do need a bit of money to pay the printer (a few hundred dollars per issue). If we don't have money for that, you won't have an ETS! to love (really). And none of us want that.

All of the writing is donated, including that of bigshots like Alexander Cockburn and Tom Tomorrow. Eddie, the distribution grunt, pays for his own gas. Maria pays for ETS!' modest office rent. There are no expense accounts, no investigative fund, no layers of bureaucracy, no frills. And we like it that way. It's just that we do have to pay the printer - like clockwork.

You could say our economic straits are our own fault. If we were more entrepreneurial about it, we could probably generate an actual income stream. We could maybe sell more adds (and are in fact working on that). But the thing is, we aren't entrepreneurs or effective fundraisers. We're just some regular people who put out a biweekly "kick ass" political journal.

And it isn't just "our" fault. If you are a regular or semi-regular reader, you are actually one of "us." That makes ETS!' dangerous poverty your problem just as much as anyone else's. We are all in this together.

When I started involving myself in ETS!, it was a weekly. It has since cut back to bi-weekly in part because of finances. This paper could be better. It could be bigger, cover more underreported stories and activities. The information is out there, we just don't have the space in here. If we could somehow get back to weekly, those stories would be more timely.

We are asking for your money, not for some abstract goal or lobbying effort, but to continue putting information into the hands of real people, like yourself, who can act to change the world. ETS! has impact beyond its modest appearance. I'm telling the truth when I say that ETS! influences the public debate in truly surprising ways. Really.

I suspect that there is plenty of money available out there to keep ETS! funded to its modest needs. That might mean writing a check, or it might mean buying regular ads for your righteous small business, or having your group subscribe to the Activist Directory, or buying a subscription for yourself, or a friend, or your local public library. Or it might mean approaching your favorite establishment about placing an ad, or using your connections or grant writing savvy to secure some funding. Maybe your band could throw an ETS! benefit, or, I don't know... I'm sure you can think of something.

ETS! is a community effort, and that community includes you. And that community thanks you in advance for your support.

To those who have supported us in the past, with money, articles, letters and by reading; a hearfelt thank you!