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CNN and Money tout a consensus of economists in favor of leaving the rich their huge tax cuts so that the middle class can continue with its usual crumbs. That settles it, right? They aren't teabaggers. We have to listen to the experts...

But.

Like big media everywhere, Money has stacked its lineup of thirty-one economists. Bank-owned economists are well represented. Investment and insurance have their guys in the list. Even real estate and retail are there. These people work for institutions who utterly and completely failed to foresee the current crisis.

These are also people whose paychecks depend on how well they serve the interests of wealth. It's not surprising to find that they find brave new ways to rationalize even more trickle down economics.

Has trickle-down abjectly failed for the past thirty years? No problem, they can find more rationalizations that sound good. It's only coincidental that they're defending policies that help their clients. They're really doing it for small businesses that are too marginal to have bothered to incorporate. I shit you not:

The 'why' behind extending tax benefits - The reason for this idea is to shield small business from tax hikes. Many small businesses are not incorporated so their owners pay the personal tax rate. This means that if the personal tax rate goes up, the tax on business goes up and that will restrict activity. Congress has known about this for some time and has done nothing to solve the problem. It’s back! A tax hike on high wage earners is one thing; a tax on business is something else. That is what is really at stake and Mr Summers wants to hide that and prefers to sell policy on the basis of ideas rooted in class warfare which can never be good but do get the blood flowing.

This Ph.D. moron, Robert Brusca, is calling Larry Summers a class warrior! And he's serious about it - or pretends to be. So much for the intellectual honesty he finds lacking in Summers. (I do too, but for completely different reasons. Can we please get Summers out of any institution that matters to the common weal!)

Money salts the list with a few academics, four by my count. But even three of them are business economists. Three of the four teach at small California colleges that I had never heard of before - Cal. State Channel Islands?

Any Nobelists? Anyone paid by a labor union? Any balance whatsoever? I know the business press doesn't have any balance in its Rolodex. Isn't it time to do a little research?

Evidently not. Better to let CNN run with the bullshit that makes all its owners and upper management happy...

Still, the totally scary news is that these business economists predict a jobless recovery through the end of 2011, despite raging unemployment between 8 and 10 percent. To prove their complete bias, most of them oppose any further help for the unemployed.

In summary, CNN/Money, through their bias says, Hurting? Fuck you. Rich. Free money!

Assholes.