Fox’s Varney Ecstatic That Pensioners May ‘Take A Haircut’

 

The city of Stockton, California officially went bankrupt yesterday. Instead of concern for what that might mean for its residents in terms of services and their quality of life, Fox predictably focused on one thing: public pensions. And, instead of doing any kind of real analysis of the pension issues, or delving into the pushy behavior of the Wall Street creditors, Stuart Varney suggested the whole problem is due to slacker public employees living high on the hog for decades after just a brief stint of work. He looked forward to pensioners taking the hit and expressed hope that the same would happen in other California cities, too.

Varney was nearly ecstatic over the federal bankruptcy judge’s ruling that allowed Stockton to go into Chapter 9 bankruptcy, and receive protection from its creditors. “Yes, I do, I do,” he crowed when asked if he liked it.

 

This ruling by this judge opens the door for Stockton to cut the payments that it makes to its pension fund. That opens the door for other cities in California to get out of their pension mess in the same kind of way. And it means, just a little way down the road, maybe existing pensioners will take a haircut.

 

 

Varney acknowledged to a less enthusiastic Brian Kilmeade that cities have “a moral responsibility to pay up on a contract” but he swiftly moved on to “the other side of the coin” which was to suggest that most pensioners are moochers. “Take for example a firefighter in the City of Stockton,” he said. “They can retire at the age of 50 and they get 90% of their best year’s salary for the rest of their lives. You can work for just six months for the City of Stockton – just six months, that’s all it is – and you get lifetime health benefits. That’s all.”

And how many of those pensioners have worked for decades educating and protecting the public based on the promise of a comfortable retirement? While retiring at 50 may seem young to the 60ish Varney, I’d like to see him start hauling firefighter equipment and running into burning buildings before he sneers about retirement ages again.

Meanwhile, neither Varney nor Kilmeade said a word about the Wall Street creditors who are very much players in the Stockton bankruptcy. In fact, you could make an argument that they are gaming the system. From the New York Times:

In the ruling, issued on Monday in Sacramento, which affirmed the legal status of Stockton’s bankruptcy, Judge Christopher M. Klein said he could see battle lines being drawn between Calpers — formally the California Public Employees’ Retirement System — and the city’s other major creditors, including several Wall Street companies that either bought Stockton’s bonds or insured them. But he ruled that it was still too early in the case for that battle to be joined.

…The judge also said that California statute required all Chapter 9 candidates to go through a 60-day mediation period before declaring bankruptcy, and creditors were supposed to help pay the cost. But the capital markets creditors dropped out of mediation, he said, when they learned Stockton was not seeking any concessions from Calpers. That left the city to pay the whole bill.

“The capital markets creditors contend that the city gave them a take-it-or-leave-it proposition, and that that is not negotiation,” Judge Klein said. “I’m sorry. I’m not persuaded. Negotiation is a two-way street. You can’t negotiate with a stone wall. You cannot do it. It cannot be done. It is a contradiction in terms.”…

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The Day That TV News Died

TV talk show host Phil Donahue. (Photo: Joe Newman / Public Citizen)

I am not sure exactly when the death of television news took place. The descent was gradual—a slide into the tawdry, the trivial and the inane, into the charade on cable news channels such as Fox and MSNBC in which hosts hold up corporate political puppets to laud or ridicule, and treat celebrity foibles as legitimate news. But if I had to pick a date when commercial television decided amassing corporate money and providing entertainment were its central mission, when it consciously chose to become a carnival act, it would probably be Feb. 25, 2003, when MSNBC took Phil Donahue off the air because of his opposition to the calls for war in Iraq.

Donahue and Bill Moyers, the last honest men on national television, were the only two major TV news personalities who presented the viewpoints of those of us who challenged the rush to war in Iraq. General Electric and Microsoft—MSNBC’s founders and defense contractors that went on to make tremendous profits from the war—were not about to tolerate a dissenting voice. Donahue was fired, and at PBS Moyers was subjected to tremendous pressure. An internal MSNBC memo leaked to the press stated that Donahue was hurting the image of the network. He would be a “difficult public face for NBC in a time of war,” the memo read. Donahue never returned to the airwaves.

The celebrity trolls who currently reign on commercial television, who bill themselves as liberal or conservative, read from the same corporate script. They spin the same court gossip. They ignore what the corporate state wants ignored. They champion what the corporate state wants championed. They do not challenge or acknowledge the structures of corporate power. Their role is to funnel viewer energy back into our dead political system—to make us believe that Democrats or Republicans are not corporate pawns. The cable shows, whose hyperbolic hosts work to make us afraid self-identified liberals or self-identified conservatives, are part of a rigged political system, one in which it is impossible to vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, General Electric or ExxonMobil. These corporations, in return for the fear-based propaganda, pay the lavish salaries of celebrity news people, usually in the millions of dollars. They make their shows profitable. And when there is war these news personalities assume their “patriotic” roles as cheerleaders, as Chris Matthews—who makes an estimated $5 million a year—did, along with the other MSNBC and Fox hosts.

It does not matter that these celebrities and their guests, usually retired generals or government officials, got the war terribly wrong. Just as it does not matter that Francis Fukuyama and Thomas Friedman were wrong on the wonders of unfettered corporate capitalism and globalization. What mattered then and what matters now is likability—known in television and advertising as the Q score—not honesty and truth. Television news celebrities are in the business of sales, not journalism. They peddle the ideology of the corporate state. And too many of us are buying…

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Shocker! Public Trust For Fox News Sinks To Record Low

By News Hound Ellen
David Schuster talks about his days working at Fox.

Public Policy Polling’s 4th annual poll about television news shows that public trust for Fox News has hit a record low. But in case you had any doubt that the “fair and balanced” network is entwined with the GOP, trust for Fox is so strong among Republicans that their partisan support makes it the most trusted news network, too.

PPP explains:

Just like its actual ratings, Fox News has hit a record low in the four years that we’ve been doing this poll. 41% of voters trust it to 46% who do not. To put those numbers into some perspective the first time we did this poll, in 2010, 49% of voters trusted it to 37% who did not. Fox has maintained most of its credibility with Republicans, dropping just from 74/15 to 70/15 over that period of time. But it’s been losing what standing it had with Democrats (from 30/52 to 22/66) and independents (from 41/44 to 32/56).

We find once again this year that Democrats trust everything except Fox, and Republicans don’t trust anything other than Fox. …When it comes to asking Americans which single outlet they trust the most and least out of the ones we polled on, Fox News once again wins both honors. 34% say it’s the one they trust the most, compared to 13% for PBS, 12% for CNN, 11% for ABC, 8% for MSNBC, 6% for CBS, and 5% each for Comedy Central and NBC. Fox News is the choice of 67% of Republicans, while Democrats basically split their allegiances four ways between ABC and CNN, both at 17%, and MSNBC and PBS, both at 16%.

So while Roger Ailes and his minions still pretend to lack a partisan agenda, American news consumers know better. It’s also heartening to know that such stunts as pretending there’s journalistic value in questioning President Obama’s citizenship, denying climate change, and predicting a landslide win for Mitt Romney don’t sit so well with most of us.

By the way, the real winner was PBS. It was the only outlet trusted by a majority of respondents.

–David Shuster, host of Take Action News and former Fox News and MSNBC reporter, joins David to talk about the behind the scenes of working for Fox News, the conservative bias, and much more.

David Shuster’s YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/takeactionnewstv

–On the Bonus Show: NYTimes hacked by China, King Richard III’s bones found, alchemy is back, more…

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