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Tea party-backed Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) on Wednesday excused Walmart's decision to decline an invitation to the White House to discuss gun violence because "they are trying to grow the economy."

The nation's largest seller of munitions told The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday that it refused to participate in Vice President Joe Biden's task force because of a scheduling conflict.

Walmart also explained to CNN's Christine Romans that the company had already scheduled month sales meetings in Bentonville, Arkansas and none of its 2.2 million employees could make it to Washington.

CNN host Soledad O'Brien on Thursday told Johnson that "when people tell me they have a scheduling snafu, I just don't believe them."

"They're probably out there trying to grow the economy," the Wisconsin Republican shrugged. "You know, they're concentrating on their business and I'll take them at their word."

"I think the concern is -- from people who actually do want to protect gun rights -- is that this is a fast-moving train to try and restrict those gun rights," Johnson added. "So, people are suspicious of that."

"From my standpoint, if they've got sales meetings, those things are probably pretty important. They are trying to grow our economy and that's a good thing."

New Yorker magazine Washington Correspondent Ryan Lizza pointed out that Walmart had a fleet of corporate jets in Bentonville and could easily send someone to D.C. for meetings.

"It's just a slap in the face to publicly say you've been invited to the White House and you're not going," he explained. "Whenever someone in politics says it's a scheduling issue it means they don't want to be there."

During his appearance on CNN's Starting Point panel on Wednesday, Lizza also asked Johnson to respond conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, who recently asserted that liberals were trying to "normalize pedophilia" by legalizing same sex marriage.

"Senator, Rush Limbaugh and pedophilia?" Lizza pressed. "What do you got?"

"Not gonna happen," Johnson replied.

UPDATE (2:15 p.m. ET): A Walmart spokesperson on Wednesday said that the company had "underestimated the expectation to attend the meeting on Thursday in person, so we are sending an appropriate representative to participate."

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Apparently CNN thinks as little about wasting their viewer's time as Tennessee Rep. Marsh Blackburn thinks of wasting her constituents' time with utterly meaningless votes that are going nowhere to repeal the Affordable Care Act. They actually had this flame thrower on there for the better part of the show. Richard Socarides rightfully called Blackburn out for exactly what she and her fellow House members are doing, which is purely political theater.

Par for the course with their unwillingness to ever admit they're wrong or lying about anything, Blackburn refused to admit that's what they're doing was theater, but then proving his point, said she wished they were taking those votes every single day. If there's one thing Republicans are good at, it is theater because they sure as hell don't care about actually governing. And they continue to prove it with stunts like this one.

Things got a little heated with the back and forth, but that's nothing new for Blackburn.

ROMANS: All right, Congress is back to work this morning after a Fourth of July recess. In just two days, House Republicans plan to call a vote to repeal the president's health care overhaul law.

But it's mostly symbolic, a symbolic vote because any repeal effort would likely die in the Democratic-controlled Senate. And of course, the Supreme Court has ruled on this, it is the law of the land, health care reform.

Yet Republicans want to fight it to the bitter end and I'm wondering, should Congress people be spending more time helping constituents comply with the law rather than continuing all of this uncertainty?

BLACKBURN: Well, when you have 2,300 new regulations and 158 new federal bureaucracies that is are created by this law, then there's a lot of uncertainty and a lot of we don't know exactly how it's going to be.

ROMANS: Do you have people in the back office who are answering the phone calls saying if you have fewer than 50 workers, small businesses, don't worry, it doesn't apply to those who have fewer than 50 workers?

BLACKBURN: We have all sorts of information on our web site, Facebook.

ROMANS: So you're going to help people comply?

BLACKBURN: Yes. It's the law of the land.

ROMANS: We're going to make this not come true, not here is how we're going to help you get your business --

BLACKBURN: Our goal -- our goal is going to be to get this off the books. Here is what we want to do --

SOCARIDES: This is like a piece of theatre, all right. This is not going to get through the Senate.

BLACKBURN: Let me tell you this is not a piece of theatre.

SOCARIDES: So you're just doing it to make a point.

BLACKBURIN: No. It is not a piece of theatre because what the American people want to hear Congress say is that Obamacare was a mistake.

SOCARIDES: So you're making a statement.

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When Herman Cain meets with Maricopa Country Sheriff Joe Arpaio Monday, it will make him the fourth Republican presidential candidate to personally seek the endorsement of "America's toughest sheriff."

"I'll meet with Mr. Cain," Arpaio told CNN's Christine Roman's Monday. "I'll see how he stands on the illegal immigration problem."

Over the weekend, Cain claimed that his call to electrify the border fence had just been a joke.

"That's a joke," the candidate told NBC's David Gregory Sunday. "I've also said America needs to get a sense of humor. That was a joke, OK."

But for Arpaio, that joke was a good sign.

"Oh, I'm sure he was joking, but it probably means that he's taking it serious to do something at the border and stop the illegal immigrations," the Maricopa Country sheriff declared.

"I'm not against the fence, but if you buy a ladder and hop over it -- I would like to see people go to jail, not give them a free ride back to Mexico. So, if you want to put a fence and they go over it, make them pay."

Arpaio is facing investigations by the U.S. Justice Department and FBI over civil rights violations and abuse of power, but that hasn't decreased his popularity among GOP candidates. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) and former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA) have all sought his approval.

"They probably understand this is all garbage -- going after me for the past three years," Arpaio said. "I'm doing my job. I'll continue to do it and serve the people of Maricopa County."

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Host Christine Romans filling in for Eliot Spitzer on CNN's In the Arena allowed their regular network contributor David Gergen, who's always painted as some bastion of even handed "centrism" because of the fact that he's served as a political adviser for administrations on both sides of the aisle to get away with lying about Mitt Romney's record on job creation.

David Gergen did his best job to conflate what either other Mormon businesses have done to create jobs in America or what Mitt Romney's father might have done to create jobs to Mitt Romney, completely ignoring Mittens horrid record of destroying jobs at Bain Capital.

As I've already noted, it's really pitiful that Stephen Colbert did a better job of telling the truth about Romney's record on job creation than our corporate media has. Gergen just gave us another example here.

GERGEN: The other thing is that Mormon business people we know have created a lot of jobs. And including his father who I have known for 40 years who is a terrific guy. They come from very good family. But they are very, very good at creating jobs.

ROMANS: Well, that's a good point because jobs is what's so important here.

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From CNN's Your Money, apparently we're all supposed to think that there's nothing that can be done to get rid of the income inequality in the United States that we're seeing now because... hey, the rich just always figure out how to game the system. That's just the way it goes. Our political dialog in this country has moved so far to the right that it's taboo to even suggest that the fat cats on Wall Street and the have-mores should do more than throw the rest of us some crumbs to fight over or that heaven forbid these markets should be regulated. The rich win! Get over it suckers!

If what's going on in Wisconsin and around the country is any indication, the peons look like they're not ready to settle for serfdom quite yet.

VELSHI: Over the last decade, the income of 90 percent of the American public has remained stagnant. Take a look at this. The story changes dramatically for the other 10 percent. That bottom red line is 90 percent. That yellow line is the wealthiest 10 percent. The folks, the super wealthy, they've gotten richer; a whole lot richer while everybody else has stayed the same. Those superrich, by the way, account for one-half of America's wealth. Top 10 percent, half of the American wealth. This does not sound like the America we knew. Christine, how do the rich become the superrich?

ROMANS: The rich always come out on top when there's an economic debacle. We've had the biggest economic debacle since the great depression. I never count out the rich for being able to figure out how to become richer. I think you can talk about how business has done, technology has allowed out sourcing --

VELSHI: And mostly, working stiffs, Richard depend on their paycheck. Other people, the rich make money in other ways. They can invest in the stock market, they can invest in property like we're talking about, and they buy the services of other people.

QUEST: Look, look, it's fundamental. If you are one of those people who was making money when you are asleep because some business is making it on your behalf, or you are one of those people who makes money because their money makes money, you're going to be all right. But if you're like most of us, which literally, and I challenge you, Christina, and myself, how many paychecks would it take before you are in trouble if you suddenly started losing them? Then, inevitably, it's going to be that way. The rich have always sailed majestically on the good ship dollar big bucks.

ROMANS: And you know, the rich take risks. And not all of us are big risk takers. And this has been a good world to take risks in, big risks, because you get bailed out if you fail, and if you win you win big, right?

VELSHI: That's exactly right. All right, guys, we'll leave it at that. Great to talk to you all. Richard a pleasure to see you as always, Christine Romans.

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Robert Kuttner reiterated many of the same points he made in his article at the Huffington Post last week on this weekend's edition of Your Money on CNN. Businesses are not going to start hiring American workers until our politicians start to care more about protecting American jobs than their corporate campaign donors.

Business Doesn't Need American Workers:

Once again, the job numbers are dismal. In January, the U.S. economy created just 36,000 domestic jobs, far below the roughly 145,000 that economists had forecast. The unemployment rate fell, to 9 percent, but only because more and more discouraged workers are giving up and leaving the workforce.

The U.S. still has a jobs gap of about 14 million jobs, and that number is increasing as the labor force grows. Counting people who've given up, or who are working part time when they want full time jobs, the real unemployment number is around 17 percent. America now has about 25 million people either out of work or underemployed.

Meanwhile, corporate profits continue to set records. Profits in the third quarter of 2010 were 1.659 trillion, about 28 percent higher than a year before, and the highest year-to-year increase on record.

What's going on? Very simply, America's corporations no longer need America's workers.

Much more there so go read the rest. Transcript via CNN below the fold.

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The Wall Street Journal's Stephen Moore thinks that all of those unemployed people out there right now just need to get off of their lazy asses and go find a job despite the fact that, as the other panelists pointed out, there just aren't jobs out there to be found. And in the next breath he was defending extending the Bush tax cuts, claiming that it's going to hurt the "job creators" if those taxes go up.

I guess it was too much to ask of the other panels to have Stephen Moore why unemployment is so high right now and why the economy tanked under George Bush if those tax cuts created jobs. Every time one of these Republicans goes on the air repeating this nonsense, someone needs to be holding up Steve Benen's monthly jobs report chart so the public can see clearly what those Bush tax cuts did to create jobs.

And for more charts and a reminder about what happens to the economy when Democrats are in charge, here's our own Jon Perr's post from back in July -- GOP Leaders Remind Voters the Economy Does Better Under Democrats.

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From CNN's Your Money, it looks like the S.E.C. is as feckless as ever with reigning in these crooks. Matt Taibbi has much more over at his blog True/Slant.

ROMANS: All right. This is the ticker where each week we take you beyond the headlines. Shawn Tully is editor at large at Fortune and Matt Taibbi is a contributing editor with Rolling Stone. Let's be blunt, Matt is not a beloved figure on Wall Street these days which stems from articles like the one out in this week's Rolling Stone entitled "Wall Street's Naked Swindle." You can pick it up for all the details.

But let's examine a few of the overall themes. You say Wall Street is designed to rip off the middle class and you make the case that our economy is currently so screwed up, actually that's not the word you use, imagine a word by mistake on "SNL" and that is the word you meant. Screwed up that the rich are running out of things to steal. What's worse is that Matt argues that no one, not the S.E.C., the Federal Reserve, or the Treasury Department is making any real effort to punish the culprits.

For starters, who specifically are the culprits and why aren't they being punished?

MATT TAIBBI, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR, ROLLING STONE: Well in the story that I looked specifically at two cases, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and what happened in those companies and what I found is that there was a kind of bear raid that had been happening to smaller firms in years previous to the Bear and Lehman episodes where there was sort of a pattern of credit default swaps.

People who were buying, naked short selling of these stocks, rumors being spread in the media. This was always happening in the smaller companies and hedge funds and predatory, you know, sellers were doing this to small companies.

In this instance, they did it to Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers. There was a massive amount of undelivered shares and obvious evidence of naked short selling and manipulation in these instances. It was clear that they had run out of smaller companies to do this to.

ROMANS: So who did it?

TAIBBI: Well that's the problem. We don't know. This data is available to the S.E.C., it is a relatively simple matter to find out who was doing all this naked short selling but they haven't released the data and a year and a half later, they haven't made any progress in an investigation at all.

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Mayor Virg Bernero was invited on CNN's Your Money to talk about how people are dealing with unemployment when it looks like there are no jobs coming back. I don't think Bernero's response was exactly the one they were looking for. Give 'em hell Virg.

VELSHI: The number of people getting jobless benefits in the United States tops 6 million for the first time this week. When the economy recovers the jobless rate should go down, but that 6 million people is even deceiving because that's the number of people getting jobless benefits and there are a whole lot of people who have been unemployed for so long they are just not getting benefits.

ROMANS: Right. People who have completely dropped out of the labor market as well, who have just sort of given up.

And frankly, some jobs especially in the manufacturing sector, there's a lot of concern that some of those jobs won't come back and there's even kind of an argument from people who say well those jobs aren't coming back so let's talk about innovation and something else.

We wanted to ask someone who has been dealing with this directly, what to do when your jobs are gone. Virg Bernero is the mayor of Lansing. Welcome to the program.

VIRG BERNERO, MAYOR, LANSING, MICHIGAN: Welcome -- hello, good to be here.

VELSHI: Let's talk about this. You are the mayor of Lansing. Michigan is clearly the state with the highest unemployment rate and there have been so many jobs lost and I just want to give our viewers a sense of this, back in 1999 the unemployment rate in the state of Michigan was 3.9 percent.

It went from 3.9 percent to 7.6 percent almost ten years later in 2008. By 2009 the state of Michigan has an unemployment rate of 12.6 percent and Lansing has a higher unemployment rate than that. Tell me your situation.

BERNERO: We are challenged. It's tough, but we are not alone. We're not unlike a lot of industrial cities. I've formed a group with other mayors the Alliance for the Automotive Coalition and other manufacturing mayors. We are hurting, there is no question about it and we do not accept that manufacturing is over because we think that manufacturing is key to the economic future of this country.

Our industries were in transition and General Motors we're a GM town, proudly so, we created a the Cadillac CTS motor trend car of the year last year and we know how productive and capable our people are and the great products they can produce, but we're in a global environment and we're in a free trade environment that has been created by Wall Street and Washington.

So our people struggle to compete and to win in that global economy, and I'm afraid that it's a race to the bottom. There's something wrong, I tell you, when you can produce great products and yet still, not be quote, unquote, competitive enough to win in this global economy.

ROMANS: Mayor you have been a big critic of free trade agreement and you blame some of these free trade agreements for the situation we're in now and here we now in a global recession where around the world we're talking about not putting up barriers and not moving toward protectionism and trying to make sure that we're all in this boat together.

BERNERO: You're talking about that. You are talking about that, I'm not talking about that. If you read about the ...

ROMANS: Our leaders are talking about it and I want to know what is your reaction. Don't blame me. I'm telling you, what is your reaction when you hear leaders around the world, G-20 leaders talking about making sure that the barriers aren't put up with other people's workers when in fact you are so concerned about free trade agreements in the first place.

BERNERO: I challenge your viewers and you all to look at what's really happening. Even "The New York Times" recently reported that the countries that are doing the best are the countries that are most isolationists and most protectionists. So for all the worry that Wall Street always warns us that we're going to start a trade war, if we have fair trade, if we insist on fair trade for our workers that's going to result in some kind of a trade war and even "The New York Times" reports that the countries that are doing the best are the ones that are least connected to the global economy.

I'm not suggesting that we become completely isolationist, but what I'm suggesting is that the Korean government puts Korean workers first, the Japanese government puts Japanese workers first, and the Chinese government in their own way puts their workers first. Who is putting the American worker first? I think it's time that Congress steps up to the plate and protect -- provide some degree of protection for the American way of life.

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