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• Here's a brief overview of some key stats on where the economy stands.
• Economic Myths: We Separate Fact From Fiction

Braden Goyette, ProPublica

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A Florida man works a street corner hoping to land a job on June 3, 2011. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

With increasing signs that the economy is laboring [2], most economists agree that a short-term infusion of spending, or an extension of this year's temporary cut in Social Security taxes, could help fend off a new downturn. But whatever one thinks of the debt deal -- and most of its billions in cuts won't come for a few years [3] -- there's a near-consensus [4] in Washington against spending increases.

Here's a brief overview of some key stats on where the economy stands.

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Economic Myths: We Separate Fact From Fiction, Michael Grabell, ProPublica

• Was the 2009 stimulus package a deficit-busting failure or an unparalleled rescue? Are taxes stifling or the lowest they've ever been? We analyze the seven most prevalent economic myths to see what's true.
• America's Economic Chaos: Don't Panic, Get Informed!
• Americans Actually Lightly Taxed

• Was the 2009 stimulus package a deficit-busting failure or an unparalleled rescue? Are taxes stifling or the lowest they've ever been? We analyze the seven most prevalent economic myths to see what's true.
• The Latest on Our Sputtering Economy, by the Numbers
• America's Economic Chaos: Don't Panic, Get Informed!
• Americans Actually Lightly Taxed

Michael Grabell, ProPublica

If you like reading this article, consider contributing a cuppa jove to Evergreene Digest--using the donation button above—so we can bring you more just like it.

A sign about jobs created is posted at the Caldecott Tunnel construction project on Aug. 17, 2011, in Oakland, Calif. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

With the recent Iowa straw poll [1] and President Obama's bus tour [2], Americans are hearing a cacophony of arguments about the wobbly economy. The federal stimulus package passed in 2009 was either a deficit-busting failure full of wasteful projects or an unparalleled rescue that would have been more successful if it had only been bigger. Taxes are either stifling or the lowest they've ever been. America needs to invest in infrastructure, or "infrastructure" is merely a euphemism for more government spending. So, here's our guide to the most prevalent economic myths.

1. Taxes have been going up and are high compared to levels in other countries.

The first part is wrong; the second is also wrong but contains a grain of truth.

The percentage of income that Americans spend on taxes is the lowest it's been since 1958, according an analysis by USA Today [3]. And with the exception of five years after the 1986 Tax Reform Act, the highest marginal income [4] and corporate tax rates [5] are the lowest they've been since World War II.

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The Latest on Our Sputtering Economy, by the Numbers, Braden Goyette, ProPublica

• Here's a brief overview of some key stats on where the economy stands.
• Economic Myths: We Separate Fact From Fiction

America's Economic Chaos: Don't Panic, Get Informed! Global Research

• It is time to step back from the panic and understand what is happening. The mainstream media is having a heyday with sensationalized reports which at their core are masking several critical and grim truths.
• Know where to turn for the truth

Americans Actually Lightly Taxed, Juan Cole, Juan Cole.com

• What you may be able to link low rates of taxation (and regressive taxation policy, which is what the US has) to is levels of social violence. Thus, Mexico and the United States are both extremely violent societies compared to those at the top of this list, in part because the government is starved by its stingy wealthy elites of funds to deal with violence, especially in poorer communities.
• The argument that raising taxes on the wealthy would hurt growth or employment holds no water.

• She won the Ames straw poll on Saturday and is the clear favorite to win the Iowa caucuses in January.
• There's a method to Michele Bachmann's madness.
  

Tim Murphy, Mother Jones

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Illustration: Anita Kunz

There's a story Michele Bachmann likes to tell when she speaks to religious audiences. It arrives about three-quarters through her stump speech, after the warning to opponents that she is "one tough cookie" and the crowd-pleasing pledge to make Barack Obama a—say it together—"One. Term. President."

As Bachmann tells it, America's national sovereignty is slipping away, and the sanctity of the family is being overrun by an encroaching nanny state. But we can find hope in the story of the Israelites, who, after drifting from their faith and coming under siege in their own land, shunned their false idolatry and pushed back the invaders with God's help: "The men of Issachar understood the times that they lived in, and they knew what to do," she says, referring to one of the 12 tribes of Israel. "They had the courage to carry it out." Although Bachmann doesn't note this, it's the only episode in the Bible in which men are led into battle by a woman, Deborah.

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• The fact that the capitalist economic system is in worldwide meltdown is not even registered in the mainstream commentary. This is the system that the mainstream political parties have facilitated and fawned over, whether Labour, Conservative or Liberal, and which has resulted in social devastation across Britain while the corporate and financial elite has ransacked economic resources.
• This system of legalised looting has been going on for decades, but certainly took on a precipitous dynamic starting with Cameron’s Conservative predecessor Margaret Thatcher in the early 1980s. Labour’s Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were merely purveyors of the same dynamic.
• The 'Toxic Mix' of social deprivation, austerity, and unemployment

Finian Cunningham, Global Research

This article is made possible with the generous contributions of readers like you. Thank you!

After a conflagration of arson attacks, riots and looting in several British cities, including the capital, London, there is a sense of order having been restored from a massive mobilisation of police forces.

There now follows the tracking down and prosecution of individuals involved in the mayhem. Conservative Prime Minister is leading “the fight back” to punish anyone who has inflicted damage and destruction to Britain’s society.

The events have visibly shocked the political establishment of all parties, police chiefs and the mainstream media. But what should be more shocking is the myopic and incredibly banal commentary that is being offered to “explain” the outburst of street disturbances and violence.

As pundits sit in comfy television studios trading inane insights about the “evils” of individual immorality, criminality, dysfunctional families, gang culture – in the background, so to speak, are the glaring signs scrolling across the screens of the cause of this societal breakdown. And yet the preponderant signs escape the mental radar of pundits and politicians alike.

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The 'Toxic Mix' of social deprivation, austerity, and unemployment, murshedz, Crooks and Liars

• Each of these events was sparked by a different cause, yet all take place against a backdrop of brutal cuts and enforced austerity measures.
• Hard to deduce this could've happened in such extremes w/out years of breakdown in trust due to political, financial, media corruption.
• London’s Burning