By now no one should be surprised that Fox News, and the congregation of Tea Party conservatives they represent, would oppose legislation intended to benefit America’s working class. Fox has consistently fought against reforms that make it possible for people to take care of themselves and their families and to advance economically. Any policy that is viewed by their corporate benefactors as negative to their profit margins, or that might adversely impact their multimillion dollar compensation, is attacked by Fox News, and the rest of the rightist press, as anti-business or even socialist.

That is precisely the case with the current debate over whether to increase the minimum wage, which has not been done in seven long years. Raising the minimum wage is generally seen as politically popular, so in order to derail it, opponents have to pitch tortured arguments that have very little backing by knowledgeable, non-partisan economists. But the tactic being used by Fox today is particularly devoid of reason and is wholly unethical, even by the standards of Fox News.

In an effort to manufacture a false claim of hypocrisy, Fox News is presenting an absurd comparison. Their story asserts that “Most sponsors of minimum wage hike bill don’t pay interns.” So F**king What? Internships are temporary positions made available to students so that they can get some real-world experience in their field of study and credit for school. They are not intended to be employment for personal gain. They serve the same purpose as the classroom at their school, and they don’t get paid for that either. Internships generally have a fixed term of a few weeks during the summer or other school hiatus. To compare that to jobs where people are working in order to support themselves and their families makes no sense whatsoever.

That said, there may be some good arguments for compensating interns, particularly in business where the enterprise has sufficient resources to do so. But to assert that members of Congress who support raising the minimum wage are being hypocritical for allowing students to get an up-close look at how government operates is simply a wild and irresponsible attempt to obstruct progress on policies that bring tangible relief to struggling Americans, as well as a substantial boost to the economy.

What makes this story even more repulsive is that Fox is citing data from a disreputable source with a vested interest in the welfare of the corporations it exists to serve. According to Source Watch…

“The Employment Policies Institute (EPI) is one of several front groups created by Berman & Co., a Washington, DC public affairs firm owned by Rick Berman, who lobbies for the restaurant, hotel, alcoholic beverage and tobacco industries.”

So this organization is directly tied to the industries who are the most virulently opposed to a minimum wage increase. That should cause a legitimate news agency to steer shy of them if they are interested in unbiased information. But it doesn’t dissuade Fox, and a bevy of other wingnut “news” outlets, from eating up the self-serving tripe.

As if that weren’t bad enough, Berman & Company is also notorious for feathering its own nest. The bulk of the funds received by the organizations under its control goes right back into Berman’s pocket. For instance, the Employment Policies Institute reported $1,629,930 in total revenue for 2011, and $2,103,896 in total expenses. But despite running a half million dollar deficit, it paid Berman more than a million dollars that year. That alone should cast doubt on the quality of the economic advice they might dispense.

What we have here is a lobbyist who created a fake think tank so that he could raise funds from corporations to advocate on their behalf – and against the interests of average Americans. Then this fake think tank gets fake news enterprises (like Fox) to disseminate their tendentious opinions. That’s how the right-wing media machine poisons the public debate on important issues. And this particular article got spread to the the Wall Street Journal, the Daily Caller, Newsmax and other conservative mouthpieces.

To counter that, here is some more information on the benefits of raising the minimum wage. These articles explain in more detail why the nation should move forward with this legislation:

Economic Policy Institute: Low-wage Workers Are Older Than You Think

5 Right-Wing Myths About Raising the Minimum Wage, Debunked

When it comes to America-hating rhetoric and bashing the values held by the majority of the citizens of the United States, Fox News takes a back seat to no one. Despite the diversity and tolerance of American society, Fox has made it their mission to inject bitter animus into the national family in order to create division and contempt. That’s why, in the Fox mindset, reproductive choice is murder, tax fairness for the wealthy is class warfare, affordable health insurance is communism, and an African-American president is a Marxist dictator who is unfit – even ineligible – to hold the office.

Nevertheless, it still comes as some surprise to find out what Fox regards as the utopian business model for the United States. In their feverish obsession for unfettered, free-market capitalism (which even the Pope recently condemned), Fox has long advocated the repeal of virtually every regulation they stumbled over. The Fox/Tea Party economic environment would be a chaotic anarchy where multinational corporations would rule with loyalty to nothing but their bottom line. It is that philosophy that is represented in their article that promotes, and distorts, a survey by the World Bank that ranked countries for their business friendliness.

The critical lesson from the data as analyzed by Fox, is expressed in their headline that laments that the “US ranks behind Rwanda, Belarus, Azerbaijan in ease of creating new business.” The inescapable conclusion is that the U.S. would be better off if it were more like Rwanda and the other third-world nations whose governments are too weak to provide any order or law or protection for its citizens who engage in business.

Setting aside the ludicrous notion that the U.S. should look to Rwanda for inspiration, the real problem with the analysis of the data is that it is comparing the U.S. to 189 other countries with which it has little in common. A more rational analysis would limit the comparison to other nations with large populations and high GDP. The World Bank’s website conveniently allows just such a comparison by filtering the list to include only those first-world countries in the Organization for Co-operation and Economic Development (OCED).

In the unfiltered list of all 189 countries, the U.S. comes in at 20th for “starting a business,” which isn’t really that bad out of 189. But when filtering the list to remove countries like Rwanda that tell us nothing about our place internationally, the U.S. jumps to number six. In fact, in the aggregate results for all eleven of the categories that the World Bank ranked (i.e. construction permits, credit, taxes, etc.), the U.S. is number two, behind New Zealand.

The question is: Why would Fox News want to deliberately misconstrue the survey to portray America as a third-rate loser in the world community? For the same reason they disparage everything else about this country that they despise. Contrary to Fox’s incessant whining about freedom and liberty, these are principles that they believe should only be available to corporations and the wealthy. It is in the interest of Fox conservatism to rebuke America as unfriendly to business in order to lobby for the elimination of the regulatory structure that they regard as impeding the liberty of the industrial class.

By misrepresenting the World Bank’s data, Fox has proven once again that they are more interested in advancing a rightist agenda than in informing their audience. And the direction in which they want to push America is one that will be distinctly unpleasant for most Americans, as demonstrated in this brilliant travelogue for the Tea Party vacation paradise of Somalia: