you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so please you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else here see some other part of it and realize that everything you saw you don't i'm trying hard just to.

talk about the big picture on thom hartmann coming up in this half hour get insult to injury as a state already struggling with sky high unemployment rates will now receive six fewer weeks about its so what is the governor of the state really trying to do plus a new article in a conservative magazine based the koch brothers not as super political power players but instead as victims how on earth was this conclusion reached and is it even worth it where it was printed on. and executives of b.p. could face criminal charges involving last fall's gulf coast oil spill one of the charges manslaughter details it's a spirited take. it

looks like another republican is read the story of robin hood backwards and stealing from the poor to give to the rich michigan residents are getting screwed over by their governor rick snyder yesterday republican snyder signed into law legislation that would cut six weeks from unemployment benefits every state in the country currently pays out twenty six weeks of benefits but now michigan will lead the way and ate out only twenty weeks and that's a state that's had higher than ten percent unemployment rate for longer than any other state in the country in other words the state with the worst unemployment numbers also treats the unemployed the worst. as us congressman sander levin about the move it turns the clock back fifty years at a time when unemployment is that historic highs since the great depression i call it the republican version not only does governor snyder's bill amount to nothing

less than a war against poor people he also fails to realize the pain out unemployment benefits helps to boost economic activity and get people back to work this is just heartless it's bad economic policy. but i get it governor snyder has to take money out of someplace like poor people's pockets in order to pay for his two hundred million dollars ad scupper big corporations and their fat cat c.e.o.'s so let's see the effect of these republican economic policies in our little city here in the studio democracy this is our back to democracy bill we've been here before and there's basically two competing theories of economics that are being played out and democrats are playing demand side of it which is how economics of work for six thousand years the republicans are playing supply side which is how economics of work for the last thirty years which is one of the reasons we're in such deep trouble now with to start out with demand side this is this is how it actually

works well here is here's a little town that has been basically devastated by the bush great depression that we're experiencing right now we have just a couple of homes here we've got a farm with a little you know a field out here silo and. a little grocery store the supermarket and so not much happy people are out of work right they they're just scraping by so we come in as the government and we say ok we're going to give you some unemployment money we're going to do the opposite of what rick snyder is doing because you're unemployed right now here's some cash we're going to give that to the homeowners so the homeowners then take some of that cash and they then they go to the supermarket they buy things and the owner of the sewer and you know they're buying things from those who are in the owner of the supermarket then course has to give some money to the farmer the farm now is making money and they say you know gee maybe we ought to buy something from like you know a store i mean let's let's actually you know get the a.t.'s and lawn service out

here and fix up our you know the help clean up the farm and make it look better and you know let's. buy some shoes and things you know it's not as much the farmer by the way because you know these people have some money too and in fact and so then you know it lets them let's open a shoe store let's open a clothing store you know put some and you know put some money because there's demand now because there's money circulating in the environment let's let's open this restaurant here just let's let's open juice have his restaurant and they're going to get some now what happens when all these small businesses open they all need employees so they're going to give money from them to the people in the houses they're going to say come back to work and so you get more houses and more people move it and they've got jobs because they work and put the people here and what has happened is that little bit of money that was put in to this to jumpstart the thing in terms of either you know food stamps welfare payments or unemployment payments

that little bit of out of money going to the going to the store in the farmer and in these other stores then circulates it creates what's called a birth to a cycle in economics as i said this is economics one or one this is and the story basically in the epic of gilgamesh. six thousand years ago about the city state or now here's the conservative supply side theory their theory is that that's all nonsense and that instead what you should do. and you should give it to the rich people you just give it to the rich people where you go guys have a pile of money and the supply and then the rich people will do something with that money while it turns out most of what the rich people do and of course you give a bunch of money to big corporations as they please create some jobs but the rich people and corporations are going ok thanks for the money we're going to take that money we're going to stick in the bank and it's just going to sit there in the bank . and i mean you know maybe they'll buy

a few things one of these stores might be gucci's but you know basically there's not a wider economic activity being created by this and so what happens is because there's no economic activity going on you know all of these are starting to and particularly if a lot of money is going to big corporations so we end up with monopolies they're putting out of business the small companies that just knock him over because you know everybody is just buying from the big chains the big corporations that got the giant tax breaks that the little companies they didn't get giant tax breaks and so what happened even the giant supermarkets you know in the and you know knocking them out of business and so what happens is you know the people are now in a crisis because they're getting laid off because of the consolidation of the big corporations and because these giant corporations by the way are shipping the jobs overseas and so people you know are losing their homes you had people are committing suicide suicide rates actually go up the b.b.c. did a spectacular hundred year analysis of suicide rates in the u.k.

and australia and they found that that whenever conservative governments came in suicide rates went up one of the liberal governments came in suicide rates went down so you got more suicides now on the other hand you may have more households because you know when you have poverty as poverty increases in the united states as inequality increases teenage pregnancies go up so maybe it we're going to add a house back here because we've got you know these extra babies coming on line but they're very very poor babies i mean you can forget about the money the money's being sucked out. why all the rich guys over here who are putting it in the bank and by the way the bank might not even be in the united states the buying bank might be in switzerland writes for the sake of that money and putting it in in u.b.s. you know we're we're phil gramm the guy who you know graham least while in the commodity futures modernization act he's on the board of directors or at least one so this is the difference between these two says. between demand side economics and supply side economics and how supply side economics wife's entire economies which

is why in the last thirty years eighty percent of all the growth in our economy of all the money all the benefits eighty percent in the last thirty years has gone to the top one percent of americans and the average american today the average of what america worker today is making twenty seven hundred dollars less a year than he was making when ronald reagan came into office they've been stealing us blind it's an insane theory it's time to put it to bed it's time to put it to you know give it a nice funeral let's go back to classical economics. in the most recent edition of the conservative magazine the weekly standard readers were treated to an article about the koch brothers that paints a picture of these billionaires and koch by the way as k.f.c. age as saintly figures in america who through their charity work are trying to make the nation better but unfortunately they're being demonized by the left is enemies

of democracy as the writer of the article matthew connecticut writes for progressives confused at the heated opposition to their do gooder agenda and coax become convenient scapegoats invoking their name was a way to write off opposition to obama as the false consciousness of racist rubes stoked by greedy businessmen in the liberal imagination to coax a son from obscurity to infamy in record time he continues by saying. liberals in the media turned into coke addicts. cute anyway they ascribe every bad thing under the sun to the brothers and their checkbooks pollution the tea party global warming denial the koch's were responsible the liberals needed any aid you needed the facts like play until the cops resembled a lovecraft ian monster the coke there plus its tentacles stretched everywhere koch industries as a target on its gargantuan back but brothers who are the latest victims of the

laughs mean lean vilification machine and of quote so is the case are the coax the victims of a left wing smear machine and they're not actually contributing to the defeat of the middle class in democracy in america luckily leaf reporter and blogger think progress who has done extensive research on the codes and robert greenwald activist filmmaker and founder of brave new films his latest campaign targets the coast dealings i've read this weekly standard fluff piece and they join me now to tell us the truth about what's going on with the crooks lead great to have you here robert thank you for joining us from los angeles. actually oregon and oregon holy cow you must be on the road with the with the film. so you know let's just let's start out lee are the cokes really these poor victims who are being vilified by the i guess you you and robert must be this lean mean liberal machine that's to destroy them

yeah you know matt is actually at the weekly standard is a fantastic writer but kind of poor reporter because he's kind of mangling the facts here and he actually refers to me four times in this piece without mentioning my name at all one hand he wants to spend a coke says these homespun you know ordinary businessmen that sometimes contribute to causes they believe in at the same time he quotes a fundraiser in this piece that's comparing the koch brothers fundraising machine to a pac the israeli lobby here in america is very efficient and right to know what it does so so robert you're making or you're going to finish your scent ok robert you're making a movie about the coke we have a a clip from that i believe he would play that. people were destroying america. a bank well and tea party movement rock obama it's a curse. the word

means probably the greatest ever perpetrate the. others to do so and surprise. yes that's. right. you're right very well it's in our politics it's dirty money that's influencing our house.

so robert brilliant piece of filmmaking tell us about tell it tell us the story of your your your film here revealing the coax. well first of all with lee on the show let me say that everybody knows the lady and think progress an enormous step of appreciation and gratitude he's done just extraordinary work in researching exposing and getting all of our attention so i want to thank him and if i had gone with tippett to him and say job well that we look forward to a lot more what we've done it brave new foundation is we've decided based at least research again recent research and we've had four researchers working for the last three and a half months on this to do a series of short videos exposing each of the different areas that the koch brothers spends their hundreds of millions of dollars using and they use their money very very smartly we see how they finance it. we see how they

financed grassroots groups we see how they finance pundits who go on television we see how they finance politicians we're going to connect those dots for people we're going to help people understand and use these videos for organizing tools for rallying around the issues that the koch's are doing their damnedest to use their money to convince people that they should be working against their own self interests and in fact ironically is the article points out working to help the coax make billions more lead to that issue to what extent the koch's clearly i am for if the numbers in roberts documented just that will help we saw you know thirty million spent here and. what was it funding political campaigns or ten million spent a lot of. typically when big companies spend that kind of money it's an investment

a they put ten million in they expect to get a billion dollar contract out or something like that i saw them some suggest that the most profitable investments in america today buying politicians to what extent are the codes ideologues promoting a belief system that they truly believe versus opportunists who are promoting their own interests they're both charles koch has a huge ego he's compared himself to martin luther theologian bring this you know supply side revolution to america that will change the world on the other libertarian well he's a libertarian but you know he says he's inspired by the f.a.a. . however you know that we even libertarians the government has to regulate air pollution now even though charles koch sees themselves as the greatest libertarian funder in america he doesn't really ascribe to that part of. philosophy because a lot of the groups that he finds just simply benefit the koch industries bottom

line the koch industries company has basically monetize the very worst types of carbon emitting industries whether it's fertilizer oil refinery. tar sands basically specialize in global warming and that's why the koch industries charitable funds you know almost three dozen different climate organizations so it's two things there's incredible you go there and you can see that in the piece they're bragging about how brilliant they are and the weekly standard person's lavishing praise on them on the other hand they want to make more money into the r. o. i their return on investment is incredible if you just think about the koch brothers made an additional eleven billion dollars in the last two years and let's imagine that it's all income and they make it again in the next two years that means billions yeah the thousand million that means. that effort with the bush tax cuts for the upper two percent they're sending five hundred million dollars right there

and that's that's just one small part of us robert. two to what extent are your films. focusing on the connection between the fact that not a single freshman member of the house of representatives believes in global warming and most of them earth who are elected with money that may have been connected to the koch brothers or at least with ideas that originated with a couple others. but i think you just hit it on the important point is they are funding ideas that they then transform into action that then get transformed into the politicians speaking the words what we're going to try to do and if people can go to our facebook page they can go to the website pro protos expose they can follow the took my twitter feed we're going to put it be putting these out throughout the next year a series of short pieces and if we have the resources we're going to be doing as

many issues as possible one of the reasons that people other than lee and jane haven't taken on the crokes is the size and scope is so extraordinary they have so many organizations and so many people they fund and they use their foundations in so many different ways we're just getting a handle around it has truly taken us months and months but boy have we got some strong video coming up and i'd love to go into detail about all of it tom but we know the element of surprise is going to be critical here you know we've been attacked will continue to be attacked they've attacked lee so if people want to get those videos and we're going to need everyone's help you know you've been an extraordinary ally your audience has been the activists have been it's going to be a very very tough fight so so get over the website robert lee gentlemen thank you both thanks for having me great work you're both. honored to be associate with. copes have existed in the shadows for too long now thanks to great work by the

following robert greenwald american people are starting to see exactly how these billionaires are strangling the markers. as time for our daily poll your chance to tell us what you think here's today's question the current brothers in the tea party followers shutting down the government possible answers yes defunding planned parenthood obamacare n.p.r. major obstacles or no the republicans will come to their senses and stop angering to the far right wing and the war on workers so far most of you have overwhelmingly voted yes while going to let us know what you think the open until. coming out to take a weapon should eleven people killing them on the spot sure enough you're probably get the death penalty so are the executives at p.v.p.

behind the gulf oil coast well spill any difference the answer inside still it's a. let's not forget that we had an apartheid regime right here. i think the plumbing even wanted well. we have the government says they're for the keep you safe get ready because you get their freedom.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything you saw you don't. charge is a big. fight . fight fight.

crazy alert a woman in california was facing up to five years in prison after she was found guilty of forging doctors' notes to obtain illegal prescriptions back in january when she showed up for sentencing the courthouse yesterday she had a trick up her sleeve she gave the judge a doctor's note asking for a postponement of the sentence because she was ill actually the doctor decided to call the doctor and the judge decided to call a doctor to double check and sure enough the no from the doctor was a forgery as well it's unclear what that is some things will be for the woman with a crafty signature perhaps it will be a lifelong ban on using them it's a. little

close to the investigation are saying that the u.s. justice department is considering criminal charges against executives at b.p. for their role in last year's oil disaster in the gulf that killed eleven people those charges could include manslaughter as well as per. injury against former b.p. c.e.o. tony hayward of course b.p. itself can't face any real punishment because it's a corporation and here in america we give corporations many of the rights of actual humans a free speech in politics but none of the consequences like going to jail or getting the death penalty for murder in fact it's been less than a year since that deadly oil spill started after eleven men died when b.p.'s oil rig caught fire and today b.p. continues drilling all over america selling oil to americans and making huge profits that they take back to the united kingdom so despite death and ecological devastation on an unimaginable scale it's business as usual for b.p. other than a few fines that they can deduct from their taxes can you imagine what the fate

would be of a terrorist who detonated a dirty bomb off the coast of louisiana killed eleven people injured countless others and left large swaths of the gulf of mexico poised to poison for fishing in the state of louisiana would be the death penalty hands down in fact the past ten years louisiana's executed three people and has eighty two i'm death row right now but there's no such thing as the corporate death penalty at least not anymore but what if i were to tell you that our nation has a long history of executing corporations that broke the law in fact america's stirred using capital punishment to put to sleep road corporations before our constitution was even ratified. more than two hundred thirty years ago all the way up to the eighteen nineties governments we the people routinely revoked corporate charters and sold off all their assets when it was proven that they operated in ways that were in jury is to citizens of the community it was a common phrase us presidents even one on

a platform of the corporate death penalty i can or jackson an eight hundred thirty two who promised to kill off the second bank of the united states and then when he was elected actually did it and in michigan ohio nebraska and new york hundreds of sugar corporations whiskey corporations match manufacturers even oil companies in the eight hundred ninety s. early one thousand nine hundred space coal justice and were in fact executed for conducting business against the public interest their charters rippled their assets were sold off at auction for example here's a law from wisconsin it was pretty identical to those in all the states until the republicans knocked them down in the era from the eight hundred ninety s. to the one nine hundred twenty s. it's referred to as the charter of our green arrow political contributions by corporations no corporation doing business in this state shall pay or contribute and keep in mind virtually every state unit had a law like this no corporation is of the station repair contribute or offer consent

or agree to pay or contribute directly or indirectly any money property free service of its officers or employees or thing of value to any political campaign already organization committee or individual for any pullet political purpose whatsoever where for the purpose of influencing legislation of any kind or go to defeat the candidacy of any person for nomination appointment or election to any political office. the penalty any officer or employee agent or attorney or other representative lobbyist of any corporation acting for and we have a such a corporation who shall violate this act shall be punished upon conviction by imprisonment the state prison for a period of not less than one or more than five years and if a corporation shall be subject to a penalty then they may be dissolved if they do but if a domestic corporation it may be dissolved if a foreign or nonresident corporation out of state corporation its right to do business in this state shall be declared forfeit that was the end if us justice

department does hold b.p. executives accountable and throws them in prison that's a great start but p.p. b.p. will continue along pumping trillions of dollars of crude out of the ground spilling millions of gallons killing off workers because of neglect and accidents and paying their new executives millions of dollars if we really want to make sure something like the b.p. oil spill doesn't happen again then we need to put corporations back on death row if we put b.p. in the chair and flip the switch oh yeah the corporations will listen and we the people can take back control of what happens in our nation. as the big picture for tonight for more information on the stories we covered visit our website at tom harkin dot com and. also free newsletter the lists all our stories this entire show is vailable and a free podcast i tunes also check out our you tube page just a you tube dot com slash the big picture artsy and you tube dot com slash tom parker and don't forget democracy begins when you show up when you get active tag

your it will sit in the. heat of the.