well i'm john are going to washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture president obama delivered his much anticipated speech concerning the changing the landscape in the middle east as walking words translate into lofty ideals of peace in the region plus to help our nation pay down its debt utah governor gary herbert wants to sell his state off the highs over better we see in the final days of america's commons and

the g.o.p. have started a new battle the war on arts it's a nice deal you take i tell you how their new plans to bring back the story are those. earlier this week we commented on the highlight of the comments of florida congressman dennis ross who suggested that utah should sell off huge tracts of its public line of private corporations to solve our nation's fiscal woes it could put a congressman from florida would think twice about selling another state what they should do with their caught with lands and you think that the governor of utah would tell 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 a news conference yesterday. i think it should really worth exploring i don't think we're going to you know our national parks and some of those pristine areas because

a lot of land could be privatized and helped reduce the deficit so is this the beginning of the end for our commons in america is the wholesale sell off of america begun to give us the details on this issue. border a blogger with think progress said welcome back thanks for having me tom the sell off of utah first of all is going to go anywhere first of all i like to say they hope not because they've been talking about this for years we always have a crazy right wing a brain the idea of people in utah are like you know what are you talking about we love our products we love our mountains we love you know our pristine public land it's always been a legacy of you since its inception and it's a gigantic portions of publicly is that people from all over the country love to come and visit and you know the idea of privatizing it actually. sort of private firms or individuals i mean it comes up every now and then but never i don't i don't recall the last time an actual governor of utah actually even entertained the idea so is so is you know given the current political environment in utah i mean

nationally as well as in utah do you think that the governor just put his foot in it or did he actually maybe help him so i mean this sounds like some of the tea party would celebrate you know exactly i mean you might as well talk about you know selling off the grand canyon as you would be talking about signing off christie and 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 we're required to get 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 better he said things like oh maybe indian burial grounds will be better in private hands or maybe you know this sort of the. actual 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 trying to cross sectors were saying republicans want to privatized medicare we're seeing unfortunately a bipartisan consensus on education that's part has a huge part of keep the troll education we're seeing public universities there tuitions go up to be privatized and we're seeing privatization across the board of

what we're really seeing at the end of 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 it is 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 there is. and by the way he's not the only guy doing this i mean you know 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 along and says hey we can private is city government just throw the throw the elected bodies out we'll put in my crony. now exactly it is happening all over the country in other places north carolina where the governor may be signing this week legislation that would

actually undercut the ability for cities to have public broadband systems you know which we talk 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 wouldn't even help the deficit damage i mean senators mccain and leave mike lee actually from utah unfortunately actually introduced legislation that was about three million acres of public land i mean how much money would that create the estimate they would only pay down the deficit by a billion dollars i mean that's one story that's one fourth of the oil subsidies that democrats are trying to trying to cut that both lee and mccain voted against you know whose side are we on here really. it's really is quite extraordinary to what extent is this being driven. the koch brothers or alec the american legislative exchange council or whatever. it's it's you know or you know any of these other right wing think tanks that are being funded by the koch's and the

other basically oligarchy it's the wider privatization movement on many different fronts is getting funding primarily from alec 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 in the majority their friends come from corporations and the corporate board but you know if you actually if you go and look at the think 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 a firm oh and everything every bit of air that we breathe every bit of land that we can step on that everything we maintain that it would 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 clean democracy and the idea that anyone no matter how rich or poor they are going to enjoy it when they don't have to pay a premium on it or libraries or public schools or fill in the blank said on it very well said thanks for joining us and thanks for the great research that you're doing

writing on those republicans look out of power 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 there in the 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 this there's a story about all of this the boston common is 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 party. park because if it was over grazed because you know the local people would have cattle and sheep would just bring as many as they could because hey it was free and it eventually got wiped out this this or this situation whatever you

want to call it this this has been described by most recently by your authority in nine hundred sixty three in his book the tragedy of the commons or his article for science magazine back in eighteen thirty three william forrester lloyd talked about this and through cities the greek author of the the history of the papilloma and work on pronouncing that right i'm sure i'm not in any case he he described his era as i and rand davao ts which is basically with 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 but 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 decays i

think this is this is over two thousand years ago we have this is and given what it was that you know democracy can from day most which is greek i mean the greeks invented the concept of democracy of the commons and we're seeing this now being systematically been dismantled and you look at the commons that can be converted into profit for example roads forests parking meters 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 was about where the governor comes in and says hey you know we're going to just throw out the city council and take over the city of an arbor and a guy working for me is going to do medicare they want to privatized medicare hey there's a lot of money to be made there social security two point six trillion dollars trust fund let's and that off to our to the banks there's on wall street's two and

a half really good options are military we've you know we have as many private soldiers now in iraq and afghanistan as we have public and they cost us a lot more but somebody is making some money our parks are museums are zoos are libraries are playgrounds are sidewalks our courts our postal service our beaches even our lack 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 today's question a 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 target our carlos' or you think poll we open till tomorrow morning. coming up president obama gives his detailed plan aimed at was civility in the middle east so will he succeed at home into chaos. for.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so. you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear see some other part of it and realize everything you saw you don't i'm sorry because if. 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 over to take advantage of the recent populist uprisings in tunisia and egypt president entailed a new posture that america will take toward 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 i just paid an 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 in 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 in cracking down on anti-government protesters any 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 were 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. and 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 a pro israel pro peace lobbying group here in washington d.c. and dr james zogby president of the america the arab american institute welcome gentlemen thank you very much. a question just in general to either both of you was there really anything new in the speech what was what was in your minds is. why i think look 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 in transformation in the middle east the president said that's going to cost us there's a lot we have to do if we want this to happen and 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 and i 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 idiology 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 of my listening know that he can 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 that a substantial difference and what does that mean he doesn't push the ball down the field a notch let's say i mean this it was an breakthrough terminology there's been talk of sixty seven as the basis from the secretary of state and other presidents and 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 leading some of the more difficult issues till later is also another slight change in what the president's been talking to going to health care it's not going for the whole deal all at once but it's clever some of the critical issues and saying let's get to agreement on that limb of the basis for going further change you mention the neoconservatives the francis fukuyama and ninety two wrote. the end of the world and if history in the last man and i remember reading it being very impressed by the idea of nation building and and spreading democracy and then

after iraq basically came out and said. you know be careful what you ask for and we saw the same thing with hamas we work so hard to get democratic elections and then they you know. is there that is is this a path that's actually a wise path i don't think that 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 we can do is try to support and i think you may overstate the case of what we can do to support. the kind of support the region is looking for from us is not political as much as its capacity building and it's a good goal. 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 an agenda so no i think that what he did was he was sort of shifting the ground away from the bush neo 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 that will shove it down their throat with 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 love us and they don't celebrate us but we can be partners in trans 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 to new ones for people in the middle east who were looking for more and 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 so i missed when i first heard it but 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 that is the word contiguous yeah i as a contiguous state i said i heard that the road saying you know where the borders will be that was that that was a kind of there were some very subtle slaps at the gate which of course netanyahu picked up and we'll hear him oh and the drudge screaming headline was you know obama comes down on the palestinians and then you know all kinds of other headlines of maybe he is a secret muslim germany your thoughts on how or actually your observations on how this is being received in israel i mean what's what's jay 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 tomorrow we're heading into

a fascinating week because you've got the prime minister here and he's going to be addressing apac and the president's addressing apac and then 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 just with each other it's a good 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 and it's and out came out with a strong press release afterwards saying no way these are our basic who's not a guy who has a history of compromise is going to be very interesting to watch them joust over the next three or four days as they give dueling speeches have meetings have to do press conferences i think in israel there's a strong can't you know has been running full page ads in the car it's in the newspapers saying the time is now to recognize a palestinian state it's an israeli existential interests 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 the post and others will be in that camp and they'll say at. there's no way there's no partner and these borders are a disaster for israel so you're going to have a real fight start is there a quick follow on to that. you know reading those publications and i've spent time in the region there's a large peace movement in israel music there's a constant debate in the media about you know how to how to accomplish peace in all of these kinds of. that to be almost doesn't exist in the united states. well i think it's going to be even harder to have a debate this weekend as we're heading right into the apec conference and this is the belly of the beast in terms of political power from the jewish community and of all weeks to have this conversation in the american political arena or in the american media this is the week when everyone's going to want to be cautious how the president puts his case before the crowd on sunday and how the apec crowd receives 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 job lieberman when he was nominated for vice president. first event he did was with a 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 as vice president i would 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 a great thing it was interesting for somebody who actually is a part of that robin but you 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 germany's group which have done some things together. are fighting all the time against those who try to be legitimized and well it doesn't to 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 does not represent that nor to work stream on the arab side represented. we represent the mainstream but frankly we don't get the sounding that we need because apec dominates the policy debate in washington in the end 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 said we're not going to recognize israel you know they didn't they didn't say that he didn't here's the agreement problem is and 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 wineglass who was sharon's top adviser wrote an article just today in the leading paper in israel saying if in yahoo 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 palestinians together under album isn't it doesn't change the palestinian politics at all. let's let's all be optimistic i mean it would be really really great if some something through the week before the deal the main argument against working with the palestinians was that they were divided i 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 indicate a need to end its argument jeremy ben-ami dr james argued thank you both for being with your group or should the middle east is a tinderbox right now largely as a result of george 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. stickier day job the secret service is catching some flack after controversal tweet against fox news yesterday tweet read add to monitor fox for a story camp deal with the lathering 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 read tweeted the message secret service did apologize for the tweet saying the tweet did not reflect the views of the u.s. secret service it was immediately removed also removed the user handling the

twitter account an account that's only nine days old and this is a learning curve for new twitter unit users the most bizarre thing about this story though is on the head is the secret service need a twitter account and should someone be worried if the secret service is following them on twitter. coming up now the debbie debbie dot 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 or just smoke. a few. feet.

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 see some other part of it and realize everything you saw if you don't i'm sorry because a big. welcome back to the big picture i'm tom hartman 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.