Here’s Proof Fox News and Rush Limbaugh Have Dumbed Down the Republican Base

By now, everybody with half a brain has figured out that the rich are parasites that get richer by draining the rest of us dry via legislation, such as deregulation and free trade “income redistribution” treaties. Even dogs and cats intuitively know this. However, 44 percent of Republicans and 8 percent of Democrats don’t believe reality, real reality. What that means is simple. There are a lot more brain dead Republicans than there are Democrats.

There is something even more amazing about the statistics below. Even as the income and wealth divide between the 99 percent and the 1 percent have grown wider since 1987, even as the 1 percent has stolen 93 percent of aggregate US income growth over the last two years, even as the 1 percent has increased their share of the total national income from about 8 percent in 1980 to roughly 25 percent today, the percentage of Republicans who believe “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer” has declined from 62 percent in 1987 to 56 percent today.

Does that mean that Republicans have been massively dumb downed by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and the corporate news media? Or does it mean they’ve become stupider? Or is it a combination of both? These are good questions because Republicans today are clearly stupider on average than they were in 1987.

From the Pew Hispanic Research Center:

“The belief that the “rich just get richer while the poor get poorer” has remained stable across income groups since 1987. Those in the lowest quartile of family income –$20,000 a year or less in the current survey – continue to be somewhat more likely to agree with this sentiment than those in highest income quartile ($75,000 or more) (85% vs. 70%).

But the partisan gap in these attitudes is large and growing. The percentage of Democrats agreeing that the “rich get richer” (92%) is as high as it has ever been and has increased by eight points since the previous political values survey in 2009. Nearly three-quarters of independents (73%) agree that the rich get richer, while a much smaller majority of Republicans (56%) do so.

Partisan differences on this measure have never been wider. In the first political values survey in 1987, 84% of Democrats said the rich got richer and the poor got poorer, compared with 74% of independents and 62% of Republicans.”

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The Fox Propaganda Network and the Dumbing Down of Republican America

The One Percent Has Stolen 93 Percent of Total US Income Growth from 2009 to 2011

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Another Study Shows That the Fox Republican Party Propaganda Network Dumbs Down It’s Viewers

By now, everybody with the exception of dumb downed Fox News Viewers knows the truth of the headline of this story. But there is something that is probably less well known. Here it is; all of the corporate news media do the same thing, only the difference between them and Fox News is a matter of degree and not of kind. That’s why we need to go to the Internet, to truthout.org, to the Guardian of England, to Al Jezeera, to the BBC, to find the real news.

In 1904, the brilliant economist Thorstein Veblen wrote in Theory of Business Enterprise, “The first duty of an editor is to edit and omit all news stories with a view to what the news ought to be.” The corporate news media, including the New York Times, continues to follow this rule. Veblen also wrote, The second duty of an editor is to not offend advertisers.

Wall Street, Goldman Sachs, Nike, Microsoft, Apple and hundreds of other corporations rely heavily on redistributing income from the 99 percent to the one percent via free trade treaties. The difference between the old wages here and the new lesser wages over there are redistributed to the one percent via higher corporate profits, rising dividends and increased share prices. The losers of those jobs may get unemployment insurance if they are lucky.

So don’t expect any stories from any corporate media outlets about how free trade treaties have redistributed income, and wiped out much of the tax base that supports our schools and local government services. The same is true of deregulation and other methods of redistributing income and wealth from the 99 to the one percent. And you certainly won’t find any stories about how thirty plus years of tax cuts for the one percent have brought about all of the above, but also corrupted our government and courts, especially the corrupt corporate wing of the US supreme court.

Click here for the story about Fox News and the Dumbing Down of Its Audience

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