sorry welcome to the big. welcome back to 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 hybrid cars in abandoned buildings so what's it mean drug done to address the homeless. and while so many americans struggle with almost no surprise big words from the leading corporations are raking in millions even billions in profits end up paying a penny to uncle sam. along this continue. and we could take a debt lot of one of us and from our neighbors across the pond i'll tell you how the germans and swedes are dealing with their own budget dilemma how to handle surface so. average tax payers like you and me are getting the shaft from a giant corporate tax cheat. we are going to zation public campaign with the new

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 joining me now is adam smith direction communications director of public campaign and daniel harper from the

weekly standard gentlemen welcome and thank you. daniel and yes exxon mobil paid nothing 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 four have billion in profits last year paid no taxes got a two billion dollars refund you know look 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 to 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 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 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 secrets 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 then charlie rangle in the barack obama's book right across the border to come i'll give you that so the bottom of the then let's identify the real problem here we have a paul we have a system in the united states the most of the rest of the developed world is horrified by where our politicians are bought and sold by big corporations transnational corporations corporations that aren't even you know g.e. we call them american corporation they get fifty four percent of their business outside the united states led you to actually 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 council. job creation i know better and that's there's no reason that we should be look it's one thing if they want to do it the politician should not be rewarding them and cozying up to the president is doing right now it's it's silly

and you see this with charlie rangle you see this with democrats and guess republicans but you know according to the party getting out of it clearly out of this is and he's absolutely right this is this is where it 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. bank of america hundred sixty five billion dollars and bella funds you know they made afford 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 and lobbying and i think largely under the saudis bank of america you know they get the you know everybody in washington is talking about shared sacrifice and people paying their fair share and they're clearly not paying their fair share and it's being paid for on the backs of middle class while in fact they had over one hundred fourteen i think it was offshore tax

havens in order to make not right i mean those taxes us on cut is going after them on this so. daniel word agreement that we have a broken system we conservative liberal we have a broken system where we do about we blame you going to the corporations and the public actually i'm i'm agreeing with you that 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 that their mandate has to be to generate greater profits if that's it and we have made it in the supreme court actually it's never been passed by the legislature it's never been even advocated by a president's 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 a bribe. how do we fix this that's absolutely right you know our political system works for these big corporations these wealthy governors 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 him to focus on the 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 yet you know i used to live in portland oregon and we had publicly funded elections and then the rich guys came in and they blew it up you know if you like those race yeah very close but absolutely you know and we introduced that legislation was introduced last week it had more original co-sponsors than ever before and you know i think the american people see what the problem so you're suggesting that the problem the solution to problems public financing of elections to get your thoughts on the 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 live that long as they did. that that's because i think there's enough public outcry that you can get it through i think.

is filtered through those were very clear think when the new york times ran this story about gee i'm not paying any any taxes and in fact getting a tax refund people were outraged right and left it didn't matter i think if you go over the corporate if you if you close the corporate loopholes as much as it is not not fully i mean there are some that are legitimate and i think you need to be you know he didn't need to go through r. and d. and things like and i think and then i think you what were the tax rate so that there's let you tell the corporate tax rate so there's less of a corporate 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 risk go back to the way that we did it from seven hundred ninety three when hamilton put it into place and so reagan came into office and then go back to protecting domestic industries with terror that's actually not. actually not true if you look at the new york times reported that when president reagan looked. at the loopholes that they were taking advantage of and what they were doing in this he would get it

exactly as 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. g.e. to pay for higher effective rate up to thirty two know why he was so reagan's rhetoric was the waterfall but over his actions i think we should take a lesson from reagan we should we should not think that high but i think because i think that will still discourage people who will still be one of the highest in the world but i think we should i think it's time for all sure let's close the corporate titles like i did you know the thing is when politicians go to vote they think of two things their constituents and whether it's in effect their bank accounts their campaign bank accounts and until we change that system we're never going to change the way washington works it seems that the cancer at the core of this is money and as i said this i don't see a solution other than changing the supreme court or or amending the constitution but that's a whole conversation for another time. adam and danielle both of you thank you very much for joining us appreciate it if only

a few of these incredibly profitable corporations by the way had paid their fair share if you could put a huge dent our nation's deficit problem and put the average americans back to work very simple many of these c.e.o.'s are patriots the traitors they're looting the 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's who often focuses just on the numbers a one point four trillion dollar deficit fourteen trillion dollars that are thirty five thirty eight have 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. and people who are affected with government programs or. are forced out on the street after some bank start gave them an exploding home mortgage increasingly in america world watch and almost men women and children even looking for another chance you've fallen through the social safety net. no one understands that better than dog night executive director of streets here in washington d.c. welcome thanks for having me i'm pleased and honored to have you here with us thank you many i've done internationally for 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 a hotel with fifty kids are following you and the local guy that i was working with one of the n.g.o.s there said don't 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 in the bloody

bloody bra and there are charities forgot to 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 that's how i was raised it's a part of my religion but what i do whatever i see somebody selling street sense is a recent i pod whatever the bill on the outside of the water is you know whether it's a one or a five or it's out or whatever i pull it out i had it to them and. i copied just about every day because what you guys are doing is great and i did and i want to get to talk about it give us an overview of the street sense and why it is that my giving money to that guy who's stonestreet stunts is so different from giving money to the guy who's you know. just yelling at people or whatever it was thank you thank you again for having us on for this we really love to tell this story because i think it's very important the street sense program started in two thousand and three and the idea quite simply is we are

a street newspaper sold by the homeless co-produced co-written by the homeless and actually sold on the street and all the profits that are made from that newspaper sale 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 stays with a vendor that money is then used however that vendor needs so they get to be entrepreneurs basically absolutely absolutely we actually call them our of 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 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 tom 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 that even though it's 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 that i could make a living and i could help myself and we have a great phrase that i dearly love at st 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 there's some pretty damn good articles in here i've read quite a few of them that's are going to sort of team which i must tell you are two editorial or part time workers we have four people on staff total two full time two part time and mary at least so our editorial team are phenomenal with our interns and volunteers to make those articles happen and most importantly the vendors themselves contribute and what i buy one of these and they're you know the theoretical prices of dollars i said i just get more ever 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 place of. of begging and subordination that happens with beggars and that's what i think that's a very healthy thing. tell me is straight sense 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 we've been talking about right now we are actually part of a wonderful organization a membership group that's called the north american street newspapers 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 that's actually up two percent from last year and we know that number area what are they and 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 recession but 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 and 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 and they don't have some savings that they can fall back on i mean this is the as jesus said the least in matthew twenty five the least of the least states or 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. like this what are they do to get involved if they'd like to follow your lead i would suggest what they can do is they could call us and find out how we do it they can go right into the streets org and check out our website they can 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 but we actually get businesses and nonprofits high school 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 just 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 and it 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 will become invisible anymore it may become investors to the corners and the neighborhoods that they reside on that they're actually selling on to the point where and you might experience this here in town if you walk by that corner you expect to see that street sense been there and you're no longer just somebody who's walking to work you're a client a customer that vendor 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 that paper buy the paper from the vendor absa then check us out and we will give you some more information so. you're doing god's work thank you 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 to now you know self-respect and and stand up and start i'm honored to be a show pleasure and i think so thanks so much for being with us thank you it's

great to see compassion work being done to help with the homeless people that our lawmakers tragically seem to have forgotten so next time you see a street sense founder and over a few bucks and to give a copy it will go a long 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 a story. to understand it and then something else some other part of it and realize every. part of the. crazy alert as you know that f.d.r. not only won world war two be back the great depression and build the middle class america but he also brought. the united states in no doubt well maybe you should listen to republican congressman paul brown we took in the house floor earlier this week to school his other republican colleagues just that. this big welfare system in this country it all started in earnest with president woodrow wilson and 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 closest help friends his cabinet people to go his it was stalin and communists russia. to study what he was doing what stalin was doing they are so that f.d.r. could replicate it year in the united states. 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 so when you throw paul brown's recent claims in with michele bachmann's about other revolutionary war was started in new hampshire in our father the founding fathers ended slavery you suddenly come to really ingenuously

understand one thing about the republican party at the day aren't exactly smarter than a fifth grader. two years after the bank stories crashed our economy has renewed hope that at least some of them might soon be held accountable democratic senator carl levin chairman of the senate subcommittee on investigations released his report on who's to blame for the financial meltdown at the top of that list as none other than goldman sachs one of the largest investment banks in fact it's a bank that it's actually seen its market share increase since the meltdown in other words they profited off it. senator levin's reporter points the finger at goldman sachs are misleading clients and manipulating the markets for greed as

reporters now being handed over to 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 of the bank stars or the 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 really 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 no 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 toure's basically what america used to do from one nine hundred thirty two just after the last time banks toure's crashed our economy all the way up until the one nine hundred eighty s. when suddenly president ronald reagan and every president after him putting 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 with deep wounds still lingering in the economy sweden is wondering

what to do with the booming economy and budget surpluses today's 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 at 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 her to the two years out they're doing just fine why but it turns out it's because they have something called curt's 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 own for example if pachter is

having trouble accessing credit because the banks are drying up and they'll 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 block the workers don't lose their jobs or jobs skills and are supposed importantly they still have enough money in their pockets to buy things which is what creates the demand for goods and services that keeps an economy alive so while u.s. businesses were closing down left and right german businesses stayed and act and now or i mean again in one year the german economy is packing booming here in the us 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 if 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 and 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 vibrant middle thrones finally a letter to the editor of the financial times today sums up what the problem is in nations like ours and the u.k. they stupidly also deregulated their banks here's an economist at the university college of london 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 for the bailout

and the banks to carry on with their big bonuses remember globin 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. but 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 has 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 this story check out our website the tom hartman are common r t and don't forget the biography begins when you get ag tag your it will see you tomorrow.

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