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This cracks me up:

Big financial firms losing power on Capitol Hill

Large banks are on the verge of losing a key legislative battle over the shape of financial reform, an unusual setback that reflects the continued political backlash over their role in creating the financial crisis.

The particular battle big banks are allegedly losing need not detain us for the moment.  Rather, I have two comments.  First, it’s a testament to its essentially imperial status that after nearly destroying the planet the financial industry has any power left to lose.  But the headline writer tells us this legislative loss is “unusual” — as indeed it is.  Check out, for example, who won and who lost on cramdown, plain vanilla, and CFPA exemptions.  Even now, a scant 12 months after triggering the biggest financial meltdown since the Depression, the financial industry almost never fails to get something it wants from the United States Congress.

Second, they haven’t lost yet.  The Post informs us that “lobbyists on both sides say they regard the battle as over,” but I’ll believe that when I see it.  The Senate hasn’t yet taken its crack at this legislation, after all, and I will be very much surprised if the finance lobby has decided to cry quietly in its beer and let this particular regulatory indignity pass without sprinkling a few million more dollars on the right committee members in hopes of getting an early Christmas present.  Don’t count your chickens before they’ve hatched.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

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