rachel martin here broadcasting live from washington d.c. coming up today on the big picture a. new web site with twenty four seven live streaming news times what to do about the ongoing financial hardship unlimited free high quality videos for download. and stories you may never find mainstream news. media so. the

political. posts aren't just stand. by guys welcome to shellings tell the alona show which part of our guests have to say on the topic now i want to hear our audience just go on to you tube to video respond or to twitter for part of the questions that we post on you tube every monday and on the first day of the show your responses like your vote. are it's time for tonight's tool time reward the great state of texas has decided to jump on the bandwagon of banning shari'a law which i have to say is not so shocking i mean it's fact that i'm naturally even moved by g.o.p. lawmakers comes at a time when there are no documented cases of sharia law. being used in the state

not one single case no proof so why would the state move to ban something that has actually never been a problem well just ask texas state representative leo berman who's pushing for this ban he says that lawmakers in the lone star state must stop shari'a law from ever happening there because it's happening in other parts of the country during his testimony berman insisted the judges in dearborn michigan were using shari'a law in their courtrooms and sadly for leo that's actually not true yes if you're born in michigan is home to one of the largest muslim populations in the us and the largest mosque in north america but shari'a law is not practiced there our team has done reports there we've spoken with residents with community leaders sure realize not an issue in this city and after the hearing the media began to question representative the overman testimony and his claims about dearborn and that's when he finally admitted he said i heard it on a radio station here on my way into the capitol one day and then burn went on to say i don't know dearborn michigan but i heard it shari'a law is accepted law here

on the radio isn't true so little berman is just introducing laws wasting taxpayers' time and money because he heard something on the radio would be irresponsible politician if politicians listened to everything on the radio we all be living in rush limbaugh scary world we're socialism has taken over the leo berman has made texas the fifteenth state to ban or at least try to ban shari'a law despite it being a non issue so for keeping the islamophobia alive and well here in the us texas republican congressman leo berman is tonight's bull's-eye and we're. now you know the saying if you can't beat em join em well apparently the democrats are taking this motto to heart for the upcoming two thousand and twelve elections turns out democrats are forming organizations designed to accept campaign contributions from undisclosed donors and i will let you think on that for a minute the democrats the liberals. supposedly are setting up an infrastructure to

accept anonymous campaign contributions does that ring a bell to anybody does that sound at all familiar to you well that's because it's the exact same political tactic used by the republicans in the two thousand and ten election and if memory serves me correctly liberals are up in arms over this contentious fund raising method all thanks in part to supreme court passing citizens united people need to be aware of what's going on this is unprecedented saying you've got you've got these funds cropping up all over orchestrated by karl rove. better spending that will spend hundreds of millions of dollars to enforce this are citizens united the court comes out and says oh these these kinds of corporate independent expenditures they're not corrupting they're not possibly going to crush any candidate it's meanwhile this law which had existed for sixty years was an expression of generations of congress are saying look we're politicians we know fundraising and we think that this money would corrupt us

tragic because the court damaged its own reputation and integrity. by reversing precedents unnecessarily and most important because it opens the door to a political system that more than ever can and likely will be dominated and distorted by corporate will. now in case you've forgotten the supreme court ruling proceed as a united granted corporations the right to donate unlimited amounts of money to campaigns thus allowing corporations with ample finances to give an undisclosed amount of money to their political candidate of choice so after the democrats were all angry about his g.o.p. strategy it turns out that they've just decided to use it themselves there are two major organizations to keep an eye on majority pac and american bridge twenty first century will serve as a research that will receive money from smaller nonprofits who have the ability to raise money from undisclosed earners now here's what we know about the access part majority pipe is designed to focus exclusively on house races with the agenda of

restoring power in the house of representatives to the democrats and while we don't know too much about this second group we do know that rodel molineaux a former top communications aide to harry reid will be president of american bridge twenty first century and we should also note the twenty first century was founded by david brock the same man who founded the liberal media watchdog group media matters so it sounds like the dems have been hashing out the details of this politicking technique for a while and grabbing some of the best and brightest from capitol hill and frankly i mean i can't blame them obviously orten two thousand and ten when the republicans gain control of the house but this is just a glaring example of how our society has changed how our government has changed and it's a sign of accepting this photographic ideology where corporations really can determine who ends up writing and acting are laws in our country so if you weren't convinced before just know that citizens united really did change everything.

now today congress passed the thirty eight billion dollar budget big region last week that's going to fund the government through the rest of two thousand and eleven but despite all the partisan turmoil in recent weeks the latest to the brink of a government shutdown that was the easy part the debt ceiling must be voted on soon as it's going to hit its limit on may sixteenth according to treasury secretary tim geithner and then comes the showdown on budget twenty twelve we can see the clear lines being drawn between paul ryan's deficit reduction proposal and president obama's own just yesterday now today also happens to be the kickoff of obama's two thousand and twelve reelection in terms of fund raising the president is attending three separate fundraisers in chicago today so now more than ever has become very clear the battle over the budget is really going to turn into the battle for the white house and two thousand and twelve joining me to discuss it is christopher d.c. president of the young conservative coalition and from our studio in new york is erika payne founder and president of the agenda project i want to thank you both for joining me now christopher to start with you tell me are republicans really

going to hold the entire country hostage here about the debt ceiling if they don't get some cuts they refuse to have a clean bill they're really going to put it on the brink of a default about it all. right hearing from every single one of them if you watch any interviews the republicans will forward a plan by congressman ryan to attack not only the national deficit but the national debt and in doing that we have a twenty twentieth century government in the twenty first century and we want to afford all the things that we've come to enjoy it regards to what i think the president eloquently stated about social security medicare medicaid we need to be make some hard choices here what's important to us and i think the president responded to that carbs with ryan's plan not what this is a serious alternative to what i think the republicans have a real plan that can work with to get in tell me if they're going to vote for the debt ceiling to be raised or not i think that should not they should hold out against spending any more. i think we've spent we have

a fourteen trillion dollar deficit we have a budget that's three point eight trillion dollars that was posed earlier the deficit one point six trillion dollars but this was a master kirk commercial government fiscal responsibility would be priceless so it's funny because you know i didn't hear them say anything about the fact that they just added what was it five billion dollars to defense in this latest round of budget cuts that they just passed erick i'm going to go over to you here for a second in terms of the the the first debate that we're going to see now before we even get to the real tony budget but over the debt ceiling do you think that democrats might almost maybe they shouldn't let republicans allow the entire country to default because they hate they're the bad guys they learned their lesson they played politics with it and then you can point all the fingers. no that's not a good idea i mean the united states has never departed on its debts and it can't be fought on these debts and i think what's important to do in this conversation is to really understand what we're talking about so this is you know that language is raising the debt ceiling and it is true that in order to get past this crisis will

need to the debt limit but what the alternative is is to not pay the financial obligations that we have and i think most americans understand that they have to take responsibility and their own lives and pay the debts that they have and we as a country need to do the same thing so conservatives pushing us to not do that is even more irresponsible than many of the choices they made they got us into the situation where and the first place well i was very shocked we looked at a poll earlier this week that said only sixteen percent of americans actually agreed with raising the debt limit and that really makes me start to question whether americans actually have any idea what those representations you know what they would look like i want to ask you a quick question too because so republican congress voted today to pass this thirty eight billion dollars budget for now for the next six months but then the cvo released this report saying that in fact it was only cutting the deficit by three hundred fifty two million dollars so i mean what does i mean what was it all

a sham i think we're starting to learn i mean there's a bigger hole so. i think that we're starting to learn that some of the deal that we didn't know about before is coming out there and it's not good i think what's more you i agree with mr paine in regards to her ideas that it's irresponsible that we should that's at the same time it's also you're responsible for the democratic congress and the president to go more spending in a time where the american public seems stop spending that was the whole point of two thousand and ten the election there they wanted less spending no more spending we don't have enough money to spend more it's time to take some serious consideration of the things that we want instead of keep raising the debt limit keep raising taxes we have to find alternatives that are going to generate revenue not only for the american government perfumery. eric i see you shaking your head clear i mean so this actually shows a fundamental lack of understanding of basic economics and we've been in the situation that we're currently and before and the best parallel was after the great

depression and what got us out of the great depression when the financial system crashed everybody says what got us out of it was world war two that's right but what was world war two actually world war two was a massive amount of government spending by the united states and they were spending that money to fight an enemy and that spending for peled our country forward in essence it's like jump starting it hard you know what happened in two thousand and eight was we had a massive financial crisis so basically or what you do with the government stimulus the government is always going to be that that battery jump start are ok and you don't want to use it when you don't have to we went in there we jump started the car and you know like everybody knows that you've got to leave the jumper cables for long enough until that engine picks up itself and can keep on going we're in that place right now let's not take off the jumper cables too quickly and i just i got to tell you i love conservatives who i met this school responsibility just

a little too late the debt went from five billion to ten billion under george bush his presidency started with a surplus and it ended with us in financial crisis the likes of which we haven't seen in eighty years or so i mean religion a little bit too late for my for my taste this is what i'm curious about is we have two fundamentally different views of what was country supposed to do in terms of getting its economy out of the gutter what we're supposed to do in terms of tackling our debt and so it makes me question whether whether this congress is ever going to be able to agree on anything how this is going to play out for the presidential race in two thousand and twelve or the congressional races and only twelve we can agree people are two completely very. it is well look i think that you can actually don't agree with that point i don't think that we do have different views i actually think that what happens in a lot of these situations is that people just want political power and they try to

think of whatever message they can think of at the time and that's going to gain them political power because most americans unlike most people who work in congress most americans wake up every day and don't think about how to destroy their enemy they think about how to educate their kids how to put food on the table how to take care of their aging parents and so what people in congress do is they take a few minutes a day that your basic average hardworking american has left and they go in there and they start trying to mess with them and tell them this and that why and what they what they're doing and that is actually sending our country and to a place that we might not be able to recover from so so the irresponsible choices and political choices that conservatives are making right now are actually going to prove very harmful to our country so chris that conservatives really just full of crap when they talk about wanting to cut spending and if you look at it even people like rand paul are saying that paul ryan's deficit reduction plan doesn't go far enough you see a lot of people really breaking up over this you saw lindsey graham throwing

a fit because fifty thousand dollars got cut from his state and so you see republicans wanting to cut but never would it actually affects anything that they hold the democrats and republicans are both guilty of both the solution is not to spend more trillion dollars as the president's proposing with his budget look if you want to look at history when you make that it makes. i mean just the question for christopher have you ever in your life taken a basic economics class and if so do you understand how government spending works that it actually to work and helps to jumpstart an economy and these are very basic right. to live like a player is get his ear as big as his line and earn it and let's let's hear what he did learning your if you're looking for a bar or. the solution to this problem here in times in the sixty's when things were president kennedy a democrat cut taxes and we had a boom in the economy in the one nine hundred eighty s. ronald reagan in the recession of eighty one eighty two cut taxes we had an economic boom george bush nearly two thousand cut taxes and we had another group

that got us out of the early two thousand recession this is standard milton friedman adam smith type economics and that's what we need to get us out of this no more spending which is the left in the nature of this morning that were there this morning regressive raised our credit and the sun came up those two are not necessarily correlate it and you and i both know that under ronald reagan taxes on people who make more than a million dollars a year were higher than they are right now and you and i both know that those that those tax cuts are not what led to that expansion and so you're just you're trying to create a cause that either it's time actually true and so go back and check your facts because this is we actually have important choices and front of us that we need to make as a country and it's important to keep those facts straight out chris well if eric is right i think hopefully we'll be on the wrong tree or on the right track excuse me but we will see i think this is going to be a showdown the last for a very long time i want to thank you both for joining us tonight thank you thanks

so much now still to come on tonight's show we have show and tell and then goldman sachs accused of misleading us lawmakers who are investigating a few thousand a decade on the collapse does that mean that some of the top bankers could finally face charges for their role in the financial meltdown. that we are right here. on the well. we haven't got the. safe. get ready because your freedom.

hi guys welcome to shower and tell me about a show we've heard about our guests not to say on the topics now i want to hear from our audience has gone to you tube the video response or to twitter for part of the questions that we've host on you tube every monday and on thursday the show long response is going to leave your voice a. few. so. far. you know some see a story and it seems so. you think you understand it and then you glimpse something

else here's the part of it i realize that everything you. go. art is time for show and tell on tonight's program the last time we told you about the big ring between the u.s. and china over their human rights records and we asked if you thought the u.s. should publish human rights reports in other countries or seek to fixing their own problems first so here's what you have to say re mactavish salad off on facebook saying the us government is bad with human rights as any other country is just better with the propaganda jon corzine says i believe that yes the human rights reports should continue elsewise we'd be sweeping under the rug the crimes of oppressors crimes that should come to light and be eliminated on youtube we heard

from giago one and they said two words bradley manning the us has no right to talk especially with two hundred fifty legal scholars condemning the us treatment of dream coyote also responded on you tube saying the information should be put out there but not as a tit for tat real honest information and no representations or threats for those that point out our failings and said of the reflexive attack honestly we should look in the mirror first and that takes true strength now we also got a tweet from one of our viewers is still the law so the u.s. should be has more people in prison than any nation on earth it also has a police state that would make good on the jealous so no now as always we appreciate your responses and here's our next question for you at home we've discussed the next chapter of the budget debate on capitol hill the conflict over raising the debt ceiling and a recent poll shows that while majority of americans approve of the. bill compromise only sixteen percent think of the debt ceiling should be raised so we want to know your thoughts on the matter do you think congress should vote to raise

the debt ceiling you can respond to us on facebook twitter and you tube and who knows your response just me on air. now could we finally see a ball see prosecution senator carl levin released the results of a two year inquiry into the financial crash yesterday and while we've already seen numerous assessments of what happened and who's to blame this time congress is finally naming names and its six hundred forty page report the report says the goldman sachs misled clients about and congress about the firm's bets on securities tied to the housing market all in order to profit off of the brewing financial crisis and levin says that he is now going to recommend the goldman executives including chairman and chief executive told lloyd blankfein he referred to the justice department for criminal prosecution it sounds promising and it's what the american people are craving but doesn't really have any chance of coming to light joining me from our studio in new york is michael hudson staff writer with the

center for public integrity and author of the monster our gang of predatory lenders and wall street bankers fleeced america and spawned a global crisis michael thanks so much for joining us tonight i must say it's rather exciting to have congress finally pointing fingers finally saying that they're going to refer some people to the justice department for prosecutions but what are the chances we're really going to see lloyd blankfein be put on trial. well i don't know about lloyd blankfein. the chances of big name executives going on trial i think right now it's up in the air because it takes political will if you go back to the savings and loan disaster in the one nine hundred eighty s. there were a thousand s. and l. insiders who were convicted of felonies and there were some big names like charles keating of the keating five game who spent time on bars but it takes some real political will when you know obama's kind of you know meet me in the middle and let's talk this over kind of guy and this is more a draw a draw

a line kind of thing it's not negotiating legislation it's the law enforcement function but i think you know there's definitely the political will if you ask average americans i think that americans would welcome this they would be absolutely ecstatic but is the problem really not that obama's drug line down the middle kind of guy which he is on certain issues but the fact that obama is just too close to wall street he has extensive ties with these people he has wall street you know if vising him essentially a part of his administration. sure has his chief of staff is a former wall street guy. it is a problem i mean. presidents feel like they need to keep wall street happy the market starts to tank the president gets blamed for it when the market does well the president doesn't always get credit so i think that i think you're right i think it is a big concern now one of the things that we saw in this report is they specifically pointed a lot of fingers at goldman sachs banks for shorting investments but were they

really of the only ones doing it you know do you think that this is something where you could point a lot of fingers or a lot of people who go on trial or were these banks the perfect examples because they came out relatively less scathed i guess you could say that others i mean these were in the report these were case studies these weren't the only only examples just about everyone on wall street was involved in questionable activities in the report makes a really persuasive case that fraud was the driving force behind the financial meltdown this was not an act of nature this was not something that just happened but but fraud was dry it was you know was the driving force behind all these subprime loans made on little hundred thousand dollar houses in rural minnesota and then the in then it was the driving force in the in the marketing of these multimillion dollar multibillion dollar investments that were backed by pools of subprime loans and what do you think then in that case that this isn't the last

report of the last investigation that we're going to see at least coming from congress on this one you know these were just the two case studies are they going to keep doing it. you know that it's another question i think you know congress. kind of puts its finger to the you know many many members of congress put their finger to you know look their finger put in the wind and see which way the wind blows. you know there's. an old line i think from f.d.r. you know. politicians see the light when they feel the heat so one question will be will there be you know. and in and public pressure. to do something about this and to really get in and investigate what happened and have some some true accountability now in terms of what we saw here right which is the fact that these people this was fraud that was going on that they were looking at making their own profits they were more concerned about themselves and they were about their customers senator coburn said something about that today said when that

happens no country can survive and neither can their financial institutions but if any of that project behavior really stopped. it's a good question let me give an example of what they're talking about so we can really there was something called the hudson mezzanine funding two thousand and six dash one no no familiar relation to me i didn't make any money off it that the goldman sachs put together and how it worked was if you were an investor if you bought pieces of this deal you were betting that pools of subprime mortgages were going to do well what goldman sachs didn't tell the investors was is they were stocking these pools with toxic waste loans that were almost doomed to fail and they were betting against these pools themselves in the end goldman sachs made one point three billion dollars at the expense of the best hers investors lost a lot of money when one group of investors that had put up a million dollars got back two and a half cents on the dollar so that's a pretty neat trick to turn a million dollars into two hundred. twenty five thousand dollars. so

you know and that's just one example these kind of deals were going on on a regular basis on wall street sort of throughout the boom years and then especially if at the end as the market as it was clear that the market was starting to melt down or was going to melt down there was a real rush record in the senate report from from goldman and other players to offload these assets you know to find investors who would buy more mortgage based assets i think a technical term on wall street is called suckers my dear i really want to get a rabbit out there at the end of the show now know as an idea as we got to wrap it up because there at the end of the show thank you very much for joining us health and get into this more later hopefully we'll see some prosecutions thank you. now before we go it's time for a tweet of the day parents jonathan taste in the blogger who's suing huffington post for not paying bloggers has a blog of his own where he's asking readers to contribute work for free so we're wondering what arianna huffington we we thought she'd say darling i at last into

their lunch that's it for tonight's show thanks for tuning in make sure you come back tomorrow happy hour is going to be very special tomorrow with our guest jim hansen from black lives of shaping up to be the most interesting segment yet and meantime don't forget to become a fan of us on facebook and on twitter coming up next is adam versus the me. wealthy british scientists are. right. market why not. come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike stronger for

a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into cars reports on or keep. a charmer here broadcasting live from washington d.c. coming up today on the big picture. more news today violence is once again flared up. these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. trying to corporations rule the day.