Between 2008 And 2010, 30 Big Corporations Spent More Lobbying Washington Than They Paid In Income Taxes

A report released this month by Public Campaign demonstrates just how important it is for Americans to battle corporate special interests and reclaim our democracy.

The group’s research finds that thirty big corporations actually spent more money lobbying the federal government between 2008 and 2010 than they spent in taxes. For example, General Electric — one of the top 10 most profitable companies in the world — got a net tax rebate of $4.7 billion during this period.

Meanwhile, it spent $84 million lobbying the federal government.

Think Progress: Between 2008 And 2010, 30 Big Corporations Spent More Lobbying Washington Than They Paid In Income Taxes

Postal Service Cuts Could !nterfere With Elections, Delay Vote By Mail Ballots

With Con­gress debat­ing plans to shut down post offices and pos­si­bly elim­i­nate Sat­ur­day mail deliv­ery, some elec­tion offi­cials are wor­ried that bring­ing the U.S. Postal Ser­vice out of the red could harm elec­tion pro­ce­dures — per­haps even in time for the Novem­ber 2012 pres­i­den­tial election.

In Novem­ber the Postal Ser­vice announced it lost $5.1 bil­lion in fis­cal 2011, not includ­ing the man­dated $5.5 bil­lion owed to the fed­eral gov­ern­ment to pre­fund retiree health ben­e­fit payments. For the ser­vice to return to prof­itabil­ity, it must cut $20 bil­lion by 2015.

Sen­ate leg­is­la­tion would pro­tect Sat­ur­day ser­vice for the next two years, but a House bill would per­mit a reduc­tion to five-day-per-week mail deliv­ery six months after enact­ment. The Postal Ser­vice has said it intends to cut Sat­ur­day ser­vice unless Con­gress requires it to continue.

Steve Mon­teith, the Postal Service’s man­ager of trans­ac­tion cor­re­spon­dence, said tak­ing away Sat­ur­day deliv­ery or shut­ting post office doors could force elec­tion offi­cials to send bal­lots out a day ear­lier to make sure they arrive on time.

Cal­i­for­nia Repub­li­can Rep. Dar­rell Issa, who chairs the House Over­sight and Gov­ern­ment Reform Com­mit­tee, co-sponsored the House bill. The service’s finan­cial losses, he said, put elec­tions at risk.

“Fun­da­men­tal reforms are needed to pro­tect the finan­cial via­bil­ity of the United States Postal Ser­vice, includ­ing its ser­vices that are inte­gral to vot­ing,” Issa said.

Full Arti­cle: The Daily Caller.

Who Killed the Postal Service?

The Postal Service just announced roughly $3 billion in service cuts that will slow down the delivery of first-class mail for the first time in 40 years. Starting in April, it plans to shutter more than half of its 461 mail processing centers, stretching out the time it will take to ship everything from Netflix DVDs to magazines. One-day delivery of stamped envelopes will all but certainly become a thing of the past.

The announcement is just the latest sign of a sad and increasingly dire fact: the Postal Service is in shambles. This past fiscal year, it lost a mere $5.1 billion. In 2012, it's facing a record $14.1 billion shortfall and possible bankruptcy. In order to turn a profit, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe says the agency needs to cut $20 billion from its annual budget by 2015. That's almost a third of its yearly costs.

How did it come to this?

The culprits include the Internet, labor expenses, and, as with pretty much every problem our country faces now, Congress.

Obama's Kansas Speech a Game-Changer

The Democratic Strategist

WaPo columnist Greg Sargent takes a look at President Obama's speech in Osawatomie Kansas, and finds it to be a critical point of departure, "a moral and philosophical framework within which literally all of the political and policy battles of the next year will unfold, including the biggest one of all: The presidential campaign itself." Citing Obama's emphasis on "inequality itself as a moral scourge and as a threat to the country's future," Sargent continues:

Obama's speech in Kansas, which just concluded, was the most direct condemnation of wealth and income inequality, and the most expansive moral defense of the need for government activism to combat it, that Obama has delivered in his career...

The clash of visions Obama tried to set the stage for today -- a philosophical and moral argument over government's proper role in regulating the economy and restoring our future -- is seen by Dems as more favorable to them than the GOP's preferred frame for Campaign 2012, i.e., a referendum on the current state of the economy and on Obama's efforts to fix it. Hence his constant references to the morality of "fairness."

"We simply cannot return to this brand of you're-on-your-own economics if we're serious about rebuilding the middle class in this country," Obama said, in what will probably be the most enduring line of the speech. A number of people on Twitter immediately suggested a new shorthand: "YoYo Economics."

That line is key in another way. Dems believe inequality will be central in 2012 because they think there's been a fundamental shift in how Americans view the economy, one rooted in the plight of the middle class and in the trauma created by the financial crisis.

A New York Times editorial affirms Sargent's evaluation of the President's speech:

Report: Corporate America Is Sitting On The Solution To The Jobs Crisis

Last September this news blog posted an article saying:

American corporations are holding more cash on their balance sheets than at any time in nearly a half century, as they continue to save instead of investing or hiring workers, according to a Federal Reserve report released last Friday. At the same time, Republican presidential candidates and corporate leaders continue to lobby for lower corporate tax rates and huge corporate tax giveaways under the guise that they will lead to higher rates of job creation.

According to the report, non-financial corporations held more than $2 trillion in cash at the end of June, a $88 billion jump since the end of March. Cash holdings made up 7.1 percent of all company assets, the highest level since 1963.

According to a new report from a group of University of Massachusetts economists America's largest banks and non-financial companies are now sitting on $3.6 trillion in cash. If banks and non-financial companies would stop hoarding the $3.6 trillion in cash they have accumulated and move it into productive investments, the report estimates that about 19 million jobs would be created in the next three years, lowering the unemployment rate to under 5 percent.

"There is no reason that the U.S. needs to remain stuck in a long-term unemployment crisis," Robert Pollin, lead author of the report and co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute, said in a statement accompanying the report's release Tuesday.

"Getting the banks and corporations to move their hoards into productive investments and job creation requires carrots and sticks -- policies such as a new round of government spending stimulus as well as taxes on the banks' excess reserves -- that can both strengthen overall market demand and unlock credit markets for small businesses," Pollin said.

Obama Addresses Issues In Terms Of Basic Fairness

The "Occupy" movement has changed our country’s political conversation. One only needs to listen to the speech Pres. Barack Obama gave in Osawatomie, Kansas, today, to understand how the conversation has changed since the GOP controlled House twice threatened to shut down government earlier this year in the Republican bid to make draconian cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

For much of 2011, Obama’s speeches followed the Tea Party controlled Republican Party's lead on draconian cuts to federal safety-net programs for seniors and veterans. Today the central theme of Obama’s speech was income inequality—and how this mounting problem weakens our economy and our democracy. At long last, the president sounded like he was channeling his inner Elizabeth Warren.

Robert Reich: "The President’s speech today in Osawatomie, Kansas — where Teddy Roosevelt gave his “New Nationalism” speech in 1910 — is the most important economic speech of his presidency in terms of connecting the dots, laying out the reasons behind our economic and political crises, and asserting a willingness to take on the powerful and the privileged that have gamed the system to their advantage."

President Barack Obama promotes an economy and a government that works for the 99 percent in a speech on Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2011, at Osawatomie High School in Osawatomie, Kan. To read the prepared text click here.

Obama’s pivot away from the GOP's austerity orthodoxy and toward public investment began with his jobs speech in September.

Since his September "jobs speech" Obama has continued to sharpened his populist focus in response to pressure from Occupy Wall Street.

Obama is again sounding like a progressive tackling issues in terms of basic fairness and attacking the GOP’s brand of conservative “your-on-your-own economics” in a much more direct way.

Obama called for a new approach to addressing America’s current economic challenges. In calling for a new approach Obama fires a shot across the bow of 30 years of conservative economic theory; Trickle down economics, the conservative theory embraced by Ronald Reagan and virtually every conservative since, “doesn’t work,” Obama declared. And even as conservatives have clung to the idea in the face of overwhelming evidence against it, “it has never worked,” Obama added:

'Obamacare' To The Rescue

A woman who believed the GOP Obamacare negative propaganda was so upset with President Obama for having "let down the struggling middle class" that she switched her registration from Democrat to Independent and altered her Obama bumpers sticker to read "Got Nope" is apologizing to the President. She says that while she was angered by Obama's plan, she's suddenly come to appreciate it, now that she's benefitting from it personally.

Two years ago, Spike Dolomite Ward and her husband had to choose between paying their mortgage or keeping their health insurance. They kept the house, and now at 49 Ward has been diagnosed with breast cancer. She didn't know how she'd afford months of expensive treatment, until he discovered the Pre-existing Condition Insurance Plan, which is part of Obama's healthcare plan. Now she's publicly "outed" herself in the hopes that she can teach ObamaCare opponents that the uninsured aren't just lazy freeloaders. She writes:

LA Times

I want to apologize to President Obama. But first, some background.

I found out three weeks ago I have cancer. I'm 49 years old, have been married for almost 20 years and have two kids. My husband has his own small computer business, and I run a small nonprofit in the San Fernando Valley. I am also an artist. Money is tight, and we don't spend it frivolously. We're just ordinary, middle-class people, making an honest living, raising great kids and participating in our community, the kids' schools and church.

We're good people, and we work hard. But we haven't been able to afford health insurance for more than two years. And now I have third-stage breast cancer and am facing months of expensive treatment.

ObamaCare’s Hidden Time Bomb That Benefits Every Insured American

PoliticusUSA

There are times that the title of legislation does not adequately describe the nature and purpose of a law that leads to confusion and uncertainty in the population. In March 2010, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was signed into law and over this past weekend, one specific provision of the law went into effect and it epitomizes the meaning of the law irrespective of all the other benefits to Americans. All at once, the law’s detractors on the professional left and wary Americans will see immediate benefits that will change the nature of health care insurance for the better and it has the potential to push health care in America toward a single-payer, universal care system.

The provision that seemed to be buried in the extensive law, the medical loss ratio, requires health insurance companies to spend 80-85% of consumer’s premiums on real medical care and not overhead, profits, or marketing expenses. If insurers fail to meet the requirement, they are bound by the law to send rebate checks to consumers “representing the amount in which they underspend on actual medical care.” Now, before any conservative or naysayer claims the provision is not workable or true, California school teachers began receiving their rebate checks on Friday for premiums they paid that were not used for medical care. According to a report in Forbes, “This is the true ‘bomb’ contained in Obamacare and the one item that will have more impact on the future of how medical care is paid for in this country than anything we’ve seen in quite some time.”

Nomination Race Hurting GOP, But Not Helping Obama

Pew Research Center: As the fight for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination unfolds, more Americans say their impression of the GOP field is worsening than improving. Those views, however, have not resulted in a better view of President Barack Obama at this point.

By a margin of two-to-one, more say that their impression of the GOP field is getting worse (31%) than getting better (14%). Half (50%) say their impression remains the same as they learn more about the Republican candidates.

About one-in-five (19%) say their impression of Obama has improved as they learn more about the Republicans. About as many (21%) say that the GOP campaign is worsening their impression of the president. Most (58%) say the Republicans have had no effect on their feelings about Obama.

The negative margin in evaluations of the GOP field rises to three-to-one (29% worse vs. 10% better) among independents, according to the latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and The Washington Post, conducted Dec. 1-4 among 1,008 adults. Still, more than half (55%) say their impression is unchanged.

Only Republicans are more likely to say their impression of the field is improving (30%) rather than getting worse (8%).

Nearly six-in-ten (58%) say their take hasn’t changed. Last month, about half of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (48%) said they saw the field as excellent or good; about as many (46%) said they saw the candidates as a group as only fair or poor. (See “Obama Job Approval Improves, GOP Contest Remains Fluid.”)

Among independents, 14% say the GOP campaign has improved their impression of Obama while 20% say it has made them more critical of the president. Nearly two-thirds (64%) say their opinion remains the same.

More than a third of Democrats (36%) say the GOP campaign has made them feel better about Obama, while 6% say it has made them feel worse. Most (56%) say their impression of the president has not been changed as they learn more about the Republican candidates.

From the Pew Research Center.

Tammy Baldwin Delivers Passionate Defense Of Progressivism

The typical political Democratic consultant today has simple advice for almost candidate these: Run to the middle, and whatever you do, don't let your opponent smear you as a liberal.

Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), running for Wisconsin's open U.S. Senate seat, suggested Democrats should ignore that "centrist" conventional wisdom.

In a speech at the Nation Institute's annual dinner -- which helps support one of the most liberal publications in the country -- Baldwin delivered an unapologetic defense of progressivism and its contribution to America.

"It's not that we've forgotten how to create wealth in this country. It's that we have allowed that wealth to be concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. And as the distance between top and bottom has widened, the bonds between us have stretched -- and broken," she said.

During her speech, Baldwin pointed to the "proud progressive tradition" in her own state as a model of what the movement can accomplish.

"Wisconsin was one of the first states to guarantee access to a free public education," she said. "We were the first state to ratify the 19th amendment allowing women the right to vote. We were the first to protect gays and lesbians from workplace discrimination. Wisconsin was the first state to grant collective bargaining rights to public employees. We invited workers' compensation. We invited unemployment insurance. But recently, that progressive tradition has come under attack by extremists."

Democrats Planning Major Voter Education Effort To Counter Voter ID Laws

Huffington Post

Democrats said last Thursday they are planning a major effort to protect voting rights in the 2012 election after several states passed voter photo identification laws and restrictions on early voting and same day registration.

Concerned over what they call voter suppression efforts in states, party officials said they were organizing on a number of fronts to, educate voters on the types of documents necessary to vote and pursue lawsuits if necessary.

A new website, ProtectingtheVote.org, makes the case that actual instances of voter fraud are rare, despite Republicans’ success in passing stricter laws to combat fraud in dozens of states. Democrats accuse the GOP of trying to stifle minority votes as a way to win elections. The site and an accompanying report, “A Reversal in Progress,” are the first step in an “unprecedented voter protection effort,” DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (picture above right) said during a conference call.

"We have a history of challenging these matters in court if need be. We'll be more than prepared to continue that into the future," said Will Crossley, the Democratic National Committee's counsel and director of voter protection.

Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin have passed laws this year requiring photo ID to vote.

NBC | As 2012 Turnout Battle Brews, Justice Department Eyes Voter ID Laws

If it’s pres­i­den­tial cam­paign sea­son, it must be time for another furor over voter fraud and voter suppression. As the Democ­rats did in 2008, they are again charg­ing that Repub­li­cans are try­ing to use photo iden­ti­fi­ca­tion laws and other changes in elec­tion laws to win­now out would-be Demo­c­ra­tic voters.

The dif­fer­ence this time: six more states have enacted laws, or strength­ened their exist­ing laws, requir­ing vot­ers to show a form of photo iden­ti­fi­ca­tion such as a driver’s license in order to cast a ballot. The stand­out among the new voter ID states: Wis­con­sin, which may have a recall elec­tion next year for Repub­li­can Gov. Scott Walker. It also has a mar­quee Sen­ate race and will likely be a bat­tle­ground in the pres­i­den­tial race.

Last week Demo­c­ra­tic National Com­mit­tee chair­woman Rep. Deb­bie Wasser­man Schultz launched a new mobi­liza­tion effort, say­ing, “Repub­li­cans across the coun­try have engaged in a full-scale attack on the right to vote, seek­ing ways to restrict or limit vot­ers’ abil­ity to cast their bal­lots for their own par­ti­san advantage.”

The strat­egy, she con­tended, dis­pro­por­tion­ally affects African-Americans, Lati­nos, and young peo­ple and could “skew the 2012 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in the Repub­li­cans’ favor.”

Assis­tant Attor­ney for Civil Rights Thomas Perez said last week that Jus­tice Depart­ment lawyers are review­ing some of the recently-enacted state laws to ensure that they com­ply with the Vot­ing Rights Act and do not have “a racially dis­crim­i­na­tory pur­pose or dis­crim­i­na­tory effect.”

Advocates of broader voting rights are looking forward to a speech on voting next week by Attorney General Eric Holder. “We’ve been pushing him hard to do that because we think it is a national crisis,” said Laura Murphy, the director of the Washington Legislative Office of the American Civil Liberties Union. “The big question is what will the Justice Department do – and that’s why we’re so excited about the attorney general’s upcoming speech.”

Democrats confront one big obstacle: the Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision handed down in 2008 and written by Justice John Paul Stevens, upheld Indiana’s photo identification law. “There is no question about the legitimacy or importance of the State’s interest in counting only the votes of eligible voters,” Stevens said. The decision left open the possibility that future plaintiffs could try to show that, as applied in specific cases, a voter ID law is unconstitutional.

Full Arti­cle: NBC Pol­i­tics — As 2012 turnout bat­tle brews, Jus­tice Dept. eyes voter ID laws.

Does Texas Want the USDOJ To Reject Its Voter Photo ID Law?

It is starting to looking like Texas may be intentionally setting up the U.S. Department of Justice (USDOJ) to reject the state's new voter photo identification law, by ignoring the USDOJ's September request for information about Texas' minority voters. The USDOJ said it needs that minority voter information to determine whether their new voter photo ID law would be discriminatory.

On November 16, USDOJ Civil Rights Division Voting Section Chief T. Christian Herren Jr. sent a letter to the Texas Secretary of State's office reminding the state that it had not yet sent the minority voter information that the USDOJ requested in September. As of today, December 5th, Texas has still not sent the minority information the USDOJ requested in September.

If Texas does not send the requested minority voter information, the USDOJ likely will turndown Texas' request to preclear its new voter photo ID law. Texas will then appeal the USDOJ's decision to the Supreme Court of the United States, where the DOJ's decision very well could be over turned.

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) ruled 6-3 in its 2008 Indiana Democratic Party v. Rokita decision (findlaw) that Indiana's 2005 strict voter photo ID law is constitutional. Texas' voter photo ID law is nearly identical to Indiana's voter photo ID law.

After hearing arguments of voter disenfranchisement, which were nearly identical to arguments that opponents of Texas' 2011 photo ID law have made to the USDOJ over the last three months, Justices Stevens, Roberts, Kennedy, Scalia, Thomas and Alito said in their 2008 majority opinion that those arguments do not provide concrete proof that Indiana's photo ID law constitutes either a burden to voting or an intentional discriminatory barrier to voting. The majority opinion further said that states have a “valid interest in protecting ‘the integrity and reliability of the electoral process.’” (AP story)

Wisconsin Voter ID Law May Force 84-Year-Old Woman To Pay $200 To Get A Voter ID

For 63 years, Brokaw, Wisconsin native Ruthelle Frank went to the polls to vote. Though paralyzed on her left side since birth, the 84-year-old “fiery woman” voted in every election since 1948 and even got elected herself as a member of the Brokaw Village Board. But because of the state’s new voter ID law, 2012 will be the first year Frank can’t vote.

Born after a difficult birth at her home in 1927, Frank never received an official birth certificate. Her mother recorded it in her family Bible and Frank has a certification of baptism from a few months later, along with a Social Security card, a Medicare statement, and a checkbook. But without the official document, she can’t secure the state ID card that the new law requires to vote next year.

“It’s really crazy,” she added. “I’ve got all this proof. You mean to tell me that I’m not a U.S. citizen?” But state officials have informed Frank that, because the state Register of Deeds does have a record of her birth, they can issue her a new birth certificate — for a fee. And because of a spelling error, that fee may be as high as $200:

NAACP Targets Tougher Voter Qualifications

The NAACP launches a cam­paign Mon­day against new state laws that tighten voter qualifications. The NAACP and the NAACP Legal Defense and Edu­ca­tional Fund, two sep­a­rate orga­ni­za­tions, will release a report that finds the laws tend to sup­press minor­ity vot­ing — a trend the report says emerged after unprece­dented minor­ity turnout in the 2008 elec­tion and Cen­sus fig­ures that show peo­ple of color gain­ing a larger share of the population.

The groups will send the doc­u­ment to con­gres­sional lead­ers, state attor­neys gen­eral, sec­re­taries of state and the Depart­ment of Jus­tice in hopes of prompt­ing leg­is­la­tion to roll back laws requir­ing government-issued iden­ti­fi­ca­tion at the polls and reduc­ing the num­ber of early-voting days and other mea­sures they say could dis­en­fran­chise as many as 5 mil­lion vot­ers. The NAACP, the National Asso­ci­a­tion for the Advance­ment of Col­ored Peo­ple, will lead a march to United Nations head­quar­ter in New York on Sat­ur­day to draw atten­tion to the issue.

The report says 14 states have passed 25 laws in roughly the past year that put new restric­tions on vot­ers or vot­ing. It sug­gests the mea­sures are a reac­tion to the minor­ity voter turnout in the 2008 gen­eral elec­tion, in which African-American vot­ers had a higher turnout rate than white vot­ers, as well as a reac­tion to Cen­sus fig­ures that show that from 2000 to 2010, the white pop­u­la­tion grew by 1.2% while the black pop­u­la­tion grew by 12.3% and the His­panic pop­u­la­tion by 43%. State offi­cials have said the laws are meant to pre­vent voter fraud and make elec­tions more efficient.

Voter ID laws are at the heart of the debate, accord­ing to the report. The authors main­tain that such laws dis­pro­por­tion­ately tar­get minori­ties. The report says about 25% of black Amer­i­cans and about 16% of Lati­nos do not pos­sess government-issued photo iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, com­pared with 8% of whites.

Full Arti­cle: NAACP tar­gets tougher voter qual­i­fi­ca­tions – USATODAY.com….

Rafael Anchia On Texas' Voter Photo ID Law

By Rafael Anchia, Texas State Representative, District 103

November has been month full of “oops” moments for Texas Republicans.

Not only were their illegal maps redrawn by a San Antonio Federal court last week, but lost in the redistricting news was the story about the refusal by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to pre-clear the strict photo ID legislation that Texas Republicans passed during the 2011 legislative session. Since July of this year, the DOJ has twice asked the Texas Secretary of State’s office (SOS) for additional information, including the number of registered voters who may be unable to comply with its requirements. At issue are about 600,000 registered Texas voters who may not have a state-issued license or ID. If the SOS does not provide the data, implementation of the bill can be halted.

Citizen Video Journalists

When blogging was young you could tell there was an emerging set of Citizen Journalists writers with real talent. It wasn't new as a medium, there were probably tens of thousands of LiveJournal blogs around with people expressing opinions and personal thoughts on everything from politics to what they had for breakfast. It's what these talented writers did with the medium that took it to the next level. There's a thousand ways things could have gone wrong for those early pioneers. But with a combination of talent, entrepreneurial skill, and the luck of being in the right place at the right time we've got the vibrant online world we have today. And we have a track record of lots of wins to look back on.

We've got a similar set of conditions brewing in the video broadcast world right now. Turn the dial on your TV and you'll mostly find right wing ownership of the air waves. News organizations have cut their budgets around the world for sending correspondents out to cover conflicts around the world. And the local TV coverage is mostly a joke. The technology to cheaply record video has existed for quite some time, most people have the ability to do that from their smart phones now. The technology to stream video in real time has become incredibly easy to use and free. You'll see coverage of all types of events, concerts, discussion panels, and you're even seeing some people broadcast live from Occupy protests.

Read the full story @ DailyKos

The Internet A Diversion And Destination In 2011

A survey by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project show that young adults’ use of the internet can at times be simply for the diversion it presents. Indeed, 81% of all young adults in this age cohort report they have used the internet for this reason at least occasionally. Americans are increasingly going online just for fun and to pass the time, particularly young adults under 30. On any given day, 53% of all the young adults ages 18-29 go online for no particular reason except to have fun or to pass the time. Many of them go online in purposeful ways, as well.

These results come in the larger context that internet users of all ages are much more likely now than in the past to say they go online for no particular reason other than to pass the time or have fun.

Some 58% of all adults (or 74% of all online adults) say they use the internet this way. And a third of all adults (34%) say they used the internet that way “yesterday” – or the day before Pew Internet reached them for the survey.

Both figures are higher than in 2009 when we last asked this question and vastly higher than in the middle of the last decade.

"These findings are one of our main signs about how deeply Internet use has woven itself into the rhythms of people's lives," report author and Pew Internet Lee Rainie told Mashable.

"When they have some down time, more and more of them are finding the Internet a fun, diverting place to spend their leisure moments. It's not necessarily surprising to see that this is a favorite pastime of young adults. It is a bit surprising to see that the incidence of this use has grown in every age demographic. The Internet is not just the playground of the young."

About the Survey

The results in this report are based on data from telephone interviews conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International from July 25 to August 26, 2011, among a sample of 2,260 adults, age 18 and older. Telephone interviews were conducted in English and Spanish by landline (1,344) and cell phone (916, including 425 without a landline phone).

Read the full survey report @ Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project

2011 Social Media Statistics

Social media has never been bigger, with hundreds of millions of people checking Facebook, Tweeting, posting and watching videos and sharing their lives on the web. Videoinfographcs have released a new video infographic with the latest statistics, facts and figures about social media that were released in 2011.

The World of Social Media 2011 hit YouTube just over a week ago and includes stats about Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, LinkedIn, Flickr, Instagram and more.

Did you know that at 135 million users, LinkedIn is 15 times the size of the population of New York? Or that Twitter users send an average of 1,735 tweets per second, with an all time record of 8,900 tweets per second? The average Facebook user now has 130 friends and spends 700 minutes on Facebook each month, and there are more Facebook users than motor vehicles.

Note: Infographics (including in this video) are saying that 35 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute. In fact, back in May this statistic was upped to 48 hours of video being uploaded per minute. Additionally, YouTube now sees 3.5 billion daily views.

Web Videos Can Deliver Messages To Millions

By now, if you haven't been living under a rock, you've seen or been told about this viral YouTube video:

Zach Wahls, a 19-year-old University of Iowa student spoke about the strength of his family during a public forum on House Joint Resolution 6 in the Iowa House of Representatives. Wahls has two Lesbian mothers, and came to oppose House Joint Resolution 6 which would end civil unions in Iowa.

The speaker's name is Zach Wahls; he's addressing the Iowa House of Representatives on the issue of marriage equality, and representing his parents, who are both women.

Posted in February, the video had been passed around several times before yesterday; it had appeared not twice but three times on the home page of Reddit, for example.

But then MoveOn.org featured the video on this page, with the headline, "Two Lesbians Raised A Baby and This Is What They Got," and the urging to "share this now" on Twitter, Facebook, or by email.

Over 500,000 people shared the page on Facebook alone, MoveOn Media editor-in-chief Angie Akers told me today, contributing to 6 million pageviews for the video since it was promoted to their front page Wednesday morning.

On YouTube, the video's analytics show 4.4 million views and a massive upward traffic spike yesterday, after its appearance on MoveOn.org and reappearance on Reddit.

Web An Increasing Tool To Link Campaigns, Voters

Huffington Post

As potential voters in New Hampshire and Iowa scan the Internet, they probably are seeing ads for Republican Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama alongside deals for shoes and holiday gifts.

The campaign ads will then follow those voters around the Web, popping up on news sites, Google searches and on social networking sites like Facebook.

Online advertising, once used primarily as a way to reach young and heavily wired consumers, has emerged as an essential communications tool in the 2012 presidential contest. While few expect Web ads to supplant television commercials anytime soon, strategists say online ads may be the most nimble, efficient and cost-effective way to reach voters.

"Online advertising cuts through because of its ability to target. It's unparalleled in any other medium," said Romney's digital director, Zac Moffatt. "TV may be more effective for driving a big message, but per usage, the Internet is more powerful. We are probably one presidential cycle from everyone believing that."

Web ads can take many forms, from small display boxes to clickable videos to 15- or 30-second commercials known as "pre-rolls" a viewer sees before the start of a news clip or YouTube video.

While campaigns invest heavily in television ads to reach a mass audience, Web ads are geared specifically to people based on their ZIP code, demographics and, most importantly, their Internet browsing history.

That means someone who has visited the Obama campaign website probably will start seeing his ads on a number of different Web pages. Those who use Google to search for information on the Republican candidates might notice a Romney campaign pre-roll the next time they watch a TV show online.

Campaigns also buy ads on websites that cater to the different demographic groups the campaigns are hoping to reach.

"When someone expresses interest in politics online, it's an incredibly good time for the campaigns to talk to them," said Andrew Roos, a Google account leader who works with Democratic campaigns on Web ad strategy. "You want to grab people when they are paying attention and ask them to take another action, like send money or attend an offline event. It's an old-school organization principle that has been working its way online."

Read the full story @ Huffington Post

Newt Gingrich's Google Ad Buy Jumps the Cain Train

Politico's Morning Score notes that Newt Gingrich is running ads on web searches for news about Herman Cain in Iowa and New Hampshire with the message "Support the Candidate that can win."

In terms of web searches, that could be a successful move by Gingrich. Google Insights shows that within the past week, searches for Newt Gingrich have risen above searches for Herman Cain in both Iowa and New Hampshire.

But when it comes to searches only in the category of news, there are still significantly more searches for Cain than for Gingrich in both states.

Raise Taxes on Rich to Reward True Job Creators

by Nick Hanauer
Founder of the Second Avenue Partners
Venture Capital Company

It is a tenet of American economic beliefs, and an article of faith for Republicans that is seldom contested by Democrats: If taxes are raised on the rich, job creation will stop.

Trouble is, sometimes the things that we know to be true are dead wrong. For the larger part of human history, for example, people were sure that the sun circles the Earth and that we are at the center of the universe. It doesn’t, and we aren’t. The conventional wisdom that the rich and businesses are our nation’s “job creators” is every bit as false.

I’m a very rich person. As an entrepreneur and venture capitalist, I’ve started or helped get off the ground dozens of companies in industries including manufacturing, retail, medical services, the Internet and software. I founded the Internet media company aQuantive Inc., which was acquired by Microsoft Corp. in 2007 for $6.4 billion. I was also the first non-family investor in Amazon.com Inc.

Even so, I’ve never been a “job creator.” I can start a business based on a great idea, and initially hire dozens or hundreds of people. But if no one can afford to buy what I have to sell, my business will soon fail and all those jobs will evaporate.

That’s why I can say with confidence that rich people don’t create jobs, nor do businesses, large or small. What does lead to more employment is the feedback loop between customers and businesses. And only consumers can set in motion a virtuous cycle that allows companies to survive and thrive and business owners to hire. An ordinary middle-class consumer is far more of a job creator than I ever have been or ever will be.

End Welfare For The Wealthy

Excepts from an Op Ed by Tom, Coburn (R-Oklahoma), @ CNN.com.

Every year, politicians on both sides engage in a process of reverse Robin Hood in which they steal $30 billion from low- and middle-income Americans and provide handouts to the rich and famous.

Millionaires receive tax earmarks and deductions crafted by both parties that allow them to write off billions each year. These write-offs include mortgage interest deductions on second homes and luxury yachts, gambling losses, business expenses, electric vehicle credits and even child care tax credits.

Meanwhile, direct handouts for millionaires have included $74 million in unemployment checks, $316 million in farm subsidies, $http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif89 million for preservation of ranches and estates, $9 billion in retirement checks and $7.5 million to compensate for damages caused by emergencies to property that should have been insured. Millionaires have even borrowed $16 million in government-backed education loans to attend college since 2007.

The goal of highlighting these excesses is not to demonize those who are successful. Instead, by highlighting the sheer stupidity of pampering the wealthy with lavish benefits through our safety net and tax code, I hope to make a moral and economic argument for real entitlement and tax reform...

Families are struggling to make ends meet and are making painful economic choices as politicians in Washington borrow billions to provide welfare to the wealthy. Politicians on both sides refuse to fix big problems and defend stupid policies because changing those policies would involve upending a comfortable political status quo.

It's important for taxpayers to understand that these distortions are not accidental loopholes in the law. To the contrary, these provisions are intentional efforts to get all Americans to buy into a system where everyone appears to benefit while the poor and middle class are being robbed.

In the case of entitlements such as Social Security, progressives have argued for decades that a program for poor people will be a poor program. Yet, Warren Buffett hardly needs the same retirement check as his secretary. Ending welfare handouts to millionaires will strengthen, not undermine, the safety net for people who need it most.

Even Canada has adopted means testing in its retirement program by limiting benefits for high-earners. That fact is we can't afford the system we have today. Only by adopting common-sense reforms can we sustain a safety net for those who truly need assistance.

On the tax side, both parties have been reluctant to alter tax earmarks and deductions, such as the mortgage interest deduction. These are considered sacrosanct.

Yet, it's hard to understand how limiting the mortgage interest deductions for yachts will hurt working families. Defending spending in the tax code is not conservative. Providing tax earmarks and deductions to millionaires is a tax increase on everyone who doesn't receive the benefit. The only way we will enact real tax reform, and grow the economy, is by lowering tax rates and broadening the base by scaling back these egregious handouts. This is precisely what President Ronald Reagan did in 1986.

Even though the super committee failed to reach an agreement on broad deficit reduction, there is no reason why the other super committee -- Congress -- should drag its feet. Change in Washington tends to start with small steps. There is no better place to start than scaling back ludicrous handouts to millionaires that expose an entitlement system and tax code that desperately need to be reformed.

Read the complete Op Ed by Tom, Coburn (R-Oklahoma), @ CNN.com.

Religion-Related Lobbying Increase Fivefold

The number of organizations engaged in religious lobbying or religion-related advocacy in Washington, D.C., has increased roughly fivefold in the past four decades, from fewer than 40 in 1970 to more than 200 today.

A new study by the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life examines the agendas, strategies, affiliations and structures of 212 religion-related advocacy groups operating in the capital.

As a whole, religious advocacy organizations work on about 300 policy issues. For most of the past century, religious advocacy groups in Washington focused mainly on domestic affairs.

Today, however, roughly as many groups work only on international issues as work only on domestic issues, and nearly two-thirds of the groups work on both.

Read the full report @ Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life