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CNN's Ali Velshi will be hosting a new business show on Al Jazeera America this summer. Here's to hoping we've seen the last of interviews like this one from his final show, where regular Stephen Moore from the Wall Street Journal was there to dumb down the conversation as usual.

Ali Velshi Joining Al Jazeera America As Host:

Ali Velshi is getting a primetime business program on Al Jazeera America, the network announced on Thursday.

"The as yet-to-be named 30-minute magazine-style program will initially launch in a weekly format but is expected to move to a five-days-a-week schedule by year’s end," the network said in a statement.

The host's last day at CNN will be Friday. News of his departure broke on Wednesday. At the time, he said that he was leaving to pursue a project "he couldn’t pass up."

Velshi said in a statement that he was "thrilled" to join Al Jazeera America. “It’s a tremendous opportunity and I look forward to taking advantage of the extraordinary U.S. news-gathering capabilities the channel is building and working with such a diverse and talented group of colleagues to tell compelling stories that matter to Americans," he said.

As they noted, Al Jazeera America is going to replace Current TV's programming soon and they're still hiring staff and searching for on air talent. I haven't read anything yet about whether they're going to keep any of Current's lineup or not. I'd be happy if we find out that Cenk Uygur and John Fugelsang will continue to be employed by the network once they make the change.

I'll be very curious to see how Velshi's show differs when he's no longer working for CNN and if he's got some better guests than those who regularly appeared on his weekend show, Your Money, like Moore, who his network decided to inflict on the public just about every single stinking weekend.

And naturally every wingnut blog that posted anything about this has their comments section full of hate filled posts attacking Velshi for the move. I'm sure we haven't seen anything yet compared to the vitriol we'll be treated to once they actually bring the network on the air in America.

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If you want to understand the source of the world's problems, follow the Davos coverage by CNN and Bloomberg News for a few days. Not only will they tell you what the source is, they'll prove that your instincts are right about billionaires and those who present them as the arbiters of all things fair and right.

Davos is the annual billionaires' conclave where they network, get their message straight, gladhand hungry politicians, and try to determine our fate. Ladies and gentlemen, our problem isn't what the billionaires think it is. Our problem is the billionaires.

Last year, the billionaires were obsessing on income inequality. Following the Occupy protests, they saw it as a source of instability and actually, for a short moment, thought it might be something they should try to solve. At least, that's how our corporate media spun it for us. This year, nary a peep out of them about income inequality. No, this year was all fearmongering over the US budget deficit and the European debt crisis.

Donohue on deficits and cuts

Ali Velshi spoke to US Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue on Friday about his solutions to the deficit problem. After the requisite hand-wringing about unemployment rates in Europe which have come about largely because the billionaires forced austerity on Greece, Spain and Italy, Donohue turned to the United States budget deficit, where he drew a distinction between European austerity and American austerity measures.

Donohue explained that American austerity measures involve "the spending that is automatic and that is entitlements -- Social Security a little bit, but primarily Medicare -- and it goes up, up, up."

Is Donohue suggesting that on that basis, it's not really austerity because it's cuts to necessities, so people will pay with or without the social safety net. Really?

We all know better, and we also know that health care spending has decreased during this recession. Not because costs have decreased, but because people are foregoing health care in order to save money. So sure, billionaires, take aim at the two government programs reaching the most people and doing the most good. That makes a ton of sense, right?

Donohue insists that longer life expectancies require lawmakers to "turn the curve down." I will let you speculate on how cutting Medicare might affect life expectancies, and whether that's what Donohue means by turning the curve down.

Keep in mind, this comes from a guy who was paid nearly $5 million dollars in salary in 2010 from a trade organization that spends millions to elect wingnuts to Congress. What the heck does he know about what that "small" Social Security cut and larger Medicare cut would do to anyone?

Donohue: Fracking is our future

All is not lost, peasants. Tom Donohue has the answer to our economic woes. All we need to do, according to the God of Commerce, is open federal lands and frack the hell out of them. Really. Here is his claim, verbatim:

Fracking, for example, has created 1.75 million jobs in less than two years. There's billions and billions of dollars going to the states and the federal coffers. We have more energy than anybody in the world and, if we, in an environmentally friendly way, acquire it, go on the federal lands, do it in the right way, we'll get that extra piece of cash and bring manufacturing and jobs back to the United States or create them in the United States because of our energy.

In laymen's English, Donohue's constituents -- the Kochs, the Hunts, and other Texas oil barons -- see the answer to our economic woes as being pretty simple. Sell federal lands to them, let them frack the heck out of it (in an environmentally friendly way, of course -- cough), and there will be more jobs than the eye can see!

Speaking strictly for me, I'd prefer to leave my children and grandchildren with pristine, unpolluted, unmarred federal lands and find a different way to build the economy, but Donohue does reveal the center of the conflict between the Obama administration and the robber oil barons of the 21st century. Earlier in the interview, Donohue whined that the president was going to tackle climate change using his regulatory authority specifically with regard to the EPA and said the US Chamber was going to have to "work on that."

Oil oligarchs are struggling to remain relevant even as the rest of the world realizes oil dependency is a national security and economic danger we must mitigate, not celebrate. Donohue is simply the oligarchs' public relations mouthpiece.

Perhaps the Chamber minions in the House could pass a few more bills abolishing the EPA? That might work. Or not.

I trust that this year's billionaire boys' concerns will not be overlooked like last year's were. After all, income inequality is only a problem for as long as the minions cry out about it. Deficits and debt, on the other hand, are a real opportunity for wealth building at the expense of the peasants who were in the streets not that long before.

This is why I loathe Davos and all of the breathless celebrity reporting around it. The financial reporters practically scream like teenagers whenever a billionaire breathes, much less says anything substantive. Davos and the coverage surrounding it are meant to remind everyone that we serve at the pleasure of the oligarchs.

Transcript follows below the fold, courtesy of CNN:

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Lately, CNN's Ali Velshi has done a good job of pushing back at some of these Republican politicians when they come on his show and lie. This wasn't one of those times. While Velshi did do a good job of making clear that raising the debt ceiling is paying for spending which has already been approved by the Congress, and that it's not the same thing as a household running up the credit cards, he let Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson get away with a whole bunch of whoppers during this segment without much pushback.

He allowed Johnson to lay the blame for our deficits on the Obama administration, even though (as we've pointed out here time after time), most of that deficit is due to Bush policies and the recession and not because of Obama, as this article and its charts clearly point out. And even after Velshi pointed out that we can't just partially default on the deficit as a lot of Republicans have claimed, and that it would likely cause a great deal of economic havoc, he allowed Johnson to just flat-out disagree with him and didn't challenge him after that.

As long as we're allowing these politicians to pretend that Social Security contributes to the deficit when it doesn't, or pretending that raising the age for Medicare and throwing more seniors into the private health insurance market is a rational way to get our health care costs under control, they get to advocate for balancing the budget and paying for tax cuts and defense spending on the backs of the poor, elderly and middle class.

As Chris Hayes and Karoli pointed out here, the conversation we ought to be having is whether the Affordable Care Act is going to do enough to get our health care costs under control -- and if not, what steps we need to take to improve that? (None of our leaders want to talk about single-player, of course) We also need to talk about getting the United States back to full employment and quit allowing Republicans to just mindlessly repeat "job creators" and "tax cuts" in every conversation without rebuttal.

And of course, none of these guys are ever pushed on why we can't cut our bloated defense spending and get rid of the waste. They never seem to be too concerned about how starting another unnecessary war might destroy the future for their grandchildren. No, granny has to take a cut in her Social Security and Medicare benefits. The one word that never gets used here is privatization, because that's what they're advocating. These costs aren't going to go away. They just want to make sure the insurance companies and Wall Street gets their cut.

It would have been nice if Velshi asked Johnson if he really doesn't "want to play brinksmanship", why does he continue to do it? Why does he thinks it's acceptable to threaten our interest rates if that's something he's actually concerned about? Velshi also waited until the following segment when the Senator was off the air to point out the fact that President Obama's budget was never actually voted on, but sadly, even that wasn't done without some false equivalencies and "both sides do it" nonsense:

VELSHI: Why don't we have a budget? Gridlock, basically. In fact, Senate majority leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, says it was not worth trying to go through the process of passing the president's budget. That's why you hear that old Republican saw that Harry Reid won't even present a budge to the Senate. You may have also heard the of repeated claim that President Obama's budget was struck down in the House and the Senate, getting zero votes. Goose eggs from either party.

But those bills were not the budget. They were shell versions of the president's budget put forward by Republicans designed to fail. They were not budgets. They were just politics.

Republicans did put out their own budget plan in the form of Paul Ryan's "Path to Prosperity," but bipartisan bickering resulted in no progress there, either.

Sorry Ali, but it was more than just "bipartisan bickering" which prevented Ryan's budget from being passed. Most Americans hated it, Republicans were backing away from it and even Paul Ryan himself was doing some backtracking on that debacle he put forward. You can read more about Ryan's so-called "Path to Prosperity" here in Jon Perr's post, where Fox was pretending that it doesn't add trillions to the deficit.

Maybe someone can tell Velshi to give it a look before he starts blaming the Democrats for its failure.

Full transcript below the fold.

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After watching Ali Velshi fill in on some of CNN's coverage over the holidays on this "fiscal cliff" debacle, I would definitely be happy to see him take Erin Burnett's place on CNN in the evening. He corrected wingnut Rep. Tim Huelskamp on the air this Tuesday and the following evening after the House finally voted to pass the Senate's bill, he didn't let Rep. Tom Cole get away with trying to blame S&P's downgrade of our credit rating on the budget deficit.

After Cole again explained that he was happy with the Republicans passing this deal because they got a lot of what they liked and that they planned on leveraging the debt ceiling to get some of the spending cuts they want, Cole said this:

COLE: We didn't have a downgrade because of the debt ceiling debate. We had it because we weren't dealing with our deficit. This is...

VELSHI: That's not entirely true. (CROSSTALK) No, no, It's not entirely true.

COLE: It actually is. (CROSSTALK)

VELSHI: Congressman, I really enjoy talking to you. I think you're one of the best around. It's just not entirely true.

COLE: Look, you can't have trillion dollar deficits for four consecutive years and have it going forward...

VELSHI: Give me five minutes and I'll pull out S&P's report. I mean, I'm not the guy to have this fight with. I don't know as much about Congress as you do, but I do know about this.

Velshi went on to give him a hard time about the Republicans not being able to get their act together in the House and he's exactly right, that report did not blame the deficit. It blamed the politicians not being able to work together.

When Cole attempted to put most of the blame for the Simpson-Bowles commission going nowhere onto President Obama, Velshi reminded him that their vice presidential candidate, Paul Ryan voted against the plan as well. Velshi didn't give Democrats a pass for their part in any of this brinksmanship we've seen going on, but he made sure to let the viewers know we're dealing with a really dysfunctional House right now.

It was nice to at least see the Representative not be allowed to get away with just completely revising history. I'd have been happier after watching this if he wasn't allowed to pretend that it's going to be acceptable behavior for them to continue their hostage taking during this upcoming debt ceiling debate. I've still got my issues with Velshi, mainly due to the fact that's he's on board for austerity measures and cuts to our social safety nets and like so many of them, seems obsessed with the deficit instead of getting Americans back to work. But compared to Burnett, who he's been filling in for, he's a breath of fresh air. It would really be nice to see more of these anchors do what he did here again, which is call out a politician on the spot when they lie on the air.

For a little reminder, here's what that S&P report said about the downgrade:

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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.

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Anti-tax lobbyist Grover Norquist on Monday insisted that Republicans in Congress would hold the debt ceiling hostage to ensure that there would be no tax increases on even the wealthiest Americans as part of a deal to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff.

During an interview with the founder of Americans for Tax Reform on CNN, host Ali Velshi noted that many viewers were outraged that the media continued to give Norquist so much airtime to campaign against a balanced fiscal cliff deal.

"All I get from people is tweets about, 'Why do you keep putting Grover Norquist, who is a big part of this problem, on TV?'" Velshi explained. "Because we have to have this conversation because you have great deal of influence over these members of Congress."

"You're right," Norquist agreed. "And some folks on the left are not big on the First Amendment for other people, but we can set that aside right now."

"We should take as many of the tax cuts off the table as possible," he continued. "And then because Republicans have the clout of the debt ceiling increase -- which they effectively used a year and a half ago -- and the continuing resolution where they could dole out money slowly to Obama and the Democrats to spend while reining it in, those are two very powerful tools."

"I'm not sure how effectively they used it," Velshi pointed out. "That was 517 days ago and that's why we're in the mess we are now."

As for any deal that lawmakers may reach on Monday, Norquist said he was "working with all the folks that are trying to defend taxpayers here in Congress."

"The leadership of the House have all made the commitment in writing to their constituents to oppose all efforts to raise taxes."

"I don't think you're going to see something that actually raises taxes," he added. "We may get some tax cuts now and have to fight for others later. Watch for the leverage the Republicans have on the debt ceiling and the continuing resolution. That allows us to come back and actually fight for spending cuts, but also for further tax reduction."

(h/t: Politico)

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During part of CNN's god-awful coverage of these ongoing negotiations over the expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts and the defense spending sequestration that none of them in Congress like, Your Money host Ali Velshi was co-hosting their live coverage, and he allowed Tenn. Rep. Marsha Blackburn to get away with painting the Democrats as the ones who are being stubborn and unreasonable during these talks, and to lay the blame for no deal being made on the Senate.

She did get some push back from Velshi, but of course it was the sort we see on that network all the time with the false equivalency game, where they're pretending like "both sides" are acting like petulant children for not reaching some deal and painting cuts to Social Security as harmless and a solution to our budget deficits, even though they'll cause a lot of pain for poor seniors and Social Security does not contribute to the deficit.

Velshi asked Blackburn who was at fault for the impasse, after complaining about the markets potentially reacting to the intransigence in Washington, why they were screwing around until the last minute before coming to a deal and Blackburn's response was that the Senate could have prevented this if they'd just passed all of the legislation that the House sent over to Harry Reid's desk. Paperwork! How dare Harry Reid not pick up their paperwork and send it all through?

Never mind the fact that we are supposed to have three co-equal branches of government and that they knew full well they were wasting everyone's time sending bills over they knew had no chance in hell of passing, or that some of them didn't even have support from Republicans in the Senate or that they were at fault for the bills being held up.

Here's more on some of what she cited here: House ‘Reconciliation’ Bill Was Anything But.

Democrats make last-minute stab at tax extenders

Preventing Crushing Defense Cuts

Too his credit, Velshi came back and reminded her that the House couldn't even pass Boehner's "Plan B" debacle that went down in flames just before Christmas. That said, he let her get away again with pretending that herself or the House Republicans have an ounce of interest in bipartisanship or working with anyone and doing anything other than obstructing if they don't get everything they want.

I don't know how many people watch Velshi's show on the weekends, but he's on there every single week, screaming about this impending doom if the Congress fails to work out a deal and then he brings in hacks like Stephen Moore and economists from right wing think tanks to debate about it. Or he's got Norquist on there every time you turn around. You can add him to the list of Villagers who seem intent on painting anyone that doesn't want to inflict some pain on our seniors and the most vulnerable among us as not being Serious, or adults. As Digby noted today: Fiscal cliff notes: The Villagers are stimulated by the prospect of human sacrifice.

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CNN's Ali Velshi continues to use his weekend program, Your Money, as one long free infomercial for the Peterson Group. This Saturday his weekly round of fearmongering over the "fiscal cliff" was with none other than Ayn Rand fan Alan Greenspan, who is apparently now the latest spokesman for the Peterson Group.

And as Stephanie Kelton at Wall Street Pit noted, he seemed to be having a bit of trouble remaining consistent with remarks he's made in the past about our debt and Social Security. I don't think it's a leap at all to assume that he's reading from the talking points of the group who wants to privatize Social Security in order to enrich Wall Street, while standing in front of a wall full of their logos.

Here's more on that from Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism -- Greenspan’s Switch to Debt Scaremongering:

Stephanie Kelton provides two video clips to underscore the point that until quite recently, Greenspan made the point that MMT types do: that the US as a currency issuer, can always pay its debts (it might incur too much inflation, but with the economy having as much slack as it does, that’s far from a pressing worry).

What I found striking was the clip of Paul Ryan pressing the man formerly known as Maestro when he was still the Fed chairman to agree that private retirement accounts would be more stable than a government sponsored program. That’s such a Big Lie I’m amazed anyone can peddle it with a straight face. [...]

After 20 years of demonizing government debt and pushing for government in miniature, billionaire Pete Peterson and his allies have managed to get the public fixated on their message rather than their motives, and the Ryan con job serves as a useful reminder.

One long-standing effort has been to “privatize” Social Security, so that Wall Street could charge fees for managing the money. Note that some countries, like Australia, mandate that a big chunk of wage payments be invested in superannuation accounts (I’m not current on the law, but when I lived in Australia, it was 9% of pay, and I believe it has risen since then. The ATO’s pages on this are too layered to get a quick answer). And even if they don’t get a mandated contributions regime, merely reducing Social Security payments will force people to save and invest more, and will similarly enrich the brokerage and investment management industries.

But the other rationale is more basic: the rich want taxes lower, period. They want to roll the clock back to the 1890s. [...] This is our future unless ordinary people wake up and oppose it. Not surprisingly, Greenspan, who was never on the side of little people, has officially cast his lot in with it.

Full transcript below the fold.

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(Chuck Todd: Republicans will give Democrats all the revenue they want, if they just agree to raise the retirement age. Trust them.)

I don't know about anyone else, but as someone who has actually worked at one of those jobs where you take a shower at the end of the work day and not before you go in, I'm sick to death of watching these overpaid television pundits and their counterparts in the Congress, nonchalantly discussing raising the retirement age. It may not matter much to them, but there are real economic hardships involved when you force the average wage earner out there to continue to work until they drop dead if the retirement age is raised any higher than it already is now.

If our beltway Villagers and politicians really believe that it's no big deal to raise the retirement age for the rest of America, how about we ask them to walk a mile in our shoes? I wonder if any of them would decide that maybe it's not such a great idea to be doing physical labor well into your late sixties if they were the ones actually having to do those jobs?

I wonder if Chuck Todd would be a little more worried about when he might be able to retire if he were say, some migrant worker picking berries and in need of daily visits to the chiropractor he can't afford because his back is screaming all day from being bent over?

Or how Mrs. Greenspan would feel if she were working at Mickey-D's flipping burgers and serving fries and standing on a ceramic floor, with her varicose veins getting worse by the minute?

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I seem to remember a time not long ago when this woman's boss was running the country that talk like this would have had the right wingers screaming to the hills that you're an unpatriotic American who doesn't love their country and is on the side of the terrorists. Now, it's apparently perfectly acceptable to bet against America if you're running for president, or so says Lady McCheney, Mary Matalin.

She's not alone either. Here's McCain BFF and Romney supporter, Sen. Lindsey Graham saying the same thing: Lindsey Graham: 'It's Really American' To Avoid Taxes Like Mitt Romney Does .

Good luck with that to both of them with trying to get that to resonate with the general public. And good luck to Mary Matalin with trying to make the argument that people are going to care more about what Romney donated to the Mormon church than him hiding his money overseas so he doesn't have to pay taxes on it.

Transcript of Matalin's hackery on Anderson Cooper's show below the fold.

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