the sessions begin at 11. i believe we are on time at 10:45 the 15 minutes to get a cup of coffee, keep it up in the microwave in your room, and join us in one of these three sessions at 11:00. thank you, guys, for joining. ♪ ♪ ♪ >> this conference on tax policy hosted by the foundation for research on equal opportunity taking a brief break coming up later on c-span2 the u. s. senate gavels in at 3:00 eastern. later at 5:30 p.m. lawmakers will vote on a circuit court judicial nominee. you can catch live coverage of the senator nunn c-span2. also on the c-span the app and online at c-span.org. while we wait for this conference to continue, we will show you some of "washington

journal." >> welcome back. were joined by thom hartmann who's a host of the thom hartmann program which is a live nationwide daily airs monday through friday on sirius xm radio. welcome to "washington journal." >> good morning, kimberly. thank you for having a. >> thank you for getting up early from portland, oregon. what is your take on the outcome of the election? >> my concern is that we are essentially sliding into oligarchy. seven or eight years ago on my program president carter pointing to citizens united when the supreme court basically said is no legal because money is the same thing as free speech and corporations are the sameor thig as people. very wealthy people to by elections and politicians and now we have a billionaire coming in as president we have the richest man in the world coming

in and oath of them have spent the last couple of years apparently regularly speaking with vladimir putin and victor or bond. the kind of semi-dictator of hungary came over to speak at cpac in dallas a couple years ago. and laid out what he had done in hungary within a year of his second election, his reelection. he had basically destroyed the independent media. people post on facebook against him and they go to jail. i am very concerned that that is the direction we are heading now and you can get people like cash patel, a trump surrogate saying we are coming for you in the media. i am very concerned that jimmy carter's essential prophecy is coming true. we will have a government for the very rich. >> republicans and donald trump

in particular showed a lot of gains this election including among people across demographic groups seeing gains with latino voters and white women. how do you explain some of those gains. guest: i used to work in advertising. 40 years ago. i owned an advertising agency in atlanta and a few beat people over the head with a message often enough with enough money and enough saturation, you can largely convince them of anything. kamala harris never once mentioned trans people during the campaign and has never really been a champion of trans people. she had that one interview many years ago where she talked about trans people getting surgery in jail. that is certainly not her position now, she walked that back years ago. but the trump campaign and

mostly the very large super pac's that were funded to the tune of over $100 million each by multiple right-wing billionaires poured so much advertising into in particular in the swing states arguing that that was her entire agenda basically was hey let's elevate trans people. people bought it. which is perfectly understandable. advertising works. it is the reason why most commercial television networks and newspaper still exist. if it didn't work they would not be around. so i think the narrative was taken by this -- i understand there's roughly about 150 billionaire families who through most of the money that was

behind trump into this campaign. and of course they are looking for tax cuts and those in business have in a big way especially the industries like the fossil fuel industry they're looking for deregulation and more subsidies. in subsidizing to the tune of billions of dollars a year. they want more and it certainly looks, putting a fossil fuel lobbyist in charge of the interior department for example which trump just announced it certainly looks like they will get their investment will pay back. my big concern is this department of government efficiency that elon musk and vivek ramaswamy are supposed to run, there is talk that they want to carefully evaluate our entitlements programs which of course his social security and medicare and medicaid. i do not think the average american realizes how bad it could get. i do not know if it will, but

there are some probably some practical political limits to what they can do. but i am just very concerned. host: i want to pull up a chart looking at some of these ea where trump gained voters inclin 46% of latinooters backed trump up from seven pointsn 2020. trump winning latino men 65% to 43%, winning among white women 53% 45%. if we look at thes last two, noncollege graates 56% voted for cop ashford donald trumpnd 64% from rural americans pported trump. whdo democrats struggle with these groups in particular, noncollege graduates in dutch and rural america. host: again to go back -- guest: again to go back to the massive advertising. there was also the social media presence and of course elon musk

tweaking his algorithms to promote right-wing messages suggesting that because democrats have traditionally been the party that related to the -- joe biden was the first president in the history of america -- it was democrats who brought us the five-day workweek work week and 40 hour work week, the weekend, unemployment insurance, social security, medicare and medicaid, all of those things. but also democrats since the 60's have been the party that has defended racial minorities and since really the 80's defended gender minorities that a caricature of democrats and the democratic party i mentioned a minute ago about going after kamala harris has been created that this absolutely massive right-wing ecosphere that has emerged since the 80's you've

got three television networks funded right-wing billionaires, one of them a foreign billionaire, fox news. you've got 1500 right-wing radio stations. we now have 300 right-wing radio stations that broadcast in spanish. this came up in the last four years. you've got 700 or 800 christian stations that have in many cases abandoned talking about jesus and started talking about politics. you have churches where they are ignoring the law and preaching politics from the pulpit. it is this massive cumulative effort and there is nothing like that on the left. we have never developed a strong -- we had air america for about five years and in 2008, there was kind of a broad consensus

that america -- air america helped barack obama get elected. host: i don't know if you want to grab a drink of water or something, but i do want to read something here. i will go back to something you mentioned earlier. since the 1960's the democrats have been the party that supported racial minorities according to your assessment. i want to look at this chart about distribution of white voters in particular. the democrats have not won the vote amongst white americans since 1964, overwhelmingly over the years white voters still voted republican. and democrats have lost support among white voters even since barack obama in 2008. what do you think that means for the future of the party and the parties dynamic? guest: i think what it reflects is the deep racism that is still

at stand among white people in america. certainly the trump presidency and even his successful campaign in 2016 which frankly shocked me. i am a white guy, i grew up with white people and i knew that white racism was out there, i heard the jokes and slurs as a kid and all that kind of thing but i never realized how broad and how deep it is. 1960 four was the year lyndon johnson put forward the civil rights act and actually passed congress. it was the end of apartheid in the united states paid i'm old enough that i remember as a little kid my parents taking me to the jack tar in michigan. that was the fanciest hotel in town and had a really nice restaurant and for their anniversary what i was seven or eight years old they took us to dinner there.

i remer the sign on the side of the building pointing to the colored interest. this is the 1950's. that all ended in 1964. that was over the next five years we saw all these southern democrats, all of these guys flip and become republicans because the republican party who was not in a big way taking a position on this, very goldwater ran for president in 64 actually opposed the civil rights act. his argument was this was the job of the states not the federal government. when ronald reagan ran for president in 1980, the first speech he gave as an official candidate of the party was in philadelphia, mississippi which is the site of the murder of three civil rights workers, a sure, cheney and goodwin. his entire speech to an all-white white audience was about states rights which was

code back then for we never should've passed that civil rights act and we should go back to an apartheid united states. it's been pretty much that way ever since. trump has tripled down on it. i do not have an explanation beyond for this very clear racial divide that exists. beyond just the shocking reality that at least half of white america is just deeply racist. >> we will be taking your calls and questions for our guests, democrats you can call in at 202-748-8000. republicans 202-748-8001 and independents 202-748-8002. now tom we've talked about the areas where democrats have lost votes and i want to talk a bit about what kind of coalition democrats could potentially create moving forward given what they've learned.

the cofounder of the democracy policy network wrote in the nation after the election a democrat focus less on really shrill relationships with fellow neighbors and local chapter leaders and emphasized fundraising and celebrities. i willa bit more of that. inst funding itself prim through membership , thdemocratic party offers fancy events for th wethy and ceaseless disrespectful texts for the rest of us. para social relationships with celebrities and famous politicians are emphasized over real relationships with fellow neighbd lol chapter leaders. when you go to democrats.org clicking take action does not rected to a page with your lol democratic committee's meeting times and location but a call to action button on the party's homepage is donate, not join. what do you see is the future for how democrats can create a new coalition for themselves? guest: i think that is a very

legitimate critique and it echoes one that i have made many times over the years. what happened was in 1978, lewis powell, richard nixon put them on the supreme court in 72. he authored a supreme court decision in first national bank versus baloney in which the supreme court ruled for the first time in a big way that money -- because corporations do not have a model. if they want to speak they have to use money so it's the same thing as free speech and protected by the first amendment. and corporations are persons so they are entitled to rights under the constitution under the first amendment. and that kind of floated ronald reagan into the white house in 1980 on an ocean of oil money by and large. but it also confronted the democratic party with a real crisis. fundraising, how can we win elections if elections going

forward are going to be about money. in 92 the clinton campaign largely embraced reagan's neoliberal positions. and started going for wealthy people, wealthy funders. and embracing the hotshot bankers and things like that. and that continued right up until the election of joe biden. pardon me. joe biden really is the first democrat since 92 to have repudiated neoliberalism, this idea of reducing the size of unions, cutting taxes on wealthy people and free trade, allowing corporations to go anywhere they want to get the cheapest labor. , but both clinton and obama did and the democratic party is still largely neoliberal party. largely embracing that although the progressive caucus in congress about 100 members of all said we will not take

corporate money we are not begging rich people for money we will be here just for the people. but i think that's a very legitimate critique of the democratic party and they really need to get their grassroots act together and they need to become the party of the bottom 90% and stop with the movie stars and the billionaires. i think that probably kamala harris campaign with beyonce and mark cuban and liz cheney a republican. i don't think any of those things helped her frankly. >> let's get to your calls. john is in virginia on our line for independent spread good morning. caller: how are you doing this morning. i want to ask a quick question. if the vote is supposed to be unanimous how do all the polls come up with the percentage of people who voted for who? like 53% of white people voting

for donald trump? how do you come up for those of they are supposed to be anonymous? host: what do you mean unanimous. caller: i'm sorry, a secret ballot. no one spoke to know who you voted for. how do you come up with these numbers like the percentage of people who voted for who. guest: they do what they are called exit polls where you stand outside polling places and as people are coming out you ask them who they voted for. the people who are willing to answer more questions they will ask them how much do you make and where you work and things like that. exit polls are actually surprisingly accurate per they are used all around the world. so that's principally how they came up with those numbers. >> carl is in michigan on our line for democrats. good morning. caller: good morning. i'm a fan of your show. and the books that you -- that

i've read. as far as the rich people and celebrities i just want to call everyone out. what i want to throw out there for the audience, to talk about a little bit just a few things i jotted down. freedom will destroy america. freedom of speech, the cesspool known as social media. freedom to bear arms. an average of three guns per adult in this country. freedom of,/freedom from religion inching closer to theocracy, a government establishing religion. congress and the supreme court forcing religion in the public schools, the curriculum and book bands. freedom to assemble, money and speech. manipulating elections and legislation from both sides. freedom of markets. plutocracy a limiting pensions and busting unions. protecting workers and consumers. shipping labor overseas. ceo salaries and profits.

freedom of press/media. dividing us, manipulating us and insulting us. host: tom do you have any response to those ideas that were just laid out? guest: yes. back in 1936 franklin roosevelt famously said necessities men are not free men. you are not free if you are hungry. if you don't have a job, if you do not have a place to live. you are not free if you are capable of getting an education and cannot. and that has been a mantra essentially for the democratic party ever since that opportunity and freedom are interchangeable. republicans on the other hand have been saying you are not free if you do not have a gun. you are not free if you have to pay taxes. particularly if you are very rich.

and this word freedom which has a deep almost dna residence for americans has been used by both parties i think in very different ways. i think your callers points are cogent and important. and kamala harris to her credit like i said she wasn't campaigning on surgeries for trans people she was campaigning on the idea that freedom is as important as freedom from. and freedom to have a decent retirement with a well-funded social security system, freedom to have good health care from a national health care system that provide for everybody. freedom to get a good education, good housing and things like that and sadly that got drowned out by literally billions of

dollars. we have never seen so much money spent in a political campaign in the history of america. i think it is a very important point made. host: jess is in cleveland on our line for republicans. caller: good morning, good day sir. my dad and my mom were fdr jfk democrats. i'm a republican. i'm not racist. one of my daughters is married to someone who is black. when you say those types of things you inflame a lot of americans, so the other things about going into a hotel and seeing a sign, you know perfectly well in 64 that was legal admit -- it's really sad you are complete biased for the left and i see nothing in the conversation that's more centric

the can pull us together. please comment. caller: well i'm not sure what i've said that is the left. i think i've been presenting american values that most of us agree with. i don't think i am inflaming anything when i say there are a lot of white racists out there. i think you would have to agree with me. and when you've got a presidential candidate saying -- talking about s-hole countries and referring to people of color as rapists and murderers, that is pretty inflammatory i will give you that. but please name one position i've taken or one thing i've argued that his radical left. host: he's already let go of that caller. caller: when you look at -- we used to get -- the american people, all of us, democrats and republicans and independents, we

used to get what we wanted out of government. between 1933 and the mid-1980's, we got medicare, social security, unemployment insurance, the right to unionize, housing support, free college functionally up until the mid-1980's. it used to be insurance companies and hospitals were required to be nonprofits. basically the stuff that americans wanted they used to get. since the 1980's, since basically money was interpreted as speech by five corrupt members of the supreme court and money came to dominate our political environment and wealthy people frankly billionaires in large part came to control at least one of our political parties, arguably both. to some extent with the democrats. we are not getting what we want. when you pull americans and say do you think rich people should pay their fair share of taxes

your average billionaire in america is paying 3% in income taxes. i am paying more than that. i bet everyone listening is. why aren't those taxes going up. they could fund a lot of really good stuff because the billionaires basically own things. you have a billionaire who is going to be president. the world's richest man right beside him. the majority funded by billionaires where's the harris campaign was funded majority with $200 contributions from average people. when you look at the things people want, people would like a national health care system where right -- we have millions of people with no health insurance at all. we are the only developed country in the world where that is the case. half a million people a year in all the developed democracies in the world, all of the developed democracies in the world, half a million people year declared bankruptcy because someone in their family got sick. 100% of those are here in the united states, no other country

has that. we are the only developed country in the world that has the student debt crisis. $2 trillion of student debt. 70, 80% of people say college should be free. everybody should have health care and it should be a reasonable cost. these things are not happening because the billionaires do not want to pay their taxes. so what do they do, they throw out this stuff like the mexicans are coming to rape your wife and murder your daughter and let me show you the example of one that happened. and kamala harris wants to do trans surgery and people, kids are going to school and coming home with her genitals chopped off. trump literally said that over and over again. not only are these things not true but they are designed to be distractions from the fact that the gop in large part with the help of a handful of democrats have basically been robbing us blind for the better part of 20 or 30 years. host: i do want to get to a few

more callers paid games in atlanta, georgia. good morning. caller: i hope i get to say at least some of what i called to say. i used to tune into the show needing to hear that political -- i can think of the name of the show, newsmax. don't you agree that three hours every day on c-span are very important opportunity for people in america to hear about important issues. why do we never hear anything about the outrage going on for women in afghanistan and elsewhere in the world. let me tell you my opinion. we don't get to hear about stuff because they prefer we get to hear a buddy say good morning. we don't need to hear about her, we need to hear about people who

know something like you to say something about all these other outrages going on. don't you agree people ought to be invited to go ahead please and say -- stop everything in the world so we can all hear somebody else say good morning back to kimberly. thanking someone for getting up early. host: do you want to make sure we take it manage of your time to get your opinion on this topic or a question for tom. caller: i would like to respond to that if i may. james i've think kimberly does a marvelous job and i'm a huge fan of c-span and have been my whole life for as long c-span has been around. i've been around longer. and i think it's important we hear all of these voices and it's important we hear people calling in and expressing their raw racism on the one hand and people calling in and objecting to that on the other.

i believe that's what america is and we need more of this. we need people talking with each other and to each other rather than across each other. so i have no objections to that. and i think kimberly is doing a marvelous job and c-span host general do a marvelous job of exhibiting good manners. just being decent human beings, that's an important role model stuff for particular young people who are watching the program. >> january is in bellevue on our line for democrats per good morning. >> it's so good to see you. i used to listen to air america all the time. i really missed it and if it's ok with c-span if you could say where we could hear you now on the air i would love that.

i called about the electoral college heard i live in washington state and it's obviously not one of the swing states, and sometimes when you hear by and for the people it's like for the swing states, and it's true we tend to always vote for the democratic party, but i think we should be involved all of the states that are swing states. we all want to be involved in the process to elect our leaders. and i know it's a pipe dream to think that will ever be changed, but except for i think in the late 80's or 90's maybe the republican candidate was pat roberts in our state which woke

a lot of people up i guess. other than that, everything's been very predictable. i'm 78 and i always vote. it feels like we are just kind of stuck on the outside. like we don't really matter. >> let's let tom respond first of all would you let people know where they can find your show or programming and then maybe speak about the electoral college. caller: thom.tv, there is a list on serious xm every day from noon to 3:00 eastern time weekdays monday through friday. it's carried simultaneously as television by free speech tv, free speech.org which is carried on dish or direct.

it is also on a bunch of other cable systems. we are on may be 200 radio stations around the country, you have to find it on your destiny >> you also have a podcast. >> we chop the show up and turn into a podcast and that's available. and we've got an app. i have the c-span app on my phone. with regards to the electoral college it's fascinating. you go back and read james madison's notes on the constitutional convention and what was clear back then was it would take four days for news to get from washington dc to southern georgia for example. the -- and it would be very hard for someone in georgia to know who's running for president if the candidates were all up in

d.c. or new york was the capital up until around 1800. and so the idea of the electoral college was each state would elect some wise men who would evaluate the candidates and then go to washington dc and cast their votes for those candidates and alexander hamilton in federalist 68 and 70 and 71 talks about this at some length about how this will present -- prevent a man of low moral character from ever becoming president. and you can argue for the first 50 years of the united states there was some value in that although it largely protected the southern states of dutch but it is an anachronism now. there is an effort to do away with the electoral college. where states sign on and say

whoever gets the most national votes we will give all of our electoral college to that person. individual states can decide how electoral votes are cast. most of them right now say whoever wins our state gets all of our electoral votes. nebraska and maine are the exception. they have two regions where they do that but the same kind of thing. right now, there are i think 200, roughly 220 electoral votes were presented by states that have signed onto this and when they hit 270 votes, then that will be the end of the electoral college. we have however exhausted all the blue states and a few of the purple states that might sign up for this so now what's left are red states and the red states the electoral college is the only reason george bush became president or donald trump became president, they both lost the popular vote. so now the red states the republicans are very hostile to this. in 1971 we came within one vote

for ending the electoral college it wasn't a big deal back then because it hadn't decided an election since the 1830's. but it has become politicized now. so still if you live in a state that has not signed the interstate compact you might want to talk to your state representative or state senators. >> bob is in connecticut for a line of republicans. caller: good morning. earlier i think i heard you say the billionaires pay a 3% tax rate. that's grossly misrepresenting what the billionaires pay. i don't know if you recall but during president biden's state of the union speech he said comparing with the billionaires pay to the firefighters and teachers and set at that time it was 8% that they paid. and that is grossly incorrect.

because it was based upon a white house study of the white house budget and management study that included unrealized capital gains for the billionaires including on stocks , business valuations, on real estate. so there is no credible study that comes up with any numbers like that. i am a cpa, i know this stuff inside and out, upside down. billionaires are included in the top 1% of taxpayers in all the numbers you see on irs.gov and that 1% pays 45% of the taxes. let me put that in perspective. that 1% amount that the top 1% send to the irs exceeds the bottom 90% of all taxpayers. in other words taxpayers in the 11% category to the 100% category. 1% of the taxpayers pay more

than 90% of the citizens of this country. you also probably know tom that nearly 50% of the bottom 50% which is ok, they pay nothing. they pay zero income tax. guest: you are right. and it also kind of highlights what you were saying, of the figures don't lie but the liars can figure. when you say the top 1% you're talking about basically everyone who makes over $400,000 a year. yeah, surgeons, lawyers, professional people who make hundreds of thousands, 700,000 dollars a year they are getting whacked, they are paying in some cases almost half of their income in income taxes. donald trump never paid more than $70 a year in income taxes

if my recollection is correct, the new york times tracked this down for decades. many wealthy people, the same thing i believe was done looking at the taxes of jeff bezos i could be wrong. basically instead of taking a paycheck which is taxable as income what they do is they borrow against their own assets for their living expenses and they borrow 3%, 4% or 5% so they are functionally paying 3% to 5% income tax and that's not even going to the government that's going to the banks that they are borrowing the money from. so in some cases they own the bank and are making a profit. billionaires by and large do not take paychecks and do not need to. and of course they've got if you make your money by investing you've got an entirely different tax category as you mention,

capital gains. if you are in the hedge fund business you've got pass-through income that is taxed at a lower rate than capital gains. instead of talking about the top 1% which is all the people who are doing very well who are really getting taxed whacked, we should be talking about the 100th of 1% or arguably the 1/10 of 1%. people making over $1 million a year because when you get into those categories there's 100 different ways as any cpa can tell you to basically avoid paying taxes or pay very little. host: let's try to get one more call her in. kathleen is in illinois on our line for independence. >> i listen your show almost every day and i recommend it highly to everyone. i just have a quick question. what do you think the impact of elon musk with his support of

the republican party, what impact do you think he is going to have on the democrats? and how they govern? guest: well he has already taken the largest social media site in the world or maybe the second largest, i'm not sure how twitter compares to facebook. it's a different kind of media. he's already taken that and swung it hard to the right and turned it into basically a massive propaganda operation. that cannot help but influence both republicans and democrats. so, i am concerned about it. jimmy carter said we are sliding into oligarchy and i would say as of january we will have officially arrived, the morbidly rich, the extraordinarily rich are running our country now and -- the thing that concerns me the most i wrote a book about