annulling to take on the millionaires and billionaires and future tax debates. drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions completely break through it through people who made who can you trust no one who is in view with the global machinery to see where we had a state controlled capitalism is called satchels when nobody dares to ask what we do our t. question more.

welcome back to the big picture on chart on coming up in this half hour the divide between the haves and the have nots keeps getting wider making matters worse is the debt limit. that again as a let the richest americans in the nation off the hook next but president obama needs to do to get back the support of the american people and go after millionaires and billionaires once and for all plus you've heard of before you get more a lot from a dummy head will talk about the specific things progress is can learn from those tea party goons incidents deleted. and the details are disturbing and his defense outrages see how the sexual assault case against the self-proclaimed prophet warren jeffs is changing the way we. polygamy and religion in this country.

as we speak right now forty six americans are on food stamps combined that was seen poverty numbers and soaring unemployment numbers and we see a pretty grim picture of the american working and middle class and yet as we just saw on this that when a debate is precisely these people who are suffering around the nation and who will bear the brunt of a deficit reduction now the billionaire hedge fund manager pays a lower tax rate than a secretary at the billion dollar oil corporation that is raking in more profits than any corporation in the history of the world but still gets billions in taxpayer subsidies and not the billionaire corporate jet owners who pays lower taxes than normal jet owners and airlines republicans and half the democrats in congress let these oligarchy off the hook even though the richest americans today

have seen their tax contributions drop to a fifty year low president obama still wants us to believe that the super congress gang of twelve in charge of finding another one at trillion dollars in deficit reduction in november will make the necessary tough choices to raise taxes on millionaires and billionaires but is speaker of the house john boehner told c.b.s. there's not a chance. can you imagine republicans backing increased taxes if that's what the committee recommends i would think that would it would be a stretch doesn't seem likely to me that would even be recommended much less supported. but just like last december the billionaires in america dodged another tax bill so how long can our economy with growing wealth inequality creating a whole host of social ills how long can we sustain these historically low tax rates for the richest of the rich and what lesson can president obama learn from past presidents to get this economy working again for everyone and not just the

richest one percent here to offer some answers and sampras a godly associate fellow in inequality at the common good. for the common good and the common good policy studies editor of too much he's also the author of the book greed and good understanding and overcoming inequality the limits are alive sam welcome thank you very much tom i pronouncing your name right yes thank you very much i have a chance to ask you where you can why is inequality a borders you know any qualities is important because if we let wealth concentrate at the top we distort our society in every way that counts we distorted economically we distorted politically we distorted culturally inequality even has a great impact on how long we live all sorts of research for everything just those of the scientists who study the health of population show that the more work that will concentrates the more equal

a society becomes the short lifespans of everyone in this society not just the poor but middle class and comfortable people swell so historically how have societies dealt with this and how do the most successful societies deal with wealth inequality well the most successful societies in the world that is the sides that are working for all their people or something close to all their people those societies tried to narrow the gap between the top and everyone else and some societies in japan in sweden in the other nordic countries have been rather successful about that and the outcomes that they've been have been solid and important and significant and lasting for some time and. it's interesting just an anecdote here the interviewer i think was a wooden berk american reporter interviewing a german businessman and he kept asking him you know about his tax rate and i was like fifty six percent and the american just couldn't figure out why the guy was

was not outraged and finally this fellow says to the american you probably heard the story you know. i don't want to be a rich man and work on. thread and i don't understand why the tea partiers and the koch brothers in the republican party are so hell bent for leather to create a nation where the rich people are rich people in a poor country you know tom i really think that a lot of the people who voted for tea party candidates in the last election were not voting for rich people we're not voting for a nation where rich people were getting rich or they were voting in outrage against the bailouts to wall street they did which was done by the bush administration and and they didn't realize that that's a i don't think they realized it because the democratic party was party to those bell. that was bad on us again but you're right it was a bi bipartisan bring how did president obama drop the ball in this debate and what

does he write you know should he be channeling f.d.r. absolutely f.d.r. faced the situation almost identical to the situation that barack obama has faced over the past year f.d.r. in one nine hundred forty two one thousand nine hundred forty three faced a hostile congress people people now don't remember that were the one nine hundred forty two and we term elections all those g.i. couldn't vote and all those workers who met him when he crossed the country to work and worked on factories couldn't vote so the turnout was very low conservative democrats and conservative republicans robbed built up of a huge congressional working majority and f.d.r. was in trouble so f.d.r. won if the tax equitably wanted to put an equitable both tax policy into effect and face this hostile congress and what did he do i mean the back off and and and can't compromise and no he pounded the rich again and again and again even when the

republicans tied their hostage taking to it to a debt ceiling bills amazing and you know. famous is that i welcome their hatred i have a hard time imagining president obama saying this and sam thanks so much for dropping by it's great to great to have this yesterday the bright colorado coalition turned in a petition with one hundred forty two thousand signatures to the colorado secretary of state's office clearing the way for a november ballot initiative to raise sales and income taxes to nine hundred ninety nine levels that's one hundred forty two thousand coloradans who are trying to work around their republican star of the b. state legislature and raise much needed revenue in the cash straight strap state purpose of the tax hike is to collect three billion dollars to pump into the state's public education system it's withering under deep spending cuts as one state senator argued about the upcoming ballot measure he said by voting yes colorado will establish yourself as a national leader i reinvest in our future our kids jobs and our economy republican

politicians may be economically stupid about taxes and people aren't. just so. it's the good the bad and the very liberals sidedly liberals sidling ugly sometimes when cavalry words are first the good answer pelosi if republicans want to play hardball with the upcoming super congress gang of twelve pelosi is game she assured progress is a she'll do everything she can to make sure entitle ones are not put on the chopping block in the super congress by appointing democrats to the gang of twelve who no way no how her words will support such cuts in an interview with the pm pelosi said this is a priority for us i know that whoever is at that table will be someone who will fight to protect these benefits the progress is worth thrown under the bus by

president obama in this bed deal of a feeling she won't be less she won't be letting herself be thrown under the bus. to bad gretchen carlson the former beauty queen turned and friends talking head picked a fight with sponge bob square pants this morning on fox so-called news department of education released a cartoon featuring sponge bob to teach kids about carbon pollution and global warming so of course fox news went into full attack mode. government agency showed kids this cartoon it can it outputs that playing man for global warming but they did not tell kids that that is actually a disputed fact. because it's not an excuse fact correction at least not anywhere else in the developed world except on fox news and fox so-called news is trying their hardest to keep them and the very very ugly herman cain republican who's running for president on a platform of fear in muslim you're for it be very afraid it seems also to be running on a platform of economic support for honduras turns out herman cain for president t.

shirts his campaign is selling for thirty bucks a pop. are not made here in the united states made instead of honduras i suppose that's not too unreasonable considering almost nothing is baby u.s. any more besides cruise missiles and tanks but what isn't reasonable is cain's response when a reporter asked if he should switch to campaign gear that is made in the u.s. instead. to pieces and the reason why somebody would want me to change a change in the because someone says it's made out sent to the united states alone isn't a reason so if i have a compelling reason yes but i don't know compelling reason no i guess overtime percent unemployment in america is not a compelling reason for me to support putting americans back to work making his campaign t. shirts and elise's as novel thought is one hundred percent made in america by the way a.b.c. news investigated all eight republican candidates as well as the president's reelection campaign and his report of the campaign t.

shirts for newt gingrich rick santorum google his name ron paul and herman cain were all made outside the united states and that's a very very. crazy alert it's not the aliens it's the wallabies tasmanian farmers been scratching their heads and looking out into the universe to find the culprits behind crop circles but now tasmania officials have found the real creatures behind the farmland vandalism and their eighty's instead there's stone with wallabies that's right tasmania grows af of the world's illegal opium and the opium crops are a favorite of wallabies that munch down and then go on a mind altered route through the tasmanian farmlands beating down crops and creating elaborate crop circles and official told the b.b.c. we have a problem with wallabies entering poppy fields getting as high as a kite and going around in circles then they crash stone sheep also been known to

get the game as one of the side stone wallabies and sheep i think there might be another culprit. thank. you thank you thank you. still ahead of the big picture but boy it was trial of warren jeffs takes a strange twist inside of texas torre room next i'll talk to author and writers about a trial of a live polygamy still exists in our society whether or not we'll see a conviction in this high profile case. drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions through get through to get made who can you trust no one who is imbue it with a global missionary see where are we heading state controlled capitalism is called

satchels when nobody dares to ask we do our tea question more. to the republican party's presidential candidates or mormons a new was new to us seeks to decriminalize polygamy from garman's sacred texts some interpret as record many multiple wives for

a man to get to heaven their romney's great grandfather had four wives of his great great grandfather parents he had thirty was and speaking of polygamous mormon. today is day eight of the warren jeffs trial in texas jeff is the leader of the morgan mormon polygamist sect known as the fundamentalist church of jesus christ of latter day saints and he's charged with sexually assaulting two under aged girls by raping he called it marien a twelve year old and impregnating a fifteen year old today prosecutors played for jurors a twenty one minute sex tape jack jepson recorded allegedly featuring jeffs and the twelve year old girl toward the end of the tape after what sounds like heavy and jeffs is heard saying in the name of jesus christ to which the twelve year old echoed. the prosecution and rested its case in the attention now turns to jeffs to mount a defense all on his own because he fired his entire legal team on friday when he decided to defend himself by sermonizing to the jury and justifying the religious tenets of his church so what is it exactly that motivates jeffs and other

polygamist moments and what could this trial mean for their community here does offer some insight as sanjeev bhattacharya writer and us correspondent for esquire u.k. and the author of the book secrets and wives the hidden world of mormon polygamy sanjeev welcome thanks for having me as i am that's a big thanks for joining us from our los angeles studio more than a weekend what do you make of this trial so far well you know today was kind of disturbing with the with the sex tape but you know we're going to say we're in this morning jeffs has been. pretty high quality entertainment for about the last eight years and it looks like he's building up to a grand finale you know the what we're seeing at the moment in the courtroom is precisely the kind of religious lunacy that he was exhibiting back in two thousand and three when he was banning everything under the sun and i'm using books everything. he even banned laughter because he said the spirit of god would leak

out of you if you after i was one of his high points but you know we shouldn't be too surprised i don't think that. he is quite this doraine just firing his legal team and reading out a letter that he said was written by god and threatening everybody with sickness and death and that sort of thing is after all he's a prophet that's that's that's his that's his day job and this is kind of what prophets do so he starts in the job description he sees himself as or probably jeremiah actually would be his role model. what makes people like warren jeffs and how frequently are mormon polygamists also pedophiles like giraffes well the thing about mormon polygamy is that it's not one of the things that jeff said in in his kind of long rambling defense that it was a fifty five minute speech. from what i've heard he had about ten minutes

a good material any kind of drag it out but he did say that this isn't a fly by night culture this doctrine is kind of here to stay and on that front i have to agree with him the main mormonism is strong potion it's been very resilient fundamentalism has existed outside of the law in this country now for over one hundred years now that's you know that some in the country with i don't think it's going to go anywhere. dogma is very powerful but i think one of the things that been missed in this and i think you pointed it out is that the perception of polygamy is getting pulled in in both directions at this point but on the one hand you've got to arrange sex criminals like warren jeffs and on the other hand you've got an attempt to decriminalize polygamy by this kind of reality t.v. show family who are essentially a marketing vehicle or they may as well be for the fundamentalist lobby so we're getting in which one is the real polygamy you know is it is it sister wives or is

it were and jeffs and and you know in in my book i try and explain it's actually a very broad spectrum for a small subculture it's a very warped and dysfunctional subculture it's there's good and bad amongst it and we have to accept as a society that polygamy is going to be exist how are we going to deal with it well and i'm obviously in favor of decriminalisation you are and polygamy does exist and in i believe the majority of cultures around the world and i'm not certainly endorsing it. if you just didn't marry a majority of cultures i don't know if it's an american majority of people around the world is that. right it's been it's been one of the you know the oldest kind of forms of marriage you know in our history but i want to be clear i'm not endorsing polygamy as a lovely lifestyle it's very dysfunctional and it does create. awful characters tyrannical prophets like warren jeffs sure and it should be said many other sides

you only one there's plenty of them up in use are. we just have the place is crawling with them we are we are we have a little less than thirty seconds left just very quickly how what impact is a seven and mainstream mormonism and might it have on the candidacies of mitt romney and jon huntsman well you know i think that whenever polygamy is raised. in the context of the word mormon it does damage to some extent. you know the prospects of the moment candidates you know but i think the effect of that at the same time is somewhat exaggerated and the paranoia of the l.d.s. church when it comes to polygamy. you know it's kind of all their own choosing to some extent so if you thanks so much for being with us tonight thanks tom with two republican candidates for president miss mitt romney and jon huntsman practicing mormons and one of the leading voices on the far right plan back

a practicing mormon don't expect a debate over this controversial religion and its subsects its subsidy to subside any time soon. i have a mission for you and it's not impossible progressive shouldn't be fighting the tea party we should be learning from them actually we should be fighting them but not just. any out and not from there but we should be learning from their bizarro economics we shouldn't be learning from their selfish morality or their destructive idealism but instead we should be learning from how they took control of the republican party and how they forced the entire conservative establishment to lurch so far to the right that they've even dumped people like david frum if we're bresson's hope to have any shot at influencing today's democratic party and kicking

out the corporate blue dog democrats and replacing them with the real deal progressives and we need to get to work right now and do exactly what the tea party did a year and a half ago to take power and it starts in our own backyards let me introduce you to the concord project a right wing organization in charge of getting out the vote for republicans last year the concord project expanded their get out the vote strategy beyond just traditional phone banking canvassing and putting a vote republican side they decided to infiltrate local politics by encouraging tea partiers and conservatives to become precinct committeemen here's their pitch what's the most powerful political office in the world it is not the president of the united states it's precinct committeemen i so why is a precinct committeemen so important. first because precinct committeemen and only precinct committeemen get to elect the leaders of the political parties if you

want to elect the leadership of one of the two major political parties in this country and then you have to become the precinct committeemen. as in politics starts at the bottom it starts with precinct committeemen and women people who are either appointed or win local elections with very few votes as they can some cases ten or twenty votes positions that pretty much anyone can hold the positions that wield enormous power it's precinct committeemen and women who elect district county and state party officials and delegates who choose primary nominees that then go on to hold elected office and who helped draft the party's platform so if far right tea partiers move in and take over precinct committeemen and win seats and they'll also nominate a slew of tea partiers told higher offices within the republican party and for primaries that was their pitch and those tea party republican party primary candidates would then be winnowed down in the primary to one tea party republican

to run against the democrat in general election that was their pitch and it worked control the primaries and the precincts committee people do and you control the ultimate candidate election and ultimately the nation as we saw this week when the tea party republican freshman who were elected because of this strategy blew up john boehner deal with obama to raise taxes. here's a video from january of two thousand and ten the same concord project representative encouraging the tea party to do exactly what i just described. this video is for all the people out there tea party. voters he's right it's good to see people are really fearful of what's going on in the country and. want to do something it's. what got us. the best way to ensure that good conservatives win that all important primary election is to become a real ball player the ball game of politics that ball is called party

politics and this is a secret they don't want the party establishment and the incumbents don't want you to know about this and that's why i'm telling you the only precinct to vote to elect our leaders only precinct. forced to do so again that was in two thousand and ten eleven months before the elections and in two thousand and eight half of the republican party's precinct committee positions around the country were vacant but today motivated by the efforts of people like the concord project the tea party has swept in to fill with gaps they filled up the republican party and we saw the results of the kid precinct committee take over last year when tea party candidates were in the way on a nearly every ballot around the country and actually picking up eighty seven new seats in the u.s. house of representatives and nine new seats in the senate and even though the tea party doesn't control

a majority within the republican party in congress they do control the republican party's platform because they have the control of the precinct committees and therefore progressive's need to do the same thing only within the democratic party . if we've learned one thing over the last few years it's that the democratic party has shifted to the center and it's a stablish when is unwilling to adopt the real progressive change when it comes to things like health reform energy reform and election reform just to name a few and as we saw the bush tax cut debate last year and the recent debt limit debate this unwillingness to stand up and fight is leading to an endless stream of republican victories and the dismantling of programs that progress is fought so hard for over the entire last century we have been too often lose in these fights and to win them it takes more than union protests in wisconsin or us uncut demonstrations on wall street or activism against your member of congress although

those are all important but to really take power like the tea party did in one short year it'll take an infiltration of the democratic party itself claiming precinct committee positions if this year starting now we execute the exact same strategy the tea party did last year and we can move the democratic party back to its progressive roots and finally see the progressive reforms that we've been fighting for so here's your assignment mr and mrs phelps should you decide to accept it we have fifteen months before the next election and your vision is to show up at your local democratic party headquarters actually given the infiltration as always should you or any of your team be clawed or killed my producer shawna and sam will disavow any knowledge of your actions this video will self-destruct in three seconds good luck.

that's the big picture for tonight for more information on the stories we covered visit our web site at tell arvin dot com free speech dot org. also check out our two you tube channels there are links to tom hartman dot com and this entire show is also available as a free video podcast on i tunes and we have a free tom hartman i phone i pad app at the app store you can see this feedback at twitter at tom underscore our on facebook at some of these for our blog logs message boards and telephone comment line that's on our radar and don't forget democracy begins with you when you show up when you participate become a committee person tag your it will still.

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