Economy

The Not-So-Subliminal Messaging Of Fox News

Posted by on December 21, 2011 at 1:57 pm. 2 Comments :

The Fox Nationalists are not even trying to mask their dishonest misrepresentations designed to keep their flock ignorant and ill-informed.

Fox Nation

Indeed, the approval rating of Congress is dismally low. However, the House of Representatives is controlled by GOP Speaker John Boehner and a majority Republican caucus. But when Fox publishes their story about the floundering body they accompany the piece with a picture of Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi. Boehner, et al, are nowhere to be seen.

This deception is even more unseemly when you take into account that it is the Republican Party that is held in far lower esteem that the Democrats. And particularly with regard to the current debate over the Payroll Tax, the American people are incensed that the GOP has refused to allow its extension to come up for a vote. The result will be that 160 million workers will get a tax increase beginning January 1.

Merry Christmas America,
Yours Truly, The Republican Party.

Obama’s Kansas Speech Owes A Debt To #Occupy Wall Street

Posted by on December 6, 2011 at 3:26 pm. 3 Comments :

President Obama traveled to the site of Teddy Roosevelt’s “New Nationalism” speech in order to deliver an address on the economy. The most striking thing about the President’s remarks was the extent to which they appear to have been influenced by the Occupy movement. Obama segued from one assertion of economic inequality to another as he insisted that “in America, we are greater together – when everyone engages in fair play, everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share.”

That is the call of the Occupiers in a nutshell. It is a campaign to restore fairness and justice and to take back control of the government from the wealthy special interests it has come to serve. If you missed the speech, I’ll save you twenty minutes by posting the one paragraph that summarizes the core of the message:

“Now, in the midst of this debate, there are some who seem to be suffering from a kind of collective amnesia. After all that’s happened, after the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, they want to return to the same practices that got us into this mess. In fact, they want to go back to the same policies that have stacked the deck against middle-class Americans for too many years. Their philosophy is simple: we are better off when everyone is left to fend for themselves and play by their own rules.”

Indeed, the Collective Amnesia Ward is overflowing with patients who not only are suffering from the malady, they want to infect every American with the disease. In fact, the only way that they can prevail next November is to spread the amnesiac virus beyond the community of conservative Republicans who are most susceptible to it. And if that one message is effectively communicated by the Obama reelection committee, the President will serve a second term.

On the other hand, the paragraph following the one above reiterated one of Obama’s most severe flaws. He still believes that there is a commonality of interest between his principles of inclusion and the Republican obsession with power. He believes that that by embracing a universal American togetherness the GOP will cease to demonize him and join the effort to rebuild the nation. It starts off well enough, but crashes and burns at the end.

“I’m here to reaffirm my deep conviction that we are greater together than we are on our own. I believe that this country succeeds when everyone gets a fair shot, when everyone does their fair share, and when everyone plays by the same rules. Those aren’t Democratic or Republican values; 1% values or 99% values. They’re American values, and we have to reclaim them.”

To argue that the 1% and the 99% share common American values is evidence of a dangerous blind spot. What Obama is missing here, and what he has missed for the past three years, is that there is a massive chasm between Democratic and Republican values. Whereas Democrats aspire (at least rhetorically) to empower the middle-class, the Republicans freely admit that their top objective is destroy Obama. That simple truth ought to be enough to convince the President that he is not going to recruit any allies in the fight for fairness and economic renewal from the ranks of the establishment GOP.

To illustrate the determination of the right-wing to throw every available obstacle into Obama’s path, Fox News cut away from the speech about half way through. Apparently they wanted to protect their fragile viewers from this subversive philosophy. By tonight Fox will be castigating the speech as a paean to socialism owing to its praise for working together. And the pressing news that demanded the interruption of the President was that Megyn Kelly had an interview with Michele Bachmann, who has about as much chance of becoming the Republican nominee as Miss Piggy.

On the whole the speech was another validation of the Occupy movement. This speech would not have been written a year ago. The public debate has been utterly transformed in the two and a half months since an unruly rabble encamped in a park in Lower Manhattan. Today the Republicans are “frightened to death” of the prospect of average Americans ascending to the top of the political food chain. And the President of the United States of America gave a speech honoring the notion that “We still have a stake in each other’s success.”

Chris Christie Rebuts His Hallucination Of Obama

Posted by on November 29, 2011 at 1:52 pm. 3 Comments :

A new video soundbite has been making the rounds of conservative media, particularly Fox News. The video presents the GOP’s favorite non-candidate, Chris Christie, in a pitched ideological battle with his own imagination.

In this video Christie says…

“I was angry this weekend, listening to the spin coming out of the administration, about the failure of the supercommittee, and that the president knew it was doomed for failure, so he didn’t get involved. Well then what the hell are we paying you for? It’s doomed for failure so I’m not getting involved? Well, what have you been doing, exactly?”

Where did Christie get the idea that President Obama knew the Super Committee was “doomed for failure?” It isn’t something the President said. In fact, when he signed the legislation Congress sent him on deficit reduction Obama said…

“Congress has now approved a compromise to reduce the deficit and avert a default that would have devastated our economy. It was a long and contentious debate. And I want to thank the American people for keeping up the pressure on their elected officials to put politics aside and work together for the good of the country. This compromise guarantees more than $2 trillion in deficit reduction. It’s an important first step to ensuring that as a nation we live within our means.”

That is not exactly a statement of doom. What’s more, before the committee even convened the White House produced a plan that cut more than $3 trillion from the deficit – twice the goal of the Super Committee. And the President made crystal clear his budgetary priorities:

“I’ve said it before; I will say it again: We can’t balance the budget on the backs of the very people who have borne the biggest brunt of this recession. We can’t make it tougher for young people to go to college, or ask seniors to pay more for health care, or ask scientists to give up on promising medical research because we couldn’t close a tax shelter for the most fortunate among us. Everyone is going to have to chip in. It’s only fair.”

So Christie, were he honest, could hardly fault the President for not being engaged. The arrogant inquiry as to “what the hell are we paying you for?” illustrates the blind hostility to anything Obama attempts. The President was doing precisely what he is paid to do. And that involves much more than just deficit reduction. It also includes national security, job and economic growth, and the management of a dangerous world that includes hotspots like Afghanistan, Libya, China, and Iran.

For Christie to criticize Obama over the deficit debate reveals just how out of touch Christie is. In addition to being unaware of the steps the President has already taken, Christie is also ignorant of the fact that Obama has to tread carefully when dealing with matters that involve Congress. The bitter partisanship of the GOP has already resulted in their opposing their own initiatives if the President endorsed them. So any guidance by Obama could cause Republicans to kick in a knee-jerk denial. It is, therefore, smart for the President to let Congress do their job without interference in the hopes of getting them to produce a workable compromise that he can sign. Unfortunately, Congress was not even able to do that.

It is pathetic that the right-wing GOP has only shady characters like Christie to look up to. The anger Christie is expressing here is misplaced due to both his ignorance of the subject matter and his naivete with regard to political statesmanship. That’s why he has to resort to inventing phantom positions, assigning them to Obama, and then rebutting them as if they were real. And the fact that Fox News promotes this ineptitude as something to be admired compounds the patheticness of it all.

Idiot Watch: Fox News Contends That Obama Wants Economic Slide

Posted by on November 27, 2011 at 1:51 pm. 1 Comments :

Fox News Sunday hosted Liz Cheney to discuss the economy and Barack Obama’s role in deliberately sabotaging it. The conversation descended into a surprisingly moronic set of conspiracy theories that would make Glenn Beck’s doughy chest heave with pride. And of course, it was a discourse that utterly abandoned known facts.

Wallace asked Cheney whether it was a problem for Republicans that they are portrayed as “fighting for the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy but willing to let the payroll tax cuts for the middle class disappear.” Cheney evaded that question entirely in order to serve up an inane conjecture that defies coherent logic:

Cheney: The President basically seems to have made the calculation that he’s gonna let the next thirteen months of the American economy slide for the sake of his own political benefits.

The reason Cheney evaded the question is because she knows that overwhelming majorities of the American people support letting Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy expire, and they also support the extension of the payroll tax cut. So she was forced to resort to inventing a distraction to defend the GOP’s indefensible agenda.

However, with her back up against the wall, Cheney latched onto an absurd assertion that President Obama wants the economy to suffer in order to enhance his reelection prospects. She apparently subscribes to the theory that poor economies are the best way to boost political campaigns. That’s a theory that only makes sense to a party that takes candidates like Donald Trump, Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Rick Perry, and Newt Gingrich seriously. It exposes a level of ignorance that is mind boggling.

In addition to the delusional nature of Cheney’s political analysis, she is also factually miles from reality. The pretext for her comment was her assertion that Obama has done nothing to address problems associated with unemployment and the deficit. She alleged that Obama had not engaged the Super Committee to assist in shaping a compromise. However, there was a White House proposal before the Super Committee had even convened its first meeting. That proposal offered a four trillion dollar reduction in debt achieved through both new revenues and entitlement cuts.

As for employment, Obama has already implemented initiatives to spur hiring of new employees in the form of credits for hiring the long-term unemployed and veterans. He has proposed restoring the nation’s infrastructure which would not only improve the environment for commerce, but would employ thousands. Republicans opposed those initiatives, as well as every other plan to help American families recover from the GOP-made catastrophe.

All sane observers know that delaying economic recovery would be the worst thing that could happen for Obama’s reelection campaign. In fact, the only beneficiary of a bad economy is the Republican Party and they have been openly hostile to any method of healing the country’s economic woes. Representative of their point of view is this image of an anti-recovery conservative who would rather hurt his neighbors and his country than to see Obama get credit for improving the economy. A real patriot would be hiring now in order to get the nation back on solid footing. But that is not how Republicans think.

Almost from inauguration day, the GOP has sought to kneecap the administration by opposing its policies and personnel. They have engaged in a record number of filibusters and created a degree of partisanship that is unprecedented. They have even opposed their own proposals after they were endorsed by Obama. It is an intentional tactic aimed at producing a national crisis, both economically and politically, to alienate voters and drive a wedge between different factions of the American people. It is a cynical and destructive crusade of division that has been exacerbated by a media that feasts on controversy and discord. Ted Koppel put it well in a recent article in Broadcasting & Cable:

Ted Koppel

“One day, most Americans will point at us in the news media and say, ‘Why didn’t you tell us? Why did you encourage all that partisan bile and venom? Why did you feed us all that trivial crap, when so many terrible things were converging?’ And no one will be happy with the answer. Least of all those of us who offer it. ‘What we gave you,’ we will say, ‘is what you wanted.'”

Sad, but true. And while Koppel gets some credit for saying it now, you have to wonder where he was when Bill Clinton was being impeached over a sex scandal; when Fox News launched as “fair and balanced”; when George W. Bush invaded Iraq and portrayed his opponents as traitors; when candidate Obama was accused of “pallin’ around with terrorists”; and when the Koch brothers financed the deliberately divisive Tea Party.

The media’s exploitation of melodrama and the Republican’s embrace of willful ignorance have united to create one of the most unstable eras of American history. It’s going to take a concerted effort to undo the damage, but it is not too late if conscientious citizens demand more of both the media and Washington.

Sarah Palin’s Top 10 Reasons To Support Occupy Wall Street

Posted by on November 21, 2011 at 6:10 pm. NO Comments :

The Occupy Wall Street movement is a bona fide phenomenon that, in two short months, has grown to levels no one could have predicted. And despite the inability of the media to discern the goals of the OWS protesters, their agenda could not be more apparent. The movement’s core convictions revolve around the abuse and corruption of politics by the wealthy and corporations, and the economic inequities that have virtually vaporized America’s middle class.

These issues have unprecedented support from a broad swath of the American people. More than 70% support raising taxes on the rich. More than 70% oppose cutting Social Security and Medicare. And both of those include majorities of Republicans and Independents. Even a majority of our nation’s millionaires support these positions. Support for these principles is so universal that the only rebuttal opponents can muster are juvenile comments about socialism or hygiene.

For these reasons, perhaps it should not be surprising that Sarah Palin has jumped on the bandwagon. Her star has been fading rapidly since she stopped pretending to be a candidate for president. And while the press used to chase after her tour bus like whimpering puppies, the only attention she gets today is from her most devoted disciples and her boss, Rupert Murdoch, and the entities he controls such as Fox News and the Wall Street Journal.

It is in the pages of the latter that Palin has published a critique of the political-financial complex that is driving the nation to ruin. Her title for the op-ed is “How Congress Occupied Wall Street.” Many of her laments mirror the philosophy of the Occupy movement. While there is some obvious hypocrisy embedded in some of her remarks, it is still notable that these perspectives are being expressed by someone like Palin and published by an enterprise like the Wall Street Journal. Following are ten points that were extracted from Palin’s article that inadvertently endorse the principles of Occupy Wall Street.

1) How do politicians who arrive in Washington, D.C. as men and women of modest means leave as millionaires?
Good question. Do you suppose it has something to do with the unholy relationships between members of Congress and their wealthy benefactors? If anyone can answer this question it’s Palin, who has personal knowledge of how to earn millions by exploiting political opportunity.

2) The corruption [is] an entire system of public servants feathering their own nests.
Indeed. Although it may be a stretch to refer to a political Mafia who shakedown constituents and accept bribes from special interests as public “servants.” And once again, Palin’s personal experience with nest feathering is invaluable.

3) The moment you threaten to strip politicians of their legal graft, they’ll moan that they can’t govern effectively without it.
What politicians refer to as contributions and earmarks are what citizens regard as graft. And while the politicians make a lot of noise about cleaning up Washington, they have no genuine interest in doing so.

4) [T]heir idea of reform is to limit the right of “We the people” to exercise our freedom of speech in the political process.
It is unclear what Palin is referring to here because she has not exactly been forced into silence, much to America’s dismay. But 26 journalists covering OWS have been arrested so far. What’s more, the GOP is working at the state level to suppress voting for millions of citizens, primarily seniors, students, and minorities.

5) [T]he only solution to entrenched corruption is sudden and relentless reform.
Could Palin have come up with a phrase that better describes OWS? When protesters occupied Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan it was a spontaneous response to an untenable situation. And the fact that they planted themselves in the park, and other sites across the country, demonstrates just how relentless this movement intends to be.

6) We need reform that provides real transparency.
Welcome to the club, Sarah. Progressives have been arguing for more openness by government and public agencies for years. And a major component of the OWS agenda is the reversal of the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court that permits corporations and others to bankroll political initiatives without revealing their identity.

7) We need equality under the law.
Absolutely! Equality and fairness and a sense of shared sacrifice. It is time for the wealthy, who have benefited more from their position of privilege than anyone else, to be treated equally under the law. No more special treatment. Palin should give this more than lip service.

8) No more sweetheart land deals with campaign contributors.
This is just another method of funneling bribes into the pockets of politicians and it must stop. Including the land deals where politicians advocate on behalf of contributors to get oil leases in protected wild spaces in Alaska.

9) [N]o transitioning into a lobbying career after leaving office. No more revolving door, ever.
Here is another plank of the progressive platform that has been beaten down by entrenched politicos every time it was proposed.

10) This call for real reform must transcend political parties. The grass-roots movements of the right and the left should embrace this.
Amen!

Now, is Sarah Palin actually getting behind Occupy Wall Street? Of course not. She undoubtedly considers them unclean, unfocused, and un-American. But the positions she appears to advocate here could be interpreted as aligned with the goals of OWS, even if it is entirely accidental on her part. Perhaps she deliberately plagiarized the platform in a desperate attempt to steal some of its popularity for herself. There is a delicious irony in that Palin has published this piece in Murdoch’s paper. You could say that these ideas have Occupied the Wall Street Journal, albeit from a back entrance.

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Sarah Palin OWS

The Delusional Tea Party Plan To Cut $9 Trillion From The Budget

Posted by on November 17, 2011 at 12:43 pm. 4 Comments :

While the congressional Super Committee struggles to agree on budget reforms that would result in paltry savings of $1-2 trillion dollars, the financial geniuses at the Tea Party front group FreedomWorks have managed to shape a plan that will slash the deficit by more than $9 trillion without raising taxes on the long-suffering One-Percenters who control the vast majority of the wealth in America. How did they do it?

    The Tea Party Debt Commission

  • Repeals ObamaCare in toto.
    This would actually increase the deficit because, as the independent analysts at the CBO have concluded, the Affordable Care Act saves $143 billion over the 2010-2019 period.
  • Eliminates four Cabinet agencies — Energy, Education, Commerce, and HUD — and reduces or privatizes many others, including EPA, TSA, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac.
    This furthers the Tea Party goal of dismantling any government program even if it is critical to national security, economic growth, and public safety.
  • Ends farm subsidies, student loans, and foreign aid to countries that don’t support us — luxuries we can no longer afford.
    In other words, keep America stupid and drive all of our international allies into the arms of unfriendly nations.
  • Saves Social Security and greatly improves future benefits by shifting ownership and control from government to individuals, through new SMART Accounts.
    Privatize Social Security and abandon seniors to the uncertainties of the stock market.
  • Gives Medicare seniors the right to opt into the Congressional health care plan.
    Kill Medicare by depleting the pool of members and siphoning off those with means leaving only low-income and high-risk participants, which would substantially increase costs.
  • Make the so-called Bush tax cuts, and other expiring tax relief provisions, permanent.
    Make permanent the tax cuts for the rich, which is the single biggest factor that has produced our current deficits.

The Tea Party proposal is wildly out of touch with economic reality, as well as public opinion. When exploring the details of the plan you will find such absurd suggestions as privatizing the Transportation Safety Administration and Air Traffic Controllers. That makes perfect sense to anyone who is pleased with the way that private airlines keep passengers trapped aboard planes that have been delayed on the tarmac for eight hours. Let’s empower those folks, who are motivated only by profit, to manage the safety of our airports and air travel.

The FreedomWorks Tea Party Debt Commission asks us to…

“Imagine a plan that cuts, caps, and balances federal spending without raising taxes; that gives future generations control over their own retirement security; and that lifts the massive debt burden from our children’s shoulders so they can know the American dream of ever-higher freedom and prosperity.”

I think I can imagine exactly what the Tea party has in mind:

Americans Ditching Big Banks By The Tens Of Thousands

Posted by on November 9, 2011 at 9:28 pm. 10 Comments :

The Occupy Wall Street movement has had a profound effect on changing the topic of debate in this country. A couple of months ago the only subject the media would entertain was the national debt and federal spending. Today the conversation has veered to economic inequities and the abuse of corporate power.

An ancillary to the Occupy agenda that arose a few weeks ago is the call for Americans to Move Your Money from big, impersonal banks, to local community banks and credit unions. That initiative climaxed last Saturday as the day designated “Bank Transfer Day.”

By any measure it was a resounding success. The Credit Union National Association reports that $80 million was moved into their member institutions on Saturday alone. For comparison, the CUNA notes that on an average day in 2010, they opened 1,643 new accounts. On November 5th, they opened 40,000 new accounts. Could anyone have predicted this level of success?

Move Your Money

One person whose predictions were typically some distance from reality was Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly. Last Friday he engaged Geraldo Rivera in a debate that ended with a brief discussion of the Bank Transfer Day.

Rivera: “Tomorrow there’s a Bank Transfer Day. This is a concrete thing. They are saying ‘Take your money out of the Bank of America. Take your money out of J. P. Morgan Chase. Take your money out of these big banks and put them in small credit unions.’ What if that comes out to tens of millions of dollars in bank transfers?”

O’Reilly: Let me just tell you something. Nobody’s gonna do that. Number one, those people don’t have any money and nobody’s gonna listen to them because they lost credibility.

Ya think O’Reilly will acknowledge his error now that he has been proven to be a lousy prognosticator? Do you think he will address the fact that 650,000 new accounts were opened in the month prior to Bank Transfer Day? That’s more than the total number of new accounts opened in all of last year. Do you think the big banks will stop pretending they don’t care about customers fleeing because they aren’t profitable customers? Yeah, me neither.

CLASS WAR VICTORY! The Wealthy Have Surrendered, So Who’s Still Fighting?

Posted by on October 31, 2011 at 1:41 pm. 3 Comments :

“Conservatives say if you don’t give the rich more money, they will lose their incentive to invest. As for the poor, they tell us they’ve lost all incentive because we’ve given them too much money.” ~ George Carlin

The national debate triggered by the Occupy Wall Street protests has given the wealth gap a renewed focus in the public arena. And with good reason. That gap is wider today than it was just prior to the Great Depression; wider, in fact, than it has ever been. The brutality of that economic disparity has thrust our nation into a bitter and persistent recession. But it has also inspired millions of Americans to step forward and demand reforms that not only restore fairness, but readjust the balance of political power.

Conservatives regard this new activism as a declaration of class war. But it’s important to note that they only call it war when we fight back. The war was already in progress and, as Warren Buffett said, “We (the rich) are winning.” Now a new survey reveals that Buffett is not the only one-percenter that is fighting on our side. The Wall Street Journal (ironically) is reporting that…

“A new survey from Spectrem Group found that 68% of millionaires (those with investments of $1 million or more) support raising taxes on those with $1 million or more in income. Fully 61% of those with net worths of $5 million or more support the tax on million-plus earners.”

We can also count Bill Gates amongst the one-percenters who advocate more progressive taxes.


[Note: The same segment from ABC’s This Week was posted on Fox Nation with a headline that perverts reality beyond all recognition: “Bill Gates Knocks Down Obama’s Millionaire’s Tax.” Gates did no such thing. He continues his remarks saying that taxing millionaires by itself will not solve the debt problem, but no one is suggesting that it will. And his support for taxing the rich more is clear and unambiguous.]

When two-thirds of the people that will be affected by a tax increase support the increase, it begs the question, who are the opponents? For the answer you need look no farther than the Office of the Speaker of the House of Representatives:

John Boehner: “[T]here’s nothing that’s disappointed me more over the last 8 weeks than to watch the President of the United States basically give up on the economy, give up on the American people.” […] “People are frustrated, and that’s why the House has been focused all year on trying to create a better environment for job creation in our country.”

Boehner is wrong about Obama. The President has not given up on the economy or the American people. He has given up on Boehner. And Boehner’s assertion that the House has been focused on creating jobs is laughable. He and his Republican troops have done nothing but obstruct progress on every legislative attempt to stimulate job growth. In fact, they have been working hard to recast the issue as one that is centered on those they call the “job creators.”

House Republicans have a web site at jobs.gop.gov. The funny thing about the site is that it has no content whatsoever that addresses the plight of workers or the unemployed. The site isn’t really about jobs at all, as the heading makes abundantly clear: The House Republican Plan for America’s Job Creators. That’s an admission that the Republican agenda for jobs is really just an agenda for business owners and corporations. Click through to their plan and you will see a short list of proposals that hew narrowly to tax cuts for business, deregulation, and deficit reduction. It’s the same tired parade of failed policies that Republicans put forth as their solution to everything. None of those policies will produce jobs and, more importantly, they aren’t even what small businesses, the biggest driver of jobs, say that they want.

A new Gallup poll asked small business owners “What would be a primary motivation or reason for hiring any new employees?” The top three responses, representing 63% of respondents, were all related to demand.

“Small-business owners point to increased revenues (27%), an improving economy (20%), and growth or expansion of their business (17%) as their top motivations for hiring new employees in 2012.”

This survey affirms the analysis of most economists who agree that companies do not expand hiring when their taxes are cut or regulations are relaxed. They hire when they need to satisfy increased demand or exploit an economic opportunity. The Wall Street Journal surveyed a group of economists and concluded that…

“The main reason U.S. companies are reluctant to step up hiring is scant demand, rather than uncertainty over government policies, according to a majority of economists in a new Wall Street Journal survey.”

Once again, that’s the conservative Wall Street Journal reporting. It’s fair to presume that the economists the Journal surveyed were not from some sleeper cell of de-thawed Bolsheviks. In addition to this widespread agreement by experts that the GOP fixation on tax relief for the Upscalers is fiscal folly, the popular sentiment on Main Streets across the nation overwhelmingly favors making those who have benefited the most contribute more to restoring our country’s economic health. After all, the rich are the only ones who have not been called upon to share the sacrifice.

Shared Sacrifice

When the big picture is unfurled there are conclusions to draw that are too obvious to ignore. The American people support raising revenue via taxes. Economists agree that demand, not tax relief, drives job creation. And a majority of millionaires believe that their own tax rates are too low. Yet Republicans in Congress continue to stonewall. The intransigence of the GOP serves no constituency and has no discernible benefit politically. The only plausible return for their bullheadedness is in the form of financial support from a deep-pocketed minority of one-percenters who simply cannot abide one more cent in taxes.

That’s the naked truth that Boehner & Co. are having such a hard time defending. That’s why the Occupy movement has captured such a broad swath of public support. And that’s why it is all the more peculiar that the media still fails to present these issues honestly, and that many in the Democratic Party, including the President, have not unambiguously acknowledged the voice of the people and joined the fight for economic justice. If the wealthy have conceded that the people’s position is the one that ought to prevail, then where are the people’s representatives?

GOP Talking Points Pass For Reporting On Fox News

Posted by on October 13, 2011 at 8:34 pm. 4 Comments :

Fox NewsThe next time you hear some FoxPod complain about Fox News being called the PR division of the Republican Party, show them this example of Fox using GOP talking points and passing them off as news developed by their “brain room.”

Today on Megyn Kelly’s program she moderated a discussion that was based on a series of “Fox Facts” that appear to have been cribbed directly from a Republican National Committee press release. The similarities are unmistakable. [h/t Media Matters]

RNC says: “$4.2 Trillion: Added To The National Debt Since Obama Took Office.”
Fox says: “DEBT: Total Public Debt Outstanding has increased by $4.2 trillion.”

RNC says: “40.5: Number Of Weeks That It Takes To Find A Job.”
Fox says: “AVERAGE WEEKS UNEMPLOYED: Unemployed out of work for an average of 40.5 weeks – that’s more than double since Jan 2009.”

RNC says: “2.2 Million: Jobs Lost Since Obama Took Office.”
Fox says: “JOBS: 2.22 million jobs lost.”

RNC says: “15.1%: Americans Living In Poverty.”
Fox says: “POVERTY: Nearly 3 million more Americans in poverty–poverty rate has gone from 13.2% to 15.1%.”

RNC says: “$1.17 Trillion: American Debt Held By China.”
Fox says: “CHINA: Owns $1.17 trillion of our debt (as of July) – a 58% increase from January 2009.”

RNC says: “45,696: Pages Of New Rules Added To The Federal Register During Obama’s First Two Years In Office.”
Fox says: “REGULATIONS – FEDERAL REGISTER: 45,696 pages of new regulatory rules were added to the Federal Register.”

RNC says: “818,000: Manufacturing Jobs Lost Since Obama Took Office.”
Fox says: “MANUFACTURING: 818,000 manufacturing jobs lost — a -6.5% drop since.”

This is not the first time that Fox News tried to pass off Republican dogma as their own original reporting. Fox anchor Jon Scott was caught reading an RNC memo that he reproduced as a graphic complete with the same typos as on the original RNC document.

In another example of Fox News carrying water for the Republican Party, their White House correspondent, Ed Henry, asked President Obama a question today at a press conference. The question was ostensibly about the President’s response to the arrests of Iran-affiliated suspects in a plot to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador. But Henry embellished his question in a peculiar way. Obama handled it nicely:

Henry: What specific steps will you take to hold Iran accountable, especially when Mitt Romney charged last week, “If you do not want America to be the strongest nation on Earth, I am not your President — you have that President today?”

OBAMA: Well, I didn’t know that you were the spokesperson for Mitt Romney.

Henry’s shout to Romney was entirely out of place. Romney was not commenting on the Iranian plot that was the subject of Henry’s question. In fact, Romney made the comment before the arrests. Henry just included it as a gratuitous slap at the President that was unrelated to the topic at hand. That’s what made the President’s retort so appropriate.

However, when Henry appeared on Megyn Kelly’s program and the press conference was brought up, the interview was limited to the crack about Romney and completely ignored Obama’s substantive answer to Henry’s question about Iran. That’s pretty clear evidence that Henry wasn’t the least bit interested in his own question. The whole thing was a setup to inject Romney’s criticism of Obama into the news cycle.

Like I said above, Fox News is the PR division of the Republican Party, and they don’t even seem to be hiding it anymore.

Fox Nation vs. Reality: On Abolishing The Debt Ceiling

Posted by on September 17, 2011 at 12:53 pm. 14 Comments :

Anyone with a functioning brain stem already knows that Fox News will distort issues to advance their rightist agenda. But the worst part of their activist pseudo-journalism is when they deliberately present material that is so obviously false that it is an insult to their audience. Lucky for them their audience actually is too stupid to know they are being insulted. Take for instance this item posted today with the headline “Democrat Congressmen Call for Unlimited Federal Debt.”

Fox Nation

The article reports on legislation in the House to eliminate the debt ceiling. For the Fox Nationalists to portray the bill as a call for unlimited debt is an outright lie that any economist, even the conservative ones, would dismiss as blatantly false.

The debt ceiling has nothing whatsoever to do with the amount of debt carried by the nation. Raising the debt ceiling does not increase the federal debt by one penny. The national debt is produced by congressional spending bills. When congress spends more of the country’s money than it receives in revenue it creates debt. After that debt is incurred the federal treasury is obligated to pay the bills for the goods and services it already consumed. When those obligations exceed the amount of the debt ceiling, the ceiling must be raised in order to issue payment. Raising the debt ceiling does nothing but allow the government to honor its obligations. If the ceiling is not raised, the debt still exists, as well as the state of default as a result of welching on our promises to pay.

Eliminating the debt ceiling would insure that we do not repeat the calamitous scenario of this past summer where Republicans held the nation hostage by threatening to destroy the country’s financial reputation in order to achieve their political goals. Their actions resulted in the downgrade of America’s credit rating for the first time in history.

Unfortunately, asking Fox News and their disciples to grasp the distinction between congressional spending and payment authority for bills already incurred is a tall order. Republicans are notably averse to reality when it doesn’t fit their preconceptions or the personal interests of their benefactors. This state of denial was well demonstrated by Bill Maher and Keith Olbermann last night as they attempted to educate a typical Republican.