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Leave it to Fox to do the bidding of the House Republicans and their allies, who are doing their best to try to destroy the U.S. Postal Service. Never mind the damage that would be done to the elderly who rely on the mail to receive their prescriptions, small businesses and Americans who live in rural areas with shoddy Internet service and the thousands of Americans who earn a decent middle class living from being employed there.

No, in the view of the majority of the panel members on this Saturday's edition of Cashin' In, that's a terrible thing that those people are gainfully employed and heaven forbid have union representation and it's all their fault that the Post Office is in financial straights. And par for the course with these "business block" shows of theirs, the only voice of reason was the one, poor, lonely outnumbered "liberal" Christian Dorsey, who did actually tell the truth about one of the problems -- which is that Congress has "forced the USPS to pre-fund 75 years’ worth of pensions for its employees, a requirement not made of any other public or private institution."

Instead we were treated to the rest of them screaming that we need to privatize the Postal Service, lying and telling the audience that other industries would provide the same services less expensively and ignoring, other than Dorsey again, that they have a mandate to serve all Americans which those other companies are not bound by. It really just boiled down to another shameful exercise in union bashing, which is what these Saturday shows on Fox do week, after week, after week, or at least when they're not attacking the poor and demonizing liberals in general.

Here's more on what's really going on, counter to the nonsense being pushed in the clip above: Do You Want To Live Without The Postal Service?:

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Our friends over at News Hounds flagged this segment from Saturday's Cashin' In on Fox News and par for the course on that show, they opened it up with attacking the poor and those suffering from the economic consequences of the recession and were demonizing a program that provides badly needed economic stimulus and the people who are using the program.

Fox News Attacks Food Stamps: Food Benefits For The Poor Are “Inherently The Problem”:

Yesterday’s Cashin’ In was another thinly veiled effort to make poor people look like welfare queens – and to make the Obama administration look like welfare-queen enablers. The vehicle this time was some government advertisements for food stamps. As a recent editorial in the Los Angeles Times noted, more than 1/3 of those eligible for SNAP (food stamps) benefits are not receiving them. Furthermore, the program was originally pushed for by the grocery industry because it bolstered household consumption and shored up the retail economy. But none of that information was provided by “objective” host Cheryl Casone. She announced, “The government is now marketing entitlements.”

Go read their post for a complete overview of the segment which I don't want to just copy and paste, but I'll just highlight a few of their points here:

Christian Dorsey was one of only two supporters on the panel. As usual, he was terrific. “Hopefully, this is destigmitizing something that doesn’t need to be stigmatized at all,” he said. He also pointed out, “In order to get food stamp benefits, you have to be working or looking for work, you have to be a dependent child, or you’re elderly, or disabled. None of those are shameful circumstances. The reason we’ve spent so much more on food stamps is because we had a really big recession where we increased poverty… This is a really efficient program. Low administrative costs, and money goes to people in need. They spend the money at private businesses, and that spending multiplies by at least 50% in economic activity.”

And of course Jonathan Hoenig was doing his usual Libertarian flogging of the "welfare state" when he touted this nonsense:

Rather than contest Hoenig, she “quipped,” “Maybe that’s a great diet plan for all of us to go on food stamps.” She was referring to ads talking about how food stamps help people stay healthy.

John Layfield spoke up. “I certainly hope not… You can’t spend this for sugary drinks… These people have nothing else to eat if you don’t give them this. The problem is, that many people are in poverty.”

Hoenig said, “Look at Mississippi. One in five people there are on food stamps. It’s the fattest state in the nation six years running.”

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If there's anything you can count on from the yappers on some of the Fox Business Channel shows that they air on Fox News on Saturdays, it's that if there's a way to trash unions or to paint anyone who receives any sort of government assistance as lazy, good-for-nothing loafers who just want to suck off of the government teet, they're going to do it. With this story, they got a two-fer.

What could possibly be wrong with getting rid of union MTA workers only to have them replaced with welfare recipients? It's nothing but a big race to the bottom where the Wall Street bankers in New York get their tax breaks and after saying the layoffs are necessary because the city's broke, union workers get replaced by those with no protections in place working for minimum wage. And if these welfare recipients are single mothers, just who is supposed to be paying for their daycare while they're out there cleaning the subways in New York City? And just what type of meaningful job training are you giving anyone by teaching them how to push a broom? Looks like none to me.

I'm all for programs that help those on welfare gain some skills so they can get back into the workforce and earn a decent living instead of having to be dependent on the government and where they're allowed to work without being cut off of their benefits if that job training is going to lead to them being independent and able to earn a living wage where they can take care of themselves and their families. I don't see how this is one of them.

I agree with the one outnumbered "liberal" on the panel who they actually allowed some air time. When host Cheryl Casone asked Christian Dorsey about whether this might help any of those workers get a full time job, we got one of the few moments of truth out of this segment.

DORSEY: Look, I'm all for making sure that people who have been left out of the workforce and who are on welfare receiving public assistance get the skills to be self sufficient, but remember, welfare is now administered by the states. It's not an overall federal program. It's block granted. And what's happening in New York is cause for alarm, not praise Cheryl. They're laying off transit workers and replacing them with lower cost transient workers, so this is in essence getting rid of decent jobs for people, adding to unemployment and then saving money by putting welfare recipients in those jobs that used to be held by non-welfare recipients. It's not improving the overall job situation in New York or in the country. This is bad policy.

And one of the worst parts of this segment was Fox hack Jonathan Hoenig letting everyone know what conservatives think about anyone receiving welfare at all.

HOENIG: What about just getting rid of welfare? Let me just throw that one out there Cheryl as a real alternative idea. I mean, point to me somewhere in the Constitution where it says anything about charity. It does not. Now were the founders such (?) were they such jerks that they didn't want to put that? No. Of course because charity is something that should be privately motivated. And I'm sorry Cheryl, working for money. That's called a job, not another government assistance program, another government handout program.

And of course in Hoenig's mind, anyone on welfare is just some lazy person who wants to destroy our economy, unlike those poor businesses that might be forced to pay more taxes so women and children aren't left to starve on the streets while they outsource the jobs they'd probably love to have to China and India, where the workers there can work for slave wages instead.

When this country relied on the good will of the rich to provide for the welfare of the least among us instead of asking all of us to take care of each other, things didn't work out so well. People like this tool Hoenig are more than happy to perpetuate a system that's taking us right back there, along with his buddies at Fox News and Fox Business Channel.

Here's more from FindLaw on the legal predicament the city may have put themselves in as well -- MTA Wants to Put NYC Welfare Recipients to Work:

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When Michael Moore comes to Wisconsin to speak out against the amount of income disparity we have in the United States that we've not seen since the Gilded Age, leave it to the yappers on Fox to go crazy and call him every name in the book, and to also insist that he's picking on the so called "job creators" in America. Someone tell me that these idiots weren't just reading straight off of the pages of Atlas Shrugged for Fox "news" with this breathless defense of how we're not supposed to pick on the rich by asking them to pay more in taxes.

According to Jonathan Hoenig here, Moore is preaching Communism and a society of... get this... "slavery" and the rich should be paying even less in taxes. Because heaven forbid we can't ask the rich to pay more or we're going to turn into Venezuela or Cuba or some other country that he wants to make completely irrational and ridiculous comparisons to. These people make my head hurt. Up is down and black is white on Fox.

Here's more from Michael that they were up in arms about.

VIDEO: America Is NOT Broke:

America is not broke.

Contrary to what those in power would like you to believe so that you'll give up your pension, cut your wages, and settle for the life your great-grandparents had, America is not broke. Not by a long shot. The country is awash in wealth and cash. It's just that it's not in your hands. It has been transferred, in the greatest heist in history, from the workers and consumers to the banks and the portfolios of the uber-rich.

Today just 400 Americans have more wealth than half of all Americans combined.

Let me say that again. 400 obscenely rich people, most of whom benefited in some way from the multi-trillion dollar taxpayer "bailout" of 2008, now have more loot, stock and property than the assets of 155 million Americans combined. If you can't bring yourself to call that a financial coup d'état, then you are simply not being honest about what you know in your heart to be true.

And I can see why. For us to admit that we have let a small group of men abscond with and hoard the bulk of the wealth that runs our economy, would mean that we'd have to accept the humiliating acknowledgment that we have indeed surrendered our precious Democracy to the moneyed elite. Wall Street, the banks and the Fortune 500 now run this Republic -- and, until this past month, the rest of us have felt completely helpless, unable to find a way to do anything about it.

Here's Michael in Wisconsin.

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From the little bit I've watched of that channel, I suppose this is what their viewers get treated to day after day on the Fox Business Channel. On Fox News' weekend show with some of the regulars from their sister network, Cashin' In, it was one big union bashing fest during this panel discussion with them opining over the horrors of union members helping people get out to vote for the mid-term elections and blaming them for the loss of jobs in the United States.

Yeah, it's those evil union workers that are to blame for the state of our economy. Never mind the CEO salaries, outsourcing, a race to the bottom with competing with cheap labor over seas and no willingness to fix our rotten trade laws that help encourage that behavior. Those workers who dare to want a living wage without having to work two or three jobs to get by and heaven forbid might want a pension so they can retire without living in poverty are destroying America.

And apparently free speech is great for large corporations, but if the unions want to help people or their members get out there to the polls, they're destroying democracy. And below from CNN's weekend show, Your Money, more of the same flame throwing from their weekend show two of my least favorite regulars on that show, Peter Morici and Stephen Moore.

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