It don't matter.

Time to look elsewhere. Time to escape fascism. Time to, oh, live and love, instead of making the wheels move.

All that's missing are the palm trees!  But then, palm trees do not drop those ACORNs that so occupy the minds (using the term loosely) at Fox News.

11.45am: Fox News' reporting on Occupy Wall Street has been criticised by some protesters (there's even a spoof Fox News reporter, complete with cardboard camera and mic, at Zuccotti Park), but undeterred, their reporters continue to plug away - apparently now working on a story which claims homeless people are being "recruited from shelters" to be at Occupy Wall Street. Fox also appears to be pursuing a line which says are being paid "$100 a day".

A Fox News reporter has emailed a list of questions to Occupy Wall Street protesters to try and get a response to the accusations. One protester has kindly shared the email with me - here it is:

1. What role is New York Communities for Change (NYCC) playing in Occupy Wall Street (OWS)?

2. What is your understanding of the participation of Jon Kest, a former ACORN director, in OWS?

3. What is your understanding of the participation in OWS of NYCC Deputy Director Gregory Basta, Jonathan Westin, Allan Harris, and Amelia Adams.

4. How many former ACORN activists from around the country are involved in OWS?

5. Please share your take on accusations that some of the protestors are actually receiving payments, in part funded by NYCC? "Sources" saying that in some cases people are getting $100 a day and that even local NYC homeless people have been recruited from shelters.

6. There are accusations that these hired activists are being used as door-to-door canvassers to collect money that is used to support the OWS protests.

7. How about accusations that cash donations for UFT's PCB campaign is being used on OWS?

The protester who shared the email with me said: "It's all baseless stuff we've never heard of before." Interesting....

12.04pm: Just like that, here's the Fox story. It alleges the former activist group ACORN is paying people to attend protests at Occupy Wall Street.

"Dozens of New York homeless people recruited from shelters are also being paid to support the protests, at the rate of $10 an hour, the sources said," the story says.

Here's a longer chunk:

The former New York office for ACORN, the disbanded community activist group, is playing a key role in the self-proclaimed "leaderless" Occupy Wall Street movement, organizing "guerrilla" protest events and hiring door-to-door canvassers to collect money under the banner of various causes while spending it on protest-related activities, sources tell FoxNews.com.

The former director of New York ACORN, Jon Kest, and his top aides are now busy working at protest events for New York Communities for Change (NYCC). That organization was created in late 2009 when some ACORN offices disbanded and reorganized under new names after undercover video exposes prompted Congress to cut off federal funds.

NYCC's connection to ACORN isn't a tenuous one: It works from the former ACORN offices in Brooklyn, uses old ACORN office stationery, employs much of the old ACORN staff and, according to several sources, engages in some of the old organization's controversial techniques to raise money, interest and awareness for the protests.

David Dayen:

The House bill eliminating the 3% withholding rule, making it easier for government contractors to cheat on their taxes, a small part of the American Jobs Act and supported by the President, passed today, on a near-unanimous vote of 405-16. The bill was paid for through a separate measure, which changes the calculation of modified adjusted gross income by including Social Security benefits in the calculation, for the purposes of determining eligibility for programs like Medicaid and SCHIP. This fix of a "glitch" that would allow some middle-income early retirees to get nearly free Medicaid coverage (we can't have that!), passed by a smaller amount, on a vote of 262 to 157. 27 Democrats joined 235 Republicans in supporting the bill.

Now, they go to the Senate, where the 3% withholding requirement passed last week with 57 votes (but was paired with a different pay-for in the same bill); I guess the question is, will the separate Medicaid eligibility calculation bill pass?  Hey, the president supports it, so my guess is it will, in fact, pass.

Thom Hartmann explained this week how just 147 corporations run the entire global economy.

Spurred on by a recent study titled "The capitalist network runs the world," The Big Picture host showed how there are harmful clusters of power that have become pervasive throughout the system that runs the global economy.

"These 147 companies around the world have basically organized themselves into this cancer, and they're basically running the world," he explained. "There sucking up 40 percent of all the resources in the world."

Obama freezes local reporters out of S.F. event

Three former top White House press aides called the move insular and politically short-sighted. And some press watchers said it is hypocritical for an administration that Obama promised would be "the most transparent in history."

This doesn't mean that people aren't suffering.  Employment numbers lag far behind this kind of thing.  In addition it doesn't mean that the growth is spectacular.  The growth is good for an economy with decent employment but not what is needed to really put a dent in the unemployment numbers.

But it does indicate that what I hoped happened was occurring: we probably hit the low point of the second downturn at the start of the year and the slow recovery is beginning in earnest.