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Fox News continued its war on poor people today when it hyped Herman Cain’s highly dubious claim that people are using food stamps to pay for "fitness training," which he “learned” via a caller to his radio show.

It was not very surprising that Cain would repeat a thing like this without bothering to verify it. He isn’t exactly known for having a thirst for knowledge. But what’s Fox's excuse? Apparently, the “fair and balanced” network was so eager to re-air Cain’s characterization of food stamp recipients as moochers being exploited by a government that wants to make them dependent that nobody cared enough to verify whether Cain was telling the truth.

As banners on the screen screamed ON THE DOLE and then FOOD STAMP NATION, Steve Doocy announced that on Friday, “a document dump” from the federal government revealed a rise in Americans’ use of food stamps, the “biggest number in history,” he said. “47,791,996 Americans had to get these SNAP cards to put food on their table – they say," he said with a sneer.

Gretchen Carlson added, “So some people are concerned at the fact that this number has continued to escalate dramatically over the last couple of years.”

The concern was not that people are hungry or are not earning enough money to feed their families adequately. For example, as the Working Poor Families Project reported, "the number of low-income working families is increasing and nearly one third of all working families—32 percent—may not have enough money to meet basic needs." Also not mentioned: 55% of all food stamp recipients are children under 18 or the elderly, over 65.

And speaking of the working poor, let’s not forget that Cain bears a hefty chunk of responsibility for their plight:

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There is a great deal of angst and worry among progressives about what is going to happen in two months, when the Republicans will once again try to hold the economy hostage so they can cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, education, and everything else in the federal budget that helps low- and middle-income folks. It is of course a bad situation when you have one branch of the government eager to blow up the economy to do bad things that more than 80 percent of Americans oppose, but we need to spend a lot less time worrying and a lot more time organizing.

We can beat these guys, and beat them badly, if we have a focused and aggressive strategy.

There are four things progressives should do right now. The first relates to the President. I understand the disappointment we're feeling about his kicking the can down the road another two months, and the leverage lost on the revenue side. And I was very critical of the President’s willingness to swap cuts in Social Security benefits for a deal in this last go-around, and will fight him with every ounce of energy if he proposes any such thing again. But right now is the worst possible time to be raising doubts about this President’s willingness to hang tough in a negotiation as some of my friends in the progressive movement are doing.

The Republicans need to know that the President is deadly serious when he says he won’t negotiate on the debt ceiling, and that the entire progressive movement and Democratic party have his back on this. No negotiation whatsoever. Period and end of sentence.

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