Dramatic Climate Swings Likely as World Warms

ScienceDaily (July 15, 2011) — Dramatic climate swings behind both last year's Pakistan flooding and this year's Queensland floods in Australia are likely to continue as the world gets warmer, scientists predict.

Horn of Africa Drought ‘Set to Worsen’ The plight of millions of drought-stricken people across the Horn of Africa is set to worsen, with rains expected only later in the year and harvests months away, a top UN official warned Saturday. Scanty or failed rainfall in the region over the past two years has already forced thousands of Somalis to flee the country and ruined the livelihoods of millions in parts of Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti. more...---------------------------------Fiery reds and oranges nearly covered the United States on meteorologist maps as a massive heat wave hit hard in much of the country on Saturday. Temperatures averaged up to 15 degrees above normal, with most peaks in the 90s but triple digit heat expected to strike from Montana to New Mexico, according to lead meteorologists for The Weather Channel and The National Weather Service. Paired with oppressive humidity, temperatures will feel even hotter, as measured by the heat indexes. The NWS issued excessive heat warnings and watches for the Midwest from Texas to Canada, and heat index values over 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43 C) are possible for portions of the central and eastern United States by the middle of next week. Locations affected are expected to see temperatures and heat indexes of up to 117 degrees (47 C), including cities like Minneapolis where that is extremely rare. "The stage is being set for a massive heat wave to develop," the National Weather service warned on Thursday.

Researchers at the Universities of Oxford and Leeds have discovered that the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the sloshing of the warmest waters on the planet from the West Pacific towards the East Pacific every 2-7 years, continued during Earth's last great warm period, the Pliocene.

Their results suggest that swings between the two climatic extremes, known as El Niño and La Niña, may even have occurred more frequently in the warmer past and may increase in frequency in the future. Extreme ENSO events cause droughts, forest fires and floods across much of the world as well as affecting fishery production.

Reporting in the journal Paleoceanography, the team of geochemists and climate modellers use the Pliocene as a past analogue and predictor of the workings of Earth's future climate.

The Pliocene (which lasted from 5 to 3 million years ago) had carbon dioxide levels similar to the present day, with global mean temperatures about 2-3ºC higher, so it is a useful test-ground for climate research.

Lead Scientist Nick Scroxton from Oxford University's Department of Earth Sciences said: 'We know from previous studies that the mean state of the Pacific during the warm Pliocene was similar to the climate patterns observed during a typical El Niño event that we see today.

'However, until recently it was believed that a warmer Pacific would reduce the climate swings that cause the dramatic weather extremes throughout the region leading to a permanent state of El Niño. What we didn't expect was that climatic variability would remain strong under these warmer conditions.'

The team combined experiments performed on the Met Office Hadley Centre climate model, HadCM3, with the analysis of the chemical composition of lots of individual shells of small organisms, known as foraminifera.

These were collected from a deep sea sediment core in the East Equatorial Pacific, and provided a record of temperature in the upper layer of the ocean through time. They discovered that the range of temperatures experienced by these organisms during the Pliocene, was higher than what would be expected from just the seasonal cycle.

The extra variation in temperature can be explained by the additional extreme temperature swings provided by the El Niño/La Niña system.

ALEC Exposed - And It's Connection To Texas Laws

This week the Center for Media and Democracy rolled out a new web site, ALEC Exposed, to make public information about the American Legislative Exchange Council. ALEC is a powerful coalition of corporations, right wing foundations, and state legislators who have been literally writing the laws at the state level to push their pro-business agenda.

The ALEC has operated in relative secrecy since 1973, avoiding scrutiny from the media and watchdog groups as it has sought to impose a coordinated corporate agenda on all fifty states. ALEC’s scheme is to game the lawmaking process with “model legislation” penned by corporation insiders and billionaire conservatives, which is then passed to Republican state legislators to submit as their own bills in state legislatures in all 50 states. ALEC's "model legislation seeks to protect polluters, privatize public education, break unions and give advantage to Republican candidates through restrictive voter photo ID requirements and other legislation crafted to restrict access to the voting booth.

ALEC counts among its alumni House Speaker John Boehner, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, Ohio Governor John Kasich, Texas Governor Rick Perry and other key players in the current push to restructure federal and state government with tax breaks for the rich, regulatory breaks for corporations, privatization strategies and draconian “Voter ID” laws that threaten to make it harder for millions of Americans to cast ballots.

According to this ALEC watch report, the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) is associated with the American Legislative Exchange Council.

The Texas Public Policy Foundation is an Austin-based conservative think tank that lobbied Republicans in the Texas legislature to make deep cuts to K-12 public education funding, college funding and Medicare funding in the 2011-13 state budget Gov. Perry signed into law last month.

TPPF also strongly advocated for the Texas voter photo ID legislation Gov. Perry signed in law in May as well as the Texas' Sanctuary Cities anti-Immigrant legislation and the privatization of public schools in Texas introduced during the 2011 Texas legislative session.

• see TPM: The Crackdown on Voting and BradBlog: Ohio's Republican SoS: GOP Photo ID Bill Does Not Protect Against Fraud, Excludes Legal Voters.

Trickle Down Tax Cuts To End Elected Government And Put The Rich In Control

David Stockman, Pres. Reagan's budget director, "In 1985, the top five percent wealthiest households had a net worth of $8 trillion, but since then the top 5% have gained more wealth than the whole human race had created prior to 1980."

If you remember anything at all about David Stockman, it’s probably his being “taken to the woodshed” by Pres. Ronald Reagan when he was Reagan's budget director. That was back in late 1981 when he gave a long interview to William Greider for the Atlantic magazine. In a piece titled “The Education of David Stockman,” the young former congressman from Michigan acknowledged that Reagan’s tax cut was “a Trojan horse” to cut the top tax rates for the rich.

“The supply-side formula was the only way to get a tax policy that was really 'trickle down’,” Stockman admitted to Greider. "None of us really understands what's going on with all these numbers.”

The result of Reagan's tax cuts, without accompanying cuts in government spending, were rapidly rising deficits. The deficit created by those tax cuts got so large so fast in the early 1980's that Reagan himself reversed course and supported budget legislation restoring some of the tax rates.

"Trickle-down economics" is a pejorative terms that refer to the theory that providing tax cuts to the wealthy and tax benefits to conglomerate corporations will provide incentive to corporations and the wealth to great jobs for the rest of the society and thus indirectly benefit the broad population.

Lesley Stahl comments on her interview with David Stockman.

The "trickle-down" term is attributed to humorist Will Rogers, who said during the Great Depression of the 1930's that "money was all appropriated to the top in hopes that it would trickle down to the needy."

Stockman is back with essentially the same message as he delivered in that 1981 Atlantic magazine interview.

On a CBS 60 Minutes interview of David Stockman by Leslie Stahl in October 2010 Stockman said that Americans need to pay more taxes:

Medicare In As Much Trouble As GOP Says?

Posted at Jobsanger by Ted McLaughlin: I think all of us can agree that Medicare is in need of some help.

The program works as well as any government program in that it gives all of America's elderly citizens health care coverage. This is what the program was designed to do, and it does it very well.

... The Republicans want us to think the program is in such bad trouble that it cannot be fixed, and if we don't make substantial changes it will soon be bankrupt and won't be able to cover any elderly citizens. And by substantial changes they mean the program must be abolished for everyone now under 55 years of age.

... Let me put this as gently as I can -- what an outrageous load of horse manure! Does Medicare need more funding? Yes. Is it about to implode? No, not at all -- at least not unless the Congress fails to do its duty and adequately fund it. The truth is that the Republicans have never liked Medicare. They believe health care is not a right, but a commodity which should only go to the people who have the money to pay for it. And they, with the cooperation of too many Democrats, have been underfunding the program for many years now.

... According to the Center for Economic Policy and Research, the Medicare system could be fixed for at least the next 75 years with a cash infusion amounting to less than 0.4% of GDP. And how much is that? About one quarter of the money we have spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan!

... Isn't it amazing that the Republicans can't find the money to fix Medicare to protect ALL of America's elderly citizens, but they have no trouble coming up with the money [to not only continue Pres Bush's massive tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, but give them even more tax cuts?

Read the full post at Jobsanger Blog...

Krugman: Getting to Crazy

NYT Op-Ed Column, "Getting to Crazy," By Paul Krugman:

... President Obama has made it clear that he’s willing to sign on to a deficit-reduction deal that consists overwhelmingly of spending cuts, and includes draconian cuts in key social programs, up to and including a rise in the age of Medicare eligibility. These are extraordinary concessions. As The Times’s Nate Silver points out, the president has offered deals that are far to the right of what the average American voter prefers — in fact, if anything, they’re a bit to the right of what the average Republican voter prefers!

... If a Republican president had managed to extract the kind of concessions on Medicare and Social Security that Mr. Obama is offering, it would have been considered a conservative triumph. But when those concessions come attached to minor increases in revenue, and more important, when they come from a Democratic president, the proposals become unacceptable plans to tax the life out of the U.S. economy.

... Yet, Republicans are saying no. Indeed, they’re threatening to force a U.S. default, and create an economic crisis, unless they get a completely one-sided deal - [Chairman of the House Budget Committee Paul Ryan's proposed a supposed deficit-reduction plan that includes huge tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy and converting Medicare from guaranteed coverage to a private health insurance voucher coupon program.]

... Beyond that, voodoo economics has taken over the G.O.P. Supply-side voodoo — which claims that tax cuts pay for themselves and/or that any rise in taxes would lead to economic collapse — has been a powerful force within the G.O.P. ever since Ronald Reagan embraced the concept of the Laffer curve. But the voodoo used to be contained. Reagan himself enacted significant tax increases, offsetting to a considerable extent his initial cuts.

Read the full column at the NYTimes...

Dems' Concessions On Debt Debate Are 'Very Troubling'

Huffington Post -- A resolution to raise the nation's debt ceiling may remain far off. But the long-term framing of the debate over spending and debt is becoming slightly clearer, and it's causing philosophical fissures among Democrats.

In an interview with The Huffington Post, former Ohio Governor Ted Strickland (D) aired his concern that the fiscal "belt-tightening" President Obama and many Democrats have pursued has effectively diminished the party's brand. Democrats, he argued, have "allowed the center of the political debate to be shifted so far to the right that we find ourselves debating on their territory and using Republican language ... It's very troubling".

Removed from office after a bruising re-election campaign, Strickland has largely avoided the political spotlight, choosing, instead, to help to build Democratic infrastructure in Ohio. But the debt ceiling debate has piqued his interest and drawn him back into the national conversation -- in large part, he said, because he's worried that his party is unnecessarily folding its superior hand.

Instead of conceding philosophical points to fiscal hawks, he said, the president should being using his bully pulpit to reframe the debate. Congressional Democrats, he added, should be forcing regular votes on "jobs bills" that would create an effective contrast between themselves and Republicans.

"You've got to create conflict, but it's got to be the right kind of conflict," he said. "The thing that bothers me is we allow ourselves to debate issues using their frame and we're doing it with this deficit issue. Everyone now, with the exception of maybe [House Minority Leader] Nancy Pelosi, begins their first statement with, 'Oh, we've got to deal with the deficit.' Yes! But not in 2011. We've got to deal with job losses in 2011."

Natural Shields Against Climate Change Weaker Than Anticipated

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore plans to hit the climate crisis hard with a day of organized global action on Sept. 14. Gore announced his “Climate Reality Project” in this video. The day of action aims to use 24 speakers to broadcast 24 straight hours of climate activism, encouraging others to get up and undertake climate mitigation efforts as well.

The soil and the ocean are being weakened as buffers against global warming, in a vicious circle with long-term implications for the climate system, say two new investigations.

If the seas and the land are less able to soak up or store greenhouse gases, more of these carbon emissions will enter the atmosphere, holding in even more heat from the sun.

A study published in Nature [and ScienceDaily] says a gradual increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) over the last half-century has accelerated the release of methane and nitrous oxide in the soil.

These gases are respectively 25 and 300 times more effective at trapping radiation than CO2, the principal greenhouse gas by volume.

"This feedback to our changing atmosphere means that nature is not as efficient in slowing global warming as we previously thought," said Kees Jan van Groenigen, a professor at Trinity College Dublin and the paper's lead author.

Texas’ Debt and Deficit Spending Growing Faster Than The Nation’s

Think Progress: [...Texas] is racking up debt at a faster rate than the national government and in greater amounts than most other states.

Perry regularly attacks President Obama for engaging in “too much spending” and running up too much debt, but as the Fort Worth Star-Telegram’s Mitchell Schnurman writes today, Texas’ refusal to raise taxes has led to its own debt ballooning faster than Washington’s:

From 2001 to 2010, state debt alone grew from $13.4 billion to $37.8 billion, according to the Texas Bond Review Board. That’s an increase of 281 percent. Over the same time, the national debt rose almost 234 percent. [...]

Still, the trend is undeniable. While Texas lawmakers have refused to raise taxes — and often criticize Washington for borrowing and spending — the state has been paying for much of its expansion with borrowed money.

While the state has had to borrow for infrastructure building to keep up with rapid population growth, as Schnurman points out, Texas didn’t have two wars, the budget-busting Bush tax cuts, recession-combating measurs, and other big-ticket national expenditures. And Texas’ “borrowing isn’t slowing.”

The state’s debt belies Perry’s boisterous rhetoric on his economic stewardship. While conservatives boast of Perry’s “Texas miracle,” California, which Perry often bashes as the antithesis of his approach, has seen faster GDP per capita growth than Texas under Perry. Meanwhile, Texas’ obstinate refusal to raise taxes helped create the largest budget shortfall in the state’s history, leading to devastating cuts to government services — one town had to lay off its entire police force — and Perry using budget gimmicks and federal stimulus dollars to balance his budget.

At his appearance before the Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans on June 18th , Texas Gov. Rick Perry crowed that the Republican Super Majority 2011 legislative session balanced the 2011-13 state budget while leaving billions in reserve. Perry told the Republican Leadership Conference:

"To preserve our job-friendly climate, the Texas Legislature didn’t raises taxes this last legislative session while balancing their budget and maintaining essential services. And I might add, that new budget leaves $6 billion in a rainy day fund."

In January, state Comptroller Susan Combs predicted the rainy day fund would have a balance of $9.7 billion by the end of August 2013. That figure was later whittled to $6.4 billion after legislators took $3.2 billion from the rainy day fund in April to cover a deficit in the current 2009-2011 budget that runs through August 31, 2011.

In January 2011 Texas Comptroller Susan Combs projected a $27 billion deficit for fiscal 2012-2013. State lawmakers then proposed an austere budget for the 2012-2013 fiscal years that cut $31 billion in spending from public schools, colleges, collage students, Medicaid and social services, public safety (police and prisons) and transportation. That austerity budget cut $7.8 billion from health and human services and $8 billion for K-12 public schools.

On June 28, 2011 Gov. Perry signed a $172 billion budget passed by the super Republican majority Texas House and Senate. The budget signed by Gov. Perry cuts $15 billion from the level of spending last authorized in the 2009-11 state budget. The largest individual cut was to public education, which lost over $4 billion over the biennium.

Smartphones Rapidly Replacing Computers For Internet Access

Pew Internet & American Life Project highlight the breakneck speed consumers are adopting smartphones as their preferred Internet access device — faster than just about any high-tech product in history. The Pew Internet Project research survey finds that one third of American adults – 35% – have adopted smartphones in the last four years, an adoption trend that shows no sign of slowing! The Project’s May survey found that 83% of US adults have a cell phone of some kind, and that 42% of them own a smartphone. That translates into 35% of all adults.

Several demographic groups have high levels of smartphone adoption, including the financially well-off and well-educated, non-whites, and those under the age of 45.

Some 87% of smartphone owners access the internet or email on their handheld, including two-thirds (68%) who do so on a typical day. When asked what device they normally use to access the internet, 25% of smartphone owners say that they mostly go online using their phone, rather than with a computer. While many of these individuals have other sources of online access at home, roughly one third of these “cell mostly” internet users lack a high-speed home broadband connection.

Why Social Security Cannot Go Bankrupt

It is a logical impossibility for Social Security to go bankrupt. We can voluntarily choose to suspend or eliminate the program, but it could never fail because it “ran out of money,”says an article in Forbes:

This belief is the result of a common error: conceptualizing Social Security from the micro (individual) rather than the macro (economy-wide) perspective. It’s not a pension fund into which you put your money when you are young and from which you draw when you are old. It’s an immediate transfer from workers today to retirees today. That’s what it has always been and that’s what it has to be–there is no other possible way for it to work.

There appears to be every indication that productivity increases should be sufficient for the Baby Boomers to retire AND allow the rest of us enjoy even higher standards of living (assuming the compression of wages ends). That’s good news. In fact, it’s the only news that’s important./

I’m not telling you whether you should be for or against Social Security, but the argument that it is going bankrupt is a non-starter. It is much ado about nothing.

Read the full article @ Forbes

President Barack Obama used the August 14, 2010 anniversary of Social Security to trumpet Democrats’ support for the popular program and accuse Republicans of trying to destroy it.

President Obama promises to protect Social Security [3:15]

Seventy-five years after President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Social Security into law, Obama said in his August 14, 2010 weekly radio and Internet address: “We have an obligation to keep that promise, to safeguard Social Security for our seniors, people with disabilities and all Americans — today, tomorrow and forever.” [Text of speech]

Sen. Bernie Sanders Cutting Medicare Is NOT the Answer

Some Republican leaders in Congress are “pushing to make privatizing Social Security a key part of their legislative agenda if they win a majority in Congress this fall,” Obama said.

He contended that such privatization was “an ill-conceived idea that would add trillions of dollars to our budget deficit while tying your benefits to the whims of Wall Street traders and the ups and downs of the stock market.”

Democrats adamantly oppose any cut in benefits to reduce costs and some won’t accept a gradual increase in the retirement age, something that was done in the last overhaul in 1983. Republicans say an increase in Social Security taxes is out of the question, even for the wealthy.

State Budget Cuts Force Texas Town To Lay Off Entire Police Force

Texas is well known for its harsh handling of criminals given Texas has been the most active in carrying out executions, among the states where the death penalty is permitted. But, in one small Texas town the Mayor has warned residents to "Bolt Your Doors" as they are left to defend their own homes against criminals after State budget cuts passed by the 2011 Legislature forced Alto, Texas to lay off its entire police force:

Alto, Texas is preparing for a crime wave, after the small East Texas town put its entire police force on furlough…

In an effort to save money, the city has laid off its police chief and four police officers for six months — longer if Alto’s finances don’t improve.

Alto residents have every reason to fear a rise in crime will follow the police force’s departure. The town’s per-capita crime rate is already above the state average. There were 66 crimes in Alto last year, compared to 51 the previous year.

“Everybody’s talking about ‘bolt your doors, buy a gun,’ ” said Monty Collins, Alto’s mayor, who opposed the City Council vote to furlough police officers.

Kelly Curry, the manager of an off-road-vehicle park, now carries two guns for self-defense. “The thought that we could be 35 or 40 minutes from getting the sheriff’s deputy here, depending on where they are in the county, is scary,” she says.

To close a historic $27 billion budget deficit, Gov. Rick Perry (R) and the Republican-controlled legislature have made draconian cuts to state services and have passed the buck to city governments across the state to make impossible decisions about which essential expenditures to cut. Alto, for instances, faces a $185,000 budget deficit.

The Wall Street Journal notes that the closure of small-town police forces “is part of a broader consolidation of services in communities across the U.S.” It’s a problem because like fire departments and other essential services, “keeping the peace is rarely a revenue-making operation.”

15-Year-Old Girl Faces Life in Prison for a Miscarriage

Alternet: Why Conservatives Are Criminalizing Pregnant Women - Rennie Gibbs is accused of murder, but the crime she is alleged to have committed does not sound like an ordinary killing. Yet she faces life in prison in Mississippi over the death of her unborn child.

Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4 1776

The Unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

Georgia Demonstrates Outcome of Texas' Anti-Immigrant Sanctuary Cities Bill

Update Wednesday June 29, 2011 @ 8:30am
Sanctuary cities legislation is dead for this special legislative session?

Gov. Rick Perry released a statement blaming Sen. Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock, for the death of the sanctuary cities bill, which the governor added to the special session call.

"Unfortunately, SB1 Conference Committee Chairman Robert Duncan ultimately refused to allow language related to the ban of sanctuary cities into the final version of Senate Bill 1," Perry wrote in his statement. "Because of this action, the special session will not provide our peace officers with the discretion they need to adequately keep Texans safe from those that would do them harm.”

This morning, Senate Republicans and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst also released a statement blaming around on the House for killing the sanctuary cities legislation.

"The Senate passed SB 9, the sanctuary cities bill, with unanimous Republican support two weeks ago, and nothing has happened," Dewhurst said in a statement. "If the House really wants to pass sanctuary cities, they should pass it today."

Original Post Saturday June 25, 2011 @ 2:34am

BOR: Perry's All Koch-ed Up

Burnt Orange Report Austin: On Sunday, Gov. Perry traveled to Colorado to speak at a shadowy conservative gathering hosted by the Koch brothers.

Perry spokesman Mark Miner described the Colorado summit as a "private gathering of business leaders". The guest list was kept secret and organizers wouldn't say where the four-day retreat was held beyond describing it as in the general vicinity of Vail.

-- Related Stories --

Sen. Sanders: Koch Bros. ‘Want To Destroy Soc Sec The Koch Brothers Exposed The Billionaires' Tea Party Covert Operations What Is The Real Agenda Of The Budget-Cutters? Starving the Government Beast The War About the War on Higher Education

"It's not entirely clear how Perry got to Colorado, but a plane owned by aircraft dealer Goldsmith Team LLC flew from Aspen to Georgetown on Sunday, flight records show," the Austin American-Statesman's Jason Embry reports. Goldsmith Team LLC made more than $25,000 worth of in-kind contributions to Perry's 2010 re-election campaign.

This is how Rick Perry operates. He owes huge favors to the corporate interests that fund his campaigns. It makes complete sense that these corporate overlords want to check in to remind Perry who he really works for. And Perry heeds their call like an obedient dog.

The Koch brothers are the conservative agenda-setters in American politics. They are the Tea Party's main sponsors - without them, there would be no bus fleets for rallies, coordinated media strategies or funds for advertisements. The ingenious Koch's routinely buy politicians through campaign donations and influence with the right-wing media, locking them into a radical anti-government agenda. Perry is undeniably part of the Koch brothers' plan to end regulations, kill social services and solidify America as a nation run by and for the wealthy.

This month, Huffington Post exposed the Koch brothers' "Saturday Evening Club" in Manhattan. In April, the Club met with Tea Party star Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN). In attendance were dozens of lobbyists representing the financial, health care and automotive industries. Members of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. press were there, as were several high-profile GOP donors. Pence's office billed the meeting as "a meeting of journalists, opinion makers and business leaders."

Which staffers did Rep. Pence bring along? The director of his political action committee, a GOP pollster and his chief counsel.

Like Rep. Pence, Gov. Perry is not really a politician. He is a cog in a radical corporate machine designed to gut America of all that makes it a land of opportunity. Tit for tat, Perry supports this radical agenda in exchange for campaign cash.

When asked, Americans do not support shadowy organizations influencing their government, and they definitely don't support the Koch agenda.

But is the American electorate now so numb to government corruption that a Koch candidate like Perry could pass their radar? We'll soon know.

Social Media Voters More Influenced by Facebook Friends Than Evening News

A research study released this month by digital agency SocialVibe found that 94% of voting-age social media users are more likely to watch an entire political message viewed online, and then 39% will share it with an average of 130 friends.

According to the study social media users are more likely to share persuasive political information with friends and colleagues in a matter of seconds from their computer or mobile device as opposed to making phone calls or canvassing. For that reason, social media users are more likely to be influenced by Facebook “friends” than the evening news.

The study also found that an investment of $25,000 in a campaign that engages social media users could spread the content online to people of voting age in all 50 states within 24 hours. That’s a lot of bang for the buck.

The SocialVibe study also indicated that political ad campaigns continue to shift more advertising budgets to online and mobile advertising. But it gets a little tricky because the campaigns have the challenge of presenting political messages in such a way that supporters want to share the information.

The key is to facilitate the users or political supporters to share messages or campaigns. Thus, the campaigners will need to become more creative in order to engage and develop loyalty to persuade others such as “friends” to be engaged as well.

The study indicates five key messages for the 2012 political season: Use Facebook and campaign Web sites to engage supporters, supporters carry social media message, go mobile, remember social email, and build loyalty through engaged advertising.

All in all, politicians will have a unique challenge of honestly connecting with people one on one as a personal experience. Approach them online in a conversation with a message that is convenient and beneficial for the social media user.

“Most people like to share personal views and beliefs. Allow people to engage with and personalize messages: This is what drives sharing,” concludes Jay Samit, CEO SocialVibe.

Pew Report: Looking For Voters? Find Them On FaceBook

Pew Internet and American Life Project: Nearly half of all U.S. adults use some kind of social-networking site, from Facebook to LinkedIn, and these people are more likely to vote and be politically active.

The Pew report found that 79 percent of U.S. adults use the Internet, and 59 percent of these Internet users also use social networking. This is nearly twice as many as in 2008, and they are getting older, the report found.

“Among other things, this means the average age of adult social networking site users has shifted from 33 in 2008 to 38 in 2010,” the report states. “Over half of all adult SNS users are now over the age of 35. Some 56 percent of SNS users now are female.”

And despite LinkedIn’s stunning IPO last month, Facebook rules when it comes to social networking, with 92 percent of people who use social networking on Facebook, 29 percent on MySpace, 18 percent on LinkedIn, and 13 percent on Twitter.

Social networking can be a powerful tool for political organizing, the report finds.

Obama's 2012 New Media Campaign

After President Barack Obama launched his 2012 earlier this year his campaign sent emails, tweets and Facebook messaging, including Facebook ads to ask nearly 13 million followers supporters from his 2008 campaign contact list to declare on Facebook "I'm In!" for Obama's 2012 re-election campaign.

Emails to supporters seek small-dollar donations in exchange for campaign coffee mugs or a chance to win dinner with the president. The campaign's website helps supporters find local events, plan meetings and raise money while its digital team develops the next big thing.

If Obama broke new ground in 2008 using email, text messages and the Web to reach voters, Obama version 2.0 campaign strategy plans to take the new media Web campaign to the next level – by taking advantage of the expansive roles that the Internet and social media are playing in voters' lives.

"The successful [2012] campaign is going to be one that integrates all the various elements of the digital channel – email, text, website, mobile apps, and social networks – together as one digital program and also mixing the digital program together with the offline reality of field organizations," said Joe Rospars, the Obama campaign's chief digital strategist.

"In the end," Rospars said, "all the digital stuff is in service of the offline organizing to ultimately persuading voters and turning them out."

• More People Rely On The Internet Than Newspapers For News
• Pew Report: Generations Online

Obama took advantage of a strong Internet campaign in 2008 to raise an estimated $500 million online while regularly communicating with supporters through text messages, an email list estimated at more than 13 million and content on his 2008 My Barack Obama campaign website:

• Political Campaign Opportunities in the Digital Age
• Obama's 2008 Presidential Win Changed Political Campaigning

When Obama was close to announcing his vice presidential selection of Joe Biden in August 2008, the campaign encouraged supporters to find out by text message, a move that prompted more than 2 million people to voluntarily give their cell phone number to the Obama campaign.

Three years later, social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter have exploded, smart phones and apps are more prevalent, tablet computers are on the rise, and most Americans are online. When Obama announced his presidential campaign in 2007, Facebook had fewer than 20 million users worldwide. That number has now surpassed 500 million.

"There's no online and offline organizing. There's organizing," said Jeremy Bird, Obama's national field director, during a session at Netroots Nation in Minneapolis.