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The Last Word's Lawrence O'Donnell got his shots in at Fox and their joke of a business channel and the likes of Stuart Varney, who was previously claiming that the election of President Obama was responsible for the dip in the stock market the day after the election. With the markets reaching a record high this week, as O'Donnell rightfully noted here, those talking heads are just as clueless now about why the market went up as they were when it went down last year.

I'm not sure who actually watches the Fox Business Channel, but sometimes I wonder if they exist solely as an attempt to make CNBC look respectable in comparison.

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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.

Continue reading »

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Former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin told the Fox Business Network Tuesday that President Barack Obama doesn't understand the American way of doing business because of his "background."

"The President is not capable of giving the right message to deal with the problem we are facing with the bankruptcy that’s facing America if we don’t start living within our means," she said. "The right message is that growing more debt won’t get us out of debt, and raising taxes in a time of economic woes in a bad economy is a bad idea."

"A lot of this has to do with his background, him having not been a part of the private sector and running a business or having to rely on making profit. That seems to be foreign to our President. His background and those he's appointing don't understand what America was built upon. His ideas are the antithesis of those things that created the prosperity in America."

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Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman isn't hiding his love for Rupert Murdoch's media empire.

In a Monday interview on Fox Business Network's Imus in the Morning, the senator from Connecticut declared that the Fox Business Network, Fox News and anything Murdoch owned were his "favorite."

Host Don Imus asked Lieberman if thought The New York Times should be prosecuted for reporting on secret State Department cables released by the whistleblower website WikiLeaks.

"I don't know if you can prosecute The Times under existing Supreme Court decisions," Lieberman said. "But I'll tell you this, I wish The Times, just as an act of citizenship had said, 'No, we're not going to publish this stuff because it's going to do the country damage.'"

"I know they will probably will say once it goes up on the WikiLeaks website in the world you can't control it and they redacted, they blocked out some of the stuff in these cables," he continued. "But, you know, The New York Times, afterall, is The New York Times with all its stature and I wish this stuff had appeared somewhere else. I wouldn't be for prosecuting The Times, but I would say I wish they had shown better citizenship."

Lieberman then commended CNN for turning down the WikiLeaks documents because they were asked to sign a pledge of anonymity.

"Incidentally, I heard last night, I was watching CNN and Joe [Johns] was on and he was doing the 10 o'clock news show and he said that CNN had been offered these documents by Wikileaks or a third party, but had turned it down because they refused to sign a pledge granting the source anonymity, which The Times did. And I give CNN and whoever else turned it down credit for doing that. The New York Times' hands are dirty in this and they should have said 'no,'" Lieberman said.

"I hate CNN," Imus replied. "I wish you hadn't brought that up."

"I'm sorry about that! It just happened. But of course, really, Fox Business is my favorite and Fox generally, anything Rupert Murdoch owns," Lieberman confessed.

The liberal blog Think Progress first noticed Lieberman's comments to Imus.

The Connecticut senator may have good reason to love Fox News. During a tight 2006 Senate race, a volunteer for Ted Lamont accused the news channel of placing campaign signs for Lieberman in advance of an interview.

"All of a sudden, two or three out-of-state vans (accompanied by a Fox News crew) pull up and unload a bunch of Lieberman lawn signs, placed right in front of the Lamont signs that had already been planted," the volunteer said. "And, what do you know, after a few more minutes, who shows up but Joe himself, ready for the cameras."

In Glenn Beck's world, most of the venom and violence in politics comes from liberals.

"You look at some of the stuff that is happening with the election and the way [progressives] are -- it's so dirty," Beck told Fox News Don Imus.

"They accuse me of inciting violence," Beck noted. "You've got to be kidding me."

The Fox News host may have been referring to a California shooter who saw Beck as his "school teacher." The shooter had plans to attack the Tides Foundation which is a favorite target for Beck.

"There's two pieces of video I saw today," Beck continued. There's a rock-throwing incident and another guy from MoveOn.org that is choking a person on videotape and just saying, 'I hate you. I hate you.'"

Over the weekend, MoveOn.org supporter Fred Highton put his hands on the throat of Tea Party activist James Massee at the first debate between Democrat Gabrielle Giffords and Republican Jesse Kelly. Highton later told the Daily Caller that he needed to "learn some self-control."

"It's this dirty progressive 'we know better.' John Kerry said it yesterday that Rush Limbaugh and I are hypnotizing everybody and stirring everybody up without any kind of intelligence at all," Beck explained.

"But the dirty stuff is on both sides. You would agree with that?" Imus asked Beck.

"Yes, I would. I don't think it's as hate-filled as some of the people on the left," Beck shrugged.

"Well, of course you wouldn't think that. It is of course. So... I mean, it's pretty much a jump ball," Imus said.

Beck seemed to be ignoring a recent incident where a man affiliated with Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul (R-KY) stomped on the head of a MoveOn.org supporter.

One Paul supporter is seen in video taken by Fox News channel 41 pushing MoveOn.org activist Lauren Valle to the ground. Tim Profitt, another Paul supporter, then is seen stomping on Valle's head and shoulder. She received a concussion and a sprain as a result of the altercation.

The Paul campaign condemned the attack but the next day the candidate downplayed it as "jockeying" and a "crowd control problem."

That same day, a full-page newspaper ad placed by the Paul campaign prominently displayed Profitt's name as one of the candidate's supporters.

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Fox Business Network anchor Cody Willard didn't appear to be very "fair and balanced" as he let out his opinion of Democrats' economic policy during a tea party protest in Boston. "When are we going to wake up and start fighting the fascism that seems to be permeating the country?" asked an excited Willard. "The fascism -- the definition of it is big business and government getting in bed together. That is what these people are fighting. We have about 700 people here. They are starting to rally," he said.