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The finance lobby is hard at work:

Wall Street’s main lobbying arm has hired a top Supreme Court litigator to study a possible legal battle against a bank tax proposed by the Obama administration….Executives of the lobbying group, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, wrote that a bank tax might be unconstitutional because it would unfairly single out and penalize big banks, according to these officials, who did not want to be identified to preserve relationships with the group’s members.

The message said the association had hired Carter G. Phillips of Sidley Austin, who has argued dozens of cases before the Supreme Court, to study whether a tax on one industry could be considered arbitrary and punitive, providing the basis for a constitutional challenge, they said.

Paul Krugman calls this chutzpah — which it certainly is — but what I’m curious about is why they’re wasting their time on this. A tax on one industry might be considered arbitrary? The United States has loads of excise taxes that fall on individual industries. It might unfairly single out big banks? There’s no constitutional bar to progressive taxes — and in any case, there are lots of compelling policy reasons to focus on big institutions. Beyond that, the federal government generally has lots of leeway both in tax policy and banking regulation. The tax would have to be way, way out of line before the Supreme Court would be likely to strike it down.

That’s my amateur opinion, anyway, which is worth exactly what you just paid for it. But I’d sure like to hear from someone more knowledgable about this stuff. Is this idea as cockamamie as I think it is? Or might they really be able to make a case? And why bother fighting such a minuscule levy anyway? They should be celebrating for getting off so easily.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists 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 hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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