Myths and Fairytales

MTP is pretty interesting this morning. Gregory is actually having a discussion with Fiorina, Romney, Granholm, Eric Schmidt (CEO of Google,) and the CEO of Wal-Mart Lee Scott.

The myths and fairytales are flying out of the mouths of the liars.

(Yep, there is more. Note: edited to use the there's more feature.)

1. The UAW workers do not make $73 per hour.

This was a myth started by a WSJ reporter, who took all of the wages, all of the retirement health care costs, all of the pension costs, all of the current workers health care costs, all of the current workers vacation, sick leave, etc costs plus the wages of the CEOs and then divided it by the hours worked by the current employees. That is how that number was arrived at.

The same result would happen if you took all government employees and added in all pensions, etc and then divided it by the current hours worked by current employees. It is a BS number.

If Bill Gates walked into a bar with 5 people, the average net worth of the people in the bar would be many millions of dollars. Think people, think.

2. The talks in the Senate did not break down over the UAW not agreeing to cut their wages in 2009.

Gettelfinger had an agreement with Corker. Corker did not have the clout in his Caucus to bring it about (or his Caucus sent him out there as a sacrifice.) They had an agreement. It fell apart with the Republicans when Corker brought it back. The GOP had no intention of negotiating. From the beginning they had no intention. It was all political theatre.

The UAW never should have even tried to negotiate with those lying fucks. They did so in good faith, and they have learned their lesson.

3. We do not have the "second highest business tax rate in the world."

Bullshit. We have more tax loopholes than any other country in the world. The larger that you are the more loopholes that you can take advantage of. There is a building in the Cayman Islands that holds almost 20,000 corporations that should be US businesses. They have a PO Box in the Caymans to avoid paying US taxes.

4. Businesses do not "create jobs." This is the greatest myth perpetuated by the Right.

Demand creates jobs. Employees offer their services to companies. Employees create wealth for business owners. (Good luck Lee Scott, CEO of Walmart - try selling your cheap crap without your thousands of underpaid employees. I'd like to see you in that blue vest.)

Please use this thread to list other BS myths perpetuated by the Right Wing. I know that it could go on forever, so, maybe just stick to the ones being thrown out today, on the morning shows. Even those will take up a ton of bandwidth.

5. Just because Obama is from Chicago does not mean that he is responsible for every friggin' thing that happens in Illinois. This is a molehill not a mountain. The media needs to quit hyperventilating about this crap and start focusing on the actual crimes being performed by the Bush Administration.

Oh, and PS: That gawddamned commercial about "the faces of lawsuit abuse" commercial is crap. There is not really a "lawsuit abuse" problem. This is one more BS meme put forward by the Right. The same old crap that blames trial lawyers for everything.

The law is there to protect the people from the government and the corporations and the powerful - not the other way around. Unfortunately, the law is not always used as it was intended - to save us from them, but that is only because enough people do not understand the history of our founding and why our laws and Constitution were written as such.

We need civics education and we need it badly.