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If you want to understand the source of the world's problems, follow the Davos coverage by CNN and Bloomberg News for a few days. Not only will they tell you what the source is, they'll prove that your instincts are right about billionaires and those who present them as the arbiters of all things fair and right.

Davos is the annual billionaires' conclave where they network, get their message straight, gladhand hungry politicians, and try to determine our fate. Ladies and gentlemen, our problem isn't what the billionaires think it is. Our problem is the billionaires.

Last year, the billionaires were obsessing on income inequality. Following the Occupy protests, they saw it as a source of instability and actually, for a short moment, thought it might be something they should try to solve. At least, that's how our corporate media spun it for us. This year, nary a peep out of them about income inequality. No, this year was all fearmongering over the US budget deficit and the European debt crisis.

Donohue on deficits and cuts

Ali Velshi spoke to US Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue on Friday about his solutions to the deficit problem. After the requisite hand-wringing about unemployment rates in Europe which have come about largely because the billionaires forced austerity on Greece, Spain and Italy, Donohue turned to the United States budget deficit, where he drew a distinction between European austerity and American austerity measures.

Donohue explained that American austerity measures involve "the spending that is automatic and that is entitlements -- Social Security a little bit, but primarily Medicare -- and it goes up, up, up."

Is Donohue suggesting that on that basis, it's not really austerity because it's cuts to necessities, so people will pay with or without the social safety net. Really?

We all know better, and we also know that health care spending has decreased during this recession. Not because costs have decreased, but because people are foregoing health care in order to save money. So sure, billionaires, take aim at the two government programs reaching the most people and doing the most good. That makes a ton of sense, right?

Donohue insists that longer life expectancies require lawmakers to "turn the curve down." I will let you speculate on how cutting Medicare might affect life expectancies, and whether that's what Donohue means by turning the curve down.

Keep in mind, this comes from a guy who was paid nearly $5 million dollars in salary in 2010 from a trade organization that spends millions to elect wingnuts to Congress. What the heck does he know about what that "small" Social Security cut and larger Medicare cut would do to anyone?

Donohue: Fracking is our future

All is not lost, peasants. Tom Donohue has the answer to our economic woes. All we need to do, according to the God of Commerce, is open federal lands and frack the hell out of them. Really. Here is his claim, verbatim:

Fracking, for example, has created 1.75 million jobs in less than two years. There's billions and billions of dollars going to the states and the federal coffers. We have more energy than anybody in the world and, if we, in an environmentally friendly way, acquire it, go on the federal lands, do it in the right way, we'll get that extra piece of cash and bring manufacturing and jobs back to the United States or create them in the United States because of our energy.

In laymen's English, Donohue's constituents -- the Kochs, the Hunts, and other Texas oil barons -- see the answer to our economic woes as being pretty simple. Sell federal lands to them, let them frack the heck out of it (in an environmentally friendly way, of course -- cough), and there will be more jobs than the eye can see!

Speaking strictly for me, I'd prefer to leave my children and grandchildren with pristine, unpolluted, unmarred federal lands and find a different way to build the economy, but Donohue does reveal the center of the conflict between the Obama administration and the robber oil barons of the 21st century. Earlier in the interview, Donohue whined that the president was going to tackle climate change using his regulatory authority specifically with regard to the EPA and said the US Chamber was going to have to "work on that."

Oil oligarchs are struggling to remain relevant even as the rest of the world realizes oil dependency is a national security and economic danger we must mitigate, not celebrate. Donohue is simply the oligarchs' public relations mouthpiece.

Perhaps the Chamber minions in the House could pass a few more bills abolishing the EPA? That might work. Or not.

I trust that this year's billionaire boys' concerns will not be overlooked like last year's were. After all, income inequality is only a problem for as long as the minions cry out about it. Deficits and debt, on the other hand, are a real opportunity for wealth building at the expense of the peasants who were in the streets not that long before.

This is why I loathe Davos and all of the breathless celebrity reporting around it. The financial reporters practically scream like teenagers whenever a billionaire breathes, much less says anything substantive. Davos and the coverage surrounding it are meant to remind everyone that we serve at the pleasure of the oligarchs.

Transcript follows below the fold, courtesy of CNN:

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From Think Progress, it looks like there's a GOP civil war erupting after the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Tom Donahue made some not so veiled threats to Republican freshman House members who don't want to raise the country's debt ceiling.

Illinois Representative and resident blowhard Joe Walsh and the Tea Party Patriots co-founder Mark Meckler appeared on Neil Cavuto's show on Fox and laid into him.

GOP Civil War Erupts: Tea Party Freshman Rips Chamber CEO Tom Donahue:

This week, though, Chamber of Commerce CEO Tom Donohue may have ignited a civil war within the GOP. Many Tea Party freshman within the House Republican caucus have said that they will not vote to raise the debt ceiling, which would force the U.S. to default on its debt obligations. In fact, many said that raising the debt ceiling would be a “betrayal” of the platform that they ran on.

But Donohue sent a message those freshman during a speech before the Rotary Club of Atlanta: Fail to raise the debt ceiling and “we’ll get rid of you.” Today, Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) appeared on Fox News, where he tore into Donohue for threatening House Republicans:

I found Tom Donahue’s comments outrageous, tone-deaf, totally establishment, and doesn’t understand at all where we’re at right now…If Tom Donahue is more comfortable having Nancy Pelosi as Speaker next year because he wants to get rid of all of us tea party, fiscally-conservative freshman who came here on a mission to save our kids from the debt we’re placing on their backs, then fine. He can have Nancy Pelosi as his Speaker.

[...]

A Chamber spokesman later said that Donohue was joking and that the comment was merely part of “pleasant and humorous banter going back and forth” between Donohue and his audience. But Walsh said during the interview that he wasn’t buying it. And many other GOP freshmen aren’t either.

Unfortunately for the rest of us, it looks like John Boehner is having some trouble controlling his members in the House as the GOP continues to play this dangerous game of chicken, with way too many of them pretending it would be acceptable and would not wreck the world's economy if the United States were to default on our debt obligations.

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I'm not sure if "Republican strategist" or probably better described, U.S. Chamber of Commerce lobbyist, John Feehery meant to actually say this out loud on television, but I think he accidentally told the truth on Hardball. While defending Paul Ryan and the Republican's plan to turn Medicare into a voucher program as a means of "saving" Medicare, at the very end of the segment Feehery lets one slip with their real priorities. Medicare and our social safety nets must be sacrificed if we want to keep a Department of Defense.

So we've got to keep pouring billions into these bottomless pits where we invaded countries that were not a threat to us and our so-called "war on terror", or we gut Medicare. Those are the choices. No raising taxes to pay for invading other countries. No cuts to our military industrial complex. Take it out of the hide of the poor and our seniors instead. We knew these were their priorities already. It's just unusual to hear one of them actually say it out loud.

And as Digby noted on the rest of Feehery's spin here:

This is some great GOP messaging from strategist John Feehery today on Hardball:

Feehery: This is the same program that was put out by John Breaux and Bill Thomas back in the 1990s. We have to fix Medicare for the long term. Obviously competition has to be involved with it. Obviously what Paul Ryan has said is, "if you're under 55 this is something you might have to deal with, if you're over 55 it's not gonna touch you." That's something that polls very well with seniors. This is a beginning of a conversation. This is a beginning of a conversation and it has to happen.

Matthews; You sound desperate. You're skirting and saying it doesn't matter if you're over 55.

Feehery: That's what the plan says, if you're over 55 it's not going to impact you. And that's an important talking point. All the members of congress that I've talked to when they go back to their constituents over 55 that sells. Now I don't happen to think that's fair. I'm under 55 and if there's going to be reform I think the old guys have to pay as well, but I'm not running for office so ...

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Campaign for America’s Future’s President Robert Borosage explains to MSNBC's Cenk Uygur the type of change in public policy that we need to see in the United States to create jobs here again in the wake of President Obama’s meeting with the Chamber of Commerce.

BOROSAGE: I do think we need though a policy for making things here in America and that’s where we’ve gone wrong. You know Germany is a very high-wage producer but it’s an export superpower. And the reason is it has an industrial policy that insures that the companies keep high quality jobs in Germany. And we’ve got to move to that and that will take a very different set of policies than begging the Chamber of Commerce to be patriotic.

UYGUR: Well Robert, that’s a great point, so let’s stay on that for a second; because a lot of people say “What can we do?” The jobs are going to go to China, India, etc., but Germany’s figured it out. They’ve figured out a way to keep the jobs. How are they doing it?

BOROSAGE: Well they do a combination of things. They have the unions, the workers have unions and they have a stake in the company leadership and so they make collective decisions. They have long term capital from their banks that’s not speculative. They make collective decisions about what kind of plants they move abroad and what technology they’ll keep at home.

They have a middle level of corporations that are funded by municipally located banks that are geographically located and very dynamic and the combination makes them a superpower and they also manage their trade with China and the like so that they don’t get overwhelmed by the Chinese mercantilist policy.

Now if we could just get our politicians in the United States to quit demonizing unions and embrace some of these same strategies instead of sucking up to multi-national corporations and Wall Street, maybe we'd see some jobs come back here. It was refreshing to hear some specific policies about what does protect jobs instead of endless blathering about how tax cuts create jobs from Republicans. They may well create some jobs, but that doesn't mean they're going to be in the United States of that they're going to pay well.

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The AFL-CIO and the US Chamber of Commerce have issued a joint statement praising President Obama for his call to invest in infrastructure during his State of the Union address. Richard Trumka explained the decision during this interview with CNN's John King and stressed the importance of getting Americans back to work and what it means for our economy.

I was especially glad to hear him say this and beat back the beltway Villager common wisdom on the need for austerity measures.

KING: You're in Davos and there was a report issued here in the United States today. I don't want to dive into the weeds of it about what happened, what caused the financial collapse back in 2008. What is the global sense there? Is there optimism? Is there still unease? Is it still sort of a, we're not sure what's around the corner?

TRUMKA: I think it's a little bit of both, John. There is a little bit of optimism, but I think there's still a lot of concern. We had a panel that I was on, and we had people from every different sector that was on the panel. They're concerned about this big kick towards austerity. They think that it can kick us back into recession. They're afraid that in our government, for instance, that the Republicans won't look at things realistically, they'll never raise revenue. So we won't be able to fix the deficit problem that we have in the midterm and long term.

I would say it's mixed. I would say there's skepticism. There's some optimism as well. There's some good signs out there. So we work together and if we can get this infrastructure program going in the United States, creates some other momentum, we can get jobs growing, and then we'll have a real recovery. Right now, Wall Street is seeing a little bit of a recovery, but Main Street has not seen a recovery, because we haven't seen any jobs created or enough to fill the hole that was created by the recession. And I think that's pretty much true around the globe. Everybody is saying a recovery happens when we have people back to work.

Amen brother. Here's more from the AFL-CIO on the joint statement -- AFL-CIO and Chamber Agree on Obama’s Call for Infrastructure Rebuild.

I don't have a lot of love lost for the Chamber's Tom Donahue, but how pitiful is it when even he is looking way more rational than the House Republicans when it comes to spending measures? Now the question is, will they listen to him?

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Well, most of the media might be taking the weekend off for the holidays, but you can count on Fox News to keep working and pumping that propaganda out there day in and day out. What would Christmas Eve be without some good old-fashioned union bashing from Republican corporate shill Barbara Comstock?

Comstock is terribly upset about a new rule being proposed by the National Labor Relations Board. More on that from the AFL-CIO's blog.

Proposed NLRB Rule Requires Employers to Post Workers’ Rights:

Most workers have seen notices about their right to a minimum wage or safe workplace posted in the company break room or elsewhere on the job. Employers are required to post those notices by federal law.

But there is no requirement for employers to post any sort of notice about workers’ rights under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), including the right to form a union. Now, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is proposing a rule that would require employers to post such notices in the workplace.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says the proposed rule is “a common sense policy needed in today’s workplace.” Every working person in America deserves to know his or her rights… [The rule]…ensures that workers’ rights are effectively communicated in the workplace. It is necessary in the face of widespread misunderstanding about the law and many workers’ justified fear of exercising their rights under it.

According to the proposed rule, published in the Federal Register, the NLRB believes that many employees protected by the NLRA are unaware of their rights under the statute. The intended effects of this action are to increase knowledge of the NLRA among employees, to better enable the exercise of rights under the statute, and to promote statutory compliance by employers and unions.

More there with some specifics on the proposed rule, so go read the rest. But according to WFI's Comstock, this is going to harm small businesses. She also blames unions for the outsourcing that's gone on in America and pretty well destroyed the economy in places like Detroit. Yeah Barbara, it's not the greedy CEO's or our crappy trade laws that reward companies for shipping jobs overseas or the fact that our health care costs are so high. It's the dirty f#%king hippie union members fault.

And of course the "fair and balanced" Fox News didn't put anyone from labor on to counter Comstock, or bother to inform their viewers just whose interests she's really looking out for. Here's more on her organization, the Workforce Fairness Institute:

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Keith Olbermann talked to Think Progress' Faiz Shakir about their recent reporting on the Chamber of Commerce and their attempt to buy America for the rich.

How The ‘US’ Chamber Uses Its Money To Pay Pundits, Manipulate Google, And Create Fake News Outlets:

Responding to our posts, the Chamber launched a massive smear campaign using its large in-house communications staff and a network of well funded public relations firms:

– Manipulating Google And Blogs: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce retains public relations giant Fleishman-Hillard for much of their online communications work. Fleishman-Hillard VP Pat Cleary posts on the Chamber’s blog, and says he works closely with conservative bloggers through RedState. Other Chamber lobbyists collaborate routinely with conservative bloggers through the Heritage Foundation’s Bloggers Briefing to help get the message out for business lobbyists. As Cleary has told conferences of business lobbyists, he helps trade associations like the Chamber buy AdWords to promote the business lobby’s message. For example, when anyone Googles the words “US Chamber” and “foreign,” they see a link to the Chamber’s false response that it receives only $100,000 from foreign affiliates.

– Paying For Television Pundits: GOP lobbyist John Feehery has appeared on cable television to attack ThinkProgress’ reporting, taken to Twitter call President Obama a “business-hating socialist” for calling attention to this story, and even penned an article in The Hill newspaper to defend the Chamber and lie about our investigation. Feehery never mentioned the foreign corporate direct donations to the Chamber’s 501(c)(6). But more importantly, neither The Hill nor any of television outlets Feehery appears on disclosed the fact that Feehery’s public relations firm, The Feehery Group, counts the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as one of its clients. Shortly after our story broke, Feehery was hired by another public relations/lobbying firm, Quinn Gillespie, which is also a client of the Chamber. Moreover, Fox News’ parent company is an active member of the Chamber, and hate-talker Glenn Beck met with the Chamber’s second in command earlier this year to plot the 2010 election. While Fox hosts and Beck have endlessly defended the Chamber’s secret money, there has been no disclosure of the network’s financial ties to Chamber lobbyists.

– The Chamber Owns Fake News Sites: As the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard reported, the Chamber owns a variety of news websites in West Virginia, Illinois, and elsewhere, while also maintaining a wire service called Legal Newsline. All of these websites posture as independently owned and objective journalism outfits, and do not disclose that they are fully owned subsidiaries of Chamber lobbyists.

Faiz Shakir also mentioned their report where a lot of the Chambers's members are getting tired of their behavior and pushing back.

275 Investors Demand U.S. Chamber Disclose Funds And Stop ‘Punitive Campaign’ Against Health Care Law

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United Steel Workers President Leo Gerard joined Ed Schultz to talk about the mid-term elections and the foreign donations being received by the US Chamber of Commerce and other right wing groups who are refusing to disclose where their donations are coming from. Gerard challenged the Chamber to open up their books in the same manner that the labor unions are required to.

SCHULTZ: Well, big labor is stepping up the fight and spending millions. These hard-working Americans know the Democrats are for the middle class and that the Republicans only care about the top two percent.

For more, let`s bring in Leo Gerard, international president of the United Steelworkers of America.

Mr. Gerard, this could be one of the last major speeches that Nancy Pelosi gives as speaker. Do you sense that she is very nervous about this election and the way it`s going for Democrats as far as the polling is concerned?

LEO GERARD: Ed, what I noticed is that she spoke to 1,200 working class women today, and as they say, she was fired up and ready to go. I didn`t sense any nervousness. What I sensed is determination.

The Speaker was very, very clear about her agenda, about creating jobs, about putting people back to work. And she went through each one of the issues where the Republicans had been the problem. And she did spend some time, although she didn`t spend all her time, but she did spend a fairly good piece of time about that foreign secret money that is in the elections, and it`s only being used to attack Democrats.

I think the clip that you played hits it right on the head. Why are they doing that? And she addressed that, and I was very proud of her.

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David Gregory plays water carrier for his former dance partner Karl Rove and the US Chamber of Commerce where he reads from a Washington Post article that as I've pointed out before, obviously ignores most of Think Progress' reporting and focuses on their “AmChams” rather than their other sources of revenue.

And as I noted in the post on Gary Bauer, Eric Boehlert did a great job this week pointing out the Villagers' hypocrisy with their selective freak outs on when to go nuts over anyone receiving donations from foreign entities. If you're a Democrat and your name is Bill Clinton, go crazy. If you're a Republican and there is actually a legitimate cause for concern with foreign donations, we get a collective yawn and are told the voters should not care about the issue.

Transcript via MSNBC.

MR. GREGORY: The president on the trail, as you mentioned, has some pointed messages. And I want to show just a portion of one of his talks here on Tuesday.

(Videotape, October 12, 2010)

PRES. BARACK OBAMA: The question is going to be whether once again hope overcomes fear. Because what essentially the other side has decided is that they're going to try to ride fear and anxiety all the way to the ballot box on November 2.

(End videotape)

MR. GREGORY: He's accusing Republicans of riding fear and anxiety to the ballot box, and yet, with his talk about the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and influence of foreign money, a lot of people question whether he's, in fact, guilty of the same thing. This is what the president said back in October in Maryland.

(Videotape, October 7, 2010)

PRES. OBAMA: Just this week we learned that one of the largest groups paying for these ads regularly takes in money from foreign corporations. So groups that receive foreign money are spending huge sums to influence American elections. And they won't tell you where the money for their ads come from. So this isn't just a threat to Democrats. All Republicans should be concerned, independents should be concerned. This is a threat to our Democracy.

(End videotape)

MR. GREGORY: A threat to our democracy, yet the White House has not produced proof of any foreign funds in the ads. And this is what The Washington Post said about this general issue. The headline: "Secret campaign money," that foreign donations are not the problem. "The gusher of secret money," they say in the editorial, "pouring into the coming election is alarming. It should be plugged for future campaigns--and could be, with the switch of a Senate seat or two. But the rhetoric about this development, from President Obama on down, is irresponsibly alarmist. ... Bruce Josten" with the Chamber of Commerce, he's chief lobbyist, "told The New York Times that the chamber's 115 foreign affiliates pay less than $100,000 in membership dues, out of a total budget of $200 million. The foreign money is kept in segregated accounts. The White House seems willing to stoke" xenophebia--"xenophobia without any evidence for its accusations."

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CBS apparently thinks that Liz Cheney doesn't get enough face time on Fox News since they invited her on as a panel member on this week's Face the Nation. Cheney pushed the right wing talking point that President Obama is not already a "centrist" and had better move to the middle and start working with Republicans. The "Tea Party" of course is not on the fringe. They're just good old red blooded, patriotic, every day Americans.

And of course Cheney thinks it's "shameful" that anyone would dare to want the US Chamber of Commerce to have their "first amendment rights" taken away from them by being forced to disclose their donors. The horror! Howard Dean hit back with noting what a terrible decision the Citizens United ruling was with allowing large corporations to buy our elections.

Schieffer basically allowed Liz Cheney to take over his show. At least Dean was there to hit back at her nonsense and to point out that Cheney's employer, Fox News is doing their best to help buy a few elections as well.

BOB SCHIEFFER: And, good morning again. And welcome to all of our guests. Let’s see here. Howard Dean is in Burlington, Vermont. Liz Cheney and Bill Galston are here in the studio with me. And Lindsey Graham is at Clemson South Carolina.

Well, I pretty much stated the conventional wisdom in the opening there. The thinking here in Washington seems to be whether or not they actually get a majority in either House. Republicans are going to pick up a lot of seats in-- in the next Congress. I don’t think there’s anybody who would argue otherwise. But here’s the question. Whether they take the majority or not, what is ahead? Are the two sides going to find a way to work together, or will they be just deeper and-- and harder gridlock? Let me start with you, Governor Dean. What-- what do you think is ahead.

HOWARD DEAN: Well, I think we’ve got-- first of all, let me thank Senator Graham for his willingness to work together. But look what happened to him when he got home. The-- the far right of his own party pilloried him. And that-- I think-- that’s a big problem, not just on the right but all the districts are drawn in more and more partisan ways so you have very partisan big majorities. Your challenge as a Republican is likely to come from the right as we’ve seen this sess-- this election season. And your challenge for-- as a Democrat is likely to come from the left. So the-- the part of the problem is not just the rhetoric. It’s the fact that we-- we’re so polarized in what we’ve done to each other as parties over the last thirty years in redistricting that it’s very, very hard to overcome your own constituencies and move to the middle.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Liz Cheney, you’ve been known to take a hard line, as it were. What do you think is coming?

LIZ CHENEY: You know, I think it will depend a lot on what President Obama does frankly. I think that once he doesn’t have control any longer of both Houses of Congress, if he wants to get things done, I think he’s going to have to move more to the center, which certainly will help the situation. I also suspect, because he’s a-- he is a very good politician that he will get the message. He’s got to listen to the American people. And I don’t think that, you know Governor Dean’s point about, you know this about is about polarizations because of redistricting is accurate. I believe that in fact, what we’ve seen is a president who has taken much more radical positions than the people voted for in 2008. And so, I think that if the White House hears the-- the people speak and if the President himself moves to the center, there may in fact, be a chance to get more done. [...]

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