oh well i'm tom foreman in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture it's nicknamed the port of opportunities the city of benton harbor michigan is experiencing massive job losses like the entire government of the city one hundred percent plus we received a break this tax season with an extra couple of days to file but that's the only break we'll see i'll tell you why top billionaires and millionaires are paying less taxes while you and i are paying the ball and paul ryan strikes again this time in

federal food assistance programs i'll explain how much food he plans to strip from american dinner tables and who is the dead woman from whom he's taking his orders. you need to know this democracy is on the march out of michigan republican governor rick snyder is using the new powers recently grandes him by the republican state legislature to take over a city to fire its elected representatives bust up unions cut critical government services as part of snyder's plan to reduce his state's budget deficit by putting cities that are struggling financially on a fast track to his idea of a libertarian utopia or a nightmare the first victim of governor snyder is the city of but harbor michigan

as of friday the powers of the city boards and commissions of benton harbor have been usurped by a financial manager appointed by governor rick snyder that financial manager although not elected by the people of baton harbor now has the authority over. all alike that city officials have been are there and can break union contracts cut city services sell off large chunks of the city to private corporations without any oversight so how can something like this happen in a democracy and the united states of america or more are joining us for more on this i'm joined by beth and harbor city commissioner dennis knowles and editor of the michigan med messenger ed braden and us ed welcome. really appreciate both you being here with me ed if first if you could just give us an overview of what happened. i mean yeah as far as the reporter here. well if your story state legislature passed a super tuesday mayor for a treasury bill i would really use unprecedented powers for the state appointed

financial managers that are that are signed truce or oversee local communities public school systems that are in frederick maryland certainly been herbert's had a great deal of pressure to just emerging leaders put in place since long before this bill was text editors for alarm time but this new bill gives them extraordinary unprecedented hours over everything that goes on and so friday night at about five o'clock in the evening you know just. in time to miss all the major media. the press releases put out that beat her just for their careers or their him over and he should order good or you elected board the city planning commission zoning commission anybody city or council school know if you care can can do anything other than call a meeting to order and take the minutes they can't pass anything else or that's amazing that us as a as a city commissioner what's your response to this. rather response is this this is

the end of democracy and the we the people was taken out the cost to ship. the saddest part about this particular bill and then of course this. order by those of o'hare us from the state is that it takes away the rights representation of the people for the people by the people as well as it takes away the rights of people to even have a voice or even be a voice them selves as i've seen the emergency financial manager and his doings and work along the way he's got into bed with a corporation this is a mandate that is happening throughout the whole country and you look at governments and corporations do not mistaken the. fact that it has times that even governing officials in the city have been harder had not gotten by way of photo and give away in fact the bodies. in the past

as well as in the present. but this is an expeditious acceleration of what has gone on in the past with those ago harris who makes a lot of thousand dollars per month and we the people pay the the bill as well as privatized haitian. ment's meaning contracting out services diminishing public safety in a crime ridden area cross training of police and fire departments does not work in my studies in our studies that say it's a proven fact that i have insurance ratings go up in municipalities where you have less and suppression of public safety. in the case of those of harris the state. now with the public act for which a allows more hours to the emergency financial manager it is

a lot more arrogance it is a lot of the lessening of again government the listing of the public safety of the people we also see in this area of the harbor surest project which is another world who aspect this is the corporation here who have come in like it if i could just interrupt you for a minute to. provide a little bit of frame here and in fact get get ed back in on this ed over and over and over again across america we've seen large corporations play city off against city state often state off saying you know if you give us more tax abatements we'll move to your state you know boeing went through it a couple years ago in three different cities you know they was going to give us the most hundreds of millions of dollars. to what extent has. have they had the development project that the commissioner was talking about whirlpool corporation the these organizations my understand have got

a number of tax breaks and bait and some things from from the community. hey doesn't this isn't this the kind of thing that makes it more difficult to govern a community when you're losing your tax base has been given away in order to keep the jobs in town. but here you go the food over there you mentioned her shirt for all over the city incredible situation that happened over the last three or four years that we finished investor covering a great detail. for to what else house but we're basically is the biggest bully on the block in the better period recorders are there fred upton the local is the rivers are state area and congress isn't here to the world fortune and the shooting took a public park that was judit to the city on the condition that it remained a public perk forever and sold off a huge chunk of it to private developers to put it a private golf course. in exchange gave them a couple dozen acres of other layer that turned out to be highly contaminated from

their factory which you're now paying to clean up at public expense this is actually the kind of evil this happened before the stewards emitter or freeman this is the kind of thing that emergency financial manager could do if they come into a city and state well the cities to go got some major problems hey one of the ways we make up for it will sell off a public park to a private corporation to develop into a golf course eight weeks of money that way for the city we don't our leading teams and a limiting access to public parks for lives and so forth all the line you know the great transition for corporate benefactors and there is actually a philosophy that rick snyder and others of you know other conservatives in the state since tried to do that if if green is the highest motivator and if it's being done by a corporation that there will be outcome will be the very best you know that that it'll be more efficient is the way they talk about it commissioner commissioner knowles how do you. know this. power has been

taken from you you're the elected you are one of the elected people in in a minute or in a half or so we have left here how do you and the other commissioners i realize that there's no legal way to respond to this right now that snyder has done is legal but is there are there any other ways that you can think of to respond to sure many ways the responsibility upon us being the governing body who were elected by the people is to take this out of the state of michigan we need to take this and hopefully the department of justice. already have the ear of the a.c.l.u. . as well as others now listening from the outside looking in this and this is a travesty this could happen to us across the country as it is with people in madison wisconsin so these are steps talking to that area. i'm sorry pardon my

interrupting but it's ok with my short seconds left i want to say this that while the american people do not remove your freedoms freedom is not a. privilege in fact it's something that you have to fight for say this to all americans people patriotism starts in the house you must learn and understand the power of the vote was its extract that you lay it is taken you become a nomad of third world country in america yeah very very well said and that's what's happened is the boat of the people about the harbor has been taken away from them by the governor and by this legislation. very very very very quickly illegal teletext he has been displaced. by true pension to the city of detroit so they're usually introduced her to show you the school that's. fantastic . commissioner thank you thank you gentlemen both for being with us tonight. thank

you so much appreciate it very snyder has been governor of michigan for barely four months and he's already using his power to take a city over over a city in his state and kill the democratic process for polar rock and no republican rule in america much closer to the ideals of napoleon and the ideals of jefferson speaking of the ideals of jefferson let's just you know get right into it i mean you know thomas jefferson said here just just a few quotes these are just some simple you know these are some of his letters actually most of them from the eight hundred sixty this is after he was president he wrote the article nearest my heart is the division of counties and awards basically pure and elementary republics the sum of which together compose the state so what he's talking about here is breaking great you know is breaking everything down to the lowest level in other words the at the at the city level people get to vote at the ward level he goes on to say the division of wards constituting the people in their wards are regularly organized power. enables them by that

organization to crush now he's talking about what happens if the state goes nuts what happens if the federal government goes nuts what if what happens if out he goes that allows them to enables them by that organization to crush them regularly and peaceably and used her patients of their faithful agents and rescues them from the dreadful necessity of doing it in your insurrection only in other words no need for insurrection no need for revolution if the power is at the lowest level here's another promise jefferson if i become as in the words of such size every citizen can attend when called on and act in person another each ward with must be a small republic within itself an every man in the state would thus become an acting member of the common government transacting a person a great portion of its rights and duties and he continues on that one then and there's there isn't another you know if i could jefferson quotes all day long it was the last from these this is actually this is i think perhaps the most important

one because here he's talking not just about how important it is that government be local which is the exact opposite of what the republicans are doing right now bizarrely but also that education free public education is at the core of all these things and one of the things that's on the agenda of many of these republicans is to privatized the schools in these towns so off to corporations run honest charter schools he says these there are two subjects indeed which i will claim a right to further as long as i breed the public education and the subdivision of counties and awards i can to set of the continuance of republican governments government as absolutely hanging on these two books. pretty straightforward stuff and when you look at it what's going on in michigan is really fundamentally the exact opposite of the ideal that the founders of this country have is the exact

opposite of what used to be called conservatism it's the exact opposite of thinking from the from the enlightenment it is as i said earlier like napoleon ricks rick snyder governor of michigan has set himself up essentially as a dictator and he's hiring private guys for eleven thousand bucks a month to go in and take over a city and then just sell off whatever they want this is fundamentally wrong and i and now we hear that there are other states where there are republican legislatures and republican governors that are talking about or planning on doing the very same thing we need to wake up america we need to wake up america fast. it's time for our daily poll your chance to tell us what you think here's today's question is a democracy one governor snyder fires elected representatives busts unions and cuts

critical government's services your choices are yes welcome to republican rule it looks more like the poly and the jefferson or no this doesn't at all look like a marker c. and has to be stopped so far eighty percent voted yes. and accountabilities don't you think poll will be open until tomorrow morning. sarah palin spoke this week at a tea party rally in madison wisconsin ground zero the nationwide war on labor unions and the mainstream media pale in calls of the lame stream media quite a job in making her look really good actually when covering a rally the media can use the audio from the crowd to make someone either look really good or really bad case in point two thousand and six democratic presidential primary howard dean take a look. we're going to south carolina and oklahoma. and recruit new recruit richard thank you for your breakfast. regular throughout recorded the

record i want you to. remember to watch your. dean was skewered for showing a little bit of emotion at a political rally by just taking the audio from dean's microphone and karine known or very little of the crowd noise the media made it look like dean was raining into a quiet room that made him into a buffoon even though there wasn't a shred of truth to it as joel roberts from c.b.s. news said about the coverage of the dean rally what you are not hearing is a room with thousands of people screaming and cheering but you are not seen are hundreds upon hundreds of american flags waving but you are not hearing are members of the audience shouting out state names urging being the list or what you are not seen is the way dean supporters were lifted out of their slump by the speech in a nutshell you are not seen the dean speech fit the tone of the room

as you can see coverage of an event can make someone look really good or really bad and unfortunately for howard dean the media chose to use only has close in microphone audio to make him look really bad and it do you realize presidential campaign. you know back to sarah palin check on how the media covered her rally in madison over the weekend. to teach party rally in wisconsin former alaska governor sarah palin energized the madison crowd a few minutes ago by issuing a challenge to what she caused the g.o.p. establishment which now. is to the g.o.p. establishment first. take on the g.o.p. establishment. was pale and speaking in madison wisconsin says the president's not doing enough to address the country's mounting this schoolfellow. we hear feinstein on this debt

crisis the only future that brock obama is trying to win and it is the only real action he's willing to mortgage your children's future to ensure a zone and does not doubt the approach yes this is the. typical sailor sarah palin in front of a receptive audience longing for every word that comes out of the above right but is that what was really going on. take a look at the view from another camera covering hail and speech this one within the crowd that she was addressing. with.

amazing the difference that cutting out the crowd noises by only using a tight mike can make hail it was practically booed back there was still at the ever c.n.n. or fox news viewer has no clue andrew breitbart who opened for paling was so incensed that they were being shouted down that he screamed to the crowd that they should all go to hell i bet you didn't see this on face the nation. go to hell. yes. so much for sarah palin claiming there's a bias against her in the mainstream media. coming out filing taxes can be already a pain but paying more than the filthy rich. just downright heartbreaking you might want to have your columns on him but the story of the.

fight. for. you know sometimes you see a story in a scene so. you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else here see some other part of it and realized everything you thought you knew. i'm sorry is a big issue. that

is tax day and guess is not fair paying their fair share millionaires billionaires and transnational corporations let's take a look at this historical chart of the top income tax rates for the wealthiest americans the wealthiest corporations and the wealthiest hedge fund managers check this out the starts of nine hundred sixteen comes right up to two thousand and ten in the yellow here we have income tax rates this is corporate tax rates and then this is capital gains rate this is the rate the dusters pay the tax rate that they pay and what you see here is that in the rural and twenty's the the income tax was dropped the corporate taxes dropped the capital gains was dropped what did that do it led to a giant bubble that burst in one thousand twenty nine crash now from the one nine

hundred forty s. all the way up into the race up until the reagan time we had a time of incredible stability and then boom reagan crash the taxes and what has happened we've had bubble after bubble burst after burst it's just nuts now let's take a look at the average income for the richest four hundred americans our nation's oligarchy. this is from one thousand nine hundred five to two thousand and seven we started six this is income in billions of dollars the average income for each one of the four hundred richest americans from six billion dollars in one thousand nine hundred five up to twenty two billion dollars in two thousand and seven so their income is going up these the four hundred richest are the american oligarchy their income is going up dramatically you would think maybe their taxes would go up again but the richest of the richest of the rich in america have seen more and more money what's happening to their tax rate bingo nine hundred ninety five they were paying

almost thirty percent in and this is what actually was paid this isn't like the formal tax rate this is what's actually paid after they've gotten all their loop holes drilled into it which is why this has been going down i mean obviously you had the bush tax cuts here and the extension of them but this this you can just basically just see how it's working i mean this is this is the end of the the of the clinton era and boom right across from go so taxes now are sixteen point six two percent so america's oligarchy have seen their tax rate drop by thirteen percent the last decade to have the kind of tax rates of the rest of the scene. try just a tiny little point six reduction less than one percent the average american who doesn't have nine zero and a bank account has seen their average income tax rate go from nine point nine percent back in the ninety's to nine point two percent today barely any change at all and add insult to injury and we're talking real injury many poor americans will

see their taxes go up this year because middle class tax breaks expired last year like one that exempt the first twenty four hundred dollars of unemployment benefits that's right you get taxed on your unemployment benefits you have no job you have no income on your own but the government will still tax your lifeline of unemployment insurance rather than raise taxes on millionaires and billionaires by just a couple percentage points tax and unemployment benefits is a neat little invention of ronald reagan back in one thousand nine hundred six it was one of the eleven tax hikes on poor and middle class americans that reagan snuck through with the media and virtually no attention to it at all it was one of the eleven tax hikes on poor and middle class americans the reagan needed to pass to pay for dropping the top income tax rate on the richest americans from seventy percent to twenty eight percent and your rich people the forty two percent tax cut pay for it by making people who don't have jobs pay taxes on their unemployment

insurance in fact the nine hundred eighty four reagan also started taxing social security benefits again to pay for his massive tax cuts to america's oliver that's why ronald reagan owns the dubious distinction literally of being the only president in american history to drop taxes for the rich while raising taxes for the poor he was our first reverse robin hood president. at least ron reagan did one thing right with taxes he raised them on corporations back in one thousand nine hundred six pretty much forced to but nonetheless that's right reagan raised corporate taxes don't believe me take a look. we're going to make it economical to raise children again. fred a race will need more reward for that extra effort and vanishing lupo's of the minimum tax will mean that everybody and every corporation pay their fair share reagan raised corporate taxes by a one hundred twenty billion dollars and close three hundred billion dollars for

the loopholes what a socialist but since then thanks to a legion of lobbyists corporations have managed to wriggle a tax code of more loopholes and you can count making the thirty five percent corporate tax rate the rate the republicans claim is the highest in the war old a bad joke the real tax rate that corporations pay in america today is closer to twelve percent one of the lowest in the developed world and that doesn't include insanely profitable corporations like g.e. boeing bank of america citigroup wells fargo who paid nothing in taxes so your military taxes today paused a moment to remember who's not paying their fair share of the corporate elite and their multi-millionaire c.e.o.'s. so i'm for the good the bad and the insanely i believe the good power shift you can

use the activist movement focused on shifting america's energy focus from fossil fuels to clean technology converge in washington d.c. this weekend and set their sights on shutting down b.p. in protest of the species receiving a ten billion dollars tax refund for cleaning up the mess that they created in the gulf eight lash mob of protesters showed up at a b.p. gas station in georgetown and shut it down. i. mean this latest action against b.p. and us on cots actions against g.e. and bank of america the corporate backlash is in full swing in america keep it up guys and. the bad republican congressman allen west besides

spewing hate speech against muslims appears west is also interested in destroying the american economy in an interview over the weekend wes was asked about the dangers of not raising the debt ceiling and he made it known the republicans should risk it to bargain for more tax cuts. but i think also males are great so we can cut our corporate business tax rate in half bring it from thirty five percent to twenty to twenty or twenty to twenty two percent because as of right now is the time to risk crashing our economy so the transnational corporations that pretty much already pays zero in taxes can somehow pay less than zero. and the very very ugly steve doocy gang of pox and friends got the memo this morning it's. and to legitimize donald trump and the earth words. he could simply just show it joy to deal with your ticket thank you very much steve i appreciate that. the president has shown us the birth certificate they just do see completed his training at fox

news that requires all anchors to ignore evidence if it comes from a democrat i always knew a fox with so called news would give a platform to the birth of yours but i never thought they'd go both of themselves and it's a very very. coming up if you're in downtown d.c. today you probably noticed a sea of green making its way through the streets. and details beyond a product of the environmental protest movement after the break. let's not forget that we had an apartheid museum right here in the.