no she said she's a. lawyer .

talk about the big picture on thom hartmann coming up in this half hour get this big banks just paid 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 way worse 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 under the

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 a shot was shutting down the bank of america when hundreds of people arrived to protest bank of america not paid a dime in taxes in two thousand and nine because they used over one hundred off short acts savings to take a look. america . 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 and wants revenue for the federal government so what could we the people do with some of that extra cash especially with our budget deficit here offer some answers reporter and water 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 called the bush depression it's just you know it's just. how are the banks to the banks are doing great banks are even better in some ways as he said the last six mega banks in this country paid about eleven percent rate and bank of america in particular in two thousand and i didn't pay anything at all but you could profitable their extreme lee profitable i mean their executive 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 avoid paying taxes were basically you and i do it ok so the. problem is that no one ever sat down and sort of imagined how our tax code 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 evolved 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 just like any other hard working american or middle. last person a day or so. if they would have paid the off the income tax rates the war 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 can we do without money well here's the thing politicians always love the trick people by presenting them with all sorts right now they say we have to lay off teachers we have to go out

your pension and benefits and wages and your retirement we have to do all that it was he had to balance our budgets but if we simply made big banks 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 in the great recession twice twice or paid more for two years right exactly it's that is incredible are the u.s. uncut and the make wall street a movement's growing i think they are i mean every week we're hearing about more actions about more people all over this country fighting unfair budgets and fighting unfair situations as the rich guys contain it to get away with highway robbery with the tax that we have with that what they bought off government that we had in 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 particularly in this country the past two decades and it's time we start standing up for our as opposed to wall street exactly street versus wall street why in the british media watch b.b.c.

you know. the british media the u.k. uncut is that high profile i mean there's they do a lot of stories about them and it's not because they're doing some of the 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 that we're going to i guarantee you would add a truck out front and will lead with it 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's the old adage if the protests happened and no one reported on it it really happened and i think there are media over the past. few years that are really low then to think of activism as a conservative thing they're acting out against you know a democratic president in progress and don't do anything and they've kind of latched on to that narrative and because of that we're not getting our voices out there but i think slowly the media and the you know the media just like the politicians tend to live 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 entered in an awful lot of the reason why it's outside the united states has to shoulder taxes could it be that these big media companies are playing the same games the banks are and that's why we're not hearing about us on you know i mean that's a that's another point is that a lot of these companies are whole big conglomeration of a corporations who actually benefit from a lot of this and they have their own commercial interests i mean contrast just bought a controlling stake and it's let me see so now you know you can see the departure of people were mean you probably won't see them talking about the issues the media consolidation anymore i mean they never criticize nuclear power because g.e. the big nuclear company i think that's what it that's where the internet comes and that's where nonprofit media and think that it's come in is where people it start talking to each other without its corporate filters they really start getting the message out and that's how you got started and i think that's our movement and starts well that's great. 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 trips making all this money anyway i mean it used to be that banks for utilities 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 boring job the image of a banker was a guy wearing green eyeshades keeping numbers and you know that kind of thing the local playing the community bank it was a boring business it was predictable. it had but the end was predictable and profitable actually put the profits were low as kids we learned this play monopoly remember you land on a bank and it's like well it's like utilities you know it's the utilities they just spend 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 the 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 got a. goal or a break up the way that commodities are regulated not a future amount of 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 the commercial banks that they can get into bed with each other break the firewall that was put there in one thousand thirty five by glass steagall to prevent a great depression or a bank failure from ever happening keep in mind the period from one nine hundred thirty five to one thousand nine hundred six to the middle of the reagan administration when reagan deregulated yes nels was the law 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 went more than fifteen years without a major and they were 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 us is 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 do 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 that should be a utility a sector that should be a little two or three percent you know predictable boring over there because what the 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 again billing 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 up where we shared blue and silver a little boy fly to a lost world and in a house tied to thousand balloons. that voice by the way was at asbury was one of our conversations of great minds guests sometime back you can see it over conversations great minds are and you know 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 out of the big picture it turns out airports weren't the only places we did digitally strip search homeland security has had its eyes on train stations public events and yes even your birthday suit as well as story thanks. for flimsy low and he told the preacher about using women that nothing people are suggesting she's hot poker no she says she's a stock. newly

released documents from the department of homeland security show that the chertoff

airport porno scanners we all love were merely the first step in a barrage of privacy intruding technologies the t.s.a. considered to keep us humiliated in two thousand and five has signed a nearly two million dollars contract with rapid scan systems corporation that makes the church up for no scanners at the corporation of former homeland security secretary michael chertoff now lobbies for that contract was for rapid scan to develop similar secret chertoff oral 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 you know in the studios the staff counsel and assistant director of the open government program of epic ginger because ginger welcome thank you for having me truck size church off or no scanners is that what these guys had in mind the backscatter vans that's what

they're called and they're actually designed to be roving bands that are equipped for the back scatter technology which is the way that they basically see people naked you know which is the x. ray scans they put forth radiation they scan people and they produce that make an image that we're dealing with now did the plug get pulled on this because it would involve massive amounts of radiation or because there was a technical. well what we have no real money we don't really know is the best that i can say about this these documents the contracts are 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 the 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 marmo biol 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 the crowded 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 done if he was able to look at a crowd of a thousand people and instantly have a computer identify every single person in the crowd i mean is that the direction that we're going and and if some you know authoritarian scott walker 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 when 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 vans in the deployment of body scanners at quote 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 pan off to. what you know aside from civil civil libertarians or people who or. you know still remember what the fourth amendment says. is there a constituency for concern about this it seems like most americans you know i went through the europe or this last weekend when it came up earlier was understand we did a random corporate personhood and people were like sheep i mean nobody said anything everybody was like oh you know grab me grope me get 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 the more specific concern as far as these machines are to go of radiation risks and the radiation risk is actually mentioned in these documents it's the same sort of radiation risk that's post by these airport body scanners only now the scanners are designed to be covert 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 if this sort of technology is implemented and you would never know what. the first amendment specifically guarantees are

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 of 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 diversity hotels institutional educate educational institutions and even disney world all of this information is being aggregated into these 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 a sense of the way that this is going to happen and play out legally well with the body scanners we actually have a law suit 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. you know it's certainly the d.c. circuit ok agree ginger thanks so much for what you're doing for coming on the show today thank you so much for having me. these sure i call them to the church of porno 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 in malaysia so they're not even helping our economy it's time for us to kick the habit. it's the good the bad in the very painfully oddly 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 let all democrats let's hope they're successful in preventing a new era of mccarthyism the bad republican louie gohmert from texas taking a break from talking about necrophilia and pay and terror babies are decided to lavish praise on tax cheats when asked why think progress reporter leaf on it 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 at this response that's on hold was a very fine with obama because nothing corporate income taxes to us are if you think that's too much well i think it would be freer if the corporations get it right. and then we can go bankrupt as a nation and let the super rich you don't need governmental services take control

of course they'd have to take out the trash but they could probably pay for. 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 if a 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 and 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 fury. 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 tripoli libya's civil war or america's obsession with us s.u.v.s are not the real reasons behind four dollars a gallon gas today the saudi oil minister ali nomani put his finger on exactly what's causing the oil spike he said recent crude prices and not reflect the fundamentals of supply and demand in the oil market as much as they are caused by financial speculation and today history is repeating itself in july of two thousand

and eight well hit 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 after already thought into a recession so demand was down the prices went up not let me introduce you to something called the goldman sachs commodity and it's basically this is a marketplace where people or big corporations or big banks can bet on the future price prices of things think metals like gold or silver or food like wheat corn or energy like natural gas and oil or people can just bet a 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 food to reduce the

risk of a bad season they basically make a bet with a potential buyer that you know that. 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 bet 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 the price they bid but 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 were permit pretty much anybody can bet any amount on anything from gold to rice to

oil. as metal he points out 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 because sina was running solo because you know that phil and wendy gramm and created it 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 that's 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 it has to do with the same goldman sachs commodity and it's 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 bait to me and they're too which led to a worldwide food crisis and literally millions of people starving around the globe these bankers made billions on wall street by literally starving people and sure enough today as well prices go up again so to 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 and demand it's just another wall street scale with a little sweetening 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 for teachers will reserve the 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. more news today violence is once again flared up. these are the images you're seeing from the streets of canada. surely corporations rule the day.