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After complaining about the fact that the economic recovery in the United States hasn't been as robust as most people would like to see and of course blaming President Obama for the number of people who are still out of work, The O'Reilly Factor's guest host, Laura Ingraham, brought in Fox regular Gary B. Smith and Demos' David Callahan to discuss the topic. To no one's surprise, when Callahan suggested that the wealth being generated by our economy is going to the 1 percent and that stronger labor unions and a higher minimum wage might help to fix that problem, he was immediately pooh-poohed by Ingraham.

INGRAHAM: Stronger labor unions? How do we compete with China, Vietnam, South Korea, India, when we are going to have stronger labor unions that insure that we have more work place regulations, more ways that business has to pay more money to make ends meet? The two things don't add up.

Ingraham went on to complain that it's unfair to blame our obstructionist Congress for any of the problems with our economy. She then allowed Smith to make the claim that unionization doesn't work and that is why we have record low levels of unionization in the United States.

Sorry Gary, but record low numbers of union members is not because unions "don't work" or because people don't want to join unions. It's due to union busting and having the laws stacked against them. Unions have worked just fine for what they're supposed to do, which is collectively bargain for better working conditions and wages for their membership -- and we can thank unions for things like ending child labor, the 40 hour work week, overtime pay, and a long list of other protections for workers too long to list here.

I have a question for Laura Ingraham. If she would like a race to the bottom in the name of staying competitive, maybe she can volunteer to work for that same wage, instead of being paid millions to bloviate on the radio and Fox “News”. If below-minimum wage keeps us competitive with Asia, I say let's start with her salary. What do you think Laura? You ready to work for a few dollars an hour or less?

According to Celebrity Net Worth, Ingraham has a net worth of $45 million and is paid $15 million a year. There's nothing like listening to a millionaire telling the rest of us how horrible it is for business that someone is actually paid a living wage.

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C-SPAN aired a debate held on November 30, 2011 between David Callahan, co-founder of Demos and Yaron Brook, Ayn Rand Center Executive Director. The debate was held in Seattle and moderated by former U.S. attorney John McKay, one of the eight US Attorneys fired by Bush Admin in 2006. The topic was the roll of government.

For anyone not familiar with either of them, John Amato wrote about Yaron Brook back in 2004 who came on The O'Reilly Factor and as John described, "was so over the top that he even scared the bejesus out of Bill O'Reilly!" David Callahan recently made an appearance on The O'Reilly Factor as well that I wrote about here -- Fox Guest Callahan Knocks Down Ingraham and Stein's Talking Points on Taxation and Income Disparity.

I don't expect to see either of them coming back on Fox again any time soon, for completely different reasons, obviously, but seeing Callahan's name on the C-SPAN schedule was what caught my eye to decide to watch this debate in the first place. He did as good of a job pushing back against Brook here as he did on Fox, when appearing with Laura Ingraham and Ben Stein. His response reminded me a whole lot of Elizabeth Warren and some of the remarks she's made out on the campaign trail in her run against Sen. Scott Brown.

I've heard a lot of these Any Rand worshipers talk about their philosophy where they still try to pretend like they care about their fellow human beings. There was no sugar coating with this guy Brook. He just came straight out and said his beliefs are I've got mine and everyone else can basically go to hell. What's scary is that his response to the questioner here actually got applause from the audience.

Update: Apparently I was wrong about Fox not wanting Brook back as a guest after his appearance on O'Reilly's show. No shock here with which show decided that he was someone worth bringing back on the air... the now canceled wingnut fest which was Glenn Beck's show.

Transcript below the fold and you can watch the entire debate at C-SPAN's web site here -- Debate on the Roll of Government.

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On this Wednesday's The O'Reilly Factor, after guest host Laura Ingraham and Ben Stein did their best to spin the Fox talking point that raising taxes on the upper one percent has not damaged most of the working class in America and decrying anyone who dares to say the the wealthiest among us haven't paid their fair share in taxes, they had the unfortunate circumstance of running into a liberal that I suspect will not be invited back on Fox News any time soon.

Most of the time the only Democrats or liberals Fox allows on the air are feckless ones who don't do a very good job of pushing back at the right wing talking points being spewed while they're on the air. That wasn't the case here. David Callahan of Demos did a very good job shooting down Ingraham and Stein's talking points on taxation and income disparity.

INGRAHAM: And David, an interesting statistic that I hadn't heard before, but Stephen Moore just shared it with me. In 2003 after the Bush tax cuts, the big tax cuts kicked in, for those next four years, the income coming into the federal treasury was the highest in any four year period in our government's history. So tax revenues went up after that tax cut. So the idea that if we only raise taxes on the rich, things will begin to even out and there will be lollipops on the Bushes and rainbows in the sky. I mean it seems to me it doesn't really fly man.

CALLAHAN: Well, actually, Steve has that statistic wrong. As a percentage of GDP taxes were lower under Bush than Clinton. They peeked in 2000 as 20% of GDP. But just going to Ben Stein's point, there is a causal connection between the pain of the middle class and how the rich are making out like bandits, which is that, you know, we're seeing cuts for student aid, cuts for all sorts of social programs, because there's not enough tax revenues and one of the reason there's not enough tax revenues is because taxes on the rich are at the lowest level they've been in sixty years. Look, that is unsustainable.

After which both Stein and Ingraham's heads both exploded, with both of them defending the one percent, and Stein complaining that they pay an unfair amount of the overall percentage of taxes, ignoring the fact that is only true because they also control most of the wealth, so of course they pay a large percent of the taxes, and Ingraham using it as an opportunity to attack the health care law. Callahan countered them fairly well again when given a chance to speak.

CALLAHAN: Well, that Obama program hasn't even gone, isn't even being gone into effect fully...

INGRAHAM: But the taxes haven't fully gone into effect in 2013. We're going to start seeing the taxes.

CALLAHAN: But let's get back to the class warfare issue. I would agree with what Warren Buffet said which is yeah, there's class warfare in this country. It's been waged from the top down. You know, politics is about who gets what and we all know that the way to get what you want in politics is to hire lobbyists and make campaign donations. And the wealthy have the money to do that.

They have taken over our politics and the middle class don't have the means to compete. We see all this money for lobbying, all this money for campaign donations and it shouldn't be a surprise that there are all of these loopholes in the tax code and that a lot of corporations pay no taxes. That a lot of wealthy people pay no taxes. There was a study recently released that found a quarter of all millionaires paid lower taxes than your typical middle class family. That is not right.

The best Ben Stein could manage to come up with to try to counter him there was to claim that most millionaires are Democrats. I've never seen any statistics to prove or disprove what Stein said, but I have a feeling he hasn't either. I have a feeling he just pulled that one out of his posterior.