Watch an economist call out CNN for hosting a Koch-backed Trump surrogate to lie about the Paris accord

From Media Matters

JEFFREY SACHS: It's just unbelievable. Every word has been a lie for the last two days. So much ignorance. And you have Stephen Moore and he is from the Heritage Foundation, paid for by the Koch brothers have engineered the whole story here. So it's just endless. Big money of the Koch brothers is behind this. And Mr. Moore and his Heritage Foundation is a Koch brothers-financed operation and this is corruption. And it's so clear and it's disgusting after a while because they are all lying.

ANA CABRERA (HOST): Jeffrey, this study was the National Economic Research Associates study that Stephen was just citing that we've heard from the Trump administration. Why do you not believe that's a credible source?

SACHS: There are about 20,000 coal miners in this country out of 150 million people. This is so bogus, it's unbelievable. Everything that Trump has said is bogus. And the idea that he has given to the American people that somehow this is an agreement that is against America, that's biased against America. This is a completely symmetrical agreement in which all 193 countries have agreed to the same thing. They have agreed to submit national plans of action under a common framework. And so it's all a lie. And the important thing for your viewers to understand is this is the future of their children and their grandchildren. And this man is wrecking the planet and it's because of the oil, gas, and coal interests that have funded the Heritage Foundation, that have funded Stephen Moore, and that have funded the 22 senators that wrote to the president last week saying to do this. This is a game and it's a game against my children and my grandchildren. And it's disgusting.

CABRERA: Stephen, I'll give you a chance to respond.

STEPHEN MOORE: Well, Jeff just needs to get his facts straight. We get less than three percent of our budget from the Kochs. So, Jeff I don't know where you're getting your facts from, but what you just said is a lie.

SACHS: I know where I'm getting my facts from. You're on the take.

[...]

SACHS: I'm shocked that you are a [contributor] for this network.

Stephen Moore: GOP ‘Hypocritical’ For Taking Gov’t Health Care, They ‘Should Give Up Their Pension’ Too

By Ben Armbruster

Seeming to maintain a consistant position on the issue, several GOP lawmakers who campaigned on and support repealing the new health care reform law have turned down their federally subsidized health insurance plans. ABC News reports that 14 House Republicans have waived their federal plans. All 242 House Republicans voted to repeal the law last week, leaving dozens, if not hundreds, more GOPers benefiting from government subsidized health care while voting to repeal it for everyone else. Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) said last week that this “could be” hypocritical. But on the online-only “Overtime” segment of HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, conservative commentator and Wall Street Journal editorial board member Stephen Moore went a bit further:

MAHER: Isn’t it hypocritical of Congress to repeal the health care reform bill but not their own government health care? Now, I don’t know how you can defend that as not hypocritcal.

MOORE: It’s hypocritical. … Repeal both.

MAHER: Really? Repeal both. You think they should’ve given up their health care?

MOORE: Yeah. The Congress should give up their pension, their health care, all those things.

MAHER: That’ll make you popular on Captitol Hill.

Watch it:

Ep. 199: January 21, 2011 – Overtime

Today on a local radio show, freshman Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-NC) — a fierce opponent of the new health care law — said that she will participate in the government plan because, otherwise, it’s too “expensive.” “Unfortunately, being here in Washington is very expensive,” Ellmers said, who is set to make $174,000 this year. “Yes we do have a salary and we do have benefits. It costs a lot of money to be here. I’ve signed on to the private plan, just like so many in America are on. The benefit is available to me. People need to understand out there it costs a lot money to be here in Congress.”

Stephen Moore calls for raising taxes on the poor in order to pay for tax cuts for the rich.

By Pat Garofalo

The Bush tax cuts are scheduled to expire in January. President Obama has expressed a desire to preserve the cuts for the middle class while letting tax rates for the wealthy reset to where they were during the Clinton administration. Conservative lawmakers and pundits have been fearmongering that allowing the tax cuts for the wealthy to expire will kill job creation and small businesses (despite the fact that fewer than 2 percent of small business owners will be affected). Last night on CNBC, Wall Street Journal editorial board member Stephen Moore went so far as to say that he can’t “see the sense” of allowing cuts for the rich to expire, and then advocated that taxes be raised on the poorest Americans in order to finance more tax cuts for the rich:

I just don’t see the sense of this. In fact, if I could have my ‘druthers, I’d raise the ten percent tax rate to fifteen percent and lower the [top] rates.

Watch it:

Adopting such a plan would only exacerbate income inequality that is already the worst it has been since the 1920’s. According to the latest data, “the gaps in after-tax income between the richest 1 percent of Americans and the middle and poorest fifths of the country more than tripled between 1979 and 2007.” The top 1 percent of families now receive nearly 25 percent of the country’s income, after earning less than 10 percent in the 1970s. This year the Bush tax cuts will give millionaires more in tax breaks than 90 percent of Americans will make in total income.

M.C.L Comment: You heard that all of you people who like to call yourself blue collar conservatives? One of the people that tell you what to think just advocated for your taxes to be increased. While Paris Hilton and other trust fund babies are sitting by the pool and reaping in the benefit of being born to a wealthy family you're going to have pay for their share along with your own.