pew research center

Our path to third world nation status continues:

The number of Americans living in poverty reached a record 49.1 million in 2010, according to a new broader measure of poverty released by the U.S. Census Bureau on Monday.

That figure contrasts with an official poverty measure released in September that said there were 46.2 million poor people in the United States.

The new measure is designed to provide a fuller picture of poverty by including the government benefits poor people receive and the expenses they pay. The official benchmark focuses more narrowly on cash wages.

That's almost 1 in 5 Americans and there seems to be no end in site with this from Pew Research:

Older adults have made dramatic gains relative to younger adults in their economic well being during the past quarter century, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of data from two key U.S. Census sources.

Trends in household wealth reveal the pattern most vividly. In 2009, the median net worth (all assets minus all debts) of households headed by an adult ages 65 or older was 42% more than that of their same-aged counterparts in 1984. By contrast, the net worth of a typical household headed by an adult under the age of 35 in 2009 was 68% less than that of their same-aged counterparts in 1984.

Apparently not the Republicans. Check out Eric Cantor admitting that extending the Bush tax cuts will increase the deficit:

Transcript (via Think Progress):

GUTHRIE: [W]ill you just as simply acknowledge that passing these tax cuts worsens the budget deficit problem? I mean, you can’t deny that, right?

CANTOR: Savannah, let’s look at it through the prism of the working families seeking jobs and the small business people who are creating them. It’s not a tax cut they’re looking for. They don’t want a tax hike. And that’s –

GUTHRIE: But that wasn’t my question. … I just was wondering if you had any dispute with the notion that it does exacerbate the deficit picture?

CANTOR: Well, what I said in the beginning is, if you have less revenues coming in to the federal government, and more expenditures, what does that add up to? Certainly you are going to dig the hole deeper, but you also have to understand if the priority is to get people back to work, is to start growing this economy again, you don’t want to make it more expensive for job creators.

By WILL LESTER, Associated Press Writer

The recent indictment of Vice President Cheney's top aide has struck a nerve with the American public. Four in five, 79 percent, said the indictment of former Cheney aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby on perjury and other charges is important to the nation, according to a poll by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. Pew noted that in September 1998, 65 percent said President Clinton's lies under oath were important. Clinton was impeached over his handling of an affair with Monica Lewinsky, but was acquitted by the Senate on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice.

Libby was charged with lying to investigators and a grand jury during an investigation of his role in revealing the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame, wife of an outspoken critic of the war against Iraq.

Most Americans, six in 10, say they do not think the news about Libby's indictment has gotten too much coverage.

The concerns about Libby's case come at a time that a growing number of people, 43 percent, now say U.S. and British leaders were mostly lying when they claimed before the Iraq war that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, while an equal number said they were misinformed by bad intelligence.

That's up from 31 percent who felt in February 2004 that the leaders were lying, while 49 percent said they got bad intelligence.

Two-thirds of Democrats say U.S. and British political leaders were lying about weapons of mass destruction and half of independents feel that way. Only one in 10 Republicans said that was the case.

The telephone poll of 1,201 adults was taken Nov. 3-6 and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

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