7:00 a.m. eastern here on c- span. >> up next, radioed talk-show host thom hartmann. after that, gordon brown discusses nuclear power. .

>>i]i]ç between me inç a conse congressman? >>ç doing it in oregon and the seat. >>çmíçqok w3ççóperhaps even mt than the difference are the similarities. i have seen many of your interviewsq and i have many xdçt(çfáqmyç father died a cs ago and as heç was dying, i put my hand on his shoulder and lookedw3 over and his two favore pictures were on the wallu!. me, shaking hands with the presidentt( and another one.y#63 what i see in the commonality is that we all love this country and we want to make this a better world and that we want to

have our children more opportunity. that is a stepping off point. the fellow you just described ii applaud those that do. i am not constitutionally made for it. being a politician, even a republican politician, that is a very tough job to do the people's work. but what i am doing is, by and large, trying to bring out the largest vision possible, to give people the opportunity to hold the sense of the whole thing rather than the small units. if i am talking heah care, i will always get back to whether it is a right or privilege.

it is the kind of debate the founders would be having. insfact, i would say that they had. they passed legislation to care for the poor of washington d.c.. it was james madison's first veto, which was vetoing a bill i]w3çto give money to aç chur. it was that, it would be that. i would try took take it to the picture of global warming. beyond that, there is this global warming issue. there is a bigger picture there. who we are, relative to everything else on this planet, whether the planet is a living organism. >> who can hear you and see you now? what we are syndicated by three companies. doud global -- dow global, which

used to be dow jonesç. that is commercial radio. i am -- i and syndicated by pacifica. we cover about an eighth of the u.k. and we are in donçghanna. ççthe third hour of our radio program is radio and television at the same time. we8d8ñw3 do that on dish networ. >> what time of day are you on in oregon when you do the show? >> in oregon, it is 9:00 a.m. to noon. >> how do you approach your show different from most shows that have]i one of these radio show? >> i try not to do complete radio -- complaint radio.

it turns me off when i hear it. i tried to -- i tried to be entertaining, informative and relevant piece -- i've try to be entertaining, informed givatived relevant. my riding long preceded my radio show. --- writing long preceded by radio show. it was something my dad used to say. if you cannot come up with the solution, do not tell me about the problem. what are the ways that we can fix these problems? i am very interested in results. but i think that solutions have to come out of a large

understanding. that is the only thing that concerns me about some of my colleagues on the right and left, is that they will take a small issue and blow it out and hammer on it as that that is really what it is all about -- as at that is really what it is all about -- as if that is really what it is all about. >>my last book is "the crisis of western culture." the reason that we chose that title is i think that there is a cultural crisis. it tells us who we are relative to each other and corporate structures and relative to our religious institutions and relative to all life on earth. we need to change those stories. rather than just complaining about so and so did bad today, i

would use that as a stepping off point. >> i have listened to you for years. let me run a clip. when we covered your show, you were talking to a senator and i asked you about that. >> that is a perfect role for government, to protect us from the predators among us. >> it is funny. this logic of bush and reagan carries over to a degree. bush recently issued some rules that wants to cut children from health insurance programs. the es test chip program is very successful. -- deep s-chip is very successful. -- program is very successful. -- the s-chip program is very successful.

this has to be reevaluated. >> we really need to go back to the meaning of it. senator bernie sanders with us. we are taking your calls. bernie, thanks for being with us. >> thank you. >> it is always great having you on. >> you are listening to do thom hartmann program, talk radio for the rest of us. this is air america radio. >> two questions. why do you give an hour a week to bernie sanders and why does he do it? >> i'd give it to bernie because -- i give it to bernie because he is willing to take calls from listeners, for a full hour, on screen. we asked people what their name is, what their city is, and what

the topic is. he has no idea who they are or what is coming. here is a member of the united states senate, and we have been doing this for six years, who is willing to answer any question. if somebody called and wanted to talk about carbon taxes or they want to talk about health care or 9/11 the spirit -- 9/11 conspiracies, and he will either tell them that are crackpots or that he agrees. -- that they are crackpots or that he agrees. he is willing to be who he is in all cases. i have so much respect for him. i lived in vermont for years. he did not go on the program

then. there was a station that was carrying my show that suggested that i have them on as a guest. >> why does he spend a whole hour every friday? >> i think because he believes in his message. the thing that i got, living in vermont, is i remember the first fund-raiser. a friend said that we needed to go to a fund-raiser for bernie. it was down the street and it was music in freeç food -- and free food. what i asked how much it was and he said that it was a suggested donation of $5. every week, he is back in the state and he is knocking on doors and talking to people and listening.

in northeastern vermont, where you see bush signs in 2000 and 2004 and a lot of gun racks in the backs of trucks and a lot of mobile homes and a lot of poverty and a fundamentalist area, bush carried that area in both the 2000 and 2004 elections well over 70%. bernie carried in both elections by 7%-8%. people get it that he is genuine -- 70%-80%. people get it that he is genuine. he works in the political system and while he has the big picture, he is willing to work at the micro level. i would rather work at the micro level. >> çi heard you say that corporations have the ability to

spend money on ads. what is the difference between that? isn't that the same thing? >> it is a very different thing. i wrote a book about this and 2000. -- in 2000. i originally sat down to write a book about jefferson. we bought a house in vermont and the attic was -- the akkad it 20 volume history of thomas jefferson. -- the added had a 20 volume history of -- attic had a 20 volume history of thomas jefferson. in the middle of writing this book, i was taking his vision of america up to today and i kept

reading and found that in 1826, the supreme court ruled, under the 14th amendment, peopleh have to have,ood status. -- people need to have person hood status. the court had ruled that corporations have rights under the bill of rights. at that point, i was trying to do everything from an original resource. i was actually reading jefferson's stuff. i went down to the vermont supreme court law library which is a really old one. vermont was a nation before it turned to the united states. the librarian found an original

book from 1889 and i read it. i discovered that in 1886, the supreme court actually did not rule that corporations or persons. in his commentary, it was opened and said that the corporations were people under the 14th amendment. i asked to the clerk of the court was. he was formerly the president of the new york rare. -- new york road. -- new york railroad. there was corruption on the supreme court. in fact, he wrote that headnote after the chief justice had

died. i think that the chief justice is rolling over in his grave. in the intervening years, we have had corporations claim supported the amendment against discrimination. we have had been planned for the amendment rights of privacy they will not tell us what they know about tobacco. now, we have had them first amendment rights of free speech. a case that cannot in 2002, after my book was published, they were not successful in as much as the case ultimately just got pulled. it was not sought -- not decided by the supreme court.

the grounding assumption of it was that first amendment rights are extendedq to corporations because they are a person just like you and i. that grounding assumptionxd is based on a misread -- a mr. karp -- and this interpretation -- a misinterpreted document. one side said that corporations should not have these rights. there is no law against saying that you do not look fat in that dress. there are exceptions. what we noticed, was in early cases, where in massachusetts,

there was a law that corporations could not involve themselves in politics unless the campaign direct impact of the corporation. the first national bank of boston had put money in. they were sued by the attorney general and all the way to the supreme court. in that case, it was one of the cases that set the precedent for this case, the court ruled that that corporation actually have the right to speak beyond just its own narrow area. but in the dissent, justice rehnquist said "back in 1886, without the benefit of open debate or discussion, this court

ruled that corporations have the rights of natural persons. i think that this court ruled in error in this case. the first half of that sentence is verbatim. he had obviously never read the case. when my book came out, i spoke at a law school, and there were about 300 law students, and this was in 2002. i said that everybody who knows in 1886 that the supreme court did corporations access to the bill of rights just the same as persons, raise your hand. they all raised their hand. they were all wrong. when the friend-of-the-court

was to make sure that rehnquist realized that he was right -- his position was right, but it was a bad decision. after the briefs were filed, the court did something that it almost never does. they came up with a one sentence lineç, the decision to hear ths case, after the debates and qv:everythingtoçmççokqu!, d w3never have heard this case in the first place. nobody knows why. i think it is because rehnquist read be our friend of theñr cout -- readied friend-of-the-court brieft( -- read the friend-of-t- court briefw3. çyou ask me what time it was ad

i told you how to build a watch. >> getting back to the original question, the power ofç the radio's station or a television station to be involved in a politicalu contest with no regulations whatsoever. why should they have that kind of power and other entities do not have that kind of access. w3>> on an unlimited basis, they should not. no institution, on an unlimited basis, should have free-speech rights. this is where i agree with the four justices. whether it is a radio station or a television station, a cable system or whatever it may be, there needs to be, if it is part

of the commons and using the public airwaves, and there needs to be some accountability to we the people. while i am not in favor of the fairness doctrine of where it is not even possible to calculate, i do think that broadcasting in the public interest is a doctrine which held up until 1987 when reagan weakened it and clinton kind of blew it up. >> i like to read back

wikipedia entry. there is a lot here. it says that your 59 years old this year. i will be in may. >> your former psychotherapist. >> yes, in 1978, my wife and i started a community for abused and severely emotionally abused children. we ran that for five years. that was a slice of my life. >> was it a business? >> it was a nonprofit. we put a fair amount of our own money into it which we never got back, of course. we worked there for five years on a $25 a week salary.

>> cottages survive? >> we did well. we sold an ad agency. louise and i have been married -- i keep forgetting. we decided that we did not want to retire when we got old. we wanted to take our retirement in little pieces throughout our lives. we built up and sold off five quite successful businesses. we had one that failed and one that was -- we took a year or two and lived in germany. i did int'l work for years. that was actually a retirement for us. we decided that we wanted to do

something that had a lasting impact. >> i have done some background, where does the word salem come from? >> the organization that we modeled our program after, the only thing like in the united states was in topeka. the program in germany it was started after world war ii. by a german -- it was started by a german. it was for the people that were ruined by the war. it comes from the hebrew and arabic word for peace. the logo next to the word means peace.

the founder just died last year. >> he is important to you? >> he was my mentor. i wrote a book mostly about him. there is this path in the forest that he and i used to walk on. he would go there to pray and he would yell. he called it the profits way. i nicknamed the book after that path and the forest -- pat in the forest are. we were running this ad agency in michigan. a friend of ours ran a holiday inn and was in the same church as i was entered he called me from germany one day -- but i

was in. he called me from germany and said that he had seen the most amazing fang and that they needed my help and that he wanted me there -- amazing thing and that he needed my help. he said that he had already bought my ticket. i had a passport, so i hopped on a plane and flew to germany and i saw this program where there were no more than eight kids in a house. it was a family model for kids that would otherwise be institutionalized. it was just amazing. they were starting a program in the united states. this was in march. he had an orchestra of 34 kids that played beautiful music.

a famous conductor had taken this as his retirement. he wanted them to play the kennedy center in march and he wanted me to book it for august of the same year. i told him that he couldn't do that. he said that i would be able to do it. he wanted our ad agency to promote it. i originally took on as a job -- to get on as a job -- i originally to get on as a job -- it took -- took it on as a job. the kids played for the u.n. and all this. when it was all done, i had

flown home for about a week in the middle of this tour because our middle child was born. he was there, one week old, my wife and me and we were sitting there with louis richards and he said that it was a great job and thank me for everything that i did and then he looked me in the eye and ask why i don't do something more with my life. i wanted to produce a 25-30 page booklet for one of the largest cereal companies in america.

i still feel guilty about that. we were making good money. we had a couple volvo's and a bg house. i turned to my wife and said i would like to do that. i asked him what he would suggest that i do and he suggested that i do a program like they were doing. i turned to wes and asked what she thought. -- to louise and asked what she thought. she thought it was a great idea. that month, we sold the business, moved to new hampshire over the next three months and about 136 acres and built three houses and it is still there and it is still winning. >> name the places you have lived in your lap? -- in your life. >> we left lansing and moved to

new hampshire then we moved to georgia in atlanta and started a travel business. we sold that in 1986 and moved to germany for a year and came back to atlanta and started an ad agency and sold but in 1997 and moved to vermont and wrote books for a while and then started his radio show in 2003 in vermont and moved to portland oregon five years ago. >> is this about you? he received his ch, a chartered herbalist degree. he earned a ph.d. in homeopathic medicine in england.

is that your education? >> by and large, i don't even claim that. one of my books have that in it, and somebody put it on that website. long before that, i dropped out of two colleges. i present myself as a layperson. one of those was a residential program and a lot of them were like university of arizona courses. we ran an herbal tea co. and i was just fascinated by herbology and went through a time when i was really into it. >> a father, an atheist, mother, a christian. but i did not know my father was an atheist until the year that he died. >> why didn't you?

>> he didn't tell me. i grew up mostly in the united methodist church. there have been a few others that were nearby for convenience. i think he thought that it was important for us to have a religious background. my mom was not a fundamentalist, but a passionate -- she was spiritual. she went to church -- and i would say my dad was deeply spiritual. but when he was diagnosed with mesothelioma, which is what killed him, he and i sat down and ask what his thoughts were on this and what he thought what happened when he died. it was not like i was trying to evangelize him or anything. i wanted to know what my dad thought.

he said that he thought the lights were to go off. he asked what i thought and i said that i think that the entire universe is a living organism and that we are a small expression of its intelligence and we came out of the light coming into this body and when i die, i will go back into the light. he said that that would be nice. >> is your mom alive? >> no, she died a few months ago. >> we have some video of you with the dalai lama. i will ask you what this occasion is. [inaudible]

>> i was a child of the '60s. i was part of the anti-war movement. i carried, from that day, until four days ago, with me, that there were situations where there is clearly identifiable evil. i only realized it a couple of days ago. this was a level that i have been operating at. institutionalized evil produces something that we have to oppose and that is what we have done. >> what is that? >> two things, but to finish that story, there were 30 of us that were invited to spend a week with the dalai lama.

we spent every morning talking among ourselves and we would spend four or five hours sitting with him, conversing. we talked about how to make a world that works. at one point, there was this huge debate among us. we were not all americans, but many of us were. we talked about how to help the dollar llama free tibet. -- the doww3 llama -- the dow llama --ko çdalai lama çfree . ultimately, we decided that we would present to his holiness our willingness -- we had millions or hundreds of millions of readers and viewers and

listeners. the fellow that was doing the presentation stood up and said that we were prepared7cn"hñ?2r,l çfor ai]i] boycott of chinesels until china stops trashing tibet. without going into a long story, he pointedúoét that outsideç the instituteçç was0 year-oldç tower with four sides it is written on two sides and tibetan and two sides in chinese. çççqfor all of these hundredf koyearsq)ké)qç tibetans have sd that they were signing a tradet% ççóqdealçççóqq and china said to be a part of china.

there were not going to resolve this in a week and he asked if this could lead to the death of people. would this create a crisis in china? i]çmy understanding of economis that if you stop buying things, people will go hungry. people died inside africa -- in south africa because of a boycott. xdhe said that that was the problem. if one child dies because of the actions that we take, it is too high a price to pay. that was the momentç that i was describing in that clip. çhe said that there is no us ad 3them, it is a giant we. we are all inç thhct(ç togeth.

>> why did they consider the dalai lama to be wholly? >> the buddhists believe he is the reincarnationi] of a past hy man. i believe that if he is not wholly, he is worthy of tremendous respect because he absolutely loves his values -- lives is now use -- lives his values. he has risked his life at times for that. he is an outspoken advocate for peace in the world. oddly, i felt the same way =:q%9uu)jz paul the second -- pope john paul ii.

it was in the context of a concert. >> this was a year later? >> i think it was the year before. in fact, this came out of the blue. there was a woman that used to work as a volunteer in a program in the 1950's and 1960's and her husbandçç was best frs with this man. he became pope john paul ii. she showed her husband a copy and said we have to invite this guy to this annual thing that we have where we bring protestants and catholics and people of other religions together to listen to açç concert and then there are about 30 or 40 people who get toçç have a few short words with the pope.

i was sitting about 30 feet away from him, and behind him was this 9 foot tall statue of peter with the keys to the kingdom and the book. it suddenly occurred to me that this is a manu! who, with a dozn or two dozen wordsw3ç, could bg more to the planet. ççor he couldçç bring peace. çwhen i met him and shookiñ hs hand and talk with him, iw3 got this sense that he was -- and talked with him, i got this sense that he was this type of man. i]çççhe tried to interveneçón execution case. he was a very good man. ;3;÷zççççi think that ths people like that as holy because we all aspire to beok, in some

wayi]xd, that consisted to our values. >> who do you think, if anybody, convinced you or let you to be a speaker, a writer, and then run a talk show? >> i have always wanted took bea wmer. ççççmy mother was an englis. i]çw3çu!my father, when heú"ee house. i lived in the library. >> 20,000? >> 20,000. it was in the basement and it was organized like a library.

13 okii,ok he was going to colleged he wanted to be a history then my mom got pregnant with me which was unplannedçç. he went to work at a steel mill and was exposed to what eventually killed him. there is a lifelong passion for learning in him. ç>>ççç he ended his life asa conservative? >> ççin 1963, i went door toxq with my dad. >> which you would getç together, where he taught his philosophy? >> we talk politics all the time. ççç-- when you would get tog,

were you taught his philosophy? >> that is unusual in the talk- show world. when you hear a talk show, whether it is a conservative or liberal, they are always talking to their own. why do you do this? >> first, i think it makes good radio. people slowdown for a fist fights or car wrecks -- for fistfights or car wrecks. the second reason is that i think that when you have people disagreeing on issues and not calling each other idiots that it highlights the issues. i am trying to model for people how they can have a debate with

their crazy brother in law and have it lead to a fist fight. >> winded to depart from your father's thinking? >> xdwhen i was 15t( or 16 years old. >> what was the moment. what was the reason? >> the entire vietnam war movement was what awakened me. i was not old enough to worry about the draft, but it was all around. >> was the for the war? >> yes, absolutely -- was the for the war? >> yes, absolutely. >> was the for iraq? >> yes. -- was he for iraq? >> yes. >> when did you start writing? >>çç i'dq started trying to we

for publication when i was 12. i have been writing my whole life. >> when was the firstç time tht something was published in a real publication that meant something? >> you know, i have never told anybody this. it was when i was 16 and i wrote a short -- i was a virgin and i wrote a short point story for a men's magazine. xdi do not even know where it i, now. çhis dad saw it and he tore itp and threw away -- threw away. >> it wit was actually a love s,

but had an of sex in it that it would satisfy the magazine. >> you have written 20 books at least. you're forced -- your first book was about what? >> ççthe first one was about attention deficit disorder. came out that iç was involved with the children's village. random house and viking v:published threshold. ççxdç--"1/ethreshold." ççokfáçt(ç;;kqçwe are upe supreme court. >> has this been good, this part of your life? >> it has put three kids through

college. i have not gotten rich on it, but i'm fine. >> give us the radio station part of this. they say that your original article became part of the original business plan of air america radio. we are in the shadow of the closing down of air america radio. i know that you had left it, but what was it all about? if you had a radioç show -- a d you have a radio show before air america? >> i started in campus radio in 1967. i made a tape and got a job when i was 17 as a deejay at a local country western station. back then, you could put

yourself through school with a part-time job. my wife put herself through college as a waitress and i put myself through college as a bj -- as a deejay. i did news for seven years and i was program director for a while. most of the news stuff ended up being mornings and afternoons, i would go with and work with my partner in the ad agency. >> where were you before you wrote this? >> i had 10 years in radio and i understood the medium. in 2002, we were living in vermont and i drove back to lansing and all i could get all the way there was right-wing talk radio. i am a businessman, and not to print your, and i knew radio.

i said that there was an opportunity here to do good and to make a living. so, i wrote an ad that talk about talking back to talk radio. i spoke about how to do radio, basically. someone from air america read it and said bingo. >> he just picked it up somewhere? >> it was picked up on a website and then a bunch of other ones picked it up and it got around. >> he called you and said what? >> i would like to talk to you. >> where were you? >> in vermont. >> doing what? >> i was riding and i was retired having sold the ad

agency. a few months after that, i thought that maybe i should put my mind where my mouth is. without a radio station in burlington vermont was willing to give me two hours on a saturday morning after the tractor's what -- after the tractor swap. >> give it to you? >> he would do it to see what happens. i did not pay for it and they did not pay me. >> did you have calls right away? >> yes, actually. after three or four months of doing that we got a show on network -- on a network. we were on 34 stations. >> daily? >> yes, five days a week.

that is how the show got started. it got started as a lark. >> uaw : the network? -- d. uaw earned -- and the uaw owned that work? >> yes. air america opened and closed that network. i independently syndicated my own show for about a year and then i signed a contract with air america and replaced al franken for a couple of years. >> alhart is a to syndicate your own show? >> -- how hard is it too is a decay your own show -- to syndicate your own show?

>> we just kept on producing the show. >> it did you buy advertisements for your show and then give away or barter for the others? added to work it out financially? -- how did it work out financially? >> the network had to run five minutes of advertising along with our show. that is how we made a living. >> were you selling the ads, also? >> yes. we had one fellow working with us and we sold the advertisements and we produced the show and i engineered the pain. i was a ham radio operator when i was a kid. i know electronics. we got it up on the satellites. we were able to keep most of the radio stations and we kept our

sirius satellite clearance and we are still on sirius. >> al franken moved to minneapolis, but he eventually moved there and ran for senate and he won. did you move to oregon to run? >> no. but i dii did move to oregon frm vermont. >> wanted to do that? -- why did you do that? >is it fair to say that vermont and oregon are the two most liberal states in the union? >> i do not think that as a state they are. >> do they think more

differently there? >> yes, very differently. they are different cultures. there are seven nations of america and the different cultures and different languages and different world views. >> where did you find that your most effective in communicating. >> when i am talking about something that i care about. >> do you speak? >> i do a lot of public speaking. >> would you rather do that or be on radio? i would do both. -- >> i would do both. the bottom line for me is, and this sounds really corny, but if i can accomplish -- i haven't heard a lot of debts in my life. i have not been -- i think this

is true all this. i have not been the world's best human being -- i think this is true will follow us. i have not been the world's best human being i think this is true of all of us. -- i think this is true of all of us. i have not been the world's best human being. people have taught me so much. i actually get pleasure from giving back. i used to do relief work for salem in germany. the red cross had just pulled out and people were getting shot left and right. we took over this institution

and i had a little kid die in my arms. there was a guy there, there were about five of us that were not yet gone ugandan. one of them was from the united states. we were all talking and he gave this speech and he said that he hated being there, but he knew that this is what would get him into heaven. it came my turn to talk and i said that i am here because i could not think of anything i would rather do. fun is the wrong word. i have lived on the edge in so many ways. that was just another edge.

we were doing something. someone used to tell me to do something. what our record to do next? >> -- what am i going to do next. >> people can listen to you on the air or on your website? >> yes. air america did not make it because they were undercapitalized. before sean hannity made his first dollar, they lost $500 million. air america lost probably $20 million in all those years. >> bank you so much for joining us. >> thank you so much for having

me >> thank you so much for joining us. -- thank you so much for joining us. >> thank you so much for having me. >> for a dvd copy of this program call 1-877-662-7726. for free transcripts or to give us your comments about this program, visit us at q&a.org. episodes are also available as podcasts. >> up next, prime minister gordon brown in the british house of commons. the prime minister takes questions from the liaison committee and after that, another chance to say "q&a"

thom hartmann. >> what a lot of rubbish. [laughter] the reason he is in favor of the alternative but is that it is election time. now he is trying to fiddle with the electoral system. he must think that the whole country is stupid. have another go. what are you doing? -- what are you doing it? what's now, from london, prime minister's questions from the british house of commons. this week, prime minister gordon brown responded to critics. the prime minister also answered questions on employment and expenses.