This, in a nutshell, is what the 2012 national elections should be about:

The Associated Press today reports that record numbers of Americans -- now nearly one in two -- are either now officially poor or struggling forward on low-income earnings. That's according to the latest US Census data. Whither the American middle class? Or more accurately, wither the American middle class.

Causes: Unemployment that remains high, a serious lack of government safety nets for middle class wage earners, and years of stagnating wages that have affected millions of middle-class working families.

Sheldon  Danziger, a University of Michigan public policy professor who specializes in  poverty (he used to do the same work at the University of Wisconsin -- Madison), told the AP that prospects for the poor and near-poor are "dismal," adding: "If Congress and the states make further cuts, we can expect the number of  poor and low-income families to rise for the next several years."

The 99 percent movement already knows this and is speaking up about it. Where are our national opinion leaders? Where are our politicians? Where is the mainstream media? Time to make them pay attention, before the USA becomes a third world nation.