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QOTD from Marco Rubio on this Sunday's Meet the Press:

And I think the best way to do that is for the Republican Party to prove, as I think we can, that we are the party of upward mobility. We are not the party of the people who have made it. Certainly we don't begrudge people who have made it. We celebrate what they've done. And in America, we've always celebrated success.

But we are the party that stands for the people who are trying to make it, the people who are trying to start a business out of the spare bedroom of their home, who are trying to give their kids a better life.

Riiiigggghhht. I don't think you could say the majority of those in the Congress other than the Progressive Caucus in the House and a few I could count on one hand in the Senate are looking out for most of us these days, but Republicans have shown by their actions for a long time now just who they represent, and it's definitely those "who have made it" -- or in other words, the 1 percent.

Full transcript below the fold.

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From this Wednesday's The Young Turks: On US income inequality: ‘We are redistributing income in this country — up’ :

Cenk and investigative journalist David Cay Johnston dig into ongoing income inequality struggles in the United States. Between 1966 and 2011, the richest 1 percent of Americans saw their average income increase by more than $18 million. Meanwhile the bottom 90 percent have only seen average incomes increase by $59. Cenk asks, “Are we being robbed blind?” Johnston says, “Oh, unbelievably. This is not because American workers have suddenly gotten lazy. It’s because government policies have changed, and what they’re doing is the exact opposite of the myth we’re being sold.”

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The Krugman-bashing on Morning Joe continued unabated Wednesday, following Joe Scarborough and Paul Krugman's debate the other night on Charlie Rose's show. It seems the right has been looking for countries to prop up to prove that their calls for more austerity measures in the United States are not going to harm the economy and they've found at least one in the tiny Baltic nation of Estonia.

Scarborough started things off in the clip above by writing off our current economic circumstances as just another "period of deleveraging" where the United States needs to get its fiscal house in order with absolutely no reference to the fact that we should not be taking a series of booms and busts as the norm, or the part that deregulation and the dismantling all of the protections that were put in place following the Great Depression to attempt to prevent these types of cycles from happening again have played.

After Scarborough pointed out the fact that Americans and particularly young people are not longer racking up debt, but are also not spending and pumping money into the economy, his guest and CNBC regular Miles Nadal then moved onto the Krugman bashing:

NADAL: So when you say, are you positive on the economy, I'm positive in a cautious kind of way, but as Joe articulated on The Charlie Rose Show, which I thought was really a terrific debate, there are things on the horizon that are very scary. And I thought Paul Krugman's perspective was kind of, a little frightening in the sense that he didn't see any possibility of any Black Swan on anything that's happening and if you talk to any informed business person, that's not possible that you could completely eliminate the probability that nothing, including this multi-trillion dollar deficit would have no impact.

And as we articulated in the green room, nobody could run a company or a home the way the government is running things.

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Republicans have done a whole lot of things to damage their "brand" and still haven't figured out what to do to quit being the "stupid party" after their losses in the last election, but note to Kathleen Parker -- refusing to raise taxes in order to lower the budget deficit is not one of them. The majority of their own constituents don't agree with them on this issue, but that didn't stop Parker from pretending it would damage them on this Sunday's Meet the Press:

GREGORY: What's striking to me is that these issues are still so hard and that the elections didn't seem to solve them completely enough. […] Is that true? I mean, why didn't it?

PARKER: Why didn't it? Because, look, the Republicans cannot give on taxes. They simply can't. It would damage their brand permanently and the President is unwilling... he is insisting on raising revenue through taxes. There's no way for them to have a meeting of the minds when those differences exist and that's not going to change.

Republicans are not worried about damaging their brand on tax increases with anyone other than the members of the one percent who are paying to keep them in office.

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I don't make a habit of watching CBNC, and this disgusting display by one of their anchors, corporate CEO suck-up Maria Bartiromo is one of the reasons why. Mediaite posted this segment, and apparently the author over there didn't find anything wrong with Bartiromo's behavior and just quoted the fact that she decided to go off on Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin for not making a deal yet with Republicans during these so-called "fiscal cliff" negotiations and had the Wall Street traders cheering for her once she was done.

Roxpert over at Daily KOS had a, shall we say, slightly different reaction to this interview, which I share: WATCH!: CNBC's Maria Bartiromo attacks Ben Cardin...:

This is an example of why conservative corporate media is stoking the flames raging in America that causes some people to become unhinged. She interviewed Senator Ben Cardin this afternoon, and hardly let him speak as you'll see after the squiggle...

Maria's behavior toward Senator Cardin was over the top. CNBC has a slogan called "Rise Above" to try to be an activist network and get a compromise fiscal cliff agreement. Of course, to corporatist conservatives like Bartiromo, the DEMS are the ones in the way of any agreement and she hates, HATES, that senators actually would like to raise taxes on the rich as this video clip shows clearly...

How many times did Maria interrupt Senator Cardin, mid-sentence? How could she get away with asking him to step down if we can't get an agreement? How does she get off questioning his competence? The people of Maryland may have a different idea.

As they noted, she really owes the Senator an apology for her behavior, but I don't expect we'll get one any time soon. Bartiromo and her ilk care about protecting one thing and that's the ultra-wealthy in our society and it's a shame Cardin didn't do a better job at pushing back at her, but when you're interrupted and cut off at every turn, that's not too easy to do. He did about as well as anyone might hope for given how hostile her questioning was toward him and with how much he was even allowed to speak.

I'm also sick and tired of any of these talking heads like Bartiromo pretending that Republicans have actually put tax loopholes on the table, when they've refused to specify a single one that they would vote for. Bartiromo is being paid pretty well to make sure the interests of the 1 percent in this country are protected, and she's got that feigned outrage down pat just like a ton of Republicans we sadly get treated to on the air these days. If anyone isn't sure what a hissy fit looks like about the fact that it's possible their taxes might go up, all you have to do is watch the clip above.

Bartiromo is being paid a salary of $1 million a year and has a net worth of about $22 million. It's a shame that information isn't run in the chyron under her name on the air every time she opens her mouth so the viewers would be made aware of her conflict of interest with her so-called "reporting" every time she starts carping about taxes on the rich going up. It's her own taxes she's complaining about.

You can watch the whole interview at CNBC's site here if you've got the stomach for it.

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While continuing their conversation about whether government workers' salaries and whether the states can afford to be making good on their pension funds or not when a lot of them are facing huge problems with their budgets, AFL-CIO deputy chief of staff Thea Lee made the point that there's no reason we should not be raising taxes on the wealthiest among us who can afford it rather than cutting services or going after workers' pension funds.

And as NEA president Dennis Van Roekel noted in the follow up to Fox's Chris Wallace, it's not your average worker out there that's a problem when it comes to who is being overpaid:

VAN ROEKEL: You know, the last 29 years, productivity up 80 percent, hourly wages up eight. The lowest one-fifth, their wages up 18 percent. But the top one percent, their wages go up 275 percent.

We have got to find a way to lift all citizens, not just a few. Not a 1 percent, not just the wealthy few.

He's right of course, but it's a message I'm sure Fox would prefer most of their viewers don't hear too often. CEO pay and executive compensation have been out of whack compared to average your average worker's salary for decades now, but as soon as anyone says we should do something about it, Republicans start screaming about "class warfare," as though most people aren't aware of who it's actually being waged on.

Full transcript below the fold.

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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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Bill O'Reilly's been on a hell of a tear this week attacking the Occupy Wall Street movement. On this Monday's show, he was calling them "terrorists" because a protester was giving him a hard time while watching a show on Broadway. Our friends over at News Hounds have more on that and O'Reilly's double standard when it comes to what sort of protesters he likes.

And never mind the hypocrisy of someone like Bill O'Reilly having the nerve to call protesters "terrorists" when he's done his best to inspire a few actual terrorists of his own as Dave Neiwert wrote about here: Bill O'Reilly has Dr. George Tiller's blood on his well-stained hands.

This Tuesday, he followed up as promised and here's how Fox's blog, Fox Nation promoted the piece tonight: The O'Reilly Factor: The Architects of The Occupy Movement:

Bill O’Reilly Asks: Who is Backing the Occupy Protesters and Why Won’t President Obama Repudiate the Movement?

Thousands of protesters and members of the Occupy movement hit the streets of Chicago during the NATO summit. 90 people were arrested and dozens were injured including a police officer who was stabbed. Tonight on The O’Reilly Factor, host Bill O’Reilly looked further into who is really behind the movement, which he notes is now very well organized. He called it a “hardcore, far-left movement designed to cause as much trouble as possible.”

He found that the movement is being run out of Washington, D.C. in offices belonging to the Institute for Policy Studies. The director of the Institute is John Cavanagh, a longtime liberal activist and his nonprofit accepts money from George Soros through the Tides Foundation. O’Reilly also reported that the Service Employees International Union headed by Mary Kay Henry is paying rent for the OWS crew in D.C. at about $4,000 month.

O’Reilly stated, “It is long past time for President Obama to condemn the anarchistic element of the occupiers, which is now dominant. Instead, the president falls back on protecting freedom of speech platitudes. Sure, tell that to the Chicago cop who got stabbed, Mr. President.”

The Institute for Policy Studies' John Cavanagh responded to O'Reilly's attacks on their organization and Occupy Wall Street later that same evening here: The Nonsense Zone:

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From this Tuesday evening's The Young Turks, Cenk Uygur discusses why we're finally seeing many Americans angry enough to be taking to the streets, with details on some recent reports about the growing income disparity in the United States.

Here's more on the stats Cenk was highlighting in the clip above from Think Progress -- As The Richest Americans Get Richer, The Rest Are Drowning In Debt:

That inequality has crushed the middle class and has perilous consequences for the American economy. It is also contributing to another problem: rising debt inequality. As income inequality has risen, the bottom 95 percent of Americans have fallen deeper into debt over the last three decades, according to a new report from the International Monetary Fund. The top five percent, meanwhile, have seen their personal debt reduced, CNN Money reports:

In 1983, the bottom 95% had 62 cents of debt for every dollar they earned, according to research by two International Monetary Fund economists. But by 2007, the ratio had soared to $1.48 of debt for every $1 in earnings.

The bottom 95% had incomes of roughly $160,000 or less in 2007, including capital gains.

And then there’s the top 5%. Their debt-to-income level actually fell during the same period, from 76 cents of debt for every dollar earned in 1983, to just 64 cents in 2007.

The contributors to rising income and debt inequality are clear — for the richest Americans, incomes are rising rapidly while tax rates have fallen to historic lows. The rest, however, are increasingly burdened by student loan debt as the cost of college soars, mortgage debt as the prices on their homes have plummeted, and credit card debt as they’ve tried to keep their head above water despite stagnant wages and rising unemployment.

And from The Economic Policy Institute Blog -- It’s executives and the finance sector that did it!:

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Add Charlie Rose to the list of the Villagers in the media who are just dying to see more austerity for Americans and for President Obama and the Congress to make good on their "grand bargain" that they were thankfully unable to reach an agreement on last summer.

Speaker of the House John Boehner made an appearance on Rose's show on PBS Wednesday evening, part of which was re-aired on CBS the following morning. Rose allowed Boehner to give plenty of revisionist history on who was not willing to cooperate with whom during the failed negotiations last year, quoting Matt Bai's account of the collapse of the agreements which Mother Jones' David Corn debunked here: The Times Gets It Wrong on the Debt Deal.

Rose also allowed Boehner to repeat the zombie Republican lie that the upper one percent pay forty percent of income taxes, which completely distorts that actual tax rates that most Americans pay, since it ignores the percentage everyone else pays out in payroll taxes and state and local taxes. It also ignores the fact that the percentages are that high for the income tax because that one percent also happens to have almost all of the money, so of course they're paying the bulk of the taxes.

Rose also allowed Boehner to play the same game we saw from CNN's Erin Burnett the other day that Cenk Uygur went after her for, dismissing the Buffett rule as a "budget gimmick" that would do nothing meaningful to bring the deficit down, so of course that means it's not worth doing since it won't solve the entire problem.

And Rose let Boehner get away with claiming the Ryan budget will do nothing to harm the poor or our social safety nets, which we know is patently false, without calling him out for it. We're also treated to Rose asking Boehner such important questions such as whether the Speaker and President Obama ever go out and have dinner or a drink together, because we know the most important thing is for all of them to get along, as opposed to how damaging the policies Rose was pushing here are. And what would any interview be if we weren't also treated to the Greece false equivalency. Austerity!!! ... or we're going to wind up being Greece! ... as they discuss the best way to take us there.

Rough transcript below the fold.

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