take him out so you can start charging more for the place mcmillan is taking the case to court win or lose now that we know it will and has been paying less rent than most of the new yorkers maybe time for a new platform how about with the pains of the gas on may be gas is today of high party or with global warming clobbering us about the temperatures to damn high party as a nice ring to it i'm sure thing. still to come where watching and waiting for wisconsin election results were voters may very well unseat six republican state senators that is they will of voters can see past the roughly forty million dollars in t. t.v. advertising but the koch brothers karl rove and other huge interests that horde into the state to prop up the republican politicians they all. drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions through get through it and made who can you trust no one who is in view with the lobel

machinery see where are we heading state controlled capitalism is called satchels when nobody dares to ask we do our t. question morning.

welcome back to the big picture i'm tom hartman coming up in this half hour in wisconsin the stakes are high for six state republican senators who could be out of a job voters will determine their outcome in tonight's recall election will corporate dollars trump true democracy and how does that new voter i.d. law work up was a ski leader report out of japan where government officials are now being blamed for downplay. in the fukushima nuclear disaster and risking the lives of thousands of people and that's just part of this of the story told in our daily take tonight . in the best of the rest of the news polls just closed it was constant putting an end of the largest recall election this nation has ever seen and perhaps putting an end to a number of republican state senators political careers and a six republican state senators faced recall for supporting governor scott walker's anti-union efforts earlier this year if democrats pick up three wins today they'll

take over the state senate and put an end to walker's union busting for good as long as they can win another round of recall elections next week when two democrats are on the ballot to defend their seats in a retaliatory recall put on by republicans recall elections are widely considered to be a referendum on the union busting that's been sweeping the nation not just in wisconsin but in states like indiana new jersey and michigan and wherever else alec has been writing the laws and republicans have been declaring war on american working class people and no one knows better this whole situation than the corporate millionaires and billionaires have been funding the union busting and are now throwing enormous amounts of cash and defending their republican lapdogs in these recall elections what looked like a democratic shoo in earlier this year has now tightened up as somewhere between twenty eight and forty million dollars mostly corporate or billionaire in cash from the likes of the koch brothers have been funneled into the state but voter turnout

was reportedly high today which bodes well for the democrats so when the results come in tonight but we see a truly democratic electoral victory for democrats or will we see yet another major election in america's subverted by corporate interests using last year's supreme court's citizens united united decision here to offer his take on this is jim dean the chair of democracy for america jim welcome. hey tom thanks for having me if i could just make one slight correction the polls are open for another hour until eight o'clock central time and i just want to make sure that if any listeners out there have not voted and live in these six districts this is a great time to go out because your vote is really going to matter really should've told you before you came on the air jim we pre-record the show an hour early so ok this will play at night and by then it will polls will be closed so what i want to look like on the ground. you know it looks pretty good i get up i must say the

folks here i mean our staff has been here for six weeks as well as a lot of great organizations that have been here are very very pleased with the way the field program has gone with the way they get out the vote has gone with the dollars that they've made but the fact is that these elections really really are close and every vote really does matter at college as for rather to say that i've just been saying it for the cows come home because i really don't think we're going to know until tomorrow exactly how this goes but i am very confident that we're going to get at least three of these seats i sure hope so in fact you know apropos of that here's my nightmare scenario we know i asked alan grayson you know they agree with the congressman search on my radio show a week or two ago bluntly why did you lose the election in two thousand and ten and he said because the republicans turned out sixty plus percent of their voters and the democrats only turned over forty plus percent of the voters the democratic voters figured hey we got the house we got the senate we got not only

a democrat the white house but an historic democrat in the white house so you know we can just go play but baseball or something we don't need to vote and my concern is that if we win these three seats a week from now there's going to be this others much smaller like two incumbent democrats been challenged by republicans and democrats might think hey we won everything's fine once go back to you know dinner and is that why you. know it does not bad here in wisconsin you know the voters here really really spoken already you might know that these six senators are all in republican districts. one actually of the year in two thousand and eight when obama of wisconsin by i think thirteen points and yet they are out in force they have been out every single just to clue the democratic defend districts. solidly and very active and again the fuel program and getting out the vote in advance here

and so i really don't think this is going to be a case where the democrats just sort of go home and say well we got it done now and one of the other recent really the most important reason is because i think they know up from seeing a scott walker become governor last year and from seeing russ feingold lose this race i think they know now no other consequences of what happens if you don't go out and vote and if you don't get involved in taking responsibility over the political process so at this stage it's really showing the way and that's part and . all of them jim david vines a student there who is also a part time indy reporter as been on our show before he told us today that he's heard reports of voters particular students being turned away because they don't have proper id because of the recently passed motor idea law in that state you heard in the like that. actually i had not i mean i've heard of a few things happening here and there tom but one of the things is that the voter

i.d. law does not take effect. until later on and actually if you do not have an id and you are registered to vote you do not need to show an id when you go to the polls today you can still register today but you have to have proved residency you know if there are those tales you know i hope we i know we have election folks at their at all the polls and hopefully they've been able to take care of some of this what broader implications will this recall election have around the country again. well i think we already have the broader implications which at that people in this state the voters of this state i've already stood out remember sort of hot then of so-called democratic activity in places like the walking madison those districts aren't even part of all of this recall these are outlying districts that are and in towns and cities around the state and these are very very competitive so it's very clear that the voters have already spoken tom it's very clear that they do not like the kind of republican governors state want an honest debate about the budget not

what scott walker has done and the implications going forward are they going to be happen in ohio this year where we have an opportunity to repeal governor cases s b five bill which is going to happen with already going to be on the ballot i think we're going to win that we have a chance to make some changes in a couple of other states the new jersey assembly is up this year but you've seen chris christie doing what he's doing there and i think you're going to see a little bit of wave of the one person who i really hope is watching this tonight is president barack obama because i think what he's going to see is that he's willing to stand up and fight this kind of governance fight this kind of. compromise governance and congress of on its you baggers he will see the pathway to his reelection a lot easier than it is right now very very well said jim dean panky so much for the great work you're doing with democracy for america and for the work that you're doing reporting there from and keeping the troops go in there in wisconsin thanks a lot you bet they did great thanks for having me on tom always great to have you

will be watching the election returns come in tonight and give you a full breakdown of what the results mean for wisconsin and the rest of the country tomorrow night. just for. kids the good the bad in the very very stagnant closely ugly verse the good the kurds vonnegut memorial library last month a bunch of right wingers in the republican missouri school board decided to ban some books one of them was gone against slaughterhouse five why because according to the person who requested the book be banned the teachers principals were calling for the bible and you thought banning books for religious reasons didn't happen in america well the current particular war a library didn't like the decision so they donated one hundred fifty free copies of slaughterhouse five to students to raise awareness about the book and the school board's decision not only that the librarian of missouri a.c.l.u.

are working to obtain the minutes of the school board meeting to prove that their decision to ban the book was based on religious reasons and thus was unconstitutional let's hope they find what they need the bad steve doocy of fox and friends bloody jump into a discussion about president obama's and wing of the economy this morning with this little gem. his message again it's very popular at these fundraisers where he says that he inherited most of this problem and so that appears to be what the campaign message is going to be three years into his presidency somewhere inside they must be doing internal polling that this is working with not only his base but with independent voters that's to potentially needs to be reelected what he really inherited from george bush was a triple a bank you read it rating and now we're down to double a plus. i'm sure president obama's real thankful for that and all the other inheritances from bush like a depression economy to field wars crumbling infrastructure tattered social safety

failing educational system broken tax code massive trade imbalances. is an unhealthy addiction to oil so i could go on way to go do see you when the bush apologist award for the day and the very very ugly congressman michael burgess republican representative from texas held a town meeting yesterday instead of focusing on how to create jobs or turn the economy around were just folks focused on how to further sabotage president obama is idea impeachments purchase it is the property it would tie things up no question about that water we allow them to go unchecked the worse things are going to be for us unclear who burgess is talking about when he says us but i doubt it's the american people burgess also couldn't name one impeachable charge to bring against the president still he said it needs to be done maybe somebody should tell congress and burgess that you can't impeach a president just because they're black and living in the white house that's very

true. still to come the japanese government is now being blamed for ignoring the actual path of radiation following the fukushima nuclear disaster why hide the truth i answer and why we need to get corporations out of the business of managing or injury energy needs and other commons next in my deleted. drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions complete couldn't break through get through it if you had made who can you trust no one who is to move you with the local machinery see where we had it state controlled capitalism is called sasha's when nobody dares to ask we do our t. question morning. here

take my take is our segment on the show where you have the opportunity to make yourself heard here on the big picture it's your chance to share your questions comments rants and observations so i try to address them as best i can our first comments tonight came to us via twitter julia tweeted to ask about how the media is framing the whole debt ceiling debacle what led to s. and p. downgrade in the united states from aaa to double a plus she wrote why can't the

media open their mouth and blame who is really responsible republicans julia you're right on the facts here's where s. and p. had to say in their eight page report about why they dumped our credit rating for the first time in this nation's two hundred thirty plus year history they said quote we have changed our assumption because the majority of republicans in congress and cheney to resist any measure that would raise revenues a position we believe congress reinforced by passing the act but most of the mainstream media has not focused on the republican refusal to call to close loopholes for corporate jet owners or oil companies at all instead they're blaming the government spending which s. and p. did not cite as the reason for the downgrade in fact even the debt ceiling debate had nothing to do with spending it was about are paying for things that we've already bought. but you never know that from the mainstream media. standard and poor's not just down to

a double a plus citing that buzzer beating deal to avoid government default did not do enough to cut back on spending standard and poor's says the government is spending too much and has too much of that so they downgraded us the standard and poor's says that washington didn't raise the dead ceiling fast enough or cut spending deep enough as a piece cited rising public debt policymaking uncertainty and failure to deal with spending on entitlements as nature factors in its decision so why is it the standard for is calling out the republicans and all these local t.v. stations are calling out the spending now the problem with the american media by and large people of the mainstream media is something called access the dirty little secret of the media is that if you're doing the kind of show that only works if you get big name republicans on it and you have to be willing to suck up to them and not call them out on the why on the air this is why networks and t.v. performers end up worrying about not losing their position the competitive media

landscape or saying something that would alienate their sources so they back off from boarding the difficult truths and simply focus on political rhetoric and strategy in a recent column paul krugman a guy who doesn't need to suck up to republicans to keep his column in the new york times or to keep the pulitzer prize in economics that he one wrote that the problem with american politics right now is republican extremism if you're not willing to say that you're helping make the problem worse unfortunately in this case the mainstream media has made grievance observation a self-fulfilling prophecy. our next your comment is from the tom hartman facebook page as you've heard me say numerous times on this program one of the greatest threats to our democracy today is the power of corporate personhood that was bestowed on corporations by a supreme court clerk back in eight hundred eighty six and put on steroids by last year's citizens united decision pushed through by a corrupt contemporary supreme court but paulo posted on facebook with this

interesting observation he wrote the union share the same legal person rights as corporations by stripping corporations those rights are doing the same to unions. that's right if we said the corporations can't use their profits to engage in political free speech i frankly have no problem with saying the same thing about unions here's where that would give unions and advantage however unions are democratic institutions they elect their leaders and all the decisions of the unions are made by a majority vote from the members corporations on the other hand are kingdoms and c.e.o.'s playing the role of kings so if both were forbidden from using their money for politics what do they have left their members in the case of the unions their employees the case the corporations so take corporate example so imagine the c.e.o. of a company with a million employees sends out a memo asking everybody to vote a particular way in an upcoming election those are secret so there's no way for him to enforce that and he'll never know who did or who didn't vote for whom those

workers will simply ignore the memo. on the other hand if a union sends out a newsletter indorsing candidates because it's a democratic membership organization experience tells us that most members actually in the beginning put forward that advice that was what they wanted and they will take that advice on who to vote for so i'm not at all worried about treating corporations and unions equally by stripping personhood rights from both for profit corporations and nonprofit unions to work out and our final comments tonight is again from twitter last night i told you about a group of p.r. insurance in new york who have launched a twitter blitz to convince the powers to rule the internet to add a new front to their e-mail and chat applications that allows people to finally express sarcasm online by using backward slashes to create a backward talent font that would imply a sarcastic tone and they've even come up with a pretty clever you tube video. of sarcasm thought stuff that works with any phone

on any platform it's called. left leaning on the side of the say hey it's ok. no need to get upset. in the future when you're able to sense or tell the size emails to your family you can tell your great. grandparents because you hope so the world's greatest crisis. well the group who invented search alex is watching the show last night and tweeted. so it's alex here what on t.v. say what you do you may just horrible how did you find out about the search alex i hope i deliver the sarcasm in that tweet the way you intended we're always on the lookout for fun and interesting stories here in the big picture and your campaign definitely fits the bill i hope you get the internet companies on board in the open actually i guess it's the people writing the o.s.'s and help solve the world's right is communication problem as you put it in the meantime i think the p.r. firm of the three of you are interning for should offer all of you

a job and you have this p.r. thing down pat. that's it for my take your insights tonight if you'd like your comments and questions heard on this segment of the picture listen up we want to know your to send us your comments that is in the tom hartman facebook page by a twitter at tom underscore her or in the chat room on the message boards or the blog at thom hartmann dot com you can also leave a message on our rant line at two to five three six fifty three zero six agree disagree sound off it's all welcome but remember that your comments may be used on the air. each day we're learning more and more about the nuclear crisis in japan not just about the dangers of nuclear power and nuclear radiation but about the dangers of too much corporate influence over government and it is after the nuclear meltdown at the fukushima plant thousands of nearby residents in the city of naani five

miles away from a cripple nuclear plant fled north from the threat of radiation to the city of shoes shima they figured they were safe there mainly because the government didn't issue any warnings and because tepco tokyo electric power company tepco the private for profit corporation running focus should inform the government everything is just fine we now know today they lied to protect their profits government projection models that actually showed a cloud every spewing from fukushima and heading right toward. yet no one was warned by. well most likely because tepco and the government regulator officials they were buddy buddy with wanted to downplay the crisis from the very beginning all of the evidence points to tepco was thinking about their shareholders the government workers were thinking about their jobs because angry tepco executives could probably get them fired and no one wanted to take responsibility

for what was happening so thousands of people were put in danger by a government and a corporation that the japanese citizens trusted in a time of crisis but it got too close to each other with their inaction emir of nami said the government and tepco committed murder and today nearly half of the almost eleven hundred children who lived around the fukushima plant test positive today for damaging thyroid exposure to radiation tragically the consequences of this exposure will be felt for decades maybe even generations to come and here in the united states were victims of this very same sort of corporate capture of government regulators it's a topic i explore in my book an equal protection in one thousand ten president teddy roosevelt said there could be no effective control of corporations while

their political activity remains over the last ten years the energy industry in america that includes oil coal gas and nuclear has spent nearly three billion dollars that's three thousand million dollars lobbying four hundred thirty five members of congress and thanks to all that political activity as roosevelt warned we've lost our ability to effectively control energy corporations in america just like the way tepco was ineffectively controlled japan regulations have been carved up mishaps overlooked outright crimes dismissed. and this has disastrous consequences as we see today in fukushima as we learned in america with the coal coal and mining disasters with the b.p. oil disaster last year when corporate capture of oil drilling regulations was so rampant that the regulators were literally in bed with the oil industry remember

they were attending sex and cocaine parties the regulators and the industry executives so when eleven men died after an oil rig explosion in the gulf of mexico and dumped millions and millions of barrels of oil into the waters choking wildlife ruining shorelines devastating people's incomes and altering our ecosystem for a generation or more we should have been to surprised the rig at a history of problems that were routinely overlooked not to mention as the oil was flowing the government constantly told half truths and obstructed investigations into exactly how much oil was contaminating our gulf of mexico every day just like in japan our regulators and the c.e.o.'s were covering their butts at the expense of the public interest and did you know that just a few weeks ago we almost lost the city of omaha probably not because regulators

and nuclear power executives swept the potential fukushima like disaster right under the rug the floodwaters came from the missouri river within inches of consuming the fort calhoun nuclear plant and knocking out the cooling ponds and keep its reactors from melting down fort calhoun sits about twenty miles away from omaha a city that would have been olenka to by radiation at the floodwaters ridden risen just a few more feet. the f.a.a. immediately arrived on the scene to do what enforce a no fly zone over the plant you know to make sure no no news helicopters could get in there and take pictures to show how bad the situation really was and stuff like this happens all the time every single day on its website the nuclear regulatory commission documents so-called minor mishaps at nuclear plants across america and as a report released in march by the union of concerned scientists noted there were fourteen

nuclear near misses in america just last year and hundreds of incidents with the potential to compromise plant safety fourteen times we almost lost that will get business continues as normal profits keep coming in you and i as heck as taxpayers keep subsidizing the oil industry the coal industry the gas industry the nuclear industry as we inch closer and closer in all of these cases to minor or major disasters so what needs to be done it's really simple we kick corporations out of the business of managing our energy needs today energy is just as important as food water education and national security it should be considered part of our commons and it should be treated that way as something that is both vital to and belongs to all of us something that we collectively we the people

control in fact local community should be responsible for toward determining how they generate their own energy needs lots of trans national corporation is looking for a cheaper land deal to build a nuclear reactor and i can promise you that residents of nami had a say in where the fukushima plant was built then a wooden a bit built five years for me five miles down the road in their own backyard. we need to kick the c.e.o.'s out of the commons and tell them they like nuclear power so much they can build a plant of their own private resort island sound heartless as the big picture for tonight for more information the stories we covered visit our website sometime martin dot com free speech dot org and. also check out our two you tube channels the links to tom hartman dot com this entire show is also available as a free video podcast on i tunes and we have a free tom hartman i phone app an i pad app and the app store that you sent us feedback to twitter at tylers who are been on facebook tom underscore our been on

our blogs message boards and telephone comment live on our radar. and don't forget democracy begins when you show up when you participate when you get active. your it will sit on. a machine three couldn't take three in-store chargers. arrangements three. three stooges free. and free brokers loaded videos for your media projects a free media gong to our teeth on time. he. you you know.