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Another Saturday, another segment on Faux News where they're attacking the poor and food stamp recipients, which, other than attacking union members, seems to be one of their favorite pastimes during their so-called "business block," From Cavuto on Business, after Cavuto opens the segment dismayed about all of the people "on the dole" still receiving food stamps and guest Dagen McDowell carrying on about how this is proof that "big government" is out of control, we got this bit of nastiness out of regular, Charles Payne:

CAVUTO: The argument, Charles Payne, is that once you get them, it's hard to stop them, so the benefit is there and it's hard to take the benefit of it away and the more people that are getting them, then it's just exponentially grows.

PAYNE: Yeah, well there's absolutely no doubt about that, that there's this idea that, you know, between the food stamps and the welfare and the earned income tax credit and the child tax credit and the local programs, you know, it gets a little comfortable to be in poverty, you know... and I know people are going to.... listen. No. Listen, I've lived it first hand. I've seen where people don't go to work because they get everything paid for them. The incentive is not there.

Yeah, all of those lucky ducky poor people who are just living the high life out there. Charlie Gasparino attempted to assert himself as somewhat of the voice of reason in the segment and a number of the members of the panel admitted that unemployment numbers are still terrible and people are hurting out there, but it really didn't get much better from there. Ben Stein made the ridiculous remark that "the war on hunger" appears to have been won, ignoring the fact that we've got millions of children in this country who don't know where their next meal is coming from -- and ignoring that lack of access to nutritious food and eating cheap junk that is bad for you instead is contributing to the problem with obesity, not that poor people out there have too much money to spend on food.

What we were treated to here is yet another example of Fox and their war on anti-poverty measures:

Not content to shame food stamps recipients and bully them into silence, Fox News is now targeting efforts to raise awareness of poverty and food insecurity.

The latest front in the Fox News war on anti-poverty measures takes aim at chef Mario Batali as he highlights the difficulties of living on food stamps -- problems that are routinely dismissed on Fox while the network pushes for drastic cuts to nutritional aid and other anti-poverty measures.

h/t Media Matters

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So much for all of that rhetoric about small businesses being the engine of our economy and job growth. After the news this week that Wal-Mart has decided to pull back its efforts to open a store in Brooklyn, New York amidst protests and political pressure, the talking heads on Fox's "business block" decided this was a perfect opportunity for another round of union bashing -- which is pretty much their favorite thing to do on Saturday mornings. However, panel member Dagen McDowell may have let one slip when she decided to attack "mom and pa" stores as well.

When it was pointed out by her fellow guest, Adam Lashinsky on Fox' Cavuto on Business this Saturday, that how many small businesses are going to end up being shut down if Wal-Mart is allowed in ought to be part of the debate, McDowell wound up the segment by saying that "mom and pa need to get over it."

And of course even though all of them had plenty of time to complain about how terrible those evil union thugs were for keeping that wonderful "job creator" Wal-Mart out of Brooklyn and for stomping on the hopes of all of those poor people out there just dying to get one of those minimum wage jobs, the true cost of the way Wal-Mart does business with shoving their costs onto the taxpayers never came up.

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From this Tuesday's The Daily Show, Jon Stewart let Fox's Charles Payne have it for his defense of Wal-Mart and their role in the fire at the Bangladesh garment factory, along with his attacks on labor unions in the United States. He also let Fox and the right wing have it for using the Hostess bankruptcy as another excuse to trash unions, while ignoring the other reasons the company went bankrupt.

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After the tragic fire this week which killed well over 100 employees of a Bangladesh garment factory, Fox "news" took the opportunity to, what else, bash labor unions in the United States, and to excuse Wal-Mart of any responsibility for the incident.

Fox Host: People Who Died In Walmart Factory Fire Were Thankful For Their Jobs:

The 129 Bangladeshis who died in a fire caused by poor fire safety conditions in their garment factory should be thankful for their jobs, according to Fox Business host Charles Payne. Speaking with Neil Cavuto on Fox News this Monday, Payne excused this Sunday’s fire as a rare event and labelled all critics of the unsafe conditions that contributed to the tragedy as anti-Capitalist:

PAYNE: It is tragic. I don’t think something like this will happen again. Don’t think that the people in Bangladesh who perished didn’t want or need those jobs, as well. I know we like to victimize everyone in this country, particularly when it comes to for-profit motivation, which is being assaulted. But, you know, it is a tragedy but I think it is a stretch, an amazing stretch, to sort of try to pin this on Walmart but, of course, the unions in this country are desperate.

[...] Some believe companies like Walmart — whose brands were found in the burnt factory — would move if production at the faculty were more expensive; that is, if things like basic safety precautions were implemented.

During his defense of the factory, Payne referred to himself as “a spokesman for capitalism and the American Dream” and said “for a lot of people, this [Walmart business practice] is a step in the right direction.”

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It wouldn't be a Saturday on Fox's so-called "business block" without several rounds of union bashing and this week was no exception with the panel on Neil Cavuto's show continuing to attack the labor union, rather than management and the hedge fund managers, for the demise of Hostess -- Fox Ignores Hostess' Array Of Troubles To Scapegoat Union For Liquidation:

Fox News placed the blame for the planned liquidation of Hostess Brands squarely on a labor dispute with one of the company's unions. In fact, Hostess' unions had previously made significant concessions when the company went through a failed bankruptcy, and Hostess had many problems beyond labor costs, including an inability to adjust to changes in consumer tastes, which contributed to its bankruptcy. Read on...

And here's more from Daily KOS Labor -- 'Hostess Brands is a microcosm of what’s wrong with America':

As Hostess Brands announces its liquidation, the company's management is blaming a strike by members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers union—those damn workers wouldn't accept having their pay and pensions cut and their health care contributions increased just a few years after they made similar concessions in Hostess' previous, mishandled bankruptcy. "The forces most responsible" for the liquidation, CNBC's John Carney writes, "were two hedge funds that control hundreds of millions of Hostess debt and which have finally decided they won't squeeze any more filling into the Twinkie."

Only Silver Point and Monarch could have kept Hostess out of liquidation and kept the Twinkie bakery ovens firing. But they were, ultimately, unable to reach a deal with the unions that represents the workers who make and deliver products like Twinkies, Wonderbread and Ding Dongs. Without large union concessions—what some would say, total union capitulation—the hedge funds decided Hostess would have to die.

Hostess has clearly been mismanaged in recent years after having grown through the previous decades in ways that make its structure, including its labor force, especially complicated. But the end game is that private equity firms came in to do what they do: squeeze profits for their own multimillionaire investors at whatever cost to workers and to the company itself. Who cares if tens of thousands of workers are left unemployed and without the means to retire? Not Silver Point or Monarch, as long as they get their money. Who cares if Hostess exists tomorrow? Not Silver Point or Monarch, as long as they get their money.

These union members had faced a slow bleed for years. The only question for them was whether to accept an accelerated bleed and hope it would stop in a few years—but hope that in the knowledge that that was not a priority or even necessarily a desirable outcome to Hostess' private equity owners—or to fight for what they earned. We're hearing, and can expect to keep hearing, a lot about how it's so unreasonable of union members to expect to get the pay and benefits they negotiated and worked for, the pensions they've planned their retirements around. Because this is coming after a generation-long war on pensions and unions and middle-class wages. As AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said in a statement, "What’s happening with Hostess Brands is a microcosm of what’s wrong with America, as Bain-style Wall Street vultures make themselves rich by making America poor." Read on...

And from Think Progress -- Hostess Blames Union For Bankruptcy After Tripling CEO’s Pay:

Today, Hostess Brands inc. — the company famed for its sickly sweet desert snacks like Twinkies and Sno Balls — announced they’d be shuttering after more than eighty years of production.

But while headlines have been quick to blame unions for the downfall of the company there’s actually more to the story: While the company was filing for bankruptcy, for the second time, earlier this year, it actually tripled its CEO’s pay, and increased other executives’ compensation by as much as 80 percent. [...]

Certainly, the company agreed to an out-sized pension debt, but the decision to pay executives more while scorning employee contracts during a bankruptcy reflects a lack of good managerial judgement.

It also follows a trend of rising CEO pay in times of economic difficulty. At the manufacturing company Caterpillar, for example, they froze workers’ pay while boosting their CEO’s pay to $17 million. And at Citigroup, CEO Vikram Pandit received $6.7 million for crashing his company, walking off with $260 million after the business lost 88 percent of its value.

Don't expect to hear that reported on Fox though. In Fox-land, it's always the greedy overpaid union thugs that are the heart of all of our problems.

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Here we go again with yet another segment on Fox where they're downplaying the use of pepper spray on the Occupy UC Davis protesters. This time, it was Sean Hannity and his guests, Fox Business' Charles Payne and frequent Fox guest, Margaret Hoover.

Even though all of them admitted that it looked like an excessive amount of the spray being used on the students, Payne played the same game as Megyn Kelly did on O'Reilly's show, saying that the military grade pepper spray must have been watered down because the students didn't appear to react badly enough to it in the clip. They also implied that they did something to provoke the over-reaction and brutality inflicted on them by the police.

Hannity, who famously refused to take up Keith's Olbermann's request for him to be waterboarded after Hannity said he'd consent to undergo the procedure to prove it's not torture as a fundraiser for the troops, didn't think the action by the police "crossed the line."

At least none of them called it "a food product, essentially" this time.

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Bill Nye "The Science Guy" found himself in the tough position Monday of explaining science to Fox Business guest host Charles Payne.

Payne began the Freedom Watch segment by pressing Nye to prove that Hurricane Irene was caused by global warming.

"I don't think the word proof is what you are looking for," Nye told Payne. "Evidence or result of? Yeah."

"Here's the thing though, Bill," Payne said. "Ever since Katrina, we heard that the hurricane season is going to be more devastating and it was apocalyptic and the end of the world. And the reality is we haven't seen that. So, how can Newsweek say this is a new normal? Is this irresponsible or is there any science behind that?"

"Well, there's a lot more science behind it than saying it's not," Nye flatly stated. "But that aside, that's only six years. In geologic times or in terms of climate events, that's not very long."

"The world is getting warmer, everybody. The world is getting warmer... Do we not agree the world is getting warmer?"

"I have no idea," Payne admitted. "Someone told me it's one degree in the last hundred years and I'll take their word for it."

The Fox Business host then changed the subject to Al Gore's suggestion that climate change deniers need to be confronted just as racists were confronted during the civil rights movement.

"[Gore is] very passionate about it," Nye explained. "As the world has become smaller -- this is to say that as communication has become better and better, and we get to know each other better, we all travel all over the world. It's routine to get on a plane and go to Asia and come back. As we get to know each other, we realize we are all one species; we are all the same human. But in tribal times, the importance of your tribe was so great that you were afraid of other tribes."

"If someone from New England has sex with someone from Papua, New Guinea, you get a human. You don't get anything else. So, racism is scientifically not especially compelling. If you learn the science of it, you let go of it. And when you learn the science of climate change, in my opinion, you will find it quite compelling and you will want to do something about it rather than pretend it doesn't happen."

"We brought you on because we knew you could connect the dots," Payne interrupted. "Although the route you've taken is still confusing some of the viewers."

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If Jon Stewart and his staff need more material for segments like the one he did this week -- slamming Fox for attacking Warren Buffett for saying the rich should pay more in taxes and attacking the poor as a bunch of freeloaders who just want to suck off the government teet and for daring to have things like refrigerators and air conditioning -- you need not look any further than their "business block" that airs on Fox "News" every Saturday morning.

Here's how Cavuto opened up the segment in the clip above:

CAVUTO: Sock it to the rich! But what if I told you there aren't as many rich folks to sock?

Oh my god! We can't have that now can we? Naturally that means we can never raise taxes on anyone that's still in those upper income brackets. Cavuto goes on to quote some statistics from the IRS showing that there were 13% fewer people earning $200,000 and above from 2007-2009 and 55% less making $10 million and above during that same period and tells Ben Stein that that's not a good trend.

Ben Stein was actually the voice of reason here with his response to Cavuto and pointing out that that doesn't mean there still aren't plenty of rich people around and it wouldn't kill them to pay more in taxes. Cavuto responds by asking him if he thinks those making over $200.000 are rich and out there buying jet airplanes. Stein got a pretty good shot in on Cavuto by telling him, no, he was talking about people like him, who have incomes of $10 million a year or more.

Cavuto and his panel end up spending the rest of the segment pretending that the poor don't pay any taxes because many of them don't pay federal income tax and having another pity party for the rich if anyone like Warren Buffett dares to say they should pay higher taxes.

UPDATE: And surprise, surprise, it appears those stats are cherry-picked to suit their new meme over at the Wall Street Journal and now Fox "News." Here's more from Media Matters breaking that down -- "Millionaires Go Missing?" WSJ And Fox Cherry-Pick Stats To Claim Number Of Millionaires Shrinking.

(Post title updated as well.)

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Fox's Neil Cavuto and his weekend show panel were terribly upset that HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said that seniors may die sooner under Rep. Paul Ryan and the GOP's budget plan during testimony before the House Education and the Workforce Committee this week.

Apparently their vote for Ryan's budget has got a lot of Republicans on edge and as Steve Benen noted, some of them are using the same talking points as the Fox pundits did here.

When Rep. Chris Lee (R) resigned in disgrace in February, few expected his seat to change party hands. His Buffalo-area district has been represented by Republicans for a long while, and national Democrats didn’t expect the special election to replace Lee to be competitive at all.

In March, the New York GOP rallied behind Jane Corwin, a well-liked state assemblywoman, and the race in the 26th congressional district appeared to be largely over.

And then a Siena College poll was published, showing Corwin’s lead at just five points over Democrat Kathy Hochul. What happened?

Part of the competitiveness is the result of Jack Davis, an odd millionaire, running as an independent and splitting the right. And the other part is Paul Ryan’s House Republican budget plan. [...]

At this point, the best the Republican campaign can come up with is the charge that Democrats “are trying to scare seniors.” But that’s awfully weak — it’s not demagoguery if it’s true, and if accurate descriptions of the GOP plan end up scaring people, that’s certainly not Democrats’ fault.

During this segment on Cavuto's show they were a bit long on fearmongering themselves and short on just what the details of Ryan's plan are, even though all of them continually maintained that the people attacking it don't know what's in it and need to go read it. And Steve is exactly right on the "scare tactic" talking point; that's a terribly weak argument. Seniors are afraid and upset because once they get a look at the GOP's budget plan and the details, they don't like it, not because they don't realize fully what it means for Medicare - privatizing it.

Of course the panel here just repeated the tired talking point that Medicare needs to be and handed over to the private insurance industry in order to "save it."