eleven. lindsey lowe and he has told rachel that he is a man and nothing people are suggesting she's told her no she says she's. a. lead.

welcome back to the big picture i'm tom marvin coming up this half hour first his troops were unsuccessful in reclaiming two cities and then the u.s. and europe seize some libyan funds it's been a bad day for gadhafi so could bring about his final days as the leader of libya and supreme court members have great job security that is until or impartiality comes into question the break on the controversy surrounding justices thomas and scalia and the g.o.p. may have been elected to cut government spending but does that mean jobs to

a new report says that's exactly what the republicans are up to. there's civil war in libya and gadhafi forces are losing in the middle that i approached it off the forces invaded the city of zawiya just outside tripoli and battled rebel forces for hours before being repelled back to libya's capital it after his forces were also unsuccessful in reclaiming two other nearby cities misrata and says into rebel forces are reportedly armed with tanks machine guns and anti-aircraft weapons virtually the same power as gadhafi aside from planes and helicopters which could be ineffective if the united states or other nations commit

to enforcing a no fly zone in libya to aid the rebel forces make matters worse for gadhafi the united states has blocked thirty billion dollars of assets within the libyan government claiming that gadhafi has quote lost legitimacy to govern and it's time for him to go but as a new york times says it is the largest amount of foreign assets ever see in american sanctions action and european banks have seized other libyan funds so as the story nearing an end with more i'm joined by robin wright journalist foreign policy analyst at the united states institute of peace and the woodrow wilson center distinguished scholar robin welcome. it's nice to be with you great to have you thank you for joining us tonight what's the latest right now with libya and scott and mr get up. well the uprising of you has reached a bit of a stalemate could obvious forces did try to take some of the nearby towns that are held by rebels and was unsuccessful but. the rebels have also been unable to

penetrate tripoli and so there's a bit of a standoff in terms of the military situation in terms of the international community the noose is tightening around colonel gadhafi but it still could be a very long time before you go one of the key questions in is to what degree the financial squeeze a success corian making it very difficult for his government to function or to what degree does the rebel force. amass all around tripoli and manage to make some kind of inroads that does not work imminent so we may be in for our a longer drama than resigned either neighboring tunisia or egypt i've heard that his government is basically like a robot mafia you know the people around him are. on like normal governments in large part because libya is so large so tribal so it is so diverse. is is that the basis of some sort of tribalism of the loyalty that he has from the

people not the people but the you know the armed forces in tripoli that are protecting here or is it just cash or you know what's going on how is he paying and . well i think it's partly because his financial resources this is a country with only six and a half million people it's one of the world's largest oil producers and so he has enormous assets in a way that a country like egypt which doesn't have while an eighty nine and had does have a million people to feed has far greater problems so could out he has managed to. retain a certain degree of world through financial are just. true libya is also a tribal society but more importantly liviu does not have the traditional military structure and the military is critical in forcing both the president of tunisia and egypt to go could out he has built a multi-faceted military that's actually been weakened because he knows that's how

he came to power and he's wanted to ensure that none of his colonels moved against him he's put his sons in charge of some of the military units and he's created rivalries among some of the military chiefs and so it doesn't have that kind of leverage in terms of telling him he's it's time for him to step down is running a divide and conquer operation in iran today the tuesday demonstrations every tuesday there's supposed to be other opposition leaders and called for it was rationed they were fairly small and scattered is that because the opposition leaders have vanished presumably been kidnapped or arrested and is that government running a more sophisticated repression why china does rather than the brute force method of gadhafi. well iran was the side of the first real people power movement in two thousand and nine after a disputed presidential election where the uprising went on star adequately for six months of the regime in the hand managed to question through

a number of tactics including mass arrests show trials that were model a bit on what stalin did in the soviet union. use of pair. military militia to spy on harass intimidate iranian citizens it appears that the opposition leaders of the green movement the two former presidential candidates have been silenced in some form the regime refuses to say whether they've been arrested and has confirmed that they have cut off all communication or contact both inside iran and with the outside world and that has limited the green movement opposition's tactics but this scheme also of the momentum that was on the side of the green movement one point has also been dissipated and though opposition has never managed to regain the kind of edge that you saw in egypt and being decisive or tunisia and that's to some degree what's happened

a little bit in libya remember we went through it a little we saw it in egypt when it went through this creates initial spurt and then it kind of level dark and it took another capital that's to get the movement going again and finally forced mubarak to step down and so all of these are challenges all these uprisings are far more nuanced than sometimes we understand when we're so far away right base so much for being. thank you seems like everyone can see libyan leader moammar gadhafi is on his way out except it out himself so he sees the writing on the wall before more people in this nation. during his asian common cause is ramping up its efforts to bring an investigation against supreme court justices clarence thomas and antonin scalia over the weekend justice thomas issued a statement referring to his critics as people who seem bent on undermining the

supreme court like he's the supreme court right a controversy surrounding thomas and scalia boils down to whether or not they accepted free travel lodging and food curtilage courtesy of the federalist society to attend political strategy meetings in california hosted by the billionaire koch brothers yeah those same koch brothers were involved wisconsin and i says oversight committee they do seem to have their hands in everything these days is scalia and thomas did attend those meetings that's a clear breach of ethics that taints the high court's impartiality so what can be done about this talk about what we know so far and here's a vice president for a program like i said you are and here's president for programs at common cause thanks for me tom thanks for joining us what it's glee and thomas. well they appear to have both gone to coke retreats out of palm springs california says k o c h

yes ok. you know the koch industries put out an invitation to this january's retreat last last fall touting the fact that scalia and thomas had a tent had been featured at past retreats so based on that information we raised the issue with the department of justice and asked for further information article three sections one into the constitution. have two interesting things to say about this the first is that justices show preside as long as they hold their offices during good behavior. article section one and then the second is that they show operate under such regulations as congress shall make. is it possible that there's a congressional remedy to misbehavior in the supreme court the best way knowledge is never been employed as for this country well and interestingly today representative chris murphy from connecticut introduced

a bill that would apply the. federal code of conduct to the supreme court so that is one way that is one way to handle the situation i mean it is clear that the supreme court judges should be. held accountable to the same standards as every other court there's no reason why the highest court in the land should have the lowest standards but so far you know it isn't it isn't binding on them it's clear that those are the ethical rules that they should live by but there's no enforcement mechanism so that's what we're working on next and that would be the legislation yes. what about of pietschmann do you know the constitution's quite clear that impeachment any federal official can be impeached including a federal judge it would have the regime the house of representatives i think we could forget about it for the next eighteen or twenty months however long it is until i see so elections that. if the democrats were to take control of the house is it conceivable again this is never to the best my knowledge you know i don't i

don't think we're there yet you know and this is why we've asked asked the department of justice to to collect more information as the lawyers for the federal elections commission and citizens united case. with an arguable claim for recusal in that case you know they should gather more information to go so far the supreme court has been had not forthcoming in their responses i mean when we raise this they base that they put out a official court response that said thomas in school we went to separate federalist society dinners sponsored by the cokes and that school we had did not go to the koch retreat and that thomas just dropped by. but there are no federalist society events on record we have scoured their their websites we've called their offices washington post offices to koku to do there are there you know there were no federalist society events that we can tell and thomas was reimbursed for four days

of accommodations and meals and palm springs if you just drop by and you know we've raised the question where were you the rest of the time either you got a free vacation from the federal or you were at three treated you're not being straight with the american public are we we just have about a minute left i'm just a couple of things. goes with cheney and in the next week rules and cheney's favor there were at least three republican three conservative justices on wish me good or who had family members or close relatives who were working on the bush campaign thomas' wife jenny was soliciting people to work in the new bush administration an hour after the court took the case before they even decided it i mean this is just is this just the tip of the iceberg. i think it points to a bigger problem on the court. the standard here is the appearance of impartiality

and this i think this court has gotten arrogant in its and its involvement in political activities and how loosely it aligns itself with different political factions i think that's an understatement to get do you think is any chance thomas might resign he seems to hate his job. you know no signs of that at the current thanks so much for show you appreciate it nice try nice to hear it common cause a successful bill prove there was bias in the court's five to four citizens united decision a ruling that directly benefited people like the koch brothers just months after thomas and scalia were allegedly hobnobbing. a corruption of the high. still ahead here in the big picture the g.o.p. may have a plan to trim the budget but it seems they may be cutting some jobs to other problems getting a little carried away. or

flimsy low in fact he has told the preacher about using women and nothing people are suggesting she's called her no she says she's a star. for

two years as the minority in congress republicans constantly chatted earlier jobs well now they're in power and the g.o.p. is focusing on jobs but not on how to create them instead and how to lose the moody's analytics a nonpartisan economics group study the g.o.p. has proposed budget cuts and concluded they will result in four hundred thousand lost jobs by the end of this year and seven hundred thousand by the end of next year. as we move into the election on top of that the republican plan will cut g.d.p. by half a percent this year chief economist of moody's mark zandi so this is about the g.o.p.'s efforts imposing additional government spending cuts as house republicans want would be taking an unnecessary chance with a republican with a recovery even the g.o.p. is banks three buddies are at odds with a proposed budget cut last week goldman sachs warned that republicans could cut

economic growth by up to two percent this year with the budget plans so what the heck is the g.o.p. trying to do here there were some answers i'm joined in feel those federal budget budget policy analyst in at the economic policy institute andrew welcome thank you very great to have you here. i saw an article in the financial times last week with the goldman sachs analysis and we talked about here in the program where they were saying basically you know anywhere from a half a percent to two percent of increased unemployment loss or actually lose loss of g.d.p. or loss of growth rate and and that would of course translate into higher unemployment which would translate into a lot of really p.o. voters which might translate into brock obama not winning the presidency again is that the republican strategy it cynical take is yes high unemployment is a liability for president obama it's not for speaker boehner i don't think they

really have the american labor market in their mind when they're approaching the federal budget. when mitch mcconnell. you know was asked what's what's the plan for the next two years he said to make obama one term president win back to two years and change ago when the republicans first came in and similar statements were made i believe by john boehner. and others basically effect their job particular the senate that their job was to what might have been the republican to prevent obama from having any significant accomplishments so that he could be be a one term president. do you think that obama's compromise that he could be digging his own hole here by compromising with republicans i mean he just he just did a small budget compromise where he slashed a few billion dollars that's going to translate into some jobs and could he be going for a larger compromise it's going to translate into me even more job was that a compromise you have to look at is the tax deal that was passed in december if the

federal government takes an approach of cutting taxes because the economy's in bad shape and then cutting spending because the deficit increased because of tax cut package you're actually going to have a net decrease in employment if you look at the fiscal multipliers direct spending is much more effective way to create jobs in cap ex cuts the state tax carbo and the tax feel very expensive but it's a tax cut for the top quarter one percent of americans so that doesn't create any jobs go along with that was it just no choice i think the magnitude of the tax deal was compelling from his perspective they were really pressed to get in the thirteen month extension of unemployment insurance benefits that will have a very stimulative impact no one's disagreeing except that that's going to run out nine months twelve months of months whatever just before the election right now the time now thirty nine years so it's seems to me like he's making deals that he thinks are great that are going to come back and bite him in the butt really big time. i think the tax deal overall did help the economy grow. you have to remember

we just expanded this year's budget deficit by about four hundred ten billion dollars we knew that was going to happen because of the tax start part because that's exactly exactly that doesn't justify immediately moving to cut the non-defense discretionary budget we have this. range policy of cutting taxes for the wealthiest and simultaneously cutting public investment and that's supposed to create a more prosperous america. very deranged approach to it all it's seems like i mean saudi arabia announces in the financial times couple days ago that they're going to spend two hundred billion dollars and they have a g.d.p. evil of three hundred eighty eight dollars a year two hundred billion dollars over the next three years on education infrastructure you know king comes back there's thirty six billion dollars a pay raise for everybody china's put you know put together last year an eight hundred billion dollars stimulus word there were none of that now right we tried the bush tax cuts and their legacy was terrible the expansion from two thousand to two thousand and seven he threw up has about the worst record for some of these

states that are in trouble it was constant now in trouble because the the the obama stimulus package has run out yet there's a huge fiscal drag from the expiration of the recovery act about a percentage point a year the tax deal delays that for about a year but right now you've got a drag from the federal fiscal policy from state and most of their bills to crash going into the into the election year i mean yeah a double dip yeah and paul krugman has pointed this out it's not just the unemployment rate that matters it's the change in the unemployment rate and the tax deal results sort of moves forward draw down the unemployment rate so you have big drop in twenty lebanon flatlines in two thousand and twelve politically that's going to be very bad for president obama going to be election disaster and thanks so much for showing the sort of you know push it to me. of course all these reports of a bad economy things to republican budget cuts don't surprise the g.o.p. who's plan is to crash the american economy and screw over workers to make president obama look bad in two thousand and twelve and hopefully win the white

house back guys don't care about what's best for our nation and all they care only by. reclaiming our by any means necessary. it's the good the bad of the very very extremely ugly first the good chairwoman of the f.b.i. sees sheila bair since congress dropped the ball there is stepping up and calling on banks that are too big to fail to be downsized at a finance summit yesterday bair said if they can't show they can be resolved in a bankruptcy like process they should be downsized now there's no reason the world why they should get some special treatment backstop that other businesses in this country don't have. any time to take on the banks there's is a special place for you on our good list so bad the nonprofit group formerly known

as the former majority association for equality texas affiliated group is offering a five hundred dollars scholarship to america's most forsaken demographic in their opinion white males the group claims it is not promoting racism it just wants to help out those who they say are routinely overlooked white men to meet the requirements for the scholarship you simply have to be male with at least a three point zero g.p.a. and no less than twenty five percent caucasian very inspirational and a very very ugly republican governor mitch daniels you must be studying the g.o.p. agenda closely because in an interview with n.p.r.'s steve inskeep yesterday daniel said he supports job losses when asked are government budget cuts worth it even if they end up seriously costing a lot of jobs right now governor daniels responded the answer is yes and this guy may be running for president next year so much for jobs being the tough for the republicans and that's very clearly.

what's wrong with america's billionaires it's going to be that they're actually mentally ill or at least a significant coord of the compulsive hoarding is a symptom of obsessive compulsive disorder it's a mental illness that causes people to constantly collect items to the point that their homes and lives are over well you may have seen the eighty show about the disease but i woke up tomorrow and everything was gone i'm across the creek and i can leave the field but i can't with the staff so the first pieces control the damn sock she broke her arms and they're off the stairs. you know no really right sort

of way that i'm going to be immediately as soon as i have thrown it away and really felt like we were never going to get anywhere with this at what point will be just say you know. when. you're not going to work. people fill their homes with piles and piles of newspapers will never read empty bottles will never refill old appliances they'll never repair and always have a rationalization easily it goes along the lines of in never know when you'll need it a few newspapers are empty paper bottle at the paper bags or bottles this is not uncommon but for hoarders you can hardly maneuver through their homes things are stacked floor to ceiling we know now by the way that this is a form of o.c.d. in most cases or at least obsessive compulsive personality disorder because many of the drugs and therapies that help people with o.c.d. help people with pathological hoarding which is like classical o.c.d. may be largely confined to compulsive and washing or syllable counting or

ritualized behaviors touching things like in the t.v. series monk similarly hoarding takes many forms so a poor or middle class person may hoard used papers or food or just looks to you and me like junk consider somebody born with a hoarding mental illness and also born with millions or billions of dollars what would they do hoard even more money of course every disney character uncle scrooge with his money then reported money over himself like it was water he was mentally ill now consider the billionaires who are obsessively accumulating so much wealth that they couldn't possibly spend in a lifetime their kids like time their kids kids like time or even their kids kids kids kids lifetime and so on down the chain. close friends of some of america's earliest money hoarders when the industrial revolution first made serious money

possible during the gilded age in the late eighteenth hundreds often commented on how the rockefeller's carnegie's melons of the world were obsessed with money and more money and even more money and matter how many lives were destroyed no matter how many small business people were put out of it is to matter how badly the environment was devastated or even the entire economy was tossed up and then crashed these guys were authority money obviously not every millionaire or billionaire for that matter is a hoarder but there are some conspicuous examples i follow bill mcguire the former c.e.o. of united health care who in just ten years took imported over one point seven billion dollars from that so-called health insurance company his hoarding was so pathological the government investigators nailed him for back eating stock options and other crimes but of course being a billionaire instead of going to jail he just paid a fine of a few hundred million dollars there's something genuinely wrong with these guys they're the charlie sheen's of money now are more more more houses more yachts

bigger yachts more private jets and of course more and more hundreds of millions or billions of dollars and now they're threatening to destroy the very country that made it possible for them to become so rich and petty for example that if charles and david koch were billionaires and had just an average salary like the rest of us their homes from old newspapers knick knacks and broken toys and antique appliances and disrepair stacked so high to the ceiling they could barely walk through their living rooms hoarding is already it's time to call these guys out in general across the board for what they really are mentally and emotionally sick it's time for the rest of us to do an intervention and it wouldn't really be all that hard all we have to do is roll back the reagan tax cuts. as the big picture for more information you can visit our website arben dot com also check out our youtube page at youtube dot com slash the big picture r.t. and r.t. dot com and don't forget democracy begins when you get out there when you get

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