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It wouldn't be a Saturday morning on Fox "news" if they didn't have at least five or ten of these type of segments their so-called "business block," bashing unions and blaming workers for the problems with our economy. And as always on these shows, they have one Fox "Democrat" on there, who agrees to come on and be ganged up on five to one with very little chance to speak.

Host Brenda Buttner opened up the show asking if the protests against Wal-Mart and the airlines are a bigger threat to a jobs recovery than this "fiscal cliff" which is usually their favorite topic to fearmonger over and push for cuts to our social safety nets and austerity.

Naturally, most of them agreed and did their best to portray unions as the big, bad bullies, even though unionization in the United States is at an all time low and the companies as the poor, aggrieved parties who are being "kicked around" by those union thugs. And the unions are now going to get Congress to allow for easier unionization because President Obama won reelection, never mind the fact that Republicans are still controlling the House and that they couldn't get that passed when the Democrats did have both houses of Congress and the presidency.

I will give their lonely "Democratic consultant" Steve Murphy credit for at least pointing out that it's a good thing for the economy for workers to have money in their pockets and that wages are at all time low right now. He also pointed out that there are economies in northern Europe doing very well with high levels of unionization and that the United States' economy was doing better when we had higher levels of unionization as well, which of course was met by jeers and sneers from the rest of the panel members.

And of course the notion that we should be able to do anything about outsourcing, states competing against each other with a race to the bottom on wages was treated as an impossibility. And naturally, the topic of CEO pay, hedge funds and the Romney/Bain model of extracting wealth from companies, and the increasing income disparity we've seen for decades now never came up.

Another day on Fox, another day of divide and conquer and attack workers as being overpaid, or unreasonable for wanting to earn a living wage and maybe retire with some dignity before they drop dead. I'm sure their wingnut welfare from Uncle Rupert for spreading this anti-worker propaganda pays a whole lot better than those people out there working in the Walmart stores, or for the auto companies or for the airlines.

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For anyone that did not read Jon Perr's post here from back in 2010, I'll just refer our readers back there for a detailed analysis of why what Chris Wallace was repeating here on Fox News Sunday about public sector workers being overpaid is complete nonsense; Republicans Launch Phony War on Public Employees.

Thankfully Chris Wallace did get some push back as well from his guests, Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association and deputy chief of staff at the AFL-CIO, Thea Lee. As Van Roekel pointed out, it's all a game of divide and conquer they're playing, trying to pit private sector employees against government employees to drive a wedge between members of the working class. As Jon noted in his post and as the two union leaders pointed out as well, public sector workers are not overpaid when you take into consideration their education levels.

As Jon wrote:

The report by Labor and Employment Relations Professor Jeffrey Keefe of Rutgers University revealed that public employees are undercompensated compared to similarly skilled private sector counterparts:

The study analyzes workers with similar human capital. It controls for education, experience, hours of work, organizational size, gender, race, ethnicity and disability and finds that, compared to workers in the private sector, state government employees are undercompensated by 7.55% and local government employees are undercompensated by 1.84%. The study also finds that the benefits that state and local government workers receive do not offset the lower wages they are paid.

The public/private earnings differential is greatest for doctors, lawyers and professional employees, the study finds. High school-educated public workers, on the other hand, are more highly compensated than private sector employees, because the public sector sets a floor on compensation. The earnings floor has collapsed in the private sector.

I find it particularly cynical that these overpaid millionaires on television are carping about those greedy government workers that get $14 or so average an hour in benefits. I wonder how far that would go towards paying what Chris Wallace receives as part of his benefits package as a paid propagandist for Fox? Corporate America wants a race to the bottom on benefits and wages and Wallace is happy to play along to help them to get it.

Transcript below the fold.

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GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney was out paying homage to the Koch brothers this Friday evening at an event hosted by their front group, Americans for Prosperity in Washington DC and I could not do a better job of summing this speech up if I tried, so I'll just refer everyone to this post by Stephen D. Foster Jr. at Addicting Info -- Mitt Romney Vows To Privatize Medicare, Raise The Retirement Age, And Fire Thousands Of Government Workers:

During a speech to a group of conservative activists on Friday in Washington, Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney said exactly what right wing extremists want to hear. Romney laid out his vision of government which includes privatizing Medicare, raising the retirement age, wiping out government agencies and jobs, making balanced budgets mandatory via constitutional amendment, and slashing funding for the arts, public broadcasting, family planning and passenger rail services. He also wants to give states more budget power.

The biggest and most critical portion of Romney’s plan is, of course, Medicare. Romney intends to privatize Medicare and turn it into a voucher system like Paul Ryan wanted to do in his budget plan.

“Medicare should not change for anyone who is in the program or who is about to be in it, we should honor the commitments we have made to our seniors. Tomorrow’s seniors should have the freedom to choose what their health coverage looks like. Younger Americans today, when they turn 65 should have a choice between traditional Medicare and other private health care plans. Competition will lower costs and increase the quality of health care.”

“Tomorrow’s seniors” will also have to wait much longer for Medicare since Romney also intends to raise the retirement age which is already 65 and 67 for people born after 1959.

Go read the rest since he goes into more detail of some of the other items Romney laid out in his speech. The clip above is the very end of his speech where's Romney is talking about raising the retirement age and privatizing Medicare. I've got more video below the fold.

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From TPM -- Paul Ryan On Wisconsin Protests: 'It's Like Cairo Has Moved To Madison' (VIDEO):

Speaking on Morning Joe Thursday morning, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) compared the current situation in Wisconsin, where Gov. Scott Walker (R) has inspired days of protests by proposing a budget that would remove key bargaining powers for public employee unions, to the recent unrest in Egypt that toppled the 30-year authoritarian rule of Hosni Mubarak, saying it's "like Cairo has moved to Madison these days."

Host Mika Brzezinski asked Ryan what he made of the protests and Walker's "stand."

"He is basically saying, state workers, which have extremely generous benefit packages relative to their private sector counterparts, they contribute next to nothing to their pensions, very, very little in their health care packages," Ryan responded "He's asking that they contribute about 12% for their health care premiums, which is about half of the private sector average, and about 5.6% to their pensions. It's not asking a lot, it's still about half of what private sector pensions do and health care packages do. So he's basically saying, I want you public workers to pay half of what our private sector counterparts are, and he's getting, you know, riots. It's like Cairo has moved to Madison these days. It's just, all of this demonstration. It's fine, people should be able to express their way, but we've got to get this deficit and debt under control in Madison, if we want to have a good business climate and job creation in Wisconsin."

Somehow Ryan forgot to mention that the Governor wants to take away the union members' collective bargaining rights. And here's more from Salon -- Paul Ryan: "It's like Cairo has come to Wisconsin":

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