Conservatives continue to cry “liberal media bias” to explain away the unpopularity of the right-wing agenda, despite the stark economic realities for all but the super-wealthy in America. These tired claims ignore the reality that the right-wing agenda actually benefits the “mainstream media.”

The multinational corporations that run the mainstream media — GE (NBC), Time Warner (CNN), Walt Disney (ABC), News Corporation (FOX), and Viacom (CBS) — stand to benefit hugely under a McCain presidency. The centerpiece of Sen. McCain’s economic plan — actually, the whole plan — is large tax cuts for corporations. It would deliver $1.44 billion in tax cuts to the five largest media companies, according to an analysis by the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

These giveaways are just one part of McCain’s doubling of the Bush tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy which would create the largest deficits in 25 years and drive the United States into the deepest deficits since World War II. McCain and Palin have promised that the $700 billion bailout would not threaten these tax cuts.

During the Vice-Presidential debate last night, Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) spent ample time claiming that Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) economic plan will create new jobs and cause the economy to grow:

PALIN: We can speak in agreement here that darn right we need tax relief for Americans so that jobs can be created here…We do need the private sector to be able to keep more of what we earn and produce. [...]

You’re going to have a choice in just a few weeks here on either supporting a ticket that wants to create jobs and bolster our economy and win the war or you’re going to be supporting a ticket that wants to increase taxes, which ultimately kills jobs, and is going to hurt our economy.

The McCain/Palin economic plan consists of a cut in the corporate tax rate, a permanent research and development tax credit, and a provision allowing full expensing of business equipment, which they claim “focuses on how to help our economy create more good jobs.”

This plan, however, spends hundreds of billions of dollars, while not even creating enough jobs to keep up with the number of new workers entering the workforce.

In an analysis for the Center for American Progress Action Fund, Brian Levine finds that McCain’s plan “would create only about ƒƒ450,000 jobs in 2009, at a cost of $280 billion.” Meanwhile, “the United States needs to generate 1.5 million jobs a year just to keep up with the new ƒƒworkers entering the labor force.”

Furthermore, Levine notes that “the number of jobs created would be decidedly unimpressive relative to the size of the tax break given to corporations.” By cutting the corporate tax rate from 35% to 25%, McCain and Palin will be giving $175 billion in tax breaks to America’s corporations, including $45 billion to the Fortune 200. And as the Congressional Budget Office has pointed out, a corporate tax cut “does not create an incentive for [corporations] to spend more on labor.”

Today, it was announced that employers cut 159,000 jobs in September, and the unemployment rate did not drop from its seven-year high of 6.1%. Thus, a plan that actually creates jobs is vital, and as Levine concludes, “a well-designed economic stimulus plan, costing the same amount [as McCain's plan], would create 2 million jobs.” The McCain/Palin plan, simply put, costs a lot while doing nowhere near enough.

Digg It!

Our guest blogger is Tim Westrich, a Research Associate at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

On the Wall Street Journal’s opinion page today (“How Government Stoked the Mania”), Professor Russell Roberts is the latest on the conservative bandwagon blaming the Community Reinvestment Act, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac for the subprime mortgage mess, a claim that is simply not true. Roberts seems to be shoveling numbers to conservative pundits who have been making the case on TV, radio, and in columns.

Problem is, Russell Roberts admitted in his own blog just today that he’s not even sure if “the case is sturdy or just suggestive” and that he’s “working on getting more data“:

Here is my piece in the WSJ on government’s role in the mess. It’s a work in progress. I am working on getting more data to see if the case is sturdy or just suggestive. And of course this is an ex post narrative. I tried to be careful to say that it is part of the story and perhaps the essential part. The people who are saying it ISN’T Fannie and Freddie, or it isn’t the CRA or it isn’t the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 or Greenspan’s role in cutting interest rates are probably right. No one of these is THE cause. But I think the combined effects are potentially as compelling once I dig up all the numbers. And I certainly prefer the combined effects to the one cause explanation of greed or markets failed.

Of course, his blog post — where Roberts is careful to say the case is “a work in progress” — will be seen by a lot fewer people than his opinion piece in the WSJ’s print and online versions, where Roberts is much more certain about his facts.

The root cause of the financial mess is the failure of Bush administration officials to take action when they saw what was happening in the U.S. housing market and the overall economy to prevent disasters from happening. They need to accept the fact that their cries for less government persuaded regulators they appointed to their posts to turn the other way as lending abuses piled up in the subprime mortgage market.