The Desperate Mitt Romney Tells Lies About President Obama Instead of Attacking His Sleazy Opponent Newt Gingrich. No Wonder Mitt is Falling in The Polls

The Desperate Mitt Romney Tells Lies About President Obama Instead of Attacking His Sleazy Opponent Newt Gingrich. No Wonder Mitt is Falling in The Polls

Here's something Mitt Romney is being firm and consistent on: lying about the Obama administration's record on regulations. Monday in New Hampshire, Romney said:

    The level of regulation in America, every the regulators, the government, come up with new regulations. And they send them out. The rate of regulatory burden has increased four-fold since Obama has become president. Four times the amount of regulation coming out per year as in the past. And so businesses say, ‘gosh, I’m not sure I want to invest in America.’

Of course, both the claim about the increase in regulation under Obama and the claim about the resulting effect on business are false, but it's not the first time Romney has gone there. Think Progress takes us through the sorry history:

    When Romney made the same claim during an interview with NPR in September, NPR asked the Romney campaign for verification, at which point the campaign was forced to admit that “the Governor misspoke.”

    Instead, the Romney camp told NPR that new regulations under Obama are twice what they were under President George W. Bush. Trouble is, that’s not true either, as Bloomberg News pointed out:

        Obama’s White House approved 613 federal rules during the first 33 months of his term, 4.7 percent fewer than the 643 cleared by President George W. Bush’s administration in the same time frame, according to an Office of Management and Budget statistical database reviewed by Bloomberg.

    Later on during the event, Romney claimed that, according to an official government report, regulations costs the U.S. economy $1.7 trillion annually.

You guessed it: That's not true either. Just a fraction of a percent of layoffs have been attributed to regulation under Obama, and more than one study, including an OMB estimate, have found that the economic benefits of major regulations outweigh their costs, sometimes by a large margin. Never mind that regulations keep us safe on the job and give us clean air to breathe and clean water to drink. But while the specific numbers Romney spews on this will probably change, I think we can count on him to be unwavering and neither flip nor flop in his basic commitment to falsehood.

I'm not sure how simply repeating the word regulation over and over again became an attack tool by elitist conservatives. You have rules for your kids so they do not misbehave. Regulations are just rules for business so they don't misbehave or they at least do so less often. Mining regulations save miners' lives - when mining companies adhere to them. You think driving on our highways is dangerous now, try scraping the regulations and see how safe it is simply to get from point A to Point B. Conservatives continue to deal with problems with childish and simplistic answers to complex problems. Not one of them should be reelected until the conservatives movement grows up and becomes responsible adults.

America's Internet Might Become As Bad As China - Stop SOPA

America's Internet Might Become As Bad As China

China operates the world’s most elaborate and opaque system of Internet censorship. But Congress, under pressure to take action against the theft of intellectual property, is considering misguided legislation that would strengthen China’s Great Firewall and even bring major features of it to America.

The legislation — the Protect IP Act, which has been introduced in the Senate, and a House version known as the Stop Online Piracy Act — have an impressive array of well-financed backers, including the United States Chamber of Commerce, the Motion Picture Association of America, the American Federation of Musicians, the Directors Guild of America, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the Screen Actors Guild. The bills aim not to censor political or religious speech as China does, but to protect American intellectual property. Alarm at the infringement of creative works through the Internet is justifiable. The solutions offered by the legislation, however, threaten to inflict collateral damage on democratic discourse and dissent both at home and around the world.

The bills would empower the attorney general to create a blacklist of sites to be blocked by Internet service providers, search engines, payment providers and advertising networks, all without a court hearing or a trial. The House version goes further, allowing private companies to sue service providers for even briefly and unknowingly hosting content that infringes on copyright — a sharp change from current law, which protects the service providers from civil liability if they remove the problematic content immediately upon notification. The intention is not the same as China’s Great Firewall, a nationwide system of Web censorship, but the practical effect could be similar.

Abuses under existing American law serve as troubling predictors for the kinds of abuse by private actors that the House bill would make possible. Take, for example, the cease-and-desist letters that Diebold, a maker of voting machines, sent in 2003, demanding that Internet service providers shut down Web sites that had published internal company e-mails about problems with the company’s voting machines. The letter cited copyright violations, and most of the service providers took down the content without question, despite the strong case to be made that the material was speech protected under the First Amendment.

The House bill would also emulate China’s system of corporate “self-discipline,” making companies liable for users’ actions. The burden would be on the Web site operator to prove that the site was not being used for copyright infringement. The effect on user-generated sites like YouTube would be chilling.

YouTube, Twitter and Facebook have played an important role in political movements from Tahrir Square to Zuccotti Park. At present, social networking services are protected by a “safe harbor” provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which grants Web sites immunity from prosecution as long as they act in good faith to take down infringing content as soon as rights-holders point it out to them. The House bill would destroy that immunity, putting the onus on YouTube to vet videos in advance or risk legal action. It would put Twitter in a similar position to that of its Chinese cousin, Weibo, which reportedly employs around 1,000 people to monitor and censor user content and keep the company in good standing with authorities.

Compliance with the Stop Online Piracy Act would require huge overhead spending by Internet companies for staff and technologies dedicated to monitoring users and censoring any infringing material from being posted or transmitted. This in turn would create daunting financial burdens and legal risks for start-up companies, making it much harder for brilliant young entrepreneurs with limited resources to create small and innovative Internet companies that empower citizens and change the world.

Adding to the threat to free speech, recent academic research on global Internet censorship has found that in countries where heavy legal liability is imposed on companies, employees tasked with day-to-day censorship jobs have a strong incentive to play it safe and over-censor — even in the case of content whose legality might stand a good chance of holding up in a court of law. Why invite legal hassle when you can just hit “delete”?

The potential for abuse of power through digital networks — upon which we as citizens now depend for nearly everything, including our politics — is one of the most insidious threats to democracy in the Internet age. We live in a time of tremendous political polarization. Public trust in both government and corporations is low, and deservedly so. This is no time for politicians and industry lobbyists in Washington to be devising new Internet censorship mechanisms, adding new opportunities for abuse of corporate and government power over online speech. While American intellectual property deserves protection, that protection must be won and defended in a manner that does not stifle innovation, erode due process under the law, and weaken the protection of political and civil rights on the Internet.

You can contact your senators and representatives directly - through e-mail and fox( check their websites) or there is a petition here.

What caused the financial crisis? The Big Lie goes viral.

Some stand to profit from the status quo: Banks present a systemic risk to the economy, and reducing that risk by lowering their leverage and increasing capital requirements also lowers profitability. Others are hired guns, doing the bidding of bosses on Wall Street.

They all suffer cognitive dissonance — the intellectual crisis that occurs when a failed belief system or philosophy is confronted with proof of its implausibility.

And what about those facts? To be clear, no single issue was the cause. Our economy is a complex and intricate system. What caused the crisis? Look:

Fed Chair Alan Greenspan dropped rates to 1 percent — levels not seen for half a century — and kept them there for an unprecedentedly long period. This caused a spiral in anything priced in dollars (i.e., oil, gold) or credit (i.e., housing) or liquidity driven (i.e., stocks).

Low rates meant asset managers could no longer get decent yields from municipal bonds or Treasurys. Instead, they turned to high-yield mortgage-backed securities. Nearly all of them failed to do adequate due diligence before buying them, did not understand these instruments or the risk involved. They violated one of the most important rules of investing: Know what you own.

Fund managers made this error because they relied on the credit ratings agencies — Moody’s, S&P and Fitch. They had placed an AAA rating on these junk securities, claiming they were as safe as U.S. Treasurys.

• Derivatives had become a uniquely unregulated financial instrument. They are exempt from all oversight, counter-party disclosure, exchange listing requirements, state insurance supervision and, most important, reserve requirements. This allowed AIG to write $3 trillion in derivatives while reserving precisely zero dollars against future claims.

• The Securities and Exchange Commission changed the leverage rules for just five Wall Street banks in 2004. The “Bear Stearns exemption” replaced the 1977 net capitalization rule’s 12-to-1 leverage limit. In its place, it allowed unlimited leverage for Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns. These banks ramped leverage to 20-, 30-, even 40-to-1. Extreme leverage leaves very little room for error.

•Wall Street’s compensation system was skewed toward short-term performance. It gives traders lots of upside and none of the downside. This creates incentives to take excessive risks.

• The demand for higher-yielding paper led Wall Street to begin bundling mortgages. The highest yielding were subprime mortgages. This market was dominated by non-bank originators exempt from most regulations. The Fed could have supervised them, but Greenspan did not.

• These mortgage originators’ lend-to-sell-to-securitizers model had them holding mortgages for a very short period. This allowed them to get creative with underwriting standards, abdicating traditional lending metrics such as income, credit rating, debt-service history and loan-to-value.

• “Innovative” mortgage products were developed to reach more subprime borrowers. These include 2/28 adjustable-rate mortgages, interest-only loans, piggy-bank mortgages (simultaneous underlying mortgage and home-equity lines) and the notorious negative amortization loans (borrower’s indebtedness goes up each month). These mortgages defaulted in vastly disproportionate numbers to traditional 30-year fixed mortgages.

To keep up with these newfangled originators, traditional banks developed automated underwriting systems. The software was gamed by employees paid on loan volume, not quality.

The people blaming government, Fannie May and whatever boogieman are just plain old gutless liars.

Anti-American Zealot Rep. Allen West(R) Exploits Martin Luther King Jr to Justify His Elitist Agenda

Anti-American Zealot Rep. Allen West(R) Exploits Martin Luther King Jr to Justify His Elitist Agenda

At the dedication of the national Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. memorial last Sunday, the Rev. Bernice King said her father Dr. King would support the 99 Percent Movement: “I hear my father saying what we are seeing now all across the streets of America and the world is a freedom explosion.” She reminded the nation that civil rights leader worked not just for racial justice, but for economic justice as well. “We should never adjust to the one percent controlling more than 40 percent of the wealth,” she said.

Florida Rep. Allen West (R), however, was “born and raised” in the same town that Dr. King grew up in. Therefore, he asserted as a fact today in a Newsmax interview that “Martin Luther King, Jr. would not back these types of protesters”:

    WEST: I was born and raised in the same town that Martin Luther King, Jr. grew up in. Martin Luther King, Jr. would not have backed these type of protesters. First of all, Martin Luther King, Jr. had a focus, he had a message. He was divinely inspired. I don’t know what the inspiration is for these individuals.



Unfortunately for West, geographical proximity clearly did not provide West any insight into the man himself. Like the 99 percent movement, King consistently called for economic justice. He critiqued unregulated free marketism as a system that permits “necessities to be taken from the many to give luxuries to the few.” He envisioned a “Poor People’s Campaign” in which a multiracial coalition would march through the capital to “demand that President Lyndon Johnson and Congress help the poor get jobs, health care, and decent homes.”

King was assassinated just weeks before the march on May 12, 1968. Rev. Ralph Abernathy carried his legacy to DC, stating, “We come with an appeal to open the doors of America to the almost 50 million Americans who have not been given a fair share of American’s wealth and opportunity, and we will stay until we get it.” This, incidentally, is what the 99 Percent Movement is about.

This, however, is also what West sees as “contradictory to the foundational principles and values that we have in the United States.” If West grew up anywhere near Dr. King and his legacy, he has now turned his back on him.

Many Americans may know West as the man who terrorized a bound unarmed man in Iraq. He was kicked out of the military for his cowardly behavior. Unlike what West would have done, the military took pity on him and gave him his tax payer funded military pension. Now West is in Congress ( once again making a living off the government he says he hates) West is doing his best to stop President Obama from creating jobs, while also fighting for even more tax cuts for millionaires. West doesn't seem to have a genuine patriotic bone in his body, no wonder right-wing conservatives love him.

Private Wall Street Companies Caused The Financial Crisis — Not Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac Or The Community Reinvestment Act

Erick Erickson Is Proud to Be a Serial Lying Unamerican Pundit

Erick Erickson Is Proud to Be a Serial Lying Unamerican Pundit

Suzy Khimm points us to redstate.org leader and right-wing establishment figure @ewerickson declares he is "one of the 53%": part of this generation's "silent majority" who are upset at #occupywallstreet and its attacks on the top 1%:

What Erick says:

    I work three jobs.

    I have a house I can't sell.

    My family insurance costs are outrageous.

    But I don't blame Wall Street.

    Suck it up you whiners.

    I am the 53% subsidizing you so you can hang out on Wall Street and complain.

Erick should blame not Wall Street but the health-insurance industry for the fact that his family insurance costs are outrageous--but at least come 2014 the Obama-Romney Affordable Care Act will give him the bargaining power that those of us who work for large organizations have in the health insurance marketplace and lower his insurance costs to more reasonable levels.

Erick should blame Wall Street for the fact that he can't sell his house: had Wall Street not broken mortgage finance, and had the breaking of mortgage finance not led to the general credit crunch that launched our Lesser Depression, then Erick would be able to sell his house.

And it is not clear to me what Erick's three jobs are: his internet biographies mention (i) right-wing internet community organizer, (ii) CNN commentator, and (iii) radio host. Are these his "three jobs"? Most of us would say that those are three aspects of one occupation--not three jobs. People who work three jobs are people who teach elementary school in the morning and early afternoon, take a shift at the car wash around dinnertime, and work a pre-dawn shift at a 24-hour 7-11. That does not sound like Erick, Son of Erick to me.

Wall Street stole $17 trillion of the nations wealth. The protesters just want a job that pays a living wage ( currently there are about 6 applicants for every job opening). So welfare queen Erik looks at these facts and declares the protesters are bad and the Wall Street vampires are good. Erik, like the vast majority of right-wing conservatives has some deeply corrupt values. He and his friends would fit right in with the crony economic system of Russia. If they hate America so much and think our traditional American values are so awful Erik and his 53% are welcome to pack up and leave.

Has Republican Conservatism Become a Cult

Has American-Style Conservatism Become a Religion?

As the American right lurches from traditional conservatism – a go-slow approach to governing that stresses the importance of continuity and social stability – to a far more reactionary brand typified by acolytes of Ayn Rand and Tea Party extremists waving misspelled signs decrying Democrats' "socialism," the time has come to ask whether modern “backlash” conservatism has become a religious faith rather than a pedestrian political ideology.

Ideology is grounded in the real world. It offers us a philosophical lens through which we can efficiently process what's happening in the world around us. Religion is different. It's a fixed belief system, based on faith, and it is immune to – or at least highly resistant to – challenges mounted by objective reality. Which better describes the belief system of a typical Rush Limbaugh fan or Tea Party activist?

Like religious faiths, the hard-right reveres an original text – the Constitution – and, like all religious fundamentalists, conservatives claim to adhere to a literalist interpretation of it while actually picking and choosing from among its tenets. Just as the vast majority of Christian fundamentalists don't actually stone their daughters to death when they're obnoxious to their fathers, the Tea Partiers conveniently ignore more or less the entirety of Article 3. Also like other fundamentalist sects, most conservatives actually have a poor understanding of what the text they revere actually means.

Like the Manicheans – adherents of one of the world's great religions at one point in history – they tend to see a world defined by a conflict between the forces of light and darkness. The forces of good are decent, conservative, "real" Americans – mostly white, married Christians, but with exceptions made for others who keep the faith. They stand opposed to a wide array of diabolical figures: liberals, gays and lesbians, Muslims, Mexicans, socialists and other foreigners, especially the French.

And like adherents of other religious faiths, they hold a special enmity for apostates. When stalwart conservatives like David Frum started talking about “epistemic closure” – “conservatives’ tendency to operate in an information bubble” – they were pilloried by their fellow travelers, accused of the worst offense: liberal heresy. Not only are moderate conservatives like Kathleen Parker or Christine Todd Whitman ripe targets, but so are red-meat Republicans who stray from the party line to any degree. Even people like former Utah Senator Bob Bennett can be painted as RINOS (Republicans in name only) if they stray from church doctrine even slightly.

Backlash conservatives also have their prophets and their saints. Just listen to Republicans talking about the Founders – a groups of liberals, moderates and conservatives of their day who agreed on very little but are assumed by the flock to have been staunch right-wingers. The faithful conveniently ignore the real-world foibles of their Holy Men. Yes, Ronald Reagan offered amnesty to undocumented immigrants, raised taxes 11 times and ran roughshod over the separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution, but to the believers, he remains as pure as the Virgin Mary is to Catholics. (Reagan would be polling right there at the bottom with Jon Huntsman if he were running for the GOP nomination today.)

Perhaps the easiest parallel to draw between conservatism and religion is the right's vilification of climate scientists, 98 percent of whom agree that human activities are changing our world with dangerous consequences. The attacks are reminiscent of the Catholic Church's running battle with “Copernicans” who believed that the Earth revolved around the sun; a theory that flew in the face of church doctrine. In that sense, Michael Mann of “climate-gate” fame is like a modern Galileo (only Mann has been completely vindicated while Galileo was handed over for trial by the Roman Inquisition and lived out the rest of his life under house arrest).

Conservatives certainly claim they represent literal interpretation of the Constitution and the Bible, but in reality they actually pick and choose. Goodness knows they seem to completely ignore Jesus Sermon on the Mount. For even a peculiar brand of Christianity it is odd how much they love the blood, guts, violence and revenge of the Old Testament. When it comes to the Constitution they also pick what they like   - free speech for them and no one else. Freedom of religion for them and no one else.

Why Does Eric Cantor (R-VA) Hate America

Why Does Eric Cantor (R-VA) Hate America

Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) voted for over $120 billion to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan, funds that were used to construct and repair schools, roads, bridges, and other critical infrastructure.

Now, Cantor is opposing President Obama’s proposal to spend $30 billion to modernize 35,000 American schools. Reuters has the story:

    U.S. House Republican Leader Eric Cantor said on Monday he will not support President Barack Obama’s proposal to renovate U.S. schools as part of the administration’s bill to spur job growth.

    He added that Obama should focus instead on cutting federal regulations that he says kill U.S. jobs…

The president’s proposal is a modest effort. The total maintenance and repair backlog at U.S. schools is estimated at $270 billion to $500 billion. While the funding Obama is proposing is fully offset, Cantor voted to build schools in Iraq and Afghanistan with deficit spending.

Construction and building projects generally create about 10,000 jobs per billion spent. At a time of high unemployment, the funding that Cantor opposes would create about 300,000 jobs. Economist Jared Berstein explains that funding to modernize schools is “a smart way to get a lot of people who really need jobs back to work, fix a critical part of our institutional infrastructure, save energy costs, provide kids with a better, healthier learning environment, and do so in way that everyone can see and feel good about each morning when they drop their kids at school.”

Please do not be fooled by their flag waving fake patriotism, conservative Republicans are the rot eating away at he basic values that make America a democratic republic.

Republican Lying Puppet of the Week - American Legislative Exchange Council Pulls the Strings and Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) Dances

Republican Lying Puppet of the Week - American Legislative Exchange Council Pulls the Strings and Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) Dances

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) is pushing a medley of policies closely correlated with the American Legislative Exchange Council, a “corporate front-group” that represents the interests of big-name corporations by drafting legislation for state lawmakers. ALEC, which has the support of conservative heavy-hitters like Koch Industries, Walmart, and ExxonMobil, has written close to 800 model bills as templates for legislators on a wide range of issues.

A ThinkProgress analysis of documents recently released by the Center for Media and Democracy show that ten of Perry’s recent initiatives mirror either ALEC model legislation or policy recommendations from ALEC’s state affiliate, the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation.

Four bills he designated “emergency” legislation in the 2011 session — all of which became law. Here are two (more below):

Bill: Voter Photo-ID Act
Perry’s Involvement: emergency item—regular session
Authors: Eight ALEC senators, including ALEC state chairman Sen. Kel Seliger and Sen. Troy Fraser, the recipient of $314,000 from its corporate members
Sponsors: Four ALEC representatives
Co-Sponsors: 28 ALEC representatives, including two ALEC state chairmen
ALEC Model Legislation: Voter ID Act
Similarities: requires a valid photo ID to vote; sets a strict six-day statute of limitations on provisional voters
Outcome: Perry signed into law on May 27

Bill: Tort Reform Act
Perry’s Involvement: emergency item—regular session
Authors: Two ALEC representatives, including state chairman Rep. Jim Jackson
Co-Authors: 30 ALEC representatives
Model Legislation: Litigation Accountability Act
Similarities: creates disincentives for citizens suing corporations by assigning all litigation costs to the claimant when a court dismisses a case as “groundless in fact or in law”
Outcome: Perry signed into law on May 30.

Perry has recently used his political capital to push policy positions strictly out of the ALEC playbook, even though his state faced a staggering budget shortfall, struggles with the highest percentage of residents without health insurance in the nation and ranks as the worst state for carbon pollution. His close financial and personal relationships with both ALEC and TPPF, however, shed some light on his legislative priorities.

Out of the 2,000 state lawmakers included among ALEC’s members, Perry has benefited “far and away the most of any candidate in the decade of data analyzed,” taking in more than $2 million in donations from 50 of its corporations. Just last August, he accepted the group’s highest honor, The Thomas Jefferson Freedom Award, which includes among its previous recipients the Koch brothers. Perry even spoke at ALEC’s Dec. 2010 conference.

Furthermore, he has nurtured strong working ties with TPPF, which Perry has described as “a quality outlet.” The ALEC state affiliate has also donated extravagantly to Perry’s campaigns over the years, with its 14 board members responsible for nearly $1.5 million in funds. He has reimbursed the conservative group’s investment by giving them all the proceeds from his latest book–and by appointing its members to important positions.

TPPF President Brooke Rollins used to serve as Perry’s Deputy General Counsel and as his Policy Director, and Perry has appointed three of the other board members to high-profile seats on the Regents Boards for Texas state university systems. Through those appointments, he has not been shy about pushing TPPF’s outcomes-based education policies, starting back in 2008 when he summoned all of the Texas regents to a TPPF seminar introducing seven “breakthrough” education initiatives.

But the biggest concern should be that, if Perry does end up throwing his hat in the ring for the GOP presidential nomination, his legislative agenda–and its ties to corporate America and ALEC–could impact more than just Texas.

ALEC's agenda is staunchly anti-American. They have done their best to undermine the rights of average working Americans, they have repeatedly pushed legislation that threatens children and those already suffering from health problems with laws that make it easier to poison our water and air. ALEC has made a mockery of the democratic process by working behind the scenes, in the shadows of the legislative process. They have weakened democracy by weakening voter rights. So no wonder that smiley-faced fascist Rick Perry is their puppet.

Have President Obama and Democrat's Economic Programs Been Successful

Have President Obama and Democrat's Economic Programs Been Successful

Despite a deep recession, very high unemployment, and widespread hardship, a combination of existing safety net programs and temporary expansions in them enacted in 2009 all but prevented a rise in the poverty rate that year, according to a Center analysis of new poverty data the U.S. Census Bureau released this week that includes the effects of non-cash benefits and tax credits. This is a remarkable achievement; poverty usually burgeons in major recessions.

These findings come to light at an important time — just as Congress prepares for a major debate on the role of government in addressing economic and social problems.

The poverty protection came partly from existing programs — such as unemployment insurance, assistance programs for low-income households, and tax credits for low-income working families. But the bulk of the poverty protection came from improvements that the 2009 Recovery Act (ARRA) made in various programs. Although the Recovery Act was designed chiefly to bolster a collapsing economy, it generated the important side effect of protecting millions of families against poverty and massive income losses. Center analysis of the new Census data shows that the Recovery Act kept more than 4.5 million people out of poverty in 2009: 1.3 million people through extensions and expansions of federal unemployment benefits, 1.5 million people through improvements in the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit, nearly 1 million people through the Making Work Pay tax credit, and another 700,000 people through an increase in benefit levels for the SNAP program (previously called food stamps).

The impact of these programs helps to explain why, under the “alternative” poverty measures that the Census Bureau released yesterday — which count non-cash benefits like food stamps and tax credits and which most analysts consider superior to the official poverty measure — poverty did not rise between 2008 and 2009, even as the economy fell deeper into recession, unemployment increased sharply, and many Americans lost their homes to foreclosure. The official poverty measure misses these effects because it counts only conventional cash income and does not reflect the income that non-cash benefits and tax credits provide.


The Census Bureau’s Findings

Yesterday, the Census Bureau issued eight alternative poverty measures that reflect poverty-measurement recommendations that a blue-ribbon National Academy of Sciences (NAS) panel made in the mid-1990s.[1] Most experts strongly prefer these NAS measures over the Census Bureau’s official poverty measure. All but one of the NAS measures tell the same story: the poverty rate in 2009 was statistically indistinguishable from the rate in 2008.

Under the measure most similar to the NAS panel’s recommendations, for example, 15.7 percent of Americans were poor in 2009, not statistically distinguishable from the 15.8 percent rate in 2008. Under one of the eight NAS measures, the poverty rate did rise a statistically significant amount — by 0.4 percentage points — but even that was far less than the increase shown in the official poverty measure, which rose 1.1 percentage points, from 13.2 percent in 2008 to 14.3 percent in 2009. [2]

Why Are the Alternative Poverty Rates Flat? The Role of the Recovery Act

The Center analyzed the household-level survey files that the Census Bureau released this week to determine the impact on poverty of seven provisions in the Recovery Act: three tax credits (the new Making Work Pay tax credit and improvements to the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit); temporary expansions in SNAP benefits; two unemployment insurance provisions; and a one-time payment for people who are elderly or have serious disabilities and receive benefits through Social Security, the Supplemental Security Income program, veterans’ compensation, or the Railroad Retirement program. The methodology for this analysis is discussed in the appendix.

These seven Recovery Act provisions kept more than 4.5 million people from falling below the poverty line in 2009. In other words, without these provisions, over 4.5 million more people would have been poor.

These findings indicate that the Recovery Act is one of the single most effective pieces of legislation at preventing poverty to be enacted in decades. No program other than Social Security and the EITC kept this many people above the poverty line in 2009. (Social Security kept more than 20 million people out of poverty; the EITC kept 5 million out of poverty.)

Moreover, given that the EITC and most other programs are the result of gradual expansions under several different laws, it is difficult to think of a single piece of legislation since the Social Security Act of 1935 that kept more people above the poverty line in 2009 through direct assistance to households than the Recovery Act.

Yet Republicans claim Democratic policies have done nothing to help Americans. We can do better as someone once said, but Republican have fought the very programs which have kept millions of Americans out of extreme poverty. Those people have also helped American business by buying essentials like food and personal consumer items such as toothpaste and soap.

Glenn Beck, right-wing nut and hero to people too lazy to read the actual history that Beck frequently rewrites to fit his agenda picks a fight with fellow right-winger Mike Huckabee, Beck Rewrites History To Claim: "I've Never Said Progressive Is The Same As Nazi"

In the latest installment of Glenn Beck vs. Mike Huckabee, Beck seemed to think he had dealt Huckabee the ultimate blow. If only. In hitting back at Huckabee today on his radio show for the latter's recent criticism (in fact, a reply to Beck's first strike a few days ago), Beck accused Huckabee of trying to "smear" him by twisting his words. Beck fervently denied Huckabee's claim that Beck has said progressives are "the same as a 'cancer' and a 'Nazi.' "

Documentation of Beck's infantile attempts to link progressives like Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy to Nazism and communism. Its the same old story, when you lie as much as Beck, all to make millions off the rubes that watch him, you have a lot of trouble remembering all the lies you told. Beck's memory might be better if he had more integrity and lied less.