and realized everything you saw. i'm sorry welcome to the big picture. talk about the big picture i'm tom arvin coming up in this half hour. along with

the nation's growing debt there's another crisis brewing in america people living on the streets out of a car in abandoned buildings so what's mean done to address the homeless. and while so many americans struggle with halmos most are already bigwigs of the leading corporations are raking in millions even billions in profits end up paying a penny douglass sent. along this company. and we could take a debt want to one lesson from our neighbors across the pond i'll tell you how the germans and swedes are dealing with their own budget to learn how to handle surplus . everest. tax payers like you and me are getting the shaft from giant corporate tax

cheats we're going to zation public campaign looked into corporate tax dodgers and released a new report that shows just how much money was spent by a dozen just twelve of america's most profitable corporations to ensure that they don't have to pay their fair share of taxes major corporations like exxon mobil the most profitable corporation in the history of the world going back to the roman empire chevron conoco phillips as well as financial institutions like goldman sachs citigroup and bank of america and defense contractors like boeing and general electric along with a handful of other transnational giants spent over a billion dollars in the last decade lobbying congress to keep intact corporate tax loopholes a billion dollars spent just a few blocks from here on just five hundred thirty five members of congress how is this fair and how long can they get away with this and joining me now is adam smith

direction communications director of public campaign and daniel harper of the weekly standard gentlemen welcome thank you. daniel and yes exxon mobil paid not that in zero nine they got a rebate of one hundred fifty six million chevron ten billion profits in two thousand and nine no taxes nineteen million dollars rebate bank of america for now have billion in profits last year paid no taxes got a two billion dollar refund you know i literally have a list here of about twenty of these i don't want to bore you with the whole thing but you get it the question. fundamentally what is conservative about corporations dodging their taxes buying politicians to carve holes in the tax code i think it's really good that you're talking about the problem and i think but i don't think identifying the problem correctly these people aren't god the tax code there's a reason that the i.r.s. isn't going after them for unpaid taxes what they're doing is not eat legal what they're doing is perfectly legal i think we should you're making my point. i know

and i but i'm saying i don't think this is the corporations for the corporations the secret to maximize their profit and benefit their shareholders and that's appropriate for a corporation the problem is are the politicians who have made this possible and that's what needs to be fixed somebody to go after the gym in office in the paul ryans and charlie rangle in the garage obama's book right across the board on the economy i'll give you that so the bottom then what's identify the real problem here that we have a paul we have a system in the united states the most of the rest of the developed world is horrified by our politicians are bought and sold by big corporations transnational corporations corporations that are needed you know g.e. we call america corporation fifty four percent of business outside the united states sadly and you know how g.e. was rewarded their c.e.o. was was announced by the president of the united states to be on the on the president's job creation i know better and that there's no reason that we should the book it's one thing if they want to do it the politicians should not be

rewarding them and cozying up to the president is doing right now it's silly and you see this with charlie wrangle you see this with democrats and guess republicans are not but you know according to the party getting out of a clearly out of this is and he's absolutely right this is this is rage might be legally right but it's it is it is wrong and you know american companies should be investing in american jobs they shouldn't be investing in washington politicians and that's the problem with our system these. banks for america i don't sixty five billion dollars and funds you know they made a form to have billion dollar profit this year and got a two billion dollar refund you know they've also spent something like thirty five million dollars in campaign contributions in lobbying and i think largely on those i think of america you know they did a good piece there but you know everybody in washington is talking about shared sacrifice and people paying their fair share and they're clearly not paying a fair share and it's being paid for on the backs of. middle class well effect they

had over one hundred fourteen i think it was offshore tax havens in order to get it not right i mean those taxes us uncut is going after them on this so. daniel word agreement that we have a broken system we conservative liberal green we have a broken system if you are going to blame but you blame the corporations and i know that i actually i'm i'm agreeing with you if corporations mandate and their legal mandate i mean you know the michigan supreme court case back in one thousand nine hundred forty established that their mandate has to be to generate greater profits if that's it and we have made it and the supreme court actually it's never been passed by the legislature it's never been even advocated by a president been decried by presidents since since jefferson but if the supreme court says money is speech corporations are persons corporations have the right to basically bribe politicians not call it bribes how do we fix this that's absolutely right you know our political system works for these big corporations these wealthy

donors it doesn't work for working americans you know it public campaign we support legislation like the fair like it's now act which would allow candidates to focus on their people back home they could raise money from people back in their district back in their state and they could be competitive without having to rely on these k. street lobbyists or and you had leave it to you know i used to live in portland oregon and we had publicly funded elections and then the rich guys came in and they and they blew it up nobody like us race yeah very close but absolutely you know and we introduced the legislation was introduced last week that had more original co-sponsors than ever before and you know i think that the american people see what the problem so you're suggesting that the problem the solution to problems public financing of elections. your thoughts on right who disagree with that i'm solution but i think the easy solution would be to minimize the corporate loopholes that these corporations are how can you get along as they can by. patients that's that's

because i think there's enough public out outcry that that you can get it through i think trying to put all your eyes filtered through those were very corporations and the new york times ran this story about gee and i'm not paying any any taxes in fact getting a tax refund people were outraged right and left it didn't matter i think if you lowered the corporate if you will if you close the corporate loopholes as much as it did not not for fully i mean there are some that are legitimate and i think you need to be you didn't need to go through r. and d. and things like and i think and then i think you lower the tax rate so that there's less and you tell the corporate tax rate so there's less of a corporate bird there's less of an incentive for corporations to go abroad and for them to create these havens and then this whole system becomes more try not to just go back to the way that we did it from seventeen ninety three when hamilton put it into place and so reagan came into office and then go and go back to protecting domestic industries which are that's actually not that's actually not true if you if you look at the new york times reported that when president reagan looked that

g.e. and at that at the loopholes that they were taking advantage of and what they were doing in this for he would get it exactly and he previously worked for g.e. and then he cracked down on g.e. and he said and i quote the president supported change that loopholes and reported g.e. to pay a far higher effective rate up to thirty two point zero i sent his i know reagan's rhetoric is wonderful but it was his actions i think we should take a lesson from reagan we should we should i'm not saying that i but i think because i think that would still discouraged me because they'll still be one of the highest in the world but i think we should i think it's right for sure let's close the corporate titles you know the thing is when politicians go to vote they think of two things their constituents and whether it's going to affect their bank accounts their campaign bank accounts and until we change that system we're never going to change the way washington works so it seems that the cancer at the core of this is money and as i said i this i don't see a solution other than changing the supreme court but or or amending the constitution but that's a whole conversation for another time. at. and daniel both of you thank you very

much for joining us thank you appreciate it if only a few of these incredibly profitable corporations by the way had paid their fair share everybody huge dent our nation's deficit problem and put the average americans back to work it's pretty simple many of these c.e.o.'s are patriots they're traitors they're looting what's left of our country and taking the profits along with our jobs over to china. think about this ongoing budget debate is that it too often focus is just on the numbers the one point four trillion dollar deficit the fourteen trillion dollars that the thirty five point thirty eight add billion dollars in spending cuts this year the four trillion in spending cuts over the next decade thirty five percent tax rate on not just numbers but here's a number to chew on. there are almost

a million homeless people in america and the fastest growing group among them is families with children. but people who are affected with government programs are cut or forced out on the street after some banks start gave them an exploding home mortgage increasingly in america world watch in almost men women and children people looking for another chance people who've fallen through the social safety net. no one understands that better than dog night executive director of streets here in washington d.c. doug welcome thanks for having me i'm pleased and honored to have you here with us thank you many i've done internationally for over thirty years and i remember way back in the late seventy's early eighty's the first time i was in india he walked out of the hotel with fifty kids are following you and the local guy that i was working with one of the ngos there said they would ever give the beggars any money because basically what you're doing is you're paying them to stand in that spot and

harass more people and it's not good for them and it's not good for you and you have bloody bloody law and there are charities for them give the money to charities things like that. here in washington d.c. when i walk by somebody just asking for money i mean my my instinct is to give them money and so i was raised it's a part of my religion but what i do whenever i see somebody selling street sense is a region of my pocket whatever the bill on the outside of the water is you know whether it's a water or a five return or whatever i pull it out i had it to them and i buy a copy just about every day because what you guys are doing is great and i want to get to talk about it give us an overview. and why it is that my giving money to that guy who's stonestreet stance is so different from giving money to the guy who's you know. just yelling at people or whatever and thank you again for having us on for this we really look to tell the story because i think it's very important the street sense program was started in two thousand and three and the idea quite

simply is we are a street newspaper sold by the homeless co-produce co-written by the homeless and actually sold on the street and all the profits that are made from that newspaper sale at one dollar donation that goes between you and the vendor goes to the vendor that money is there we don't see it as a nonprofit organization that's needs with the vendor that money is then used however that vendor needs to we get to be entrepreneurs basically absolutely absolutely we actually call them our vendors and i actually call them my guys my team. m. you know because i really do believe it that that what we have and what we're really showing them is something that's it within them and it's something that very often gets lost in this conversation about homelessness in america too often we have this idea that homelessness is sort of crept up on somebody and it's it's sadly it's just there and we can't solve it my issue with that is it's a solvable situation it is actually like a disease that we have symptoms of we have cure we need to find a cure to this disease and how this is and i really believe that part of the cure is economic impact and that's exactly what you were talking about when you get that

dollar and you receive that money you feel good about having that money in your hands and are our vendors feel that same way and what they do with that then is it indicts their entrepreneurship and they think to themselves oh i remember now i remember before i lost my home before my marriage fell apart before i fell in the maybe some drug and alcohol problems i remember but i could make a living and i could help myself and we have a great phrase that i dearly love a street sense which is homelessness is not helplessness when you have streets and that street sense is the key to this and that is it's information that newspaper you have is not a newsletter it's not an advocacy piece it's the news that's happening on the streets today some pretty damn good articles in here and i've read quite a few of them that's going to team which i must tell you too editorial are part time workers we have four people on staff total two full time two parts on and mary and lisa our editorial team are phenomenal with our interns and volunteers to make those articles happen and most importantly the vendors themselves contribute and that's what i buy one of the isn't there you know the theoretical price is dollars

i said i just give mortar i have to have that's over a dollar over. there is the relationship between me and the person that i'm having that interaction with. seems to be a high respect relationship rather than the kind of patronizing. keeping people in in a place of. of begging and subordination it happens with beggars and that's right i think it's a very healthy thing. tony is street since i lived in portland for five years and i used to buy these things in portland too it was a different name but this is part of a national movement it is it is and i think a fantastic movement especially with the current events that your past segments have been talking about right now where we are actually part of a wonderful organization a membership group that's called the north american street newspaper association so we are one of about thirty five or thirty six other papers in major cities and

around the country that are doing the same work and what i think it's the most interesting thing about this town is the fact that right now we just had a count happen here in this area where we're at twelve thousand homeless people that's up that's actually up two percent from last year and we know by numbers area what even we're talking about d.c. maryland virginia and what we know is that number and those struggles are just going to continue because we are coming off of the economy and where we were at the recessions we're also coming off of those federal dollars that were put into the stimulus money is now going away and what we see and what we try to do and there's a lot of sort of macro being talked about here we did was we bring it down to the individual the power of the individual economic impact social connectivity and information that's in that paper those three buckets of power can really move the needle to a conversation that's well beyond stats and figures and one of the people and that's the thing we try to emphasize that there are people here that we're talking about these are not just stats and figures they're people and these are the people who who have really in genuinely i mean they don't have a brother or

a father to move in with they don't have a neighbor who can take them in they don't have some savings that they can fall back on i mean this is the as jesus said the least twenty five the least of the least answer at least of these my brother that's right and you're doing this remarkable work with. why do you think well i don't want to get political about this how can i if somebody is watching this in another city in america where there's not a newspaper. or like this what do they do to get involved if they like and follow your lead i would suggest what they can do is they can call us and find out how we do it they can go right into street sense not org and check out our website they could call us directly and say hey we think this is a kind of an interesting thing we have a great thing we do we have a thing called vendor for a day where we actually get businesses and nonprofits high school and college students they come for the day and we have them go out and sell with our vendors and the experience with that is the good and bad of it and we go back to them all the time we have these deeper into afterwards and you'll be amazed at how many people when they come back off this they say i don't know why we don't have this in

our town this makes so much sense we're passing great information with a quality product we're getting economic impact to these people and most importantly this invisible community that we talk about often about the homeless they don't become invisible anymore they become in basters to the corners and the neighborhoods that they say they reside on that they're actually selling on to the point where and you might experience this here in town he walk by that corner you expect to see that street sense and it and you are no longer just a somebody who's walking to work you're a client a customer about member and well so what i would suggest to anybody who's interested is check out our website check out a paper most importantly go buy the paper buy the paper from a vendor at the then check us out and it will give you some more information about your you're doing god's work and america's work i mean the george washington was the first president to sign a a an actual bill the provided for the care of the homeless in the united states and this is this is a great evolution in that process from poor houses to so now you know self-respect and stand up and start i'm honored to be show pleasure and i thank you so much for

being with us thank you it's great to see compassion work being done to help of the homeless people that our lawmakers tragically seem to a forgotten so next time you see a street son spender and over a few blocks and pick up a copy of go along the way. after the break i'll explain how democratic socialism is like in sweden and germany and show us about the economic recovery in america.

you know sometimes you see the story. you think you understand it and then something else some other part of it and realized every. hour is a. crazy alert and you know that f.d.r. not only won world war two beat back the great depression and built the middle class america but he also brought. to the united states you know that maybe you should listen to republican congressman paul brown who took the house floor earlier this week to. other republican colleagues just that. this big welfare system in this country it all started in earnest with president woodrow wilson when franklin delano roosevelt

president franklin delano roosevelt just exploded the size and scope of government through his new deal both progressives both has socialist beliefs fact franklin delano roosevelt said his advisers his close help friends his cabinet people to go his it was stalin economists russia. just tell you what he was doing was stalin was doing they are so that f.d.r. could replicated year in the united states. wow so that means president obama isn't our first socialist president after all he's the second or the third if you count woodrow wilson too when you throw paul brown's recent claims it was michele bachmann's about other revolutionary war was started in new hampshire and our founding fathers ended slavery you suddenly come to really and genuinely understand

one thing about the republican party it today aren't exactly smarter than a fifth grader. two years after the bank's toure's crash farah khan to me there's renewed hope that at least some of them might soon be held accountable democratic senator carl levin chairman of the senate subcommittee on investigations at least his report on who's to blame for the financial meltdown at the top of that list is none other than goldman sachs one of the largest investment banks in fact it's a bank that's actually seen its market share increase since the meltdown in other words they profited off it. senator levin's report points the finger at goldman

sachs for misleading clients and manipulating the markets for greed is reporters now being and over the u.s. justice department to determine whether or not charges should be filed still the damage has been done in america thanks to the behavior of goldman sachs and their banks there's more than five million jobs have been lost in this country since two thousand and eight twelve million homes have been foreclosed on or are in danger of foreclosure and tens of trillions of dollars have been sucked out of the american middle class this is the culmination of thirty years of tax cuts for the rich and financial deregulation the culmination of reaganomics a complete catastrophe a quick glance across the pond or a back to a quick read through today's financial times tells a different tale of the effects of the two thousand and eight financial meltdown not everybody has suffered like the united states in fact some countries in europe are doing just fine thank you very much sweden today is planning tax cuts you know

not because they think paul ryan has a good idea when it comes to budgeting but instead because their economy is the fastest growing economy in europe and their government is starting to run surpluses sweden is doing just fine because they didn't have a housing bubble or a banking disaster like we did because they use something called regulation they regulate their banks stirrers basically what america used to do from one nine hundred thirty two just after the last time banks crashed our economy all the way up until the one nine hundred eighty s. when suddenly president ronald reagan and every president after him including bill clinton pretty much forgot just how damaging the regulation can be in fact senator levin's report cites weak regulation and conflicts of interest throughout wall street as another cause of the crisis. sweden doesn't mess around they kept their banks in check and today as america claws its way out of

a recession the deep wounds still lingering in the economy sweden is wondering what to do with its booming economy and budget surplus that is financial times also examined germany as the article calls it churman e because their economic growth is rivaling that of china other words germany is going gangbusters with an industrial production growth rate or how much more stuff they build each year and nearly fifteen percent in the u.s. it's less than six percent and that's not to say that germany didn't take a hit the financial meltdown like we did because they got hard to the two years out they're doing just fine why well it turns out it's because they have something called crits arbeit literally short work it's a big government program that encourages businesses to not lay off workers during hard times but instead to cut down their oh for example if

a factory is having trouble accessing credit because the banks are drying up and the cut everyone's hours say from forty hours to thirty hours pay them for the thirty hour work week the company pays them and then the german government picks up the rest of the salary for the other ten hours that way the factory stays in the black the workers don't lose their jobs or job skills and that's most importantly it's cold enough money in their pockets to buy things which is what creates the demand for goods and services that keeps an economy alive so all u.s. businesses were closing down left and right german businesses stayed intact and now are going to get in one year the german economy is back in booming yet here in the u.s. more than two years later we're still drowning. in fact we do the opposite here from what they do in germany in sweden we take money and thus demand out of the

pockets of workers by firing them off shoring their jobs and cutting their own unemployment benefits and people can't buy things and economy doesn't work germany realizes this i don't. so this is the approach that countries in europe a call themselves social democracies or the republicans in the us call failed socialist states have taken well here in the united states thirty years or reaganomics has nearly completely destroyed a once and vibrant little things finally a letter to the editor of the financial times that sums up the problem is in nations like ours and the u.k. that stupidly are so deregulated their bankers and economist at the university college of logic writes the central issue of the financial crisis has brought into the public debate is the banks losses have been effectively nationalized all their

profits remain private in other words the taxpayers take the hit with the bailout and the banks to carry on with their big bonuses remember goldman sachs is in better shape today than before the crisis and they wouldn't even exist if they had been bailed out by you and me the taxpayers. well let's hope something comes out of this new report by senator levin and the two years after the worst financial crime in the history of our nation's taken place some bankers are finally thrown in jail and to prevent this from happening again maybe we should look across the pond at the social democrat democracies like sweden and germany and take some notes as the big picture for tonight for more information on the stories check out our website the tom hartman icon in our t.v. icon and don't forget the barber see begins when you get active tag you're it will see to.

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