Chicken Trump Flees Fake News Conference For Fear of Being Asked Questions

The character (or lack thereof) of Donald Trump is on display every day, and it isn’t a pretty picture. In addition to his pathological lying, infantile name-calling, flaming racism, and malignant narcissism, Trump also flaunts his unabashed weakness and cowardice. He is the first American “leader” who has actually bragged about being the most fabulous whiner.”

Donald Trump Chicken

On Thursday morning Trump held something that he called a “news” conference to announce the details of the latest jobs report. However, it was nothing but a self-serving public statement wherein he spoke for a few minutes, then left without taking a single question. The reasons for that were obvious after a quick analysis of his remarks.

First of all, the jobs report had some surface level good news that 4.8 million people had returned to work in June. But looking just slightly below the surface reveals that this report is not at all encouraging. None of those jobs were newly created. They were all just a small fraction of workers being called back from furloughs. More troubling is the fact that there are still more than 30 million people unemployed. The unemployment rate of 11.1% is still higher than at the peak of the Great Recession. And there were 1.4 million new unemployment filings. That’s likely to increase significantly next month reflecting that more than half the country has reinstated lockdown rules due the surging coronavirus pandemic.

Trump’s phony fifteen minute press conference may be the shortest of his presidency. And no wonder. He was clearly afraid to face questions from the free press that he maligns in Stalinist terms as “the enemy of the people.”. He was afraid he would be asked about coronavirus deaths nearing 130,000, and cases exceeding 50,000 in a single day for the first time. He was afraid he would be challenged on his lies about Russia paying bounties to Taliban militants to kill American soldiers. And Trump was surely scared about having to field specific questions about this jobs report. He’d rather just unload his spin, waddle off the stage, and get back to satisfying his Twitter and Fox News addictions.

Consequently, Trump said nothing about the Russian bounty story that is, without a doubt, the most flagrantly treasonous conduct ever alleged against a U.S. president. As for the pandemic that is reaching new and tragic heights of cases and fatalities, Trump dismissively referred to them as “hotspots,” continuing to downplay the peril that he still thinks will “disappear” by magic. “Now we’re opening it up,” Trump boasted, “and it’s opening up far faster than anyone even thought possible. And more successfully.” If this is his idea of “success,” let’s hope we never see what he would call failure.

It would be an understatement to say that things are going badly for Trump lately. His standing in the polls is lower than any incumbent president in modern times. Speculation is growing that he might choose to drop out of the race, even on Fox News. His cherished cult rallies aren’t drawing the throngs of adoring disciples that he requires to satiate his ravenous ego. So it’s likely that he will continue to be ducking out of the public eye for the foreseeable future. If there’s one thing that we can rely on, it’s that Trump is a coward who would rather skulk in his bunker than face the prospect of accountability for his failures and crimes.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Trump’s Heartless Take on Dreadful Jobs Report: It’s Fully Expected and I’m Not to Blame

When the history of Donald Trump’s presidency is written, it will be difficult to find documentation of any genuine expressions of sympathy for the American people, whether those whose lives were upended by hurricanes, refugees from poverty and oppression, or the victims of the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic. Trump appears utterly incapable of having a human feeling for people who have suffered misfortune. Although he always seems to be pretty charitable toward corporations and the wealthy.

Donald Trump

On Friday morning the latest jobs report was released and it revealed a historic decline for the month of April. More than 20.5 million jobs were lost, a number not seen since the Great Depression. The unemployment rate tripled to 14.7%, which is likely an undercount because it doesn’t include those who are not currently looking for work due to the Stay-At–Home policies currently in effect.

Trump was being interviewed on Fox News by the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends when the report became public. The program interrupted their predictable Trump-fluffing to announce the new data and get a response from Trump. So in keeping with his callously uncaring demeanor, Trump’s initial message to the nation was this:

“It’s fully expected. There’s no surprise. Everybody knows that. Somebody said, ‘Oh, look at this.’ Well, even the Democrats aren’t blaming me for that.”

That’s typical Trump. No compassion for the people who are now unemployed. No concern for how they will pay for rent, groceries, medicine, etc. No acknowledgement of the stress and anxiety that millions of people are enduring. Nope. Trump can be relied on to always put his own interests above those of the nation or any of its citizens. And that is openly in play as he seeks to stem his personal financial losses by rushing to allow hotels and golf courses to resume operations. So naturally, Trump’s first thoughts upon hearing the jobs report were both egocentric and dishonest.

Trump’s malignant narcissism was on display in his first remarks when he complained about the prospect of being blamed for the pandemic and its consequences. That’s a key concern for Trump. Never mind that his documented negligence and incompetence has directly resulted in exacerbating the severity of the pandemic’s impact in the U.S. Trump relentlessly rejects any responsibility. He is so afraid of having to accept the blame he so richly deserves that he is pushing for a premature relaxation of business restrictions. That will undoubtedly result in even more illnesses and fatalities. And he keeps moving the goalposts on estimates of the dead. For weeks he “bragged” that it would be under 60,000 by August. Now that we are over 76,000 in May he has upped it to 110,000. Keep in mind that neither estimate is worth bragging about.

Trump lied by saying that he expected this catastrophic jobs market. In truth, he denied that there was any problem at all for the first two months. He insisted that it was fully “under control” and that the handful of cases would quickly “go down to zero.” Instead they went up to 1.3 million with more than 76,000 deaths. And contrary to his current position that he expected this, he literally said that “Nobody ever expected a thing like this” during a Fox News town hall two weeks ago. What’s more, his Commerce Secretary, Wilbur Ross, said this on January 30:

“I don’t want to talk about a victory lap over a very unfortunate, very malignant disease. But the fact is, it does give businesses yet another thing to consider … I think it will help to accelerate the return of jobs to North America.”

So not only was the Trump administration not planning for an employment debacle, they were actually looking forward to a jobs boom resulting from a rush by companies to relocate their manufacturing to the U.S. That turned out to be a figment of their overactive and self-serving imaginations. However, Trump did get one thing right during his segment with his Fox friends. “Next year,” he assured, “we’re going to have a phenomenal year. People are ready to go.” Indeed. President Biden will see to that. And the American people are surely “ready to go” to the polls to vote in November to oust Trump and his enablers in the Republican Cult.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Fox News (And Trump) Credit Trump For Jobs Created During Obama’s Term

Friday morning the jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics was released for the month of January. It showed a healthy increase of 227,000 persons employed, which was significantly more than was projected. These numbers extend Obama’s job creation to a record 76 consecutive months of growth.

So leave it to Fox News to lavish praise on Donald Trump for what they call the “first jobs report under Pres Trump.” Never mind that Trump wasn’t sworn in until January 20, and this report concludes with data as of January 12. That didn’t stop Fox from pasting a graphic over the video that proclaimed “More Winning.”

Trump Fox News

In a meeting with corporate CEOs (video below), Trump addressed the jobs report saying:

“A couple of things happened this morning. 227,000 jobs. Great spirit in the country right now, so we’re very happy about that. I think that it’s going to continue, big league. We’re bringing back jobs.”

Notice that he referred to “we” in a blatant attempt to grab credit for employment numbers that he had nothing to do with. Even if he deserved credit for some of the jobs he claims to have saved at companies like Carrier, it amounts to a few hundred at best. During the Obama administration there were eleven million jobs created.

What’s more, Trump has previously dismissed these jobs reports as phony and manipulated to make Obama look good. He disputed the data and offered his own “alternative facts” for which he refused to provide documentation. His wildly exaggerated estimates earned him a “Pants-On-Fire” designation for lying. He previously characterized the jobs statistics as:

“…the biggest joke there is in this country. […] The unemployment rate is probably 20 percent. But I will tell you, you have some great economists that will tell you, it’s a 30, 32. And the highest I’ve heard so far is 42 percent.”

The same people in the same department produced this new report. But since it was released two weeks after he moved into the White House it has renewed credibility. In reality, it merely enables him, and Fox News, to steal credit that he doesn’t deserve. That’s something he does on a regular basis. So expect more of that sort of dishonest self-glorification for as long as he’s president. And expect Fox News to provide the propaganda to go along with it.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Donald Trump’s Post-Christmas, Narcissistic, Delusional, Tweet-A-Rama

Apparently America is going to suffer through four years of deranged ranting by an infantile tweetaholic pretending to be president. Donald Trump’s skin is just as rice paper thin as ever. Despite having claimed an Electoral College victory and promising to “act presidential,” such behavior continues to evade him.

Obama Trump Tweet

On the day after Christmas Trump, who still doesn’t have time to attend national security briefings, managed to keep his Twitter followers entertained. And true to form, he had nothing to say other than to disparage his foes and glorify himself. The first Xmas exaltation was directed at President Obama’s recent assertion that he would have beaten Trump in a rematch:

It’s cute that the issues Trump chose to feature in his rebuttal were all examples of Obama successes. He presided over the creation of 22 million jobs in the longest period of private sector job growth in history. The unemployment rate was cut by more than half, from 10.1 percent to 4.9 percent. As for ISIS, under Obama’s command the terrorist organization lost tens of thousands of fighters. According to the general in charge we have killed 45,000 in just the last two years. And that includes many of their top leaders. We have also substantially reduced the territory that ISIS controlled and their ability to raise revenue. And ObamaCare just completed the sign up period for 2017 with record numbers (6.4 million) of newly insured citizens.

Trump’s blatantly wrong commentary on Obama’s record was not his only glaring mistake. He also made the ludicrous assertion that there is “NO WAY” that Obama would have beaten him. He doesn’t explain his reasoning, but since he is the most unpopular president-elect in history it seems like a difficult argument to make. Especially when Obama is enjoying sky high favorability ratings.

Not content to embarrass himself with that tweet, Trump let loose again with one that may be even more absurd:

You will have to use your imagination to figure out what “gloomy” world Trump is living in. Although he spoke of it often during his campaign. To hear it from him, America is hell hole on the scale of something out of Mad Max. Never mind the employment and economic advances that occurred over the past eight years. Trump touts the 10 percent increase in the stock market since the beginning of November. Of course, he isn’t president and couldn’t have had anything to do with it. And he doesn’t mention the 150 percent increase since the beginning of Obama’s presidency. Pretty gloomy, huh?

What’s more, Trump thinks that somehow he is responsible for people buying their loved ones Christmas presents. So now Trump is Santa Claus too? How appropriate that he would exhibit his messiah complex on the anniversary of the birth of his messiah. Perhaps he is also responsible for everyone who was healed of an illness in the past month.

Continuing late into the evening, Trump posted a tweet lauding his philanthropy:

Now he’s just flat out lying, which for him is a natural state of being. IRS records show that Trump has not donated anything to his foundation since 2008. And his disbursements mainly benefited himself. He gave $25,000 to a Florida Attorney General who then dropped the investigation on him that her office was conducting. He gave another $250,000 to settle the terms of a lawsuit he lost. Those are both illegal uses for charitable funds.

And then there were the portraits of himself that he purchased as well as some sports memorabilia. Again, that’s misuse of foundation funds. Last week he announced that he’s shutting down his foundation, which he can’t do while the New York Attorney General is investigating it for fraud.

Finally, one Twitter response to Trump’s brag-fest offered a poll to gauge who would really have won in an Obama/Trump match-up. At the time of this writing, Obama was ahead by three to one. Of course, this is not a scientific poll. However it is posted on Trump’s Twitter feed where he might be expected to have an advantage:

So even on his home turf, Trump is a loser. And that’s after losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by a historic margin (over 2.8 million votes). And Clinton’s favorables aren’t anywhere near as high as Obama’s. So let that sink in, Mr. Trump. And I’m sure we can expect some thin-skinned, half-baked tweets to follow as soon as you get your tiny hands on your phone.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Fox News Smears Seniors And Students In Lame Attempt To Smear Bernie Sanders

Today on Fox News the network put in their rotation a chart illustrating the professions of donors to the Bernie Sanders campaign. The chart is dominated by a long bar that is labeled “Not Working.” The implication from the chart, which was backed up by the Fox News anchors who displayed it, was that donors to the Sanders campaign are unemployed, lazy, leeches on society.

Fox News

As you may already have guessed, Fox’s implied shiftlessness of Sanders’ donors is a deliberate lie. The data came from the Los Angeles Times, and while it is true that about 28% of Sanders’ donors do not have jobs, what Fox fails to disclose is that it is a group comprised mainly of retirees (13.5%), students (6.5%), and stay-at-home spouses (14.5%). So what does Fox have against America’s seniors, its youth seeking an education, and its families? If Fox were to report honestly they would have remarked on the large percentage of such honorable people who flock to the Sanders campaign.

Of course, nobody expects Fox to report honestly. And this is just the latest example of their purposeful deceit. No wonder surveys of Fox News viewers consistently show them as being the least informed, and the most misinformed, news consumers in the country. And no wonder they are supporting Donald Trump for president – perhaps the stupidest, most dishonest candidate in the nation’s history.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Donald Trump: Bringing Back Jobs – And The Foreigners To Do Them

The Republican’s favorite jingoistic blowhard, Donald Trump, has made immigration the centerpiece of his alleged presidential campaign. Not that he’s proposed any coherent policies or solutions. That would only distract from his hate-speech and fear mongering. No, The Donald’s stunted ability to comprehend complex issues is limited to demonizing his perceived enemies and building walls. And he has the audacity to believe that after insulting Mexican immigrants as criminals and rapists that American Latinos will still vote for him.

Donald Trump

Among the many things that Trump is convinced he can do better than any other mortal is creating jobs. Never mind the fact that it has always been a lie that the wealthy are job creators (Here is an infographic showing who the Real Job Creators are). And set aside that Trump’s businesses have long outsourced American jobs to China and elsewhere. He nevertheless said in his presidential campaign announcement speech that “I will be the greatest jobs president that God ever created.” This is a meaningless boast, and not just because he doesn’t have any respect for God.

Reuters is reporting that Trump’s businesses “have sought to import at least 1,100 foreign workers on temporary visas since 2000, according to U.S. Department of Labor data.” It is notable that these are not the sort of hard-labor jobs in agriculture or construction for which it is sometimes difficult to recruit. The jobs Trump was seeking to fill were for maids, cooks, wait staff, and even golf-course superintendents, and hotel and banquet managers. These are sought-after positions in luxury resorts. They are also positions for which the employer must certify that “they tried and failed to hire Americans.”

So Trump expects people to believe that he was unable to find Americans to fill these jobs. Yet he still expects people to believe that he will be “the greatest jobs president that God ever created.” And perhaps he will, just not for American workers. It’s likely he is seeking people that he can exploit by paying less and treating badly. What’s more, the foreign workers he is employing are the very same ones that he is disparaging as rapists and promising to deport en masse. Reuters notes that…

“The temporary work visa program through which Trump’s companies have sought the greatest numbers of workers, H-2B, brings in mostly workers from Mexico. Mexicans made up more than 80 percent of the 104,993 admissions to the United States on H-2B visas in 2013. The Trump companies have sought at least 850 H-2B visa workers.”

It will be interesting to see if Trump’s stubbornly stupid supporters will hold him accountable for this slap in the face to American labor. Will they make him pay for his outrageous hypocrisy? Judging from the past few weeks, maybe not. If they weren’t offended by his racism, or his disrespect for POW’s, or his rebuke of God, then perhaps they aren’t bothered by hurting the American work force (and lying about it) either. After all, if you’re dumb enough to support Trump in the first place, you’re probably too stupid to figure out when you’re being screwed.

News Corpse Presents: The ALL NEW 2nd volume of
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Hillary Clinton Smeared By Fox News For Correctly Analyzing Trickle-Down Economics

During the 2012 presidential campaign President Obama gave a speech wherein he paid tribute to the American people who collectively created an environment for business to prosper. That environment included paying for the roads, bridges, water and electricity facilities, and other infrastructure necessities without which the economy would whither.

However, one sentence fragment was lifted out of context from that speech by Mitt Romney’s campaign, and his friendly media cohorts, and used to unfairly clobber the President. That sound bite, you may recall, was when Obama reminded the proprietor class that “You didn’t build that,” meaning that every business has benefited from the investments made by our society and government.

Well, here we go again. Yesterday on Fox News the curvy-couch potatoes of Fox & Friends hosted a segment that focused solely on a sentence fragment that was part of a speech by Hillary Clinton.

Fox News Trickle Down

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Clinton was speaking at a rally in support of Massachusetts gubernatorial candidate Martha Coakley. The comment in its sliced-up form was “Don’t let anybody tell you, that, you know, it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs.” In essence it is barely different than Obama’s comment two years ago. But it is just as deceitfully excised from its original context. Here is what Clinton actually said:

“Don’t let anybody tell you that raising the minimum wage will kill jobs. They always say that. I’ve been through this. My husband gave working families a raise in the 1990s. I voted to raise the minimum wage and guess what? Millions of jobs were created or paid better and more families were more secure. That’s what we want to see here, and that’s what we want to see across the country.

“And don’t let anybody tell you, that, you know, it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs. You know, that old theory, trickle-down economics. That has been tried. That has failed. That has failed rather spectacularly.

“One of the things my husband says, when people say, what did you bring to Washington? He says, well I brought arithmetic. And part of it was he demonstrated why trickle down should be consigned to the trash bin of history. More tax cuts for the top and for companies that ship jobs over seas while taxpayers and voters are stuck paying the freight just doesn’t add up.”

It’s plain as day that Clinton was referring to the discredited sham known as trickle-down economics. She also hammered Republicans for opposing a pay raise for America’s workers while simultaneously pushing for a tax cut for America’s wealthy. That is exactly the reverse of what is needed to stimulate the economy. When the middle class has more money in their pockets they spend it, increasing profits for businesses and creating the demand that spurs employers to hire. Conversely, when the rich get more money it is typically directed to Wall Street or retirement accounts which have no productive impact on job growth.

Particularly disturbing were the comments by Fox’s business maven, Maria Bartiromo. For someone who should know better, she offered an ignorant appraisal of how the job market works. She accused Clinton of calling business evil, which never happened, and turned the whole debate into a political drama saying…

“Everybody knows that businesses create jobs. I mean, this is not brain surgery. We know that businesses, people that run business actually create the jobs. And I think Hillary knows that as well. […] Here we are a week away from the midterms, she’s gearing up for 2016, she’s firing up the base.”

Apparently Bartiromo knows even less about economics than she does about brain surgery. Businesses do not create jobs. They create products and services. But there are no jobs until there is consumer demand. That means people have to want the products and have the funds to pay for them. If a company has such demand for their product they will hire new employees. If there is no demand they will not hire anyone, no matter how many tax breaks they get.

[For a deeper look into who the “Real Job Creators” are, see this article and infographic]

The big fallacy about business is that it focused on creating jobs. But that isn’t true and the proof is that no business sits around trying to figure out ways to increase its expenditures on staff. To the contrary, they spend a great deal of time trying to find staff they can cut. Since their mission is to increase profits, their goal is to reduce expenses, and personnel are generally first on the list of cost-cutting measures. That’s one of the reasons that businesses are so drawn to outsourcing to foreign labor.

So businesses, rather than being job creators, are more often job destroyers, trying to operate with the fewest number of employees possible. And when Clinton says not to let anyone tell you that corporations and businesses that create jobs, she is spot on. It is, and has always been, consumers that create the demand that creates jobs. Trickle-down economics was a fat-cat scam from its inception. Fox News and other right-wing deceivers will perpetually mislead their ill-informed flock, but the truth is available for those clear-eyed enough to want to see it (which means no Fox News viewers or Tea Partiers).

Shameless self-promotion…
Get Fox Nation vs. Reality. Available now at Amazon.

Fox Nation vs. Reality: Giving Workers More Freedom Is ‘Devastating’ To Fox News

The Congressional Budget Office just released their latest set of economic projections for the next decade and the data provides some good news for America’s workers. But never let it be said that Fox News would receive such information and honestly present it to their woefully deceived audience. The headline at the top of the Fox Nation website trumpeted that the CBO’s report was “Devastating News for ObamaCare: Over 2 Million Workers Will Lose Jobs.”

Fox Nation

For more brutal deconstructions of Fox lies, read Fox Nation vs. Reality.

Oh my. That would be devastating – If it were true. However, the CBO report never said any such thing. The truth is that ObamaCare will provide workers with more freedom of choice due to the fact that they will no longer be shackled to jobs they don’t want or need simply because they can’t afford to lose their medical benefits. What ObamaCare does is to make health care affordable so that people can decide whether to continue their employment based on factors other than their health plan. Here is how the CBO phrased it:

“The estimated reduction stems almost entirely from a net decline in the amount of labor that workers choose to supply, rather than from a net drop in businesses’ demand for labor, so it will appear almost entirely as a reduction in labor force participation and in hours worked relative to what would have occurred otherwise rather than as an increase in unemployment (that is, more workers seeking but not finding jobs) or underemployment (such as part-time workers who would prefer to work more hours per week).”

What this means is that workers may voluntarily choose to leave their jobs or work fewer hours. It does not mean that employers will fire anyone or cut staffing. And when a worker freely decides to resign, it is ridiculous to say that they “lost” their job. They didn’t lose it. They know where it is still. It’s just that they have chosen not to go there anymore (h/t Bobcat Goldthwait). That’s called freedom of choice.

There are many reasons why someone might leave a job under these circumstances. They may be seniors who wish to retire. They may be young mothers who want to be at home with their children. They may want to seek opportunities at other companies. They may be entrepreneurs who require more time to start a new business. Before ObamaCare these choices may not have been available because people were locked into their employer-provided health plan at a job that was not otherwise helping them achieve their personal goals. Now they will have more freedom to structure their lives in a manner that is more satisfying or appropriate to their circumstances.

Nevertheless, the Fox Nationalists falsely portrayed this exercise of free choice by workers as “lost jobs.” Then they judged this phony loss a devastating blow to ObamaCare. Their source for this blatantly misleading analysis is the “Moonie” Washington Times, a disreputable newspaper with an ultra-conservative bias. But it doesn’t stop there. The same fraudulent reading of the CBO study was aired on the Fox News Channel where they recruited criminal/congressman Darrell Issa to lambaste the “bombshell” report.

It’s no wonder that so many studies have proven that Fox News viewers are more ill-informed than viewers of other news outlets – and even those who view no news at all. The problem with the Fox News audience has never been that they lack information. The problem is that the information they have is more than likely untrue. We’ve been warned about this in the past by some notable thinkers:

“Beware of false knowledge. It is more dangerous than ignorance.” ~ George Bernard Shaw

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” ~ Mark Twain

“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wise people so full of doubts.” ~ Bertrand Russell

Fox Nation
[Update] As Fox Nation escalates their mischaracterization of the CBO report with a feature story asserting a “Death Blow,” PolitiFact has analyzed the spin and the conservative claim that jobs will be lost due to ObamaCare. They found specific allegations, as articulated by House Speaker John Boehner and Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson, to be “Mostly False.”

PolitiFact: “They made it sound as if jobs are going away because businesses don’t create them or because they eliminated existing jobs. The CBO report, though, was referring to workers who decide on their own to leave the workforce, because they don’t have to keep working a job just to keep their health benefits.”

[Reprise] The REAL Job Creators: Share This Infographic To Undo GOP Fallacy

With the presidential election behind us, the public discourse turns once again to more substantive matters, first of which is the fearful prospect of the so-called “fiscal cliff.” Setting aside the fact that the cliff itself is a figment of media imagination, it is nevertheless necessary for congress to address tax policy.

As the debate heats up in advance of the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, conservatives are trotting out their tired rhetoric about the risk of allowing tax cuts for the rich to expire and the allegedly detrimental impact it would have on what they call job creators. However, they are deliberately distorting facts in order to benefit their wealthy patrons. Last year I published an analysis of the right-wing effort to confuse the issue along with an infographic that laid out the case for who the real job creators are. This seems like a good time to re-publish it and direct credit for creating jobs to those who actually deserve it.


Occupy Messaging: Who Are The Real Job Creators?

December 13, 2011

For too long now, right-wing propagandists like Frank Luntz have been manipulating language to distort the real issues that impact so many lives of American citizens. They engage in dishonest wordcraft that disguises their true meaning in order to shape public opinion and deceive voters. It’s time to counter that rhetorical offensive by restoring definitions that actually reflect reality.

One of the most recent and insidious examples of this practice is the conservative effort to replace references to “the rich” with the phrase “job creators.” It is of no interest to these hacks that no evidence exists to validate the claim. In fact, NPR’s congressional reporter, Tamara Keith, asked members of congress and representatives of conservative business groups to refer her to business people who could substantiate the assertion that tax cuts for the wealthy would induce them to increase hiring. They were unable to come up with a single name or example to affirm their half-baked theory. However, Keith found several examples of her own that utterly refuted it. This caused Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to note that “Millionaire job creators are like unicorns. They are impossible to find and don’t exist.”

The agenda that Republicans have adopted has literally no popular constituency. Every poll taken on the subject reveals that majorities of Americans (including majorities of Republicans) favor increasing taxes on the rich. Even polls of the rich show that they believe that they are not presently sharing the sacrifice required to restore the nation’s economic health. An independent group of Patriotic Millionaires released a video beseeching Congress to raise their taxes.

So the next time you hear some GOP flunky whining about the plight of the rich whose only desire is to be unburdened from the shackles of what are the lowest taxes in decades, remember that they have not, and cannot, certify any claim that lower taxes will spur hiring. In fact, the evidence is all to the contrary. And whenever possible, we need to recapture the phrase “job creators” and use it in a manner that is more in line with reality. Here is a handy, shareable chart that illustrates who the real job creators are:

(click to view larger)
Job Creators


Some conservatives are beginning to admit that lavishing benefits on those who are already wealthy does nothing to stimulate the economy. Bill Kristol recently said that “It won’t kill the country if Republicans raise taxes a little bit on millionaires.” Ben Stein, with some apparent reluctance, told Gretchen Carlson that “With all due respect to Fox…” “We’re going to have to raise taxes on very, very rich people.”

This is the beginning of the wall crumbling down. The right knows that they cannot continue to be seen as only fighting for the welfare of the rich. They know that they have already lost this argument and that now it is only a matter of finding a way to concede without losing face (or Tea Party support).

Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Jobs Council Fraud?

The headline story on Fox Nation today calls the President’s Jobs Council a fraud. There is nothing in the story that indicates what the nature of the alleged fraud is, but the charge stills hangs there like rotting fruit.

Fox Nation

The root of the complaint has something to do with the frequency with which President Obama meets with the White House Jobs Council. The Fox Nationalists appear to be upset that he doesn’t do it often enough. Coincidentally (wink), that’s the same theme that Mitt Romney has been pitching on the campaign trail recently.

But here’s the thing. The Jobs Council has mostly done its work already. They issued a report with some specific recommendations. Those recommendations have been addressed by both the administration and Congress. The White House has acted on 54 of the 60 recommendations for executive action. Congress passed the JOBS Act which contained many of the ideas proposed by the Council. There are many other proposals that Republicans in Congress are blocking because they are more focused on making Obama a one-term president than they are on helping Americans get back to work.

It’s ironic that Romney and Fox are so concerned with the meeting schedule of a Council that they so fiercely opposed. They have rejected many of its recommendations and they were never particularly fond of its formation. Fox News in particular was maniacally critical of its chairman, Jeffrey Immelt of General Electric. Bill O’Reilly called him “a despicable human being” on the air. So it’s rather peculiar that they are now upset that Obama hasn’t spent more time with them. Of course, if he did meet more often they would be crticizing that.