are going to washington d.c. and here is what's coming up tonight other big picture president obama delivered his much anticipated speech concerning the changing landscape in the middle east those lofty words translate into lofty ideals of peace in the region plus to help our nation paid out of the debt utah governor gary herbert wants to sell his state authorized grover better we see in the final days of america's economy and the

g.o.p. have started a new battle the war on arts it's a nice daily take out tell you how their new plans to bring back the story. earlier this week we commented on the highlight of the comments of florida congressman dennis ross of suggested that utah should sell off huge tracts of its public light of private corporations to solve our nation's fiscal woes i think that a congressman from florida would think twice about telling another state what they should do with their public lands and you think that the governor of utah would sell ross to go mind his own business but that's not what happened and said utah governor gary herbert loved the idea is that he had to say about it a news conference yesterday. i think is certainly worth exploring i don't think we're going to. you know our national parks and pristine areas because lovely could

be privatized and helped the definition so is this the beginning of the end for our america as the wholesale selloff of america begun to give us the details on this issue. order a blogger with think progress towards me said welcome back thanks for having me. this sell off of utah first of all just going to go anywhere but first of all i like to say they hope now they've been talking about this for years we always have a crazy right wing your brain the idea people in utah are like you know what are you talking about we love our parks we love our mountains we love you know our pristine public land it's always been a legacy of sort of inception that it's had gigantic portions of public lands that people from all over the country love to come to visit and you know the idea of privatizing it actually selling off lands to their sort of private firms or individuals i mean it comes up every now and then but never i don't recall the last time an actual governor of utah actually even entertained the idea so is you know

given the current political environment in utah nationally as well as in utah do you think that the governor just put his foot in it or he actually maybe helping so i mean this sounds like some of the tea party would sober know exactly i mean you might as well talk about you know selling off the grand canyon as he would be talking about signing off pristine public lands and utah which the state's always been known for and when the congressman first made his comments i mean we reported about it we just thought it was absurd we're going to utah would require. one this local reporter asked the governor i mean i was just shocked to see him start to make the case that privatization might actually be better he said things like oh maybe indian burial grounds will be better in private hands or maybe you know the sort of the. sure yeah yeah exactly he then i mean this is a man and i mean this is this is what we're seeing all over the country right now and it's a trend across sectors were saying republicans want to privatizing medicare we're seeing unfortunately a bipartisan consensus on education it's a huge part of keeping education we're seeing public universities there to. which

is go up and be privatized and we're seeing privatization across the board what we're really saying are you know the day is an assault on democracy because with them obviously means that when people get together and vote they can have public goods and part of those public goods are the excellent public lands the rocky mountains the great part of things that everyone can enjoy no matter who they are because it belongs to everyone. do. actually i'm surprised there's not more outrage about this you're writing about it but it's do you know if in utah there is outrage about it or is it and by the way he's not the only guy doing this i mean because i mean the ultimate commons is the government is the ultimate thing that we all own because it's the it's the thing by which we have minister everything else and in michigan. rick snyder is going to long and said hey we can private is city government just throw the throw the elected bums out more put it micro-mini. now exactly it is happening all over the country another place of the north carolina where the governor may be signing this

week legislation that would really the ability for studies to have public broadband systems you know which we talked about another show i mean basically what you're saying like i said before it's a privatization move it's a movement against democracy and just for your viewers to know this this would even help the deficit that much i mean senators mccain and leave mike lee actually from utah unfortunately i actually introduced legislation that was about three million acres of public land i mean how much money would that create they estimate they would only pay down the deficit by a billion dollars i mean that's one fourth that's one fourth of the oil subsidies that democrats are trying trying to both lee and mccain voted against so you know whose side are we on here really. it's really is quite extraordinary to what extent is this being driven by the koch brothers or by the american legislative exchange council or whether. it's it's you know or you know any of these other right wing think tanks that are being funded by the. coke's and the other basically oligarchy

starts with a wider privatization movement i'm a different fronts is getting funding primarily from alan because they're fighting all the state level battles it's basically a shadowy group that about a third of legislators in america are part of they put out model bills sort of many of them written by their corporate benefactors they are the majority of their funds come from corporations and the corporate board but you know if you actually if you go and look at it if they take network in this country if you go and you can find cato papers that advocate for privatizing every single square inch of planet earth they're arguing that if a person or firm oh and everything every bit of air that we breathe every bit of land that we can step on that everything we maintain better because it will be for profit i mean this is this is the final goal of a lot of these people and what we're saying is that you know it's time to reclaim the common designer and clean democracy and the idea that anyone no matter how rich or poor they are can go and enjoy it when they don't have to pay a premium on it or libraries or public schools or fill in the blank so i just want to very well said thanks for joining us next time and place for the great research

that you're doing writing on those republicans look out at of acres of public land they don't see parks and wildlife that americans and future generations can enjoy and so they see untapped oil and chemical fields unexploded mountaintops of the rich minerals buried deep inside land that could be made much more useful if it was paved over with a strip mall or anything left that profiteers won't want to snatch with their grubby hands sadly no so long as corporate owned republicans have power in america there's just there's a story about. the boston commons probably the most famous sixteen thirty four fifty acres were set aside in downtown boston for grazing within ten years what happened was they stopped using it for grazing and it became basically a public park because if it was over grazed because you know the local people who had had cattle and sheep would just bring as many as they could because they it was free and it eventually got right to this this loose. situation whatever you

want to call it as this has been described by most recently by your authority in nine hundred sixty three in his book the tragedy of the commons in his article for science magazine back in the eighteen thirty three william forester lloyd talked about this and for the cities the greek author of the history of the catalonian war upon pronouncing that right i'm sure i'm not in any case he he described his error as i and rand david will tease which is basically who these people are and this isn't for ten b c it was twenty five twenty twenty four hundred years ago they devote a very small fraction of time to the consideration of any public option object put most of it to the prosecution of their own objects meanwhile each fancies that no harm will come to his neglect. it is the business of somebody else to look after this or that and so the common cause imperceptibly this case of

this is if this is over two thousand years ago we have this is and keep in mind it was that you know democracy comes from de most which is greek i mean the greeks invented becomes a democracy of the commons and we're seen this now being systematically been dismantled and you look at the commons that can be converted into profit for example roads forests parking meter subways water sewage fire and police of all of these by the way have been subject to proposals by conservatives or objectivists or libertarians that may be privatized schools the government itself like the state of michigan as i was just talking about where the governor comes in and says a you know we're going to just throw out the city council and take over the city about an hour you know a guy working for me is going to do medicare they want to privatized medicare hey there's a there's a lot of money to be made there social security two point six trillion dollars trust fund lots and that off to our to the banks there is on wall street's two and

a half trillion dollars in our military we you know we have as many private soldiers now in iraq and afghanistan as we have public and they cost us a whole lot more but somebody is making some money our parks our museums or zoos or libraries or playgrounds or sidewalks our courts our postal service our beaches even our allied sions have been privatized with these electronic voting machines that are owned by private corporations and now our vote is being honored in private it's insane and it's time for us to take our nation and our commons back. it's time for our daily poll your chance to tell us what you think here's the day's question new poll shows majorities in ohio disapprove of governor john k. six anti-union laws will ohio voters repeal and recall your choices are yes republican governors screw the working class out of their jobs and then the

governor's jobs are endangered too or no it's hard to fight back against millions focused on union busting as in millions of dollars so far eighty percent of you voted yes log on to tarpon dot com let us know what you think poll be open till tomorrow morning. coming up president obama gives his detail a plan aimed at fostering civility in the middle east so will he succeed at home in the chaos. for. five.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so. you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realized everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tougher is a big issue. you need to know this president obama gave a major foreign policy speech today addressing some of the chaos taking place across the middle east will be to take advantage of the recent populist uprisings in tunisia and egypt president until the new posture that america will say what a rapidly changing arab world take a look. drawing from what we've learned around the world we think it's important to focus on trade not just state on investment not just assistance

the goal must be a model in which protectionism gives way to openness the reigns of commerce pass from the few to the many and the economy generates jobs for the. america's support for democracy will therefore be based on ensuring financial stability promoting reform and integrating competitive markets with each other and the global economy and we're going to start with tunisia and egypt this new policy includes pledging billions in aid money and a new trade partnership with egypt and tunisia and hopes of fostering a modern economy and financial infrastructure that's not all the president had to say today yesterday the white house smacked the president of syria bashar assad was sanctions has repeated human rights abuses and cracking down on anti-government protesters and the assets within the u.s. belonging to assad will now be frozen and it's now illegal for u.s. companies to do business with assad so far more than eight hundred fifty people have been killed by assad's government in syria since the uprising began two months

ago here's what president obama said about that issue. and president assad now as a choice you can leave that transition or get out of the way the syrian government must stop shooting demonstrators and allow peaceful protests they must release political prisoners and stop unjust arrests. or must allow human rights monitors to have access to cities like daraa and start a serious dialogue to advance a democratic transition otherwise president assad his regime will continue to be challenged from within and will continue to be isolated abroad and then there's the israel palestine issue where recent clashes are threatening to ignite another war in the region the president laid out this plan for peace in the middle east. now ultimately it is up to the israelis and palestinians to take action no peace

can be imposed upon them not by the united states not by anybody else. but endless delay won't make the problem go away. what america and the international community can do is to state frankly what everyone knows. a lasting peace will involve two states for two people the united states believes that negotiations should result in two states with permanent palestinian borders with israel jordan and egypt and permanent israeli borders with palestine we believe the borders of israel and palestine should be based on the nine hundred sixty seven lines with mutually agreed swaps so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states. so how will this speech today jive with the real life challenges on the ground in the middle east and north africa or offer their

takes on this issue jeremy ben-ami president of j. street of pro israel pro peace lobbying group here in washington d.c. and dr james zogby president of the america of the arab american institute welcome gentlemen thank you very much. question just in general to either or both of you was there really anything new in the speech what was what was in your minds dunes. so i think if if the speech was directed at an american audience what was what was important is the president reframing the democracy debate and challenging congress in particular to step up to the plate this is a slash and burn congress but it's a congress that says they support democracy and transformation in the middle east president said that's going to cost us there's a lot we have to do if we want this to happen and that aid and trade programs that he talked about are going to require congress not to cut programs that the very

programs that congress wants to cut so he's asking for money i think it was a very well crafted appeal to congress that if you want to see tunisia and egypt move forward please don't do some of the things you want to do so that was part of it may think it was it knew as much as it was him trying to take the ground away from neoconservatives who had a very different approach to democracy and saying that democracy actually is more than anybody ology it's capacity building it's support for transition it's doing real things on the ground to make to make things happen that i think was important in the speech the rest of it did not appear to me to be fundamentally new but rather an effort to kind of put it all in a package and put an obama stamp on it and jeremy he he. to my understanding so my list you know he and he nailed down the sixty seven borders so this is it and. prior to this that had always been you know with

negotiations that will somehow lead maybe to that or some variation on that isn't bad a substantial difference and what does that mean well you haven't pushed the ball down the field a notch let's say i mean this is it isn't breakthrough terminology there's been talk of sixty seven as the basis from the secretary of state and other presidents have mentioned it so i wouldn't go too far but it certainly did move the ball down the field a bit and the notion of going with borders and security first and leaving some of the more difficult issues till later is also another slight change in what the president's been talking and i did health care it's not going for the whole deal all at once but it's over some of the critical issues and saying let's get to agreement on that and the mother basis for going further change you mention the neoconservatives the francis fukuyama in ninety two wrote the. end of the world and the end of history of the last man and i remember reading it very impressed by the idea of nation building and and spreading democracy and then

after iraq basically came out and. you know be careful what you ask for and we saw the same thing with hamas who worked so hard to get democratic elections and you know is is there that is is this a path that's actually a wise ass i don't think this is a neoconservative speech this was a rather humble speech the president embraces democracy and he says this is our values and this is what we want to talk about but he made it clear we didn't make this happen it was the tunisian and egyptian people and others who made it happen what we can do is try to support and i think you may overstate the case what we can do to support. the kind of support the region is looking for from us is not political as much as the capacity building and its. assistance that's the kind of thing they want if we can't do that we really ought to get out of the way but if we

can do that we can make a contribution and i think what he was doing was pushing for that kind of image and so no i think that what he did was he was sort of shifting the ground away from the bush neo con we'll make democracy happen to the we will in effect help rather these democracies move forward to the extent to which congress wants to step up to the plate and make it happen which was doing the will shove it down their throat the barrel of a gun if they don't like it and they'll celebrate and love us and obama understands that no they don't want us and they don't celebrate us but we can be partners and friends transformation but we have to bring something to the table and right now the one thing we can bring to the table is development assistance and capacity building if we don't do that i don't know where we are in that region so that's i think that was like i said that was the thing he did on the arab israeli conflict it was nuanced maybe too nuanced for people in the middle east who were looking for more in that sense i think it fell flat but if you look at some of the nuance there

was some interesting stuff there it was pointed out to me today something i missed when i first heard it that when he said that a palestinian state should have borders with jordan and egypt that was a direct rebuke of the. netanyahu will keep the jordan valley and gaza is separated from the west bank is the word contiguous yeah i want as a contiguous state i heard that no saying where the borders will be that was that was a kind of a there were some very subtle slaps that which of course netanyahu picked up and we'll hear him call and the drudge screaming headline was you know obama comes on the palestinians and then you know all kinds of other headlines of maybe he is a secret muslim. your thoughts on how are actually your observations on how this is being received in israel i mean what's what's j. post what are they were writing about and how do you think. or what have you heard that mr netanyahu is going to be saying to morrow we're heading into

a fascinating week because you've got the prime minister here and then he's going to be addressing apec and the president's addressing apac and the prime minister's address in congress so you have a whole dance that's going to play out over the course of the next few days and it's going to be interesting to see how the sides joust with each other let's me i'll give a speech earlier in the week that laid out some of his bottom line demands keeping troops on the jordan valley for instance this was obama's come back saying no you're not you know we're going to have a border and you're going to have a border between palestine and jordan that came out with a strong press release afterwards saying no way these are our base and yet now who's not a guy who has a history of compromising and it's going to be very interesting to watch them over the next three or four days as they get dueling speeches have meetings have to do press conferences i think in israel there's a strong candidate you know has been running full page ads in our it's in the newspapers saying the time is now to recognize a palestinian state it's an israeli existential interest to have a palestinian state so you've got

a strong camp that saying you've got to do this before the september u.n. vote on palestinian statehood and then you've got the bibi netanyahu and to the right camp the reason post and others will be in that camp and they'll say absolutely not there is no way there's no partner and these borders are a disaster for israel so you're going to have a real fight start as a quick follow on to that. reading those publications and i've spent time in the region there's a large peace movement in israel music is a constant debate in the media about you know how to how to accomplish peace and all of these things that that could be almost doesn't exist in the united states. but i think it's an even harder to have that today this weekend as we're heading right into the apec conference i mean this is the belly of the beast in terms of political power from the jewish community in the weeks to have this conversation in the american political arena or the american media this is the week when everybody's going to be cautious how the president puts his case before the apec crowd on so. and how the crowd received them is going to be very interesting but

there's a whole nother movement in this country that j. street is a part of and other groups as well that are saying no the american jewish community is diverse as the israeli community and we have as many people who support a two state solution because it's in israel's interest as there are people on the right who say there's no way to make peace and so we're joe lieberman when he was nominated for vice president. first event he did was with american group in michigan he asked me to pull together and people challenged him on the jerusalem resolution and he said he said you know i did that as a senator but this vice president i would have here to american policy said you know one thing i've learned in all of my time is that it's easier to have a debate in the knesset on these issues than it is in the u.s. senate it's true i thought that was striking at the interesting for somebody who actually is a part of that problem right now but what i don't see that one of the things that we've argued is that we've got change all across the middle east and the change we need is here right and the change we need is now i mean we do not have the ability to have an american debate on these issues in my group and in germany's group which

have done some things together. are fighting all the time against those who try to deal with and it does into the radical corner where in fact polling shows we represent the mainstream of both those arab american and jewish american communities in fact our numbers polling numbers from arab americans and jewish americans on key middle east issues are within the margin of error of each other apec does not represent that nor do we stream just on the arab side represented we represent the mainstream but frankly we don't get the sounding that we need because . the pharmacy debate in washington and that's true of america. jeremy was talking about. what's going on in israel in the minute or so we have left what you know now that hamas and fatah have kind of come together and in coming together have so. we're not going to recognize israel i know they didn't they didn't say that they didn't here's the agreement abu mazen president abbas

still remains the head of the p.l.o. and he's the top negotiator the government does not include and hamas in fact the government will include neither party it'll be a government of technocrats but the two movements will work out a compromise that's not feuding and warring with each other that is a good thing but it doesn't change the posture of the leadership and the of lying glycine was sharon's top adviser wrote an article just today in the in the leading paper in israel saying netanyahu this is your best chance this is the best leadership you're going to have on the palestinian side you've got to make concessions to them i think there is really to recognize that this deal is a good thing it brings problems things together under them it doesn't change the palestinian politics at all. let's let's all be optimistic i mean it would be really really great of some something good from the week before the deal the main argument against working with the palestinians was that they were divided that was the reason not to make peace now they've united now the main argument is they've

united you can't make peace so it's bizarre can educate and he started with jeremy ben-ami dr james our great thank you both for being with us thank you to the middle east is a tinderbox right now largely as a result of george w. bush's illegal wars that are bankrupting our nation thankfully president obama is a statesman but in that region that can only go so far it's. crazy alert stick to your day job the secret service is catching some flak after a controversial tweet against fox news yesterday. had to monitor farce for a story can't deal with law but rather in seconds after the tweet went up it was promptly deleted but not before many of the twenty thousand followers of the secret service on twitter had reach we did the message secret service did apologize for the tweets. the treat did not reflect the views of the u.s. secret service it was immediately removed also removed the user handling the

twitter account and accountants only nine days old this is a learning curve for new twitter unit users the most bizarre thing about this story though is why the heck does the secret service need a twitter account and should someone be worried if the secret service is following them on twitter. coming up. danger dot com the council of europe pushes a ban for schools to eliminate all wireless networks and cell phones claiming the devices pose a health hazard so is there a real fire behind this alarm at a small. fee. for.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some of the part of it and realize everything you saw you don't know i'm sorry because if we. go back to the big picture coming up in this half hour there will not be any singing and holding hands at a south florida high school school has banned all and touching.