(Note: The words that appear in red are links that you can click.)

There are a number things the public “knows” as we head into the election that are just false. If people elect leaders based on false information, the things those leaders do in office will not be what the public expects or needs.

Here are eight of the biggest myths that are out there:

1) President Obama tripled the deficit.
Reality: Bush’s last budget had a $1.416 trillion deficit. Obama’s first budget reduced that to $1.29 trillion.

2) President Obama raised taxes, which hurt the economy.
Reality: Obama cut taxes. 40% of the “stimulus” was wasted on tax cuts which only create debt, which is why it was so much less effective than it could have been.

3) President Obama bailed out the banks.
Reality: While many people conflate the “stimulus” with the bank bailouts, the bank bailouts were requested by President Bush and his Treasury Secretary, former Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson. (Paulson also wanted the bailouts to be “non-reviewable by any court or any agency.”) The bailouts passed and began before the 2008 election of President Obama.

4) The stimulus didn’t work.
Reality: The stimulus worked, but was not enough. In fact, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the stimulus raised employment by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million jobs.

5) Businesses will hire if they get tax cuts.
Reality: A business hires the right number of employees to meet demand. Having extra cash does not cause a business to hire, but a business that has a demand for what it does will find the money to hire. Businesses want customers, not tax cuts.

6) Health care reform costs $1 trillion.
Reality: The health care reform reduces government deficits by $138 billion.

7) Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, is “going broke,” people live longer, fewer workers per retiree, etc.
Reality: Social Security has run a surplus since it began, has a trust fund in the trillions, is completely sound for at least 25 more years and cannot legally borrow so cannot contribute to the deficit (compare that to the military budget!) Life expectancy is only longer because fewer babies die; people who reach 65 live about the same number of years as they used to.

8) Government spending takes money out of the economy.
Reality: Government is We, the People and the money it spends is on We, the People. Many people do not know that it is government that builds the roads, airports, ports, courts, schools and other things that are the soil in which business thrives. Many people think that all government spending is on “welfare” and “foreign aid” when that is only a small part of the government’s budget.

This stuff really matters.

If the public votes in a new Congress because a majority of voters think this one tripled the deficit, and as a result the new people follow the policies that actually tripled the deficit, the country could go broke.

If the public votes in a new Congress that rejects the idea of helping to create demand in the economy because they think it didn’t work, then the new Congress could do things that cause a depression.

If the public votes in a new Congress because they think the health care reform will increase the deficit when it is actually projected to reduce the deficit, then the new Congress could repeal health care reform and thereby make the deficit worse. And on it goes.

I understand the conservative arguments & perspective against the current administration & congress, though I do not agree with them. I find it hard to understand the liberal / progressive arguments & perspective against Obama, Reid, & Pelosi, except that I share a healthy sense of frustration & impatience with the rate of change & progress. Like Dr. Cornel West so eloquently put it, what is Obama doing for the working poor & unemployed in America today? That being said, going back to a Republican-controlled congress in 2010 & presidency in 2012 is a very scary thing to me. Whomever controls the presidency controls the future of the Supreme Court, & we have ample evidence what the activist wing of the Roberts court feels about corporate personhood & transparency in elections. So, what to do? I for one am not going to throw my vote away on a third party candidate until we live in a parliamentary government in which there are more than two main power-brokering parties. Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders is probably my favorite senator, yet he caucuses with the Democrats & is essentially a Democratic Socialist supporter of the Democratic Party, which I would like to think of myself as too. In any case, I am going to vote for the Democratic candidate in my house district & for governor on Nov. 2, 2010. I am sure that there are several Democratic candidates around the country who do not deserve anyone’s vote, but as far as I can tell in my situation, the Democrats are the best option available.

September/October 2010 Issue

Read also: The rest of this special report and MoJo’s daily political coverage.

When it comes to corporate donors, Democrats and Republicans may be closer than you think.

The Senate: Lawyers, Drugs, and Money

The Senate

SECTOR | # OF MEMBERS

Finance, insurance, and real estate  57

Lawyers and lobbyists  25

Health  5

Agribusiness  3

Labor  2

Energy and natural resources  2

Miscellaneous business  2

Communications and electronics  1

No money raised  3

Total seats | 100

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) Terms: 2 (9 in House) Total raised: $62.2 million, 27% from finance, insurance, and real estate (FIRE) Top donors: A major defender of Wall Street interests before the crash, Schumer has netted more big bank money than any member of Congress who hasn’t run for president.	Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) Terms: 1 Total raised: $17 million, 7% from FIRE Top donors: In the special election to fill Ted Kennedy’s seat, Brown’s biggest donors were Fidelity Investments, Bain Capital (Mitt Romney’s old firm), and Credit Suisse. But—whoops!—he voted for the financial regulation bill.
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) Terms: 5 Total raised: $37.2 million, 14% from FIRE Top donors: The top Senate Republican’s most generous contributors have been US Smokeless Tobacco—now part of Altria, née Philip Morris—and Brown-Forman, the maker of Jack Daniel’s. Cheers!	Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) Terms: 4 (2 in House)Total raised: $35.4 million, 17% from lawyers and lobbyists Top donors: 5 out of the majority leader’s top 10 lifetime donors are casinos or gambling interests. The industry has bet more than $1.7 million on him, plus $1.3 mil on fellow Nevada Sen. John Ensign.
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) Terms: 3 (5 in House) Total raised: $75.3 million, 7% from lawyers and lobbyists Top donors: Boxer is Hollywood’s favorite member of Congress (aside from Sen. John Kerry). Her second-biggest donor is Time Warner; Disney is sixth.	Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) Terms: 2 (4 in House) Total raised: $31.8 million, 12% from agribusiness Top donors: The ranking member of the ag committee has never met a federal farm subsidy he didn’t like. He just happens to be Congress’ second-most bountiful recipient of agribusiness cash.
Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) Terms: 4 (4 in House) Total raised: $16.2 million, 13% from energy and natural resources Top donors: Inhofe, who’s declared that “man-induced global warming is an article of religious faith,” has received more money from Koch Industries than any other company. The oil firm has given nearly $25 million to climate-change denial groups.

The House: Big Labor vs. Big Money

The House

SECTOR | # OF MEMBERS

Labor  159

Finance, insurance, and real estate  159

Health  26

Agribusiness  23

Lawyers and lobbyists  20

Miscellaneous business  18

Energy and natural resources  10

Defense  7

Transportation  6

Communications and electronics  4

Construction  1

Unfilled seats  2

Total seats | 435

Rep. David Obey (D-Wisc.) Terms: 21 Total raised: $10.8 million, 21% from labor Top donors: The chair of the appropriations committee and a subcommittee with oversight of labor matters, is the House’s second-biggest recipient of union cash. Obey’s retiring in the face of a challenge from Real World star Sean Duffy.	Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) Terms: 12 Total raised: $11.9 million, 19% from FIRE Top donors: Sure, her husband is a major real estate investor, but the biggest all-time donor to the speaker (who has her own Napa vineyard) has been California wine giant E&J Gallo.
Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) Terms: 5 Total raised: $17.3 million, 24% from FIRE Top donors: The top donor to the GOP whip, a leading opponent of cap-and-trade legislation, is Dominion Resources, a Virginia power company.	Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) Terms: 1 Total raised: $6.4 million, 25% from FIRE Top donors: The freshman rep, a former Goldman Sachs veep, now collects campaign checks from the firm—more than any other House member. Financial regulation vote: Yes.
Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) Terms: 7 Total raised: $50.5 million, 3% from FIRE Top donors: GIs, meet geeks. The small-government libertarian’s biggest givers are members of the military, followed by Google and Microsoft employees.	Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) Terms: 13 Total raised: $17.2 million, 19% from energy and natural resources Top donors: Barton, who decried the “shakedown” of BP, has watched the cash flow from Anadarko Petroleum, owner (PDF) of 25% of BP’s Deepwater Horizon well.
Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) Terms: 17 Total raised: $8.3 million, 17% from defense Top donors: The Armed Services Committee chair is—surprise!— Congress’ top recipient of defense-industry cash.

Previous: Who Owns Congress? Special Report

Next: The Top 75 Corporate Sponsors

Are Democrats Really Doing Better?

Oct 4 2010, 5:18 PM ET

Are Democrats doing better? Are they closing the enthusiasm gap? Why are Republicans exuding less confidence about the Democratic Party’s scheduled root canal on November 2?

There is some obvious perception-framing here. Republicans want to make sure that a 45-seat pick-up is seen as a “win” for the party, particularly when pundits like Charlie Cook talk about a landscape with more than 70 seats in play. (Of course, Cook knows that Democrats will win many of the seats, but when people hear 70, they expect 70). Precisely because the 2010 election is not a vote of confidence for Republican leaders in Congress — it has become in so many races the opposite — if Republicans win, they will need to claim a mandate. It won t appear. Expectations must be managed.

By the same token, nothing will hurt Democratic turnout more than a Democratic Party that telegraphs losses. If the election seems more competitive than it is, more Democrats will vote. If it seems as if their votes will be wasted, if Republicans are simply going to win regardless, then they won’t. This is basic political psychology, but it always seem to kick in in early October.

Secondly, the Republicans have succeeded in defining their party in a way that is helping Democrats get clarity about the stakes of the election. This is to be expected in an era of intense polarization. It is why the national Democratic Party is not running for something; it is why they are running against the Palin-O’Donnell-Beck-Paul Ryan-Austerity party.

Thirdly, news coverage of the midterms has increased. People are paying more attention. Republicans have been paying more attention for a while, and now everyone else is. That, in and of itself, will bleed into the likely voter screens. Races that are naturally tight but don’t appear that way because of the attention gap will suddenly seem tight. This is an artificial (but welcome) momentum booster for Democrats.

All of the above is mechanical.

Most of the major prognosticators are forecasting a two-to-one Republican sweep of the marginal districts, which is about right for a wave election. But importantly, Democrats are keeping these races, many of them they are certain to lose, competitive. The party has enough money to keep these races in play. It does not have to publicly abandon House races because, with about a dozen examples, their candidates are either within a few points of the Republican candidate, are tied, or are leading.   

In 1994, Democrats did not see the wave until it was right under their noses. In 2010, Democrats saw the eddies being generated before the wave was, and fortified their candidates with as much nutrition as possible. A lot of Democrats were able to escape bad votes — with the permission of the Speaker — because they’d face tough races. The Rahm Emanuel-recruited frosh class of Democrats is benefiting from the “sophomore surge” phenomenon.

It’s time for a concluding anthropomorphic synecdoche. Democrats are hanging in there. By this point in 1994, they’d already fallen off the cliff.   

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Jann Wenner reports in Rolling Stone today that after his recent interview with President Obama was over, Obama returned briefly to the Oval Office and tacked on a coda, speaking “with intensity and passion, repeatedly stabbing the air with his finger”:

It is inexcusable for any Democrat or progressive right now to stand on the sidelines in this midterm election. There may be complaints about us not having gotten certain things done, not fast enough, making certain legislative compromises. But right now, we’ve got a choice between a Republican Party that has moved to the right of George Bush and is looking to lock in the same policies that got us into these disasters in the first place, versus an administration that, with some admitted warts, has been the most successful administration in a generation in moving progressive agendas forward.

….If we want the kind of country that respects civil rights and civil liberties, we’d better fight in this election. And right now, we are getting outspent eight to one by these 527s that the Roberts court says can spend with impunity without disclosing where their money’s coming from. In every single one of these congressional districts, you are seeing these independent organizations outspend political parties and the candidates by, as I said, factors of four to one, five to one, eight to one, 10 to one.

We have to get folks off the sidelines. People need to shake off this lethargy, people need to buck up. Bringing about change is hard — that’s what I said during the campaign. It has been hard, and we’ve got some lumps to show for it. But if people now want to take their ball and go home, that tells me folks weren’t serious in the first place.

If you’re serious, now’s exactly the time that people have to step up.

Well, that’s not going to be popular with Obama’s lefty critics, though obviously you’d expect a mushy sellout like me to agree with him. And I do! But I’d also make a distinction. If you’re, say, Glenn Greenwald, I wouldn’t expect you to buy Obama’s defense at all. All of us have multiple interests, but if your primary concern is with civil liberties and the national security state, then the problem isn’t that Obama hasn’t done enough, it’s that his policies have been actively damaging. There’s just no reason why you should be especially excited about either his administration or the continuation of the Democratic Party in power.

On the other hand, if your critique is the broader and more common one — that Obama has moved in the right direction but has been too quick to compromise and hasn’t accomplished enough — then I think you should take his defense of his record way, way more seriously. It’s all too easy, like Velma Hart, to convince yourself that he could have waved a magic wand and gotten a bigger stimulus and a better healthcare bill and stronger financial regulation and a historic climate bill. But honestly, you have to buy into some pretty implausible political realities to believe that (Olympia Snowe would have voted for a trillion-dollar stimulus, there were Republican votes for a climate bill if only it had been a bigger priority, healthcare reform could have been passed via reconciliation, Harry Reid could have unilaterally ended the filibuster, etc.). The votes just weren’t there and the president’s leverage over centrist Dems and recalcitrant Republicans just wasn’t very strong. Maybe he could have done better, but the evidence says that, at best, he could have done only a smidge better.

And the alternative? Well, if the prospect of ripping apart healthcare reform, shutting down the government, deep sixing START, slashing social spending, and reliving the glory days of investigations over Christmas card lists isn’t enough to get you motivated, I guess I’m not sure what is. I wish I got more warm and fuzzies from Obama too, and I wish, like Mike Tomasky, that his ”fetish of not kowtowing to public opinion” were a little less ostentatious. But letting Darrell Issa take over the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform doesn’t seem like a very good way of getting that message across.

OK then. I think I’ll go donate a hundred bucks to someone. Who do you think it should be?

Jann Wenner reports in Rolling Stone today that after his recent interview with President Obama was over, Obama returned briefly to the Oval Office and tacked on a coda, speaking “with intensity and passion, repeatedly stabbing the air with his finger”:

It is inexcusable for any Democrat or progressive right now to stand on the sidelines in this midterm election. There may be complaints about us not having gotten certain things done, not fast enough, making certain legislative compromises. But right now, we’ve got a choice between a Republican Party that has moved to the right of George Bush and is looking to lock in the same policies that got us into these disasters in the first place, versus an administration that, with some admitted warts, has been the most successful administration in a generation in moving progressive agendas forward.

….If we want the kind of country that respects civil rights and civil liberties, we’d better fight in this election. And right now, we are getting outspent eight to one by these 527s that the Roberts court says can spend with impunity without disclosing where their money’s coming from. In every single one of these congressional districts, you are seeing these independent organizations outspend political parties and the candidates by, as I said, factors of four to one, five to one, eight to one, 10 to one.

We have to get folks off the sidelines. People need to shake off this lethargy, people need to buck up. Bringing about change is hard — that’s what I said during the campaign. It has been hard, and we’ve got some lumps to show for it. But if people now want to take their ball and go home, that tells me folks weren’t serious in the first place.

If you’re serious, now’s exactly the time that people have to step up.

Well, that’s not going to be popular with Obama’s lefty critics, though obviously you’d expect a mushy sellout like me to agree with him. And I do! But I’d also make a distinction. If you’re, say, Glenn Greenwald, I wouldn’t expect you to buy Obama’s defense at all. All of us have multiple interests, but if your primary concern is with civil liberties and the national security state, then the problem isn’t that Obama hasn’t done enough, it’s that his policies have been actively damaging. There’s just no reason why you should be especially excited about either his administration or the continuation of the Democratic Party in power.

On the other hand, if your critique is the broader and more common one — that Obama has moved in the right direction but has been too quick to compromise and hasn’t accomplished enough — then I think you should take his defense of his record way, way more seriously. It’s all too easy, like Velma Hart, to convince yourself that he could have waved a magic wand and gotten a bigger stimulus and a better healthcare bill and stronger financial regulation and a historic climate bill. But honestly, you have to buy into some pretty implausible political realities to believe that (Olympia Snowe would have voted for a trillion-dollar stimulus, there were Republican votes for a climate bill if only it had been a bigger priority, healthcare reform could have been passed via reconciliation, Harry Reid could have unilaterally ended the filibuster, etc.). The votes just weren’t there and the president’s leverage over centrist Dems and recalcitrant Republicans just wasn’t very strong. Maybe he could have done better, but the evidence says that, at best, he could have done only a smidge better.

And the alternative? Well, if the prospect of ripping apart healthcare reform, shutting down the government, deep sixing START, slashing social spending, and reliving the glory days of investigations over Christmas card lists isn’t enough to get you motivated, I guess I’m not sure what is. I wish I got more warm and fuzzies from Obama too, and I wish, like Mike Tomasky, that his ”fetish of not kowtowing to public opinion” were a little less ostentatious. But letting Darrell Issa take over the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform doesn’t seem like a very good way of getting that message across.

OK then. I think I’ll go donate a hundred bucks to someone. Who do you think it should be?

Apparently Bill Maher really doesn’t want to see the Republicans back in office any more than I do. Maher channeled his inner “Barry Whitehouse” and reminded everyone why as aggravated as many of us might be with the Democrats right now, we don’t need to be putting the Republicans back in office and had a bit of fun while doing it.

“Maher: Why can’t the Democrats get props for what they’ve achieved? Oh, I know… I know. Obama’s black. He’s used to being denied credit. And there’s nothing wrong with being hard on him. He’s the president and it’s our job to keep him honest.

But when it comes to voting, when we only have two choices, you’ve got to grow up and realize there’s a big difference between a disappointing friend and a deadly enemy. Of course the Democrats are disappointing. That’s what makes them Democrats. If they were any more frustrating they’d be your relatives.

But in this country they are all that stands between you and darkest night. You know why their symbol is the letter “D”? Because it’s a grade that means good enough, but just barely.

You know why the Republican symbol is “R”? Because it’s the noise a pirate makes when he robs you and feeds you to a shark.

The truth is the Democratic base is still way larger than the Republican base. The reason why they’re losing is something called the enthusiasm gap. Yeah. And the voters that Obama and the Democrats have really lost are the women. Women like Velma Hart are just not getting enough love from the president.
So tonight I thought I’d try to make their fantasies come true and speak to you as Barack Obama’s alter ego, Barry Whitehouse.”

As if Rand Paul’s flippant “No one will miss a hill or two” comment wasn’t egregious enough, his latest PR effort on behalf of the coal industry is even worse. In an interview with Details magazine, he makes some of the dumbest and most offensive statements I’ve heard yet about mountaintop removal.

See, here’s what Rand Paul thinks. Seriously.

Paul believes mountaintop removal just needs a little rebranding. “I think they should name it something better,” he says. “The top ends up flatter, but we’re not talking about Mount Everest. We’re talking about these little knobby hills that are everywhere out here. And I’ve seen the reclaimed lands. One of them is 800 acres, with a sports complex on it, elk roaming, covered in grass.” Most people, he continues, “would say the land is of enhanced value, because now you can build on it.”