Firing Back in Wall St.’s Reform War

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Americans for Financial Reform, a leading advocacy group lobbying for major regulatory crackdowns on Wall Street, released a new ad today coming to the defense of Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT), who’s been under fire lately for his support for an independent Consumer Financial Protection Agency and for generally backing greater reforms of the financial markets. In particular, Tester’s been taking a lot of heat from a secretive, deep-pocketed organization called the Committee for Truth in Politics, which has targeted Tester and called the financial reform supported by the Montana senator a $4 trillion bank bailout in disguise. (That language, you’ll remember, comes from a memo circulated by consultant Frank Luntz trying to torpedo Wall Street reforms.) Earlier this month, Tester called the committee’s attacks on him “flat-out false,” and asking to see the source of the committee’s funding, which it doesn’t publicize. “Our economy almost collapsed a year and a half ago because there were no referees on Wall Street,” Tester wrote in a statement. “Montana’s Main Street small business owners and families should never have to pay the price of greed on Wall Street.”

Here’s the ad:

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In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

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