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I have to give CNN's Ali Velshi kudos here, because he did something we don't see often enough on our corporate media. He fact checked someone right on the air and called them out for not telling the truth during an interview. Then he followed up during the same program so the viewers who watched the interview would see it. I was glad to see that happen during his New Year's Ever interview with Rep. Tim Huelskamp.

He actually went a long way in making up for the terrible interview with Huelskamp's fellow wingnut Rep. Marsha Blackburn the previous evening, where he allowed her to filibuster him and rattle off way too many of her talking points unchecked. I still don't think it makes up for him having the Wall Street Journal hack Stephen Moore just about every stinking week on his weekend show, Your Money, without some liberal economists for balance.

Velshi laid into Huelskamp for pretending that raising taxes on those making over $250,000 a year is going to harm a large number of the small businesses out there and those so-called "job creators," and gave him some grief for the stats he was quoting as well.

Ali Velshi Tears Into GOP Congressman Over ‘Misleading Statistic’: ‘You’re On CNN Right Now’:

Huelskamp disputed Velshi’s claim and said that he had “seen research” that raising taxes would impact “41% of business income.” Velshi called him out on his language, saying “41% of business income is not 41% of business, that’s a very, very different and somewhat misleading statistic.” Again Velshi asked, “You understand the distinction, right?”

Velshi then proceeded to silence Huelskamp from speaking any further, saying, “Sir, you put out information to our viewers, you’re on CNN right now. I would like the information to be accurate.” Huelskamp fought to answer, and when he was asked by Velshi whether he wanted to stand by his information, he said, “That’s our best guess. We’re still working on that.”

“I think that’s a guess,” Velshi retorted.

According to Huelskamp, part of the difficulty in obtaining accurate information is that the Obama administration won’t tell his team anything. Velshi slammed him for this misstatement, saying, “We actually don’t have any difficulty getting that information, sir. We don’t need it from the administration, that information is public.”

The post at Mediaite did not take note of the fact that he followed up during the same hour and fact checked Huelskamp for the viewers who had just watched the interview. I say good for him for doing this. It's too bad that this is the exception and not the norm on every channel with any politician who comes on the air and lies to the viewers.

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VELSHI: Wolf, I just want to... I've been doing some research as I promised I would do in the conversation that we had with Congressman Tim Huelskamp, quoting what he said was a study by Montana State University. We're working our way through that study, but I'll tell you the facts that we have right now.

If businesses... if everybody who earned more than $250 thousand saw an increase in the top tax rate from 36 percent to 39.6 percent, that would be 3.5 percent of all small businesses. That would be 940,000 businesses. That's I think a number that the Congressman was quoting. So at $450,000, it is nowhere near the number that the Congressman was quoting.

But let's just be generous and say that it was that. Of that number, only a very small proportion are not hedge funds, partnerships, law firms, companies that don't employ a whole lot of other people. So the Congressman's facts are just incorrect on this. There is nowhere near a million businesses that will be affected by this increase of taxing people above $450,000.

Go read the whole thing, but I wanted to share at least this portion of Robert Reich's post from this Saturday: Bedford Falls or Pottersville?:

But we are still in danger of the “Pottersville” Capra saw as the consequence of what happens when Americans fail to join together and forget the meaning of the public good.

If Lionel Barrymore’s “Mr. Potter” were alive today he’d call himself a “job creator” and condemn George Bailey as a socialist. He’d be financing a fleet of lobbyists to get lower taxes on multi-millionaires like himself, overturn environmental laws, trample on workers’ rights, and shred social safety nets. He’d fight any form of gun control. He’d want the citizens of Pottersville to be economically insecure – living paycheck to paycheck and worried about losing their jobs – so they’d be dependent on his good graces.

The Mr. Potters are still alive and well in America, threatening our democracy with their money and our common morality with their greed.

Call me old fashioned or overly sentimental but I still believe the George Baileys will win this contest. They know we’re all in it together, and that if we succumb to the Potters we lose America and relinquish the future.

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Stephen Colbert had a bit of fun with GOP presidential candidate 'Rmoney' after his comments that President Obama didn't get the message from Wisconsin about cutting teachers and firefighters.

COLBERT: Well said. Obama is totally out of touch. Romney then flew off in his private jet to watch Rafalca compete in the national dressage championship.

And Romney was just getting luke-warmed up. […]

Yes! Only Romney has the courage to say what we're all thinking. America is being sucked dry by fireman, policeman and teachers. These big-government teet moochers are so lazy they can't even take the stairs. Some of them slide down poles.

Must be nice. And the worst part folks is our kids look up to these parasites. Ask any brainwashed six year old what he wants to be when he grows up and it's always members of public service unions; firemen, policemen, teachers.

Kids need to start admiring society's real heroes; job creators.

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As Media Matters reported, Fox's John Stossell went on Fox & Friends to discuss his special Rich Man, Poor Man which aired on both of their networks, and made some dubious claims about what's happened to income growth for those who are living in poverty:

Fox Mangles Data To Claim "The Poor" Are Getting "Richer":

Fox's John Stossel claimed that it's a "myth" that "the poor are getting poorer" and that they are actually getting "richer." In fact, incomes for the bottom fifth have shown almost no growth in recent decades, and the numbers Stossel used to support his argument were cherry-picked.

Incomes At The Bottom Have Shown Almost No Growth In Decades; Stossel Calls It "Getting Richer"

Stossel: "The Rich Have Gotten Richer, But So Have The Poor." From Fox News' Fox & Friends:

STOSSEL: There are just two myths. One is that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. And the truth is yes, over time the rich have gotten richer, but so have the poor -- 20 percent richer since I was in college. [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 5/24/12]

CBPP: "The Era Of Shared Prosperity Ended In The 1970s." From the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report:

Census family income data show that the era of shared prosperity ended in the 1970s and illustrate the divergence in income that has emerged since that time. CBO data allow us to look at what has happened to comprehensive income since 1979 -- both before and after taxes -- and offer a better view of what has happened at the top of the distribution.

As Figure 2 shows, between 1979 and 2007, average income after taxes in the top 1 percent of the distribution rose 277 percent, meaning that it nearly quadrupled. That compares with increases of about 40 percent in the middle 60 percent of the distribution and 18 percent in the bottom fifth.

The report included this graph:

[Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 3/5/12]

Media Matters has a lot more charts and information in their post along with debunking more of what Stossel said on the air.

Here's the promo for Stossel's special which you can watch the very beginning of in the clip above from Fox Business Channel where it originally aired this week: Rich Man, Poor Man:

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Charlie Rose actually broke from his standard fare which is generally populated by the likes of David Brooks and Tom Friedman and their cohorts in the corporate media and had a conversation with authors Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer about their new book, The Gardens of Democracy: A New American Story of Citizenship, the Economy, and the Role of Government.

After watching this interview, I don't think Mitt Romney will be recommending this particular edition of Rose's show as required viewing any time soon. Both men discussed the fact that if we truly want to get our economy moving, those "job creators" are middle class consumers and the fact that when all of us are doing better and there is shared prosperity. That is something that is still completely lost on our political class these days, with way too many of them still pushing the idea that austerity and tackling our debt without putting Americans back to work is going to solve our problems with our sluggish economy.

If anyone has any doubts about why austerity measures like those pushed by the conservatives both here and in the U.K. are not a model we want to follow, just go look at the chart and read Steve Benen's post here -- Why the U.K. recession matters in U.S. politics.

They cited Henry Ford's theory that it was better to overpay his workers so that they could afford the product they were producing and advocated for taxes going up on the rich and for the taxes on investments to be raised, even if they're kept just slightly lower on those on wages and labor, so not to stifle the incentive for investments in America.

Whether anyone agrees or disagrees with all of the authors' points made during this interview, I think it was a whole lot more healthy discussion than what we're typically treated to from our corporate media. I don't think Rose made up for the countless hours he's allowed of Brooks and Friedman and their ilk to be spouting nonsense on his show unchallenged with this interview, but he certainly took a step in the right direction with having them on and with allowing a conversation where what we've been hearing over and over from Republican politicians on how jobs are created in our economy is challenged.

They both thoroughly debunked trickle-down economics and why it does not work and why Mitt Romney is full of crap with his talking points about being a “job creator” while he was at Bain during this interview.

Here's a short description of their book from Amazon:

American democracy is informed by the 18th century’s most cutting edge thinking on society, economics, and government. We’ve learned some things in the intervening 230 years about self interest, social behaviors, and how the world works. Now, authors Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer argue that some fundamental assumptions about citizenship, society, economics, and government need updating. For many years the dominant metaphor for understanding markets and government has been the machine. Liu and Hanauer view democracy not as a machine, but as a garden. A successful garden functions according to the inexorable tendencies of nature, but it also requires goals, regular tending, and an understanding of connected ecosystems. The latest ideas from science, social science, and economics—the cutting-edge ideas of today--generate these simple but revolutionary ideas:

True self interest is mutual interest. (Society, it turns out, is an ecosystem that is healthiest when we take care of the whole.)

More of their interview below the fold.

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The Republican Party decided to bring out the author of the controversial Blunt Amendment, that thankfully was killed in the Senate last month, which would have allowed employers to deny coverage of health services to their employees on the basis of personal moral objections, to give their weekly address this Saturday.

Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt continued with the GOP's series of attacks on the Obama administration for the rising price of gas, of course conveniently omitting the fact that they soared to record heights after Republicans deregulated oil speculation back in 2008.

Blunt was also still flogging the Keystone pipeline project as some great "job creator" even though, as Media Matters' Political Correction noted, the numbers given by Republicans on the number of jobs created have been highly inflated and a lot of those jobs would be temporary or go to workers in other countries.

And like his buddy John Boehner over in the House, Blunt was calling the Buffett rule a "gimmick" because we all know that anything a Democrat proposes that might lower our deficit but doesn't fix the problem completely is a cheap trick, but when Republicans propose to go after the funding for Planned Parenthood, they're being completely serious about reducing the deficit and not just playing partisan politics.

Transcript of Blunt's remarks below the fold.

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House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) on Tuesday refused to define "rich" because the wealthiest Americans were "job creators," and accused President Barack Obama of "verbal tantrums" for calling his proposed budget "thinly veiled social Darwinism."

During a speech in Washington last week, Obama blasted Republicans for proposing "more than a trillion dollars in tax giveaways for people making more than $250,000 a year."

"That's an average of at least $150,000 for every millionaire in this country," the president said. "It is a Trojan horse disguised as deficit reduction plans. It is really an attempt to impose a radical vision on our country. It is thinly veiled social Darwinism. It is antithetical to our entire history as a land of opportunity."

Speaking to MSNBC on Tuesday, Ryan shrugged off Obama's criticism.

"We're kind of used to these verbal tantrums from the president," the Wisconsin Republican opined.

"That was a verbal tantrum?" co-host Mika Brzezinski asked.

"I would think so," Ryan insisted. "Look at it this way, Mika, we proposed to increase annual federal spending from $3.6 trillion a year to $4.9 trillion over the ten year period instead of the president's $5.5 trillion. Apparently, the difference of that makes us social Darwinists?"

"You hear this kind of over-the-top rhetoric. I really think it more of a rhetorical broadside to distract from the fact the president isn't proposing solutions. He can't run on his record. He can't run on his broken promises. So, he's gong to use this kind of rhetoric to divide and distract Americans."

The non-partisan Center for Budget and Policy Priorities found that nearly two-thirds of the cuts proposed in Ryan's budget would be to programs serving low-income Americans, while the his tax cuts would largely benefit millionaires. People making more than $1 million a year would see a 12.5 percent increase in after-tax income but those making less than $20,000 would see an increase of 0.2 percent or less.

Ryan argued on Tuesday that because he would close tax loopholes for the rich, the tax cuts would be revenue neutral.

"You talk about deductions and who should get them and who should not, that's sort of making choices," Brzezinski noted. "What then is wrong with the Buffett rule [to address income inequality and tax fairness]?"

"It represents a huge tax increase on job creators," Ryan argued. "Remember that 80 percent of our businesses file their taxes as individuals so they would get hit by this Buffett rule.

"Let's define rich," Scarborough suggested. "So, what's the cutoff? Is it $500,000?"

"I don't even want to get into what the cutoff is because I don't think we should get into this definition," Ryan said. "But I'm not going to give you what I think is a rich person and what I think is not a rich person because you have to look at the fact that these are job creators."

(H/T: The Huffington Post)

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Nothing like watching Republicans eating their own. On Fox's America Live, host Megyn Kelly first talked to Newt Gingrich Super PAC, Winning Our Future, adviser Rick Tyler about the half hour long documentary, When Mitt Romney Came to Town, now being aired heavily in South Carolina, which attacks Romney for his time at Bain Capital and his claims that he's somehow a "job creator."

Tyler defended the documentary, calling Romney a vulture capitalist, who unlike venture capitalists who come up with new services and innovations, make their money picking companies apart and raiding their pension funds.

For anyone who hasn't seen the documentary, it's available on line now, and it's pretty scathing. You can watch the entire video here -- King of Bain.

And we may have gotten rid of Pat Buchanan on MSNBC, but unfortunately we've still got his sister Bay showing up on Fox (where I suspect we'll see more of Pat as well) and Kelly followed up by bringing her on to defend Romney. When asked about Romney's time at Bain Capital, Buchanan rambled on with their usual talking points that you're just attacking the "free enterprise system" if anyone dares to say anything negative about how Romney and his rich friends conducted business there, painted what they did as a positive for the economy and called the Gingrich campaign "desperate" for the attacks.

I can't disagree that they're not, but I don't think Romney's going to come out of this unscathed. His Super PAC went after Gingrich hard in Iowa and it's payback time from Newt.

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The more things change, the more they stay the same. Rep. Nan Hayworth (R-NY) delivered this week's Republican address and lo and behold, they're still pretending like they care about job creation and pushing their House Republican Plan for America's Job Creators that Jon Perr wrote about here last October:

As it turns out, this is one of those rare occasions where John Boehner is right. After all, that same day Boehner's Republican colleagues in the Senate introduced their own GOP jobs plan titled the "Jobs Through Growth Act." Of course, President Obama could be forgiven for assuming the GOP had nothing new to say on the subject of the economy. Because as a quick glance reveals, John McCain's new "Jobs Through Growth Act" like Eric Cantor's "House Republican Plan for America's Job Creators" is just a cynical rehash of the same tried and untrue policies the GOP has been pushing for years.

That the Senate Republicans' ersatz plan is a merely a repackaging of a years-old Republican wish list is apparent from the description on John McCain's web site. It's not merely a litany of existing GOP legislation; the call for upper class tax cuts, cutting federal regulations and tort reform could have come straight out of George W. Bush's 2000 campaign playbook. And the demands for steep spending cuts, a balanced budget amendment, 25% tax rates for individuals and corporations and the repeal of the Affordable Care Act are just a copy and paste from the Republicans' Ryan budget, the GOP "Pledge to America", the Tea Party "Contract from America" and other recent conservative manifestoes mercifully consigned to the dustbin of history.

Of course, if you think you've heard this story before, that's because you have. Read on...

Republicans also obviously have no shame whatsoever when they can continue to lie to the American public and pretend like they care about job creation when they are the ones who have been doing everything possible to sabotage any economic recovery.

Transcript below the fold.

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It seems millionaire Nick Hanauer's recent op-ed on why we need to be taxing the rich in America has, as Steve Benen explained, “caused a stir, and with good reason.”

Political Animal – Raise Nick Hanauer's Taxes:

If Hanauer’s name doesn’t sound familiar, he’s a very successful venture capitalist, playing a role in the creation of companies like Amazon.com. This week, he took on a standard Republican talking point: the notion that job creation suffers if taxes go up on the rich. Hanauer explained very well why the GOP’s approach is backwards.

I can start a business based on a great idea, and initially hire dozens or hundreds of people. But if no one can afford to buy what I have to sell, my business will soon fail and all those jobs will evaporate.

That’s why I can say with confidence that rich people don’t create jobs, nor do businesses, large or small. What does lead to more employment is the feedback loop between customers and businesses. And only consumers can set in motion a virtuous cycle that allows companies to survive and thrive and business owners to hire. An ordinary middle-class consumer is far more of a job creator than I ever have been or ever will be.

It appears that Hanauer, unlike GOP policymakers, understands supply and demand, and that three decades of concentrating wealth at the top doesn’t create an economic base that ensures broad prosperity. Republicans can keep lavishing more and more money on the rich, but they’ll only spend so much. [...]

Hanauer’s advice? Raise his taxes, make public investments, and get some money in the pockets of middle-class consumers.

Digby’s take on this rings true: “This is a person who really doesn’t want to kill the golden goose of capitalism but would like to save it. It doesn’t speak well for the future of capitalism that there are so few entrepreneurs like him.”

Damn straight.

Be sure to go read the entire editorial here -- Raise Taxes on Rich to Reward True Job Creators: Nick Hanauer.

Hanauer was a guest on Neil Cavuto's show on Fox Business this Wednesday and he did a great job knocking down every one of Cavuto's arguments and straw men as Cavuto desperately tried to rebut Hanauer's assertions on why the rich aren't paying enough in taxes.

Here's the shortened version of their conversation with a tiny bit of paraphrasing and which does not reflect Cavuto constantly interrupting and talking over Hanauer.

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