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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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Anyone who frequents this blog even if you don't watch Fox at all, knows how terrible a lot of their "business block" coverage is on Saturday mornings because I try to make a habit of posting at least some of it when I've got the stomach for or the time to watch any of it. This was another typically horrid segment with Cashin' In host Cheryl Casone opening up the show by saying there is a "new debate" over whether spending on "entitlements" are "doing damage to America."

The premise for why this "debate" is happening -- New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and his recent attack on Americans receiving government "entitlements" that we covered here at C&L in these two posts:

Gov. Christie: 'We're Turning Into A Paternalistic Entitlement Society'. Oh Really, Governor?

Christie: Americans 'on Couch Waiting for Government Check'

What followed was the panel of Tracy Byrnes, Jonathan Hoenig and Wayne Rogers all repeating Christie's lines about how receiving everything from food stamps, to unemployment benefits, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, to mortgage loan modifications was somehow destroying America and turning us all into a bunch of lazy slobs that don't want to work and just sitting home waiting for their checks to arrive.

For "balance" we had former professional wrestler and conservative John Layfield actually pointing out that it might be a good idea to feed people so we don't end up having another revolution in America if massive amounts of people are starving. And milquetoast "liberal" and Fox regular Julian Epstein countering with how "reasonable" it would have been for President Obama to have made some "grand bargain" with Republicans and agreed to austerity measures in the middle of trying to recover from a recession.

And they ended the segment with regular Jonathan Hoenig, who is always reading straight from some script by Ayn Rand, saying we'd have real "freedom" in America if we just got rid of Medicaid and Medicare all together.

I have to wonder just how many people that watch these shows and take them seriously instead the sorry, sad joke that they actually are, consider themselves members of the "tea party" and are receiving Medicaid benefits. The terrible thing is segments like this would be laughable if they weren't so dangerous, because there are so many out there that buy into the nasty rhetoric they were spouting here.

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Fox Business reporter Tracy Byrnes says that climate change is overblown because the temperature of the Earth "basically hasn't changed much since the Ice Age."

During his Tuesday show on the Fox Business Network, habitual climate-change denier Stuart Varney pointed to an op-ed by Princeton Professor William Happer as evidence of another "nail in the coffin of global warming hysteria."

"CO2 is not a pollutant," Happer wrote. "Life on earth flourished for hundreds of millions of years at much higher CO2 levels than we see today. Increasing CO2 levels will be a net benefit because cultivated plants grow better and are more resistant to drought at higher CO2 levels, and because warming and other supposedly harmful effects of CO2 have been greatly exaggerated. Nations with affordable energy from fossil fuels are more prosperous and healthy than those without."

"We're not in global warming," Fox Business host David Asman agreed. "That has to be emphasized, screamed out at the top over everybody's lungs. That's why they changed the rhetoric from global warming to climate change. Because even the folks that advocated that we are in global warming realize that it hasn't been that way."

"The temperature basically hasn't changed much since the Ice Age," Byrnes announced. "But this notion that we're now getting to a point where carbon dioxide is bad, I mean, I think these guys have pretty much fallen over the cliff."

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From part of Fox's "business block" on Saturday mornings, Cashin' In, the topic for discussion was whether or not eight states raising their minimum wage on January 1st is going to help or harm the economy. Naturally a couple of the panelists, Tracy Byrnes and Gary Kaltbaum claimed that it was going to do damage and advocated for eliminating the minimum wage altogether and just letting the "free market" take care of itself.

I'd like to see either of those two try to actually live off of minimum wage for a year. Panelist Wayne Rogers was ambivalent and didn't think the modest increase of 28 to 37 cents per hour when we're only talking about eight states was going to have any impact on the economy at all.

The one dose of sanity was the final panel member, David Mercer, who actually brought up the fact that we've got record income disparity and a wealth gap that's equivalent to China, Sri Lanka and Rwanda. That didn't seem to phase Byrnes one bit who was more concerned about "eating into businesses bottom line."

Apparently she doesn't share that same concern for families who are so poor they can't afford to eat at all.

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While discussing the fact that a large number of school districts across the country have now decided to start operating on a four day schedule because of budget constraints, Fox Cashin' In contributor Jonathan Hoenig jumps the shark so badly during this segment, that even his fellow wingnuts that normally spend these Saturday show trashing public education and any public sector unions had to disagree with him.

HOENIG: Government, which of course has a monopoly over the public schools, really has become the parent. If the reason for keeping this failed school system is day care, I mean honestly Tracy, believe me, it's cheaper for you to hire a baby sitter for your kids, than to fund this union dominated school system.

(crosstalk)

BYRNES: Jonathan, it's about learning. It is about keeping us on par with the rest of the world.

HOENIG: Why do you want to keep them there more? That's the whole point. They're not learning in the public schools. You want to keep them there more... an extra day? They'd do better on the streets!

This is the same idiot that John wrote about back in Feb. 2008 here -- Jonathan Honeig thinks it's a right to smash a dog's head against a wall.

And I'm beginning to think Tracy Byrnes is suffering from the same syndrome as Megyn Kelly who suddenly became a born again liberal when it comes to maternity leave that Karoli wrote about here -- Megyn Kelly Defends The Family Medical Leave Act. Besides defending the public school system as she did in this segment, earlier in the show she was defending national flood insurance, after, you guessed it, her home was in one of the areas affected by the hurricane and she just got her power turned back on the day before the show.

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Here we go again. Whether it's bashing the long term unemployed as lazy, wanting to replace government workers with welfare recipients, calling for getting rid of Social Security, or comparing those who receive food stamps to crack cocaine addicts, you can always count on the panel of Fox's Cashin' In to attack unions and the working class and to defend the rich and powerful against having their taxes raised.

And as always the one liberal allowed to come on the show was outnumbered five to one.

This week they were attacking government workers as being overpaid compared to their public sector counterparts; a talking point has already been thoroughly debunked by our own Jon Perr last December -- Republicans Launch Phony War on Public Employees. Go read his entire post for much, much more, but here's a snippet:

Pawlenty repeated his charge to Fox News on Monday:

"You have public employees making more than their private-sector counterparts. They used to be under-benefited and underpaid. Now they're both over-benefited and overpaid...it needs to stop."

Sadly for would-be President Pawlenty, the charge - whether at the federal, state or local level - is false.

That's the conclusion of a recent study by the Economic Policy Institute. Just one of many recent analyses debunking Republican charges about government workers and their unions, EPI found that "on average, state and local government workers are compensated 3.75% less than workers in the private sector." (See the table above for details.) 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'd just like to know what Rupert Murdoch is paying these blowhards to come on the air week after week and attack unions, the employed and the poor.

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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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I wonder if this is what Ruth Marcus was talking about when she said we need to have an "adult" conversation about Social Security. From Cashin' In, these Fox talking heads think we need to get rid of it and the one "liberal" on the panel, Julian Epstein wants to means test it. Yeah, great idea there Julian. That turns it into a welfare program for the poor, and we know what that will lead to.

h/t Media Matters