for the place millen 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 pump maybe gas us today at high party or with global warming clobbered a sabata the temperature is too damn high party has a nice ring to it dontcha think. 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 have voters can see past the roughly forty million dollars in tea advertising the koch brothers karl rove and other huge interests at ford into the state to prop up the republican politicians they all. drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who made decisions. made who can you trust no one who is in view with the global machinery see where we

had a state controlled capitalism is called satchels when nobody dares to ask we do our tea question more. welcome back to the big picture i'm tom hartman coming up in this half hour it was

crowded so 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 of corporate dollars through democracy and how is that new voter id law work and what's a ski the 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 ugly story so 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 face recall for supporting governor scott walker's anti-union efforts earlier this year and 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 these 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 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 as 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 will we see a truly democratic electoral victory for democrats or will we see yet another major election in america subverted by corporate interests using last year's supreme court's citizens united and united decision here to offer his take on this is jim dean the chair of democracy for america jim welcome. hey todd thanks for having me if i could just make one slight correction at the polls are open for another hour until eight o'clock central time and i just want to make sure that 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 we should have told you before you came on the air jim we prerecorded the show an hour earlier so . this will play at nine and by then it will polls will be closed so any i want to look like on the ground. i don't it looks pretty good i get up i must say the folks here i mean our staff that's 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 better and i apologize for having to say that i've just been saying it for the cows come home because i really i don't think we're going to know until tomorrow exactly how this goes but i have 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 the congressman certain aura on my radio show a week or two ago a lot way 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 turn over forty plus percent of their voters the democratic voters figured hey we got the house we got the senate we got only

a democrat the white house but and historically i'm a crap in the white house so you know we can just go play baseball or something we don't need a 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 election 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 does that why you. know it does not that here in wisconsin you know the voters 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 took wisconsin by a i think thirteen points and yet they are out in force they have an out and every single district including the democratic defend districts will. solidly and very active and again the field program and getting out of vote in

a voluntary 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've got it done now and one of the other recent really the most important reason is because i think they know up front seeing a scott walker become governor last year and from seeing russ feingold lose his race i think they know now no other consequences 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 that the carpet and. album jim david vines a student there who is also a part time in the reporter has been on our show before he told us today that he's heard reports of voters because students being turned away because they don't have proper id because of the recently passed voter id law in that state you're in the like that. actually i have 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

who 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 proof of 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. well i think we already have the proper implications which had the people in this state the voters of this state have already stood out remember sort of hotbeds of so-called democratic activity at places like milwaukee and madison those districts aren't even part of all of this recall these are alkali districts that are 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 governance they want an honest debate about the budget not what scott walker is done and the implications going forward are they going to be happen

in ohio this year where we have an opportunity to repeal governor casings 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 i'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 thought this kind of governance is kind of a no compromise governance in congress on its you bag he will see the pathway to his reelection a lot easier than it is right now you know very very well said jim dean thank you 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 though and there in wisconsin thanks a lot you bet they did great they spread the odd tom always great at it we'll 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. it's just. it's the good the bad of a 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 on a gets waterhouse why because according to the person who requested the book be banned the teachers principals were crying for a while and you thought banning books for religious reasons didn't happen in america well the bought a couple more in 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 that's what they find what they need the bad steve doocy the fox and friends bawdy jumped into a discussion about president obama's handling of the economy this morning with his little joke but 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 same taste president say somewhere inside they must be doing internal polling that this is working with not only his base but with independent voters that he potentially needs to be reelected well 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 two field wars crumbling infrastructure tattered social safety

net failing educational system broken tax code massive trade imbalance. is unhealthy addiction to oil so i could go on way to go do see you when the bush apologist award for the day and a 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 the idea employees from it purchase it needs to happen it would tie things up no question about that water we allow them to go unchecked the worst 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 we're just 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 may answer and why we need to get corporations out of the business of managing our energy or energy needs and other commons next in my deleted. drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions to break through get through if you have made who can you trust no one who is you know what you do with the global machinery to see where are we heading state controlled capitalism is called sasha's when nobody dares to ask we do our t. question more.

your 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 and i came to us via twitter truly a tween to ask about how the media is framing the whole debt ceiling debacle will lead 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 what 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 continue 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 close 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 knock us down into a double a plus saying that guys are 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 debt so a downgraded us standard and poor's says that washington didn't raise the debt ceiling fast enough or cut spending deep enough and s. and p. cited rising public debt policymaking uncertainty and failure to deal with spending on entitlements as major factors in its decision so why is that the standard and poor's is calling out the republicans and all these local t.v. stations are calling out the spending but the problem with the american media by and large fickle of the mainstream media is something called access and dirty little secret of the media is that if you're doing a kind of show that only works if you get big name republicans on it then you have to be willing to suck up to them and not call them out on the lie on the air this is why networks and t.v. performers end up worrying about not losing their position in the competitive media

landscape or saying something that would alienate their sources so they back off from hoarding 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 crewman's observation a self-fulfilling prophecy. our next your comment is for me thom hartmann 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 an eight hundred eighty six and put on steroids by last years that is 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 say 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 out of the unions are made by a majority vote in the members corporations on the other hand are kingdoms and c.e.o.'s playing the role of kings so both were forbidden from using their money for politics where they have left their members the case of the unions their employees in 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 most

workers will simply ignore the memo. on the other hand if a union sends out a newsletter endorsing 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 it will work out and our final comments tonight is again from twitter last night i told you about a group of p.r. interns in new york who have launched a twitter blitz convince the powers who 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 fun stuff that works with any thought on any platform it's called sort of left leaning hard to the subtle to say hey it's ok

i am being served. in the future you're able to censor tell the size emails to your family so you can tell your great. grandparents as you helped solve the world's greatest crisis. well the group who invented search alex is watching the show last night and tweeted. so it's highlights here what a terrible t.v. segment we 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 were always on the lookout for fun and interesting stories here in the big picture in 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 or uscis and help solve the world's great 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 you have this p.r. thing down pat. that's it for my take your insight 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 by visiting the tom hartman facebook page by a twitter at tom underscore her or in the chat room on the message boards or through the blog at thom hartmann dot com you can also leave a message on our rant line at two o two five three six fifty three zero six agree disagree sound off it's all welcome 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 in the days after the nuclear meltdown at the fukushima plant thousands of nearby residents in the city of nami about five

miles away from the crippled 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 a private for profit corporation running focus you informed the government everything's just fine we now know today they lied to protect their profits the government projection models that actually showed a cloud every spewing from fukushima and heading right toward shima yet no one was warned why. well most likely because tepco and the government regulator officials they were buddy buddy with wanted to downplay the crisis from the very beginning and all the evidence points to that tepco was thinking about their shareholders and 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 putting 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 and mirrored 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 pretty 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 nine hundred president teddy roosevelt said there could be no effective control of corporations rather 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 has roosevelt warrant we've lost our ability to effectively control energy corporations in america just like the way tepco was ineffective with controlled japan regulations have been carved up mishaps over water and 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 of 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 you

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 down to 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 too surprised the rig had 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 in the c.e.o.'s are 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 it with central focus 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 pumps to keep its reactors from melting down for calhoun so it's about twenty miles away from omaha a city that would have had a lengthy aided by radiation had 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 couldn't 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 our good business continues as normal the profits keep coming and you and i as heck as taxpayers can subsidize it 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 get corporations out of the business of managing our energy needs they energy is just as important as food water education and national security and should be considered part of our commons and 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 communities should be responsible

for toward determining how they generate their own energy needs not some trans national corporation is looking for a cheaper land deal to build a nuclear reactor and i can promise you that residents of naani had a say in where the fukushima plant was built then a wooden a bit built five years fire to five miles down the road in their own backyard. we need to kick the c.e.o.'s out of the commons and tell him if they like nuclear power so much they could build a plot of their own private resort island bahamas as the big picture person night for more information the stories we covered visit our web sites of tom hartman dot com free speech dot org and r.t.i. also check out our two you tube channels there are links of tom hartman dot com its entire show is also available as a free video podcast on i tunes and we have a free town hartman i phone app and i pad app and the app store you can send us feedback at twitter at tyler square arbonne on facebook it's on underscore in our

blogs message boards and telephone comment line. and don't forget democracy begins when you show up when you participate when you get active tag your it will see them a. wealthy british style. sometimes. market trying to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with much stronger or a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to the report.