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From The PBS Newshour Hunger in America:

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight: hunger in America. Jeffrey Brown has our story.

JEFFREY BROWN: One in seven American households had a hard time putting enough food on the table last year, that from a new report released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture -- 14.6 percent of U.S. households, nearly 50 million Americans, found themselves in need during 2008, an increase of 13 million people from the year before. The new figure is the highest since data collection began in 1995.

The USDA called the problem food insecurity, instead of hunger. But, by any name, President Obama said, the findings were unsettling. And his secretary of agriculture, Tom Vilsack, said it's a -- quote -- "wakeup call for the country."

Inside those numbers, a more dire toll: One-third of those in need said they have been forced to skip meals, cut portions significantly, or go without food altogether.

Cynthia Sibley helps coordinate the Simple Supper, a community meal and food bank run from a Methodist church in Eagle, Colorado. She says the recession has affected many levels of her community.

CYNTHIA SIBLEY, Simple Supper: It's hitting people that -- it's surprising a lot of us. And all of us here are feeling it in one way or another. And we know people who have either lost their homes, lost their jobs. It's -- you know, it's shaking us to the core. And I know that there are a lot of places across the country that this is occurring, but to see it, you know, firsthand and experience it...

JEFFREY BROWN: Nationwide, the report said, 17 million children did not have enough to eat last year. And the Agriculture Department predicted the numbers for this year are likely to be worse still.

And now to some close-to-the-ground views from two regions. J.C. Dwyer is with the Texas Food Bank Network, a nonprofit statewide group. He joins us from San Antonio. Lynn Brantley is president and CEO of the Capital Area Food Bank in the Washington, D.C., metro area.

Mr. Dwyer, I wonder, first, did this report surprise you, based on what you're seeing there?

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November 13, 2009 PBS News Hour

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From The Newshour with Jim Lehrer--TV, Radio Talkers Shaping Political Discourse in U.S. It was nice to see Thom Hartmann and Media Matters' Eric Burns featured in this segment. They both did a great job here.

GLENN BECK, Host, "Glenn Beck": If it wasn't for FOX or talk radio, we would be done as a republic.

JEFFREY BROWN: In a multimedia world of talk and more talk, the latest big talker is Glenn Beck, known for his folksiness and emotion, which sometimes spills over to tears...

GLENN BECK: I just love my country.

JEFFREY BROWN: ... and, most of all, for his over-the-top style and words, which, for many, push the limits of acceptable public rhetoric.

GLENN BECK: ... is that there are Marxist revolutionaries who have dedicated themselves to principles that will destroy our nation as we know it.

I'm saying he has a problem. He has a -- this guy is, I believe, a racist.

JEFFREY BROWN: Since moving from CNN Headline News to FOX last year, Beck has successfully built up his cable TV audience. He now reaches almost three million viewers with his 5:00 p.m. show, unseating FOX's Sean Hannity for the number-two spot, right behind the network's Bill O'Reilly. On radio, Beck's audience of nine million is second only to Rush Limbaugh.

All of these talk show hosts far exceed the numbers of their liberal counterparts. And, as the numbers grow, so has the attention in other media, and Beck's seeming influence on the national agenda.

Beck is a persistent critic of the president and his policies. Among much else, he helped rally opponents to show up and speak up at this summer's town hall meetings on health care, and led the way on exposing problems with ACORN, the community organizing group that ran into numerous public controversies.

ROGER HEDGECOCK, Radio America: I like Glenn Beck personally. And I like that his TV show, in that he is speaking truth to power. That's his attitude. He really is trying to overturn the apple carts.

We're not in favor of illegal alien amnesty.

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David Brooks as usual, is wrong on just about almost everything that comes out of his mouth in this segment. Health care reform is popular. This mess that looks like it's going to be a sell out to the insurance industries is losing popularity. Obama's numbers are going down among his base and with independents as this thing plays itself out and it appears that not only was single-payer not on the table, but the public option wasn't either. It's not losing popularity because the President didn't look like he showed enough love to the Grassley's and Blue Dogs of the world.

And the democratic process has not made Chuck Grassley do anything. Chuck Grassley is out to destroy the chances of anything meaningful being done with reforming our current system, and listening to his constituents at town halls has not changed that one way or the other.

From The Newshour with Jim Lehrer Aug. 21, 2009.

JIM LEHRER: What would you add to that or subtract?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes, I'm not sure it was inevitable.

JIM LEHRER: You don't think it was inevitable?

DAVID BROOKS: No, I mean, he's lost the independents, a group I don't think he had to lose. If he had taken a stimulus package of $400 billion instead of $787 billion, I think he would have held the independents, held a lot of the Republicans.

If he had taken sort of a more moderate version of health care reform, I think he could have held on to -- there's a Wyden-Bennett plan that he, I think, would have held on to some of those independents.

I mean, the major reason he's falling down now -- the secondary reason is the economy is still not -- you know, unemployment. But the major reason is health care reform. His major domestic initiative is unpopular. The majority -- a slight majority of the American people disapprove of it, and there's no sign that that's let up.

And so he really is in a sort of not freefall, but a serious slide. You know, Charlie Cook, who knows more about congressional elections than just about anybody, has a memo out today saying there's as much of a chance the Democrats will lose more than 20 seats in the next House elections than fewer than 20 seats, and that's a pretty serious thing. That's a terrible climate in which to try to enact health care.

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Here's a little preview of the B.S. we can expect FreedomWorks' Dick Armey to be spouting on Meet the Press this weekend. He faced off against Health Care for America Now's Richard Kirsch on The PBS Newshour Thursday night. Armey uses people buying into his disinformation campaign as proof that there must be something wrong with the health care bills making their way through Congress. I agree there are problems, but for the opposite reason Dick Armey does, and somehow pursuit of the truth doesn't look like it's at the top of his organization's agenda. Protecting the insurance and health care industries' profits are.

JUDY WOODRUFF: As the fight over reforming health care spreads from here in Washington, D.C., across the rest of the nation, we hear now from advocates on both sides of the issue.

Former U.S. House Majority Leader Dick Armey is chair of FreedomWorks, a conservative group that has rallied protestors at health care town hall meetings.

And Richard Kirsch is the national campaign manager of Health Care for America Now, a liberal group which has urged its supporters to turn out at the meetings.

Thank you both for being here. We thank you for being part of this discussion.

And, Dick Armey, I'm going to come straight to you on the basics. You believe that there should be some form of reform of health care, health insurance, but a more limited form than what the president favors.

DICK ARMEY, FreedomWorks: Yes, I do. And we go back to things I've argued for, tort reform is -- estimates now as much as $100 billion of just sheer abject waste, which, by the way, is a hardship...

JUDY WOODRUFF: Tort reform, for those people who don't know the legal term, means...

DICK ARMEY: Well, lawyers suing doctors and that which causes doctors to order up extra procedures on behalf of patients that are not needed medically, but they need them in case they end up in a courtroom.

I watch this process. The thing that breaks your heart about that is, especially with older folks, to be subjected to extra procedures that are not medically necessary is a very difficult burden for them to carry when they're already oftentimes quite fragile and the procedures themselves can be quite a stressful experience for them.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So tort reform would be an important change for the system?

DICK ARMEY: That would be a good place to start.

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July 20, 2009 Jim Lehrer PBS News Hour

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LEHRER: Now that, of course, was Gov. Bobby Jindal, the governor of Louisiana, making the Republican response. David, how well do you think he did?

DAVID BROOKS: Uh, not so well...I oppose the stimulus package because I thought it was poorly drafted but to come up at this moment in history with a stale 'government is the problem, we can't trust the federal government,' it's just a disaster for the Republican Party. The country is in a panic now. They may not like the way the Democrats have passed the stimulus bill. But the idea that we're just going to... That government will have no role, the federal government has no role in this, that in a moment when only the federal government is big enough to actually do stuff- to just ignore all that and just say 'government is the problem, corruption, earmarks, wasteful spending,' it's just a form of nihilism. It's just not where country is it's not where the future of the country is. There's an intra-Republican debate: some people say the Republican Party lost its way because they got too moderate, some people say they got too weird or too conservative. He thinks they got too moderate. And so he's making that case. I think it's insane. I just think it's a disaster for the [Republican] Party. I just think it's unfortunate right now.

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From the Newshour with Jim Lehrer:

Economics correspondent Paul Solman reports on how the U.S. dollar's fluctuations impact global trade.

A video follow up to Susie's post Unsold Goods Piling Up As U.S. Spending Contracts.

November 13, 2008 PBS News Hour

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