hello america canadian for tom hartman in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture the storm may have passed through our nation's capital leaving little damage but there was a terrible blow at the white house where president for president obama's approval ratings now hang and the g.o.p. is literally taking names i'll tell you how they started a watch list to weed out those mouthy constituents. you need to know this while president obama woke up this morning to unscathed

washington d.c. after hurricane irene roared up the coast this past weekend he was hit by a wave of bad news on the political landscape according to the latest gallup poll the president's job approval ratings are at an all time high but fifty five percent of americans now disapprove of the way president obama is handling his job a summer of double dip recession worries and a debt downgrade are taking a toll on the president is desperately looking for a way to shake the big spending debt piling job killing label republicans have stuck on him before the two thousand and twelve elections maybe the best maybe the best way to shake these labels off is to look at the facts. take a look at these charts that sell the real story of the obama president saying as for spending compared to former president bush obama has a tightwad over eight years of president bush federal spending increased by eighty eight percent so far president obama has only added seven percent in extra spending

and that was mostly to deal with the great recession that bush left practically giftwrap types a little blow for obama on the front steps of the white house. and look at this chart plotting the annual budget deficit bush inherited one hundred twenty eight billion dollars surplus from bill clinton and squandered it he created enormous deficits thanks to two unfunded wars an unfunded prescription drug program and of course bush tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires according to future budget estimates president obama has put the nation on track to start with going down those bush era deficits when it comes to jobs while this chart tells you the whole story with his so-called failed stimulus package in one year president obama wiped clean the massive job losses from the final months of the bush presidency and got our economy creating jobs again from month to month we are now in our seventeenth straight month of job creation in the private sector and it's thanks to the president's economic policies. so why are these facts not getting through to the

american people who still think the president is spending too much in killing jobs and what can the president do better to get this message out their hair answer that question is eric burns the former president of media matters and currently a founder and copartner of post right strategies eric welcome here again. so eric our president media matters you understand the conservative media machine why can't obama shake this reputation as a free spender who has ballooned the deficit was a printing i think the first remembers that you have a republican or a republican power base it was in the house in the senate presidential candidates than it was there were force news of this a vested political interest in ensuring that americans think the economy is still headed south so that they can have you know you prove their electoral chances. with choice for all of them so it's really all very political so about a little over a year ago we thought the white house appeared to kind of take on fox news but it

seemed to backfire and since then they they've backed off i mean as a communications strategist erick how should obama deal with the factual distortions and the ox news problem he seems out of i've been a firm believer for a long time and not writing any go unchallenged and i think that the president it was it was a year a half or so ago what he called out news for a lot of it was i think it really set them back on their heels the right wing has such an enormous communications infrastructure with the word their way to your network and having the most powerful cable show out there in the country that their ability to it's a lot of the american people is almost a match and it's got to be pushed back so i want to go back to you know kind of both i guess both sides of the approval ratings i mean obviously some of the lies that kind of just a will to fire for conservatives but looking over kind of a progressive stand a lot of progressives have been very disappointed with this administration and they were expecting a public option. an immigration reform climate change bill and kind of an eyelid

hasn't come up has that really affected you think these polling numbers i mean i don't think there's any question that it has you know especially in the first year of a presidency people feel like they passed with this president people expected hope and change and they expected it immediately we had a lot of change and this president has done really i think much everything right if you look at what he's done has been able to get everything that folks wanted him to not yet and of course obviously there have been as you noted three wars that two wars george bush got us into we've had a few more international crises we've had the greatest economic crisis since the great depression and the president's had to deal with those things as presidents do and he's done that and still manage to pass health care and ensure that all americans are going to be every bit of kerry's done that and still minutes from now we turn the economy around we've had seventeen straight months of job growth in this country and americans are feeling but we should remember that in two thousand and eight when the collapse happened. to come for predicting that we would be

losing jobs through two thousand and twelve and that's not the case we're actually recovering so mentioning and jobs in this jobs package that the president is going to be unveiling shortly and again as a communications strategist what's your recommendation to the president and in terms that how to unveil the package roll it out and talk to americans about jobs and the economy where we are where we should be where we want to go well i think i think one of those important things you can do is you deliberated with those charts that you shared a few moments ago this stuff can be complicated there's a lot of misinformation out there so the first thing is going to be is going to set the record straight and he's got to really explain to the american people in terms that they are going to relate to where we are now and where we're headed and then what this jobs package that he's going to he's proposing is going to do and i think that we also democrats progressives and the good right else as well how to temper expectations economic recoveries from major system it collapses don't happen overnight the fact that we're three years. from the collapse of two thousand and

eight and doing as well as we are i think is a credit to the leadership of this administration. kind of hold the line or you know it could be worse or it isn't that bad is that you know kind of a tough message to sell we've got one minute and i ask you another quick question in terms of this you know this idea of obama being the post partisan president. republican party that's basically by extremists and. you know how does obama still be the post partisan is that really working for him she is going to change that stance and go straight in and kind of not answer they go at war but start pushing back with with congress on how to handle the i don't know that he is or should be true or something clearly the republicans into it was to not get the memo that we were in a post production environment and it's a shame because i think that we could be a lot further along in this recovery if especially those of your character the republicans in the house were more cooperative and weren't so on the destruction of this presidency ensuring that they control the reins of power in this country which is where the incredibly cynical but you know in terms of what this president should

do i think it's going to have to take off the gloves and circulating he's good at it when he does it i think we're going to see it machine a little bit of it in the last couple weeks and i hope we will see a lot more of them. thank you so much for coming on the show that you are having on here moving beyond politics there's more evidence of a widening inequality gap in america thanks to thirty plus years of reaganomics according to the atlantic magazine two thirds of all new income in america between two thousand and two in two thousand and seven when just to the top one percent of americans that's two out of every three dollars in america being sucked up by the richest of the rich not to mention that the wealthiest four hundred americans our nation's most senior oligarchy to own more wealth than the bottom one hundred and fifty million americans have seen their incomes double over the last twelve years while their tax rates have been cut virtually in half talk about for the rich by the rich economy wealth inequality in america that lead. not since the one nine

hundred twenty s. and we're now more on equal nation then the ivory coast pakistan ethiopia and profits time according to the cia. and the entire middle class american medical officer peers and can we all accept that reagan's vision for america and the direction that the current republican party has this nation headed in going to lead us towards ruin recently com weighed in on the growing wealth and balance in america and how it's the greatest threat to american democracy take a lot. does your member of congress support teenage pregnancies drug abuse and violence. last week canadian members of parliament brought up an important issue in the house of commons wealth inequality but motion was agreed upon across party lines did read this house notes the findings that societies with smaller income differences between rich and poor have fewer health and social problems such as teenage births violence mental illness and drug abuse through notes such societies

have higher levels of trust between citizens and more social mobility and therefore encourages the government to promote policies that reduce income inequality. in other words they're going to do something about the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer in canada. so is it about time we do the same. in two thousand and seven richer waterson in cape published a book titled the spirit level the equal societies almost always do better the book was based on decades of data where they looked at nearly two dozen developed nations on the planet and compared every u.s. state against the others and studied wealth inequality guess what they found is that the more unequal a nation or even a state is the bigger the gap between the rich and the poor than the worst it's social ills like teenage pregnancy or drug abuse or violence. it's. in nearly every

single instance the higher the wealth inequality the bigger the problems and where does the u.s. rank well here sort of pick it up to japan sweden finland norway germany spain france the netherlands italy australia denmark belgium switzerland austria greece canada ireland israel the u.k. you zealand and portugal comparing all those countries what they found. is that the u.s. is by far and away the most unequal we have the biggest gap between the rich and the poor of all these other nations and because of that we lead the way in problems take infant mortality we are the very very worst when it comes to how many failed births there are every year far more than any nation in the world down here you have jet this is low japan sweden norway spain germany france has income inequality goes up. portugal usa here we are here we infant this is infant deaths per live

births all the way up here it's been down here three for japan and sweden low income inequality take imprisonment rates again where the very very worst with a far higher percentage of people serving in prison than in any of these other nations take teenage birth rates again we blow other nations out of the water this is this is the prisoners with how many kids get pregnant in our communities there's births for oprah thousand women and usa is way up here over sixty. norway in japan down at the bottom near ten take homicides guess what we win that too with far more murders than any other nation work there and take drug abuse boom there we are at the top again with the most drug addicts all of this all of these problems because we've let the rich in the the in. in this nation go wild massive

tax cuts and deregulation and at the same time let the poor sing deeper and deeper into desperation busting up unions and cutting away the social safety nets put into place by f.d.r. and l.b.j. perhaps this is the most important as social mobility wilkerson and pick it look at other nations to see how often poor people moved up to higher wealth classes in other words how easy it is to become to go from a poor family and become middle class or even wealthy on your own this is essentially the basis of the american dream the idea that anyone can make it here we go to where you came from and when it comes to social mobility when it comes to the american dream america finished dead last the lowest social mobility of all the other nations studied. the lowest. the american dream no longer exists because of extreme wealth inequality in america we can't continue on like this our government your member of congress must acknowledge soon that its wealth

inequality is the biggest threat to america today it's not our debt it's not illegal immigration it's not our taxes it's wealth inequality canada gets it the rest of the developed world gets it but we don't call your member of congress call your senators and tell them one thing is though wealth inequality stupid. if. that's your chance to tell us what you think here's today's question do we have fish they have a for the rich by the rich to me their choices are yes q thirds of all the income in the us between two thousand and two and two thousand and seven went to the top one percent of americans or no the entire middle class hasn't disappeared yet log on to thom hartmann to tell us what you think hold the opening for tomorrow morning . coming out as it closed for profit town hall meetings where enough republicans have. figured out another way to avoid their constituents and i'm comfortable

question i'll tell you how they're utilizing watch lists. what drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions to break through that sort of been made who can you trust no one who is in view with the global machinery to see where are we heading state controlled capitalism is called sessions when nobody dares to ask we do our tea question more.

your congressman may be watching you as the chickens come home to roost that august republicans continue to take drastic measures to avoid tough questions and disapproving constituents at town halls to republican congressman dan webster from florida and tim griffin from arkansas have been caught creating industry being watched lists these lists target constituents who asked the congressman tough questions about their policies at previous town halls. these watch lists feature of the names and faces of six floridians and offer a list of pointed questions directed at exposing their bias these flyers mainly containing pictures pulled from constituents personal facebook pages are then distributed to townhall participants and what appears to be an effort to intimidate others from asking similar tough questions as in if you ask the question

a question the congressman doesn't like your suspect so watch as you say or you might end up on one of these wanted posters one person on the list was a cancer patient who asked congressman webster what might happen to people like her under the republican budget proposal seems like a fair question another person is a sixty six year old vietnam veteran who was who upon hearing that he was on the list said i think it's pretty weird someone asks a legitimate question and all of a sudden somebody has got a dossier on you it's a type of thing they do in a little russia. so what's going on here and more of this i'm joined by mary diamond reporter blogger at think progress well welcome very thanks for having me so is the republican reaction to the hostility of these town halls is it almost like i could admission of guilt in a way i mean they have been accusing democrats of not really being being activists in this and that is this really proves that they've been astroturfing well it's

certainly certainly shirking their very basic responsibility to make themselves accessible to their constituents and this august recess we've seen republican congressmen resort to all sorts of tactics to avoid free and candid discussions with their constituents because they've been so embarrassed in the past at these town hall meetings so several republicans like budget committee chairman paul ryan have refused to hold any free and open town hall meetings others have only held them at very remote locations most of their constituents can't get to the extreme of the of the spectrum we're seeing you know political retribution for town hall audience members who have spoken up and challenge their congressman so i mean it seems to me like you know i've worked for a member of congress and i would never suggest something like paul ryan to call the cops on constituents or trying to meet with him or distributing people's facebook page. and stuff i mean is there any i mean why don't they have

a fear of retribution how does this looking to constituents yeah i mean they can't be playing well you know it looks like the breakdown of kind of the relationship between the citizen and their government right right well that's what's so deeply unsettling about this story is that we don't expect to see this in a free democratic society you know these are congressmen who are targeting their own constituents who are private citizens or simply standing up and asking them questions so you know this story really starts back in april when all of these republicans want to back to their home districts and faced really tough scrutiny for everything from support. corporate tax breaks to voting to end medicare and one representative as you mentioned dan webster a tea party freshman florida. was really humiliated of new orleans a town hall where one constituent after another lined up to ask them tough questions and so in retaliation webster's office made this watch list of six constituents who might have the audacity to ask him questions so webster in turn.

distributed this list to other republican members of congress who have now been giving out to their own constituents at town hall meetings to discourage precipitation so the clear message is think twice before you stand up and ask an embarrassing question or you might end up on the next list one of the things that i saw on these lists that really personally disturbed me was that it was kind of guilt by association that they were targeting people's memberships to certain organizations there was one of the men who had a photo of her participating in a rally the national organization for women which has have republican presidents of their organization and in the past i mean it's essentially the republican candidates have bipartisan so if their target people's affiliations and using them to undermine why is something like a nationalisation for women suspect but not americans for prosperity how why do they why can they get away with saying that progressive groups you know make it so that your question isn't legitimate but not conservative well i think

a more important point is that you know what they're trying to do with these lists is make it seem like these constituents who are all residents of webster's district were actually paid activists which they weren't and this watch list had all sorts of factual errors or magical errors typos it was a very creepy sort of that was just completely inaccurate in many ways it suggests many of the people work for barack obama misspelling brock by the way or you know work for move on dot org and move on president so this is ridiculous to think that you know any constituent who stands up at a town hall meeting and questions a republican is a paid activist for some. it really kind of you know is that it it's so creepy i mean. when i mean if these guys are doing these town halls as part of their official duties so who's making these flyers i mean they're using their official staff to do this i mean these government resources going to searching people's facebook pages and holding out their memberships and there's not a little yeah i mean that's what i would rather get is you know taxpayer dollars

going to fund the salaries of these staffers for sure and griffin you know spend time composing these these watch lists the office of congressman tim griffin said that they got the watch list from webster's office so that certainly suggests that webster staffers played a big part in putting this list together and i find that incredibly disappointing and other interesting thing is that i haven't really seen this on fox news i mean if that's not facts new through all the coverage of these angry constituents about a constituents angry about obamacare all last summer about why isn't fox news covering this right no no it's curious you're not seeing it on fox and you know it's funny today senator john thune actually said that the question that he's getting most often that his own title hold meetings is a criticism of republicans for wanting to end medicare and social security so actually some republicans are admitting that the tilt they're saying at their town hall meetings are heavily in favor of what we'd call democratic priorities you know preserving entitlement programs and being tax breaks for the wealthy well thank you

so much for coming on and sharing this story. it's just seems to be the latest antics by republicans who are offended by voters who don't like their radical policies and hate being held accountable by their constituents however these guys seem to bend over backwards to please their feet donors problem here is too much money in politics an issue that knows a lot about iraq. is a simple way to make members of congress responsible for their voters again and exploiting corporate money out of politics like most healthy democracies of various ways to do. money is to politics what cancer is to our bodies and with the time freedom from fundraising the members of congress could begin to listen to we the people. phrase that the constitution begins with their constituents and if i could take it a step beyond that you know the constitution it says members of congress can't be arrested you know unless they commit treason or felonies they could be basically

there had there are no responsibilities there are no members of congress must do this and laid out the constitution i'd like to propose one you know it's. maybe idealistic but i'd like to propose a. this comes out of the fact that john boehner the rules are we work two weeks on one week from four days a week by the way so there's plenty it's id back in the district so how does suggesting that you have to use at least half your vacation days which are about a half a year old town hall meetings and talk to your constituents if you're going to hold public office now the fact of the matter is oh and by the way you can't privatized them you can't charge for them michael ryan and ben quayle are doing you know forty bucks a pop if you want to ask a question and then basically tom has become fodder as yours let's make them real town halls now the fact of the matter is the congress is not going to vote this rule for themself the you know they have it in two hundred some odd years and they're not about to today but we can push that each one of us have the most with

the district of columbia we have two senators and one member of the house of representatives there's three representatives in congress might be interesting to call them up and just say each one of them are you all going to town hall nearby that i can visit. you know if so where and if not why not. and just you know let it go that you'd like to be speaking with and in fact you know the senator bernie sanders of this program has suggested set up a town hall meeting at the local auditorium in your high school the local high school for example live where you usually get them for free and get forty or fifty people to commit to show up and then tell your elected representative. we've got a meeting waiting for you you're going to be there all the media we're going to maybe. it's time for the crazy or the great diamond heist honeybun the dog that makes the pink panther look like a petty thief thinking they were tasty dog treats our friend and all of christine romans last week belonging to john ross jewelers in albany georgia the owner of the

store and the owner of honey bun had a hunch this caper was an inside job and took anyone to the animal hospital for x. rays sure enough the x. ray showed. ten thousand dollars worth of arc lee diamond stashed in his gut eventually the diamonds were passed cleaned up to the shop. makes the afternoon truro slewing button two diamonds recovered. i hear the republican presidential candidate and i'm in love or newt gingrich is now i guess really trying to adopt anybody. coming up i'll speak with one of the act searchers clearheaded a project that exposing the lies behind the threat and because of the islamic religion if america.

let's not forget that we had an apartheid regime. i think. either well. we never got the shows the safe get ready because of their freedom. you know sometimes you see

a story in the scene so. you think you understand it and then he glimpse something else you sure see some other part of it and realize that everything you saw you don't. charge is a big. welcome

back to the big picture america canadian for tom hartman coming up in this half hour a new study has uncovered the origin heirs of the of long the phobia wave in america right down to the very penny i'll tell you who's behind the growing disturbing trend and a religious fear mongering to the denial of mother nature and tonight's daily take tom explains why climate change should not be ignored. so what can forty two million dollars get you how about a whole nation addicted to it llama phobia according to a new study released last week by the center for american progress that in foundations have spent forty two.