The Occupy Wall Street protest that began in New York City more than three weeks ago has sparked an entire movement, based on the principle that the economy should work for everyone, not simply the richest one percent. At a time when income inequality and corporate profits are running sky high, right alongside joblessness and foreclosures, a movement like this captures the very real pain felt by “the 99 percent.”

However, the financial prognosticators on CNBC — including Larry Kudlow, Jim Cramer, and Joe Kernan — have found nothing but scorn for the protestors, deriding them as “bizarre,” “freaks,” and “law-breaking” “anti-American” “anarchists” who are “more aligned with Lenin.” Watch a compilation:

It’s no real surprise that the same pundits who derided subprime lending victims as “suckers,” vigorously defended the righteousness of bailed-out banks paying million dollar bonuses, believe tax havens prevent tyranny, and cited Glenn Beck as a new economic indicator would find the Wall Street protests off-putting. But their comments merely highlight how out-of-touch they are with the common American, as they cater all day, every day to the Wall Street crowd.

Since BP’s oil gusher in the Gulf of Mexico began, a favorite right wing talking point has been that the Jones Act — a 1920 law stipulating that commerce between U.S. ports needs to occur on U.S. ships — has been hindering the cleanup effort by forcing the federal government to reject aid from foreign nations. Conservative lawmakers and pundits have been claiming that the Obama administration is refusing to waive the Jones Act out of deference to the will of labor unions.

Earlier this month, McClatchy demolished this meme, reporting that “maritime law experts, government officials and independent researchers say that the claim is false. The Jones Act isn’t an impediment at all, they say, and it hasn’t blocked anything.” But this hasn’t stopped the drumbeat from the right-wing, with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) going so far as to say that aid from 17 countries has been rejected because of the Jones Act. “Due to the Jones Act, these vessels are not permitted in US waters,” he said.

Yesterday, on CNBC, Hans Bader of the Competitive Enterprise Institute repeated this talking point, claiming that there have been several rejections of foreign aid due to the Jones Act. However, he ran into a host who had done his homework, as CNBC’s Mark Haines noted that 68 different offers of foreign cleanup help have been accepted. Haines challenged Bader to cite examples of the Jones Act causing a problem, with predictable results:

HAINES: How many rejections under the Jones Act?

BADER: I don’t know how many.

HAINES: Excuse me, Senator McCarthy, you can’t tell us how many there are? I want the facts, give us hard facts, give us evidence, not innuendo, not baseless accusations, okay? It’s offensive to intelligence. The fact is sir, you have told us there are examples of rejections and you can not name a single one.

Watch it:

Bader eventually cited one Dutch ship that was supposedly turned back due to the Jones Act. So today, Haines was back on the case, pointing out that the Dutch offer had been made before the federal government even knew there was an oil leak, and the rejection was initiated by the EPA. “It was not because of the Jones act, it was not a conspiracy to protect the unions and sacrifice the environment,” he said.

I’m pretty tough on CNBC’s team for spending most of its time shilling for big bank bonuses, tax cheats, predatory lenders, and the ultra-wealthy, while falsely scaremongering about the effects of the Obama administration agenda. But, credit where credit is due, Haines was prepared to call this nonsense for what it is: an attempt to demagogue unions and score political points off an environmental catastrophe.

(HT: ThinkProgress reader Richard)

The House of Representatives is currently working its way through a bill that extends several popular business tax credits as well as important social safety net provisions like unemployment insurance. But of course, these things cost money, and the bill’s authors — led by Sens. Max Baucus (D-MT) and Rep. Sander Levin (D-MI) — have come up with a series of offsets to partially cover the bill’s cost.

One of these is a change in the taxation of carried interest, or the payment that hedge fund and private equity managers receive for successfully managing other people’s money. Currently, these managers are inexplicably allowed to pay the capital gains rate (which is meant to encourage investment) on money that they receive in exchange for providing a service. It’s as if we taxed the proceeds of a movie that go to its lead actor as capital gains instead of income. Levin and Baucus have suggested that their pay be subject to normal income tax rates.

Of course, CNBC’s talking heads — who never miss an opportunity to defend the right of the wealthy to use tax havens or the sanctity of bonuses for bailed out bankers — are going nuts about the tax increase, led by devout supply-side devotee Larry Kudlow. They’re calling it “one of the five dumbest things in the history of the Earth,” a “job killer,” “mind boggling,” “patently unfair,” and the result of “left-wing social policy.” Watch a compilation:

What’s actually mind boggling is that CNBC’s cast of pundits and anchors thinks it’s entirely appropriate for both a janitor and a hedge fund manager to receive a paycheck, yet have the former be subject to income tax rates and the latter subject to the lower capital gains rate. As Citizens for Tax Justice explained:

The preferential income tax rate for capital gains was created to benefit those who invest their own money. The partnership income that investment managers earn is clearly compensation for services and not a return on investment (except to the extent that they actually have put up their own money — and the treatment of that won’t change). They should pay income taxes at ordinary rates on their compensation, just like everyone else, from the folks who sweep their floors or answer their phones to CEO’s exercising stock options and professional athletes getting playoff bonuses.

CNBC’s gang deploys a lot of rhetoric about innovation and job creation being smothered by the tax, but let’s be clear — investors will not see their taxes go up because of this change. It applies to managers, who are paid to take money from investors and make more money with it. These managers typically receive hundreds of millions — if not billions — annually for their services.

Baucus has said that there’s a “growing sense of inevitability” that the tax change will be adopted and Levin today added that it won’t be taken out of the legislation. “We’ve already worked hard to balance all of the needs, here,” Levin said. “The basic principle is, if it’s your money [at risk] you pay capital gains; if you’re managing other people’s money, essentially you pay ordinary income tax like everybody else.”

The news that Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-CT) is retiring has thrown some light back onto financial regulatory reform, which is slowly being molded by that committee’s members. While the committee is nearing agreement on some issues — such as the proper regulatory role for the Federal Reserve — the “key stumbling block” remains the Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA).

During the House regulatory reform debate, Rep. Walt Minnick (D-ID) proposed an amendment that would have gutted the CFPA by turning it into a loose council within the existing regulatory framework. The Minnick proposal would make the CFPA into a conflicted, ineffectual body (Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) called it “the bureaucratic version of the Christmas song”), which is exactly what the financial services industry would love to see. And the proposal was only narrowly defeated.

Today, Financial Services Forum president Ron Nichols said on CNBC that his organization (which represents the 18 largest financial firms in the country) is actively pushing Minnick’s plan in the Senate:

We’ve talked to a lot of senators, on both sides of the aisle, who have seen what Walt Minnick has done. He is a conservative Democrat from Idaho and he proposed an amendment to the House bill that, instead of having a CFPA, would have a council — within each regulator would have an office of consumer protection and education that would get together, talk about best practices, talk about what they’re seeing in the marketplace, in lieu of a CFPA…It would marry consumer protection with the prudential regulator.

Watch it:

CNBC’s Becky Quick pointed out the obvious, noting that such a council would have “no real teeth in being able to implement anything.” Indeed, look at Nichols’ description of what the council would do — “talk” about this and that, but take no action.

Of course, the biggest financial firms in the country are loath to see a CFPA with rule-making and enforcement authority come into being. And they’re joined by Senate Republicans, who as Ryan Grim noted, “consider [the CFPA] as threatening as their current arch-nemesis regulator: the Environmental Protection Agency.” “From the Republican point of view, the idea of a separate agency is still anathema,” said Sen. Robert Bennett (R-UT).

But an independent agency with rule-writing and enforcement authority is exactly what we need to even the playing field between big banks and consumers. “For reform groups, this effort will not be successful without a stand-alone consumer agency,” said Graham Steele, policy counsel with Public Citizen’s Congress Watch. “These [bank] regulators repeatedly prioritized banks’ business practices over consumers’ financial security.” And only an independent agency that is on even-footing with the bank regulators can actively ensure that such pernicious practices don’t reemerge.