Foodstamp recipients and Small Business are factual confirmations of this "recoveryless recovery"

Since Bernanke has been so successful, how come Foodstamp Recipients Jump by 400K In November, Hit New Record Of 43.6 Million? (H.T. ZeroHedge)

And what about small businesses? The NFIB reports:

It appears that the small business sector remains in a “rut”, unable to find reasons (drained by a 2 plus year recession period) to ramp up hiring and capital spending. The top problem remains weak sales, spread over too many firms. With weak sales prospects, hiring or spending on capital projects have little likelihood of paying off and therefore will not happen.

Congress passed or tried to pass a ton of legislation that had little to do with helping the economy. It is no wonder that consumers and owners are in a canyon of pessimism, the recession took a huge economic toll and the leadership inspired fear, not confidence. With the small business sector on the sidelines, it is hard to get national growth above the 2 to 3 percent range and the economy will not enjoy the type of rebound experienced after 1982 when GDP grew eight percent for over a year.
[...] We can certainly “hope for change” here, but history warns against a lot of optimism.

The Russell 2000, the small caps index is now back within a few percentage points of its historical levels. How disconnected is this from economic reality?