Who says news mags are dead? At a town hall in North Carolina this afternoon, President Obama gave a shout-out to this week’s cover of Newsweek:

I don't know whether you've seen the cover of the latest Newsweek magazine on the rack at the grocery store, but the cover says "The Recession Is Over."  I bet you found that news a little startling.  I know I did. Now, it's true that we've stopped the freefall.  The market is up and the financial system is no longer on the verge of collapse. We're losing jobs at nearly half the rate we were when I took office six months ago.  So, we may be seeing the beginning of the end of the recession. But that's little comfort if you're one of the folks who have lost their job, and haven't found another….

OMG, Obama still reads Newsweek?! Yippee! Eat it, Time! Oh wait, he was sort of trashing us, wasn’t he? This cannot stand. Here’s the response from Daniel Gross, who wrote the article, and guess what: He thinks Obama didn’t read the piece, considering he went on to articulate the very same argument that the article actually makes. (You've gotta at least read those subheads, Mr. Prez.) Here’s Dan:

Lobbying expenditures have increased in the second quarter of this year, and health care lobbyists appear to be the ones raking in the dough, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. Around $262m has been spent on health care related lobbying so far this year. The graph below shows gives a breakdown of expenditure by sector. (Note: "Single Issue" refers to lobbying on topics like human rights, gun rights, Israel and abortion.)

Data Courtesy of the Center for Responsive Politics

Perhaps unsurprisingly, expenditure on health care and energy lobbying has grown at a faster rate than spending on other topics over the last ten years. The compound annual growth rate (not adjusted for inflation) for health care lobbying from 1998 to 2008 was just over 11% compared with 8% on finance, 9.6% on energy and 7.3% on communications, which represented a greater proportion of lobbying spending in the late 1990s. 

Data Courtesy of the Center for Responsive Politics