she's a. welcome

back to the big picture i'm tom hartman coming up in this half hour get this big banks just pay their taxes all the teaching jobs lost during the recession could be back so could such a simple solution solve. the problems of our country and just when you thought the airport scanners were bad turns out it could have been a way worse i'll tell you what else was on homeland security surveillance agenda plus later my daily take on why gas prices are really on the rise and the unrest in libya is only the smallest part of that story. a bank of america in washington d.c. is having a difficult time staying open these days two weeks ago was shut down by hundreds of

people as part of the u.s. uncut movement demanding corporations pay their fair share of taxes and yesterday a similar movement named make wall street pay shut was shutting down bank of america when hundreds of people arrived to protest bank of america not a dime in taxes in two thousand and nine because they used over one hundred off shorts x. evens take a look. now from cairo. a new report by the national people's action and public accountability initiative revealed that the six biggest banks in america wells fargo citigroup bank of

america j.p. morgan chase goldman sachs and morgan stanley paid on average about eleven percent in taxes on their massive profits well below the thirty five percent corporate tax rate that's billions in lost revenue for the federal government so what could we the people do with some of that extra cash especially with our budget deficit here to offer some answers on reporter and blogger extraordinary at think progress said welcome back to the program thanks for having me tom thanks for being with us. we're still average americans most people are still in the throes of the bush i call i'm sorry call the bush depression and just you know just. how are the banks to the banks are doing great thanks for the good and better in some ways as you said the last six mega banks in this country paid about eleven percent rate and bank of america particularly in two thousand and i didn't pay anything at all profitable and they are extremely profitable i mean their executives their executives are still getting away with highway robbery and they're exploiting our tax code and paying their taxes while you and i are contending that they are taxed

just like any other hard working american how do these banks. paying taxes were basically you and i do. know the problem is that no one ever sat down and sort of imagine how our tax would work it's basically evolved over the last probably thirty years slowly going through congress and a large part of the way that it all happened to involve special interests and lobbyists and the big banks themselves and people who basically written a tax code that rewards big corporations when they have losses where you know you or i may have had losses during the great recession but we still pay our taxes like any other hard working american or middle. person a day. so. if they were to pay the office the income tax rates that the law prescribes these banks were given the profits that they've shown in the last couple years what would that mean for the federal budget and what could we do with that money well here's the thing politicians always love the trick people why presenting

them with prostitutes is right now they say we have to lay off teachers we have to go out your pension and benefits and wages and you were tired that we had to do all that it was he had to balance our budgets but if we simply made big banks like the states big banks pay their full tax rate of thirty five percent they required to under law we could have rehired every one of those one hundred thirty two thousand teachers that was laid off of the great recession twice twice their pay or for two years right exactly that is incredible are the u.s. uncut and the make wall street pay movements growing i think they are i mean every week we're hearing about more actions about more people all over this country fighting unfair by just them fighting i'm for situations as the rich guys contain it to get away with highway robbery with the tax that we have with that would be bought off government that we had it and i'm really calling it a main street movement because i think main street is starting to stand up and say look we've had a really really unfair shake i don't materially in this country it has three decades and it started it's kind of we start standing up for ourselves as as opposed to wall street i mean exactly it's true versus wall street why in the

british media watch b.b.c. you know. the british media the u.k. uncut is like high profile i mean there's they do a lot of stories about them and it's not because they're doing so many actions it's just they get reported on here in the u.s. i mean if those have been tea partiers every single network that shut down the bank of america every single network in america i guarantee you would have a truck out front and will lead with that on the a.b.c. c.b.s. n.b.c. and evening news as it is it's almost invisible us uncut what's going on well i mean i mean here is the old adage of protests happened and no one reported on it it really happened and i think there are media over the past. three years is going to be a lot of them to think of that activism as a conservative thing there are going out against you know a democratic president that progressives don't do anything and they kind of last on to that area then because of that we're not getting our voices out there but i think slowly in media they you know the media just like the politicians tend to lag behind the people and people can speak up and he is going to have to cover because it's going to be big could this have something to do with i know n.b.c.

is no longer owned by g.e. but last year was the last year actually the year before last was the last year that g.e. made more than half their revenue in the united states and japan and an awful lot of the reason why it's outside the united states is to shoulder taxes could it be that these big media companies are playing the same games the banks are and that's why when i heard about us on but i mean that's a that's another point is a lot of these companies are a whole host of big conglomeration of big corporations who actually benefit from a lot of this and they have their own commercial interests i mean contrast just bought up a controlling stake and it's time to say so now you know you'll see the departure of people were manual you probably won't see them talk about issues of media consolidation anymore i mean they never criticize nuclear power because g.e. the big nuclear company and i think that's what that's where the internet comes in that's where nonprofit media and think that it's come in is where people can start talking to each other without these corporate filters they really start getting the message out and that's how you can get started and i think that's how our movement was started well that's great so thanks so much for being with us thank you it's always great to have you here with us so the question why would republicans rather

cut teachers than hold transnational tax cheats accountable here's a hint follow the money and why are these banks making all this money anyway i mean it used to be that banks were utilities you know bankers we used to talk about bankers hours you know bankers hours was ten am to four in the afternoon and most bankers actually kept those hours you know they were well paid but they weren't super well paid it was a nice dole boring job the image of a banker was a guy wearing green eyeshades keeping numbers on it you know that kind of thing the local bank the community bank it was a boring business it was predictable. it had but the end was predictable and profitable actually but the profits were low as kids we learned his play monopoly remember you land on a bank and it's like well it's like the utilities you know it's utilities they just stand two hundred dollars every time you go around it's not it's not like marvin gardens and then along came and that's by the way how it was in america for

a long long time for like you know a couple hundred years and then along came congressman or senator actually republican senator phil gramm and his wife wendy who was on the board of directors of enron corporation and ken lay said to phil gramm phil you've got to get some legislation passed for me you've got a. break up the way that commodities are regulated madi future model modernization act and you've got to make it so that so that the gambling banks the investment banks and the regular normal we're putting our savings account here banks to commercial banks that they can get into bed with each other and break the fire wall that was put there in one thousand thirty five by grass needle to prevent a great depression or a bank failure from ever happening even mine the period from one hundred thirty five to one thousand nine hundred sixty the middle reagan administration when reagan deregulated us nels was the wall it was the first time in the history of the

united states that we went more than fifteen years literally since george washington the first time that we're much more than fifteen years without a major panic or bank failure. it's incredible when you think about it and then phil gramm gets in and puts in these two pieces of legislation ninety nine and two thousand and all hell goes loose. the banks now instead of manufacture in the u.s. as you know manufacturing used to account for thirty five percent thirty four and a half thirty four percent of g.d.p. right now it's eleven percent we don't make things here anymore except basically weapons we have it's really quite startling so where do we generate our profits how does america do business we have business by moving money around finance now last year the financial sector accounted for over thirty five percent of all profits in the united states a sector this should be a utility a sector that should be a little two or three percent you know predictable boring over there because what do banks do what they do is they they help us facilitate business so we can do

transactions and they loan money so that you can grow a company or you can buy a home and that's should be about it they shouldn't be in the business a gambling and they're being in the business of gambling is frankly putting this country at risk. crazy alert it's a bird it's a plane it's a house we all remember the two thousand and nine animated film where we shared balloon salesmen or a little boy fly to a lost world of house tied to thousand balloons. that voice by the way was at as he was one of our conversations with great minds guests sometime back you can see it over conversations great minds dot com and i'm

taking a page from the movie producers of the national geographic channel new show how hard can it be attached to three hundred pound balloon or three hundred big balloons to a makeshift yellow house in an effort to make it fly and sure enough it worked in the middle of california desert house when just over a ton flew to hide it and thousand feet and stay in the air for about an hour he says the entertainment value this may be just the way to escape the floundering housing market in america. so ahead of the big picture it turns out airports weren't the only places we did digitally strip search away and security has had its eyes on train stations public events and yes even your birthday suit as well that story next. actress lindsay lo in. this time of the preaching about these women that i think people are suggesting she's. you know she says she's

a stock. al . newly released documents from the department of homeland security show that the

chertoff airport porno scanners we all loved were merely the first step if it were rise of privacy intruding technologies that c.s.a. considered to keep us humiliated in two thousand and five d.h. has signed a nearly two million dollars contract with the rapid scan systems corporation that makes the church of scanners at a corporation the former homeland security secretary michael chertoff now lobbies for that contract was for rapid scan to develop similar secret chertoff scanners for train stations or bus depots and also systems that could analyze a crowd of people see them all naked without people realizing that they were even under surveillance these documents were made public as a result of a lawsuit against the department of homeland security brought by the privacy organization epic the electronic privacy information center i mean now in the studio is the staff counsel and assistant director of the open government program at epic ginger mccall ginger welcome thank you for having me truck sized church off or no scanners is that what these guys had in mind back scatter vans is what

they're called and they're actually designed to be roving bands that are equipped with a backscatter technology which is the way that the basically see people make it you know which is the x. ray scans they put forth radiation they can people and they produce that make an image that we're dealing with now did the plug get pulled on this because it would have involved massive amounts of radiation or because there was so technical i mean what well what we have no real going on we don't really know is the best that i can say about this these documents the contracts were dated from two thousand and five. until two thousand and eight we haven't received any later contracts than that we've heard statements by the t.s.a. that they will not be deploying the airport body scanners outside of the airport now the interesting part of that sentence is is that very operative part is airport body scanners the technology that they would be deploying under these contracts that we saw is actually slightly different than the airport body scanners it's

designed to be more mobile it's designed to be able to pick up moving people as opposed to people who are who are just standing in yeah. i understand also that they've been looking at technology that we're proud of education technology from iris scans to face recognition these kinds of things on a large scale can you imagine what more could offer you would have if he was able to look at a crowd of a thousand people and instantly have a computer identify every single person in a crowd i mean is that the direction that we're going in and if some you know authoritarian scott walker type on steroids i mean he's not that crazy but you know if if god forbid we were ever to reach that point i mean is that is that kind of technology coming to america the integration of these sorts of systems is very troubling to think about it would be it would create a surveillance state we have documents on biometrics in the development of biometrics by the department of homeland security we have these documents about the

roving backscatter bands in the deployment of body scanners at points of interest and transportation venues which could be you know subway stations rail stations stadiums anywhere where they might anticipate large crowds so it's very troubling to think about all of these things being integrated together into a sort of total surveillance system the panoply of home you know what you know aside from civil civil libertarians or people who or. you know still remember what the fourth amendment states. is there a constituency for concern about this it seems like most americans you know i went through the europe work to this last weekend when it's not till you're with senator sanders we did a rather corporate personhood and people were like sheep i mean nobody said anything everybody was like oh you know grab me groped me look at me make it doesn't matter. how do we develop or where is that constituency of people who are concerned about this or is this just something

limited to people like you and i who think that this is the beginning of something that could be really bad as a general matter our freedom of expression really hinges on our ability to to act anonymously or to go to a protest and not expect retribution because we've attended that protest it hinges on our ability to take actions without constantly being surveilled by the government so there's sort of that general concern about continuing to have a real free real robust freedom of expression freedom of speech freedom to protest freedom of assembly and then there's a more specific concern as far as these machines are go of radiation risks and the radiation risk is actually mentioned in these documents it's the same sort of radiation risk that supposed by these airport body scanners only now the scanners are designed to be coverts and they're designed to be just out in the world everywhere i mean who knows how many times per day you could be scanned at this sort of technology has implemented it and you would never know it's. the first

amendment specifically guarantees or a right to public assembly to redress the government for their grievances. or to petition the government for redress of grievances. isn't this a violation in addition to the fourth amendment rights of privacy it is it really undermines that right your freedom to assemble your freedom of speech i mean all of these things hinge on our ability to to state our point of view to go out there and arks express ourselves without fearing retribution without fearing that that information that our name and all the data about us is going to go into some government fusion center which is another project that we've been working on the fusion centers which is just an aggregation of all of these pieces of information from federal law enforcement state law enforcement private organizations and companies and you know places this diverse as hotels institutional educate educational institutions and even disney world all of this information is being aggregated into the fusion centers and you know there's a very real chance with these body scanner machines that that sort of information

is going to be aggregated as well as any federal court ruled in any direction on this that might give us some sort of the way that this is going to happen and play a little bit well with the body scanners we actually have a lawsuit we're going to be doing oral argument in d.c. circuit court on thursday morning and you know under our lawsuit we're suing the department of homeland security to suspend this program because it violates the fourth amendment because it violates several federal statutes including the religious freedom restoration act the privacy act and the administrative procedure act and we're arguing that on thursday we're hoping for a good result we're hoping for some guidance from the court d.c. circuit court of appeals so this for sure but. you know you know certainly the d.c. circuit ok great ginger thanks so much for what you're doing and for coming on the show to thank you so much for having me very nice to me thinking. these i call them to the church scanners and other trappings of the modern security theater or more ways to shovel taxpayer money into the military industrial security complex that

awards million dollar contracts to former government officials like michael chertoff to build useless machines on top of that most of these machines are built malaysia so they're not even helping our economy time for us to kick the habit. it's the good the bad and the very fully ugly first the good of the twenty eight members of congress is signed onto a letter being circulated by democratic representatives pete stark and john dingell asking republican chairman of the homeland security committee peter king to not want you to visit investigations into american muslim communities letter stated we believe that the tone and focus of these hearings runs contrary to our nation's values muslim americans contribute to our nation's well being in many professions

the hard work helps to make our country exceptional it should be noted that no republican signed on to the letter democrats and hope their successful everybody a new era of mccarthyism about republican louie gohmert from taxes can't break from talking about necrophilia and terror babies are decided to lavish praise on tax cheats when asked by think progress reporter leaf on if he thought it was ok that exxon mobil the most profitable company in the history of planet earth paid zero us federal income taxes last year gohmert had this response that's my mother was a very friendly co-operative i think we're pretty compact so that's all right you think that's too much well i think it would be free or it could be all corporations . and then we can go bankrupt as a nation and let the super rich who don't need governmental services take control

of course they'd have to take out their own trash but they could come up with a few. and the very very ugly the georgia state legislature the mostly republican state house is on the verge. passing a bill to address their budget deficit it would raise or place new taxes on food and gasoline taxes that mostly affect lower income people one industry that will be affected by the tax hike the girl scouts their cookies will now be taxed taking away money from their support programs here's the kicker that very same bill lowers taxes on major foreign corporations doing business in the state of georgia so to sum up georgia republicans are raising taxes on girl scouts to pay for tax cuts for billionaire transnational c.e.o.'s this is insanity and it's a very very ugly.

oil prices are on the rise again but unlike what everybody else is telling you it's not just because of the unrest in libya that's not even largely because of the unrest in libya the real reason prices are going up has more to do with wall street than with triple levy is so war or america's obsession with us s.u.v.s but not the real reasons behind four dollars a gallon gas today the saudi oil minister ali no money put his finger on exactly what's causing the oil spike he said recent crude prices do not reflect the fundamentals of supply and demand in the oil market as much as they are cause by financial speculation and today history is repeating itself in july of two thousand

and eight while he did an all time high of one hundred forty nine dollars a barrel. and it wasn't because of oil supply was down in fact at that time oil supplies were at an all time high and the economy was falling into a recession at already thrown into a recession so demand was down but prices went up well let me introduce you to something called the goldman sachs commodity index basically this is a marketplace where people or big corporations or big banks can bet on the future prior prices of things think metals or gold or silver or food like wheat and corn or energy like natural gas and oil or people can just bet the whole lot from gold oil assuming that the price of everything will go up commodity markets were originally set up mostly to help farmers to receive crude to

reduce the risk of a bad season they basically make a bet with a potential buyer that you know the. they would say well i'll sell you look at this corn it three dollars a bushel and you know if it comes in or doesn't come in they they were they were protected so back in those days when you took that back you had to take possession of those thousand bushels of wheat or whatever it was actually had to take that delivery airlines for example use commodity futures markets right this minute to lock in future jet fuel prices and they then take delivery of the fuel at that price they would put today after insane financial deregulation pushed by republicans like reagan and greenspan and particularly as i mentioned earlier phil gramm the commodity futures modernization act you don't have to actually take delivery of the wheat or the jet fuel instead commodity markets have become gambling operations or permit pretty much anybody can bet any amount on any thing

from gold to rice. as neta even points in his book griftopia from two thousand and three to two thousand and eight the amount of money in these commodity markets increased from thirteen billion to three hundred seventeen billion dollars that's a twenty five hundred percent increase in five years the casino was running full of the casino that phil and wendy gramm and created and with all that extra money in the goldman sachs commodity market when you know what price all rose from just thirty bucks in january two thousand and three to one hundred forty nine dollars in july of two thousand and eight five hundred percent increase in just five years bats called a speculative bubble and just six months after the bubble pete it popped and oil went back down to thirty three dollars a barrel in a matter of just a few months and what we're seeing today is the real inflation of that bubble plain

and simple here's how we know it and the and that has to do with the same goldman sachs commodity because the price of just about everything is going up as well in two thousand and eight when oil was peaking so were all the other commodities on the index including food prices because wall street investors were creating a demand there too which led to a worldwide food crisis and literally millions of people starving around the globe these banks here's made billions on wall street by literally starving people and sure enough today as well prices go up again so the food prices. the point is what we're seeing here is the use of a global crisis in this case unrest in libya to shoot up prices by the wall street gamblers and while they're making their millions in profits on these bets the rest of us lose and higher gas prices at the pump the saudi oil minister is right this is not about supply the man it's just another wall street scam with a little sweet thrown in for the big oil companies that use the excuse to jack up

their profits so while republicans blame president obama and democrats wring their hands about happiness to teach well reserve truth is they really want to stop rising prices they need to stop gambling on wall street and that's it for the big picture tonight thanks so much for being with us and don't forget democracy begins when you get active tag you're it. your social implications your. touch from the.