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 oprah for president obama's approval ratings now hang in 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 an 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 and he did what maybe the best way to shake these labels off is to look at the facts take a look at these charts that tell the real story of the obama presidency as for spending compared to former president bush obama as 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 gift wrap type of a little bow 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 deficit thanks to to an undead wars an unfunded prescription drug program and of course bush tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires according to future budget estimates have been obama has put the nation on track to start going down those bush era deficits when it comes to job of this chart tells you the whole story. but the 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 on killing jobs and what can the president do better to get this message out there eric answer that question is eric burns the former president of media matters and currently a founder and copartner of post right strategies air well they hear. so erick that's part present of 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 pretty thing i think for those to remember is that you have a republican. or a republican power base those in the house in the senate presidential candidates and then of course there were folks news that a vested 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. of choice twelve and so it's really all very political so about a little over a year ago we saw the white house appear to kind of take on fox news but it seemed

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

that 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 third year of a presidency people feel like they just 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 really everything right if you look at what he's done there 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 the 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 sure that all americans are going to be governor of kerry's done that and still minister really turn the problem here where we've had seventeen straight months of job growth in this country and americans were 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 recovered so mentioning jobs in this jobs package that the president is that he's going to be unveiling shortly again as a communications strategist what is your recommendation to the president and terms of how to unveil the package roll it out and talk to americans about jobs and the economy and 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 go astray with those charts that you showed a few moments ago this stuff can be complicated there's a lot of misinformation out there so the first thing is got to do is he's got to set the record straight and he's got to really explain to the american people in terms that they are going to to relate. where we are now and where we're headed and what this jobs package that he's going to he's proposing is going to do and i think that we also the democrats progressives and the white house as well it's over expectations that a lot of recoveries from major system that collapses don't happen overnight the fact that we're three years out 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 and a whole kind of hold the line or you know it could be worse or it isn't that bad is you know kind of a tough message to sell we've got one minute and ask you another quick question in terms of this you know this idea of obama being the post partisan president for. republican party that's basically by extremists. you know how does obama still be the coast part of that is that really working for him she is going to change that stance and go straight in and kind of not it's really go at war but start pushing back with with congress on how to handle the i don't know that he has or sort of sure something clearly the republicans in congress to not get the memo that we were in a post partisan environment and it's a shame because i think that we could be a lot further reward in this recovery if especially those if you're a cancer of the republicans in the house for more cooperative or worse so that the destruction of this presidency and ensuring that they control the reins of power in

this country which are these are the same incredibly cynical. 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 soon a little bit of it in the last couple weeks and i hope we're going to 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 thousand and seven point 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 through 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 levels not seen since the one

nine hundred twenty s. we're now more unequal nation than the ivory coast pakistan ethiopia and kazakhstan according to the cia. so when the entire middle class american medical asked this appears thank you we all accept that or break ins vision for america and the direction that the current republican party has this nation headed and then to lead us towards ruin recently com weighed in on the growing wealth imbalance in america and how it's the greatest threat to american democracy take a lap. as your member of congress supported teenage pregnancies drug abuse and violence. last week canadian members of parliament brought up an important issue in the house of commons wealth inequality 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 that about time we do the same. in two thousand and seven richard waterson and kate pickett published a book titled the spirit level by 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 an equal a nation or even a state is the bigger the gap between the rich and the poor then the worse it's social ills like teenage pregnancy or drug abuse or violence. in nearly every

single instance the higher the wealth inequality the bigger the problems and where does the u.s. rank well wilkerson pickett looked 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 of 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 leave 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 as income inequality goes up. portugal usa here we are

here with 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 any of these other nations take teenage birth rates again we blow other nations out of the water this is this is still prisoners how many kids get pregnant in our communities there's births for per thousand women the usa is way up here over sixty. norway in japan down at the bottom your take homicides yes well 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 in this in this nation go wild massive tax cuts and

deregulation at the same time let the poor sing deeper and deeper into desperation by 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 data set of social mobility wilkerson and pickett 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 come 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 regardless of 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 so right now. well you're a member of congress call your senators and so on one thing is the wealth inequality stupid. it's time for our daily poll that's your chance to tell us what you think here's today's question do we have fish really have a for the rich by the rich economy your choices are yes two 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 dot com to tell us what you think colby open until tomorrow morning. coming out as it closed for profit town hall meetings were enough

republicans have figured out another way to avoid their constituents and uncomfortable 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 put it through a bit through to be 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 t. question more.

here congress. and may be watching you as the chickens come home to roost this 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 and distributing watch lists these lists target constituents who ask the congressman tough questions about their policies at previous town halls these watch lists feature 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 is a cancer patient who asked congressman webster what might happen to people like her under the republican 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 the type of thing they do in old russia. so what's going on here for more of this i'm joined by marie time and reporter blogger at think progress well welcome mary thanks for having me so is the republican reaction to the hostility of these town halls is it almost like it mission of guilt in a way i mean they have been accusing democrats of of not really being being

activists in this and that but 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 and you know at the expense 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 what paul ryan take to call the cops on constituents or trying to meet with him or distributing people's facebook page you know flyers and stuff i mean is there any i mean why

don't they have a fear of retribution and 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 simply standing up and asking them questions so you know this story really starts back in april when all of these republicans went 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 our town hall one constituent after another lined up to asking tough questions and so in retaliation webster's office made this watch list of six constituents who have the audacity to ask 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 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 a guilt by association that they were targeting people's memberships to certain organizations there was one woman who had a photo for participating in a rally the national organization for women which has have republican presidents at their organization and in the past i mean it's essentially the republican candidates and the bipartisan so if their target people's affiliations and using them to undermine why is something like a nationalisation for women suspect or not americans for prosperity how are pretty well i think i can get away with saying that progressive groups you know make it so that your question isn't legitimate but not conservative well i think you are

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 district were actually paid activists which they weren't and this watch list had all sorts of factual errors grammatical errors typos it was a very creepy sort of list that was just slightly inaccurate in many ways it suggests many of the people work for barack obama misspelling brock by the way. or you know works 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 and it's a paid activist for some liberal group. it really kind of you know you said it it's so creepy i mean. what i mean if these guys are doing these town halls as part of their official duties so who's making these fliers i mean after using their official staff to do this you know these government resources going to searching people's facebook pages and rippling out their memberships and there's not a little yeah i mean that's over i think it is you know taxpayer dollars going to

fund the salaries of these staffers for griffin you know spend time composing these these watchlist the office 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 really disappointing and other interesting thing is i haven't really seen this on fox news i mean that's not that's new through all the coverage of these angry constituents about a constituent anger about obamacare all last summer but life is in part and he was covering that right no no it's curious we'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 at his own title hall 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 her 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 the story. that's just seems to be the latest antics 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 pocketed donors problem here is too much money in politics an issue that a lot about take a look. there's a simple way to make members of congress responsible for their voters again and exploiting corporate money out apologist like most healthy democracies are 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 in fact i take it a step that you know the the constitution it says members of congress can't be arrested you know unless they commit treason or felonies this could be basically

their head there are no responsibilities there are no members of congress must do this laid out the constitution i'd like to propose what you know it's. maybe ideal was to propose a. this comes out of the fact that john boehner the rules are we work two weeks on one week and four days a week by the way so there's plenty of time to be back in the district so how do 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 why paul 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 and the fact of the matter is the congress is not going to vote this rule for them so if they you know they have a two hundred some odd years and they're not about such a day but we can push for each one of us have the most with the district of

columbia have two senators and one member of the house of representatives those three representatives in congress might be interesting to call them up and just say each one of them are you were going to town hall nearby that i can visit. you know if so where and if not why not. and just you know know that you'd like to be speaking with them and in fact you know the senator bernie sanders of this program isn't just to set up a town hall meeting rent the local auditorium in your high school the local high school for example live where you usually get them for free get forty fifty people to commit to show up and then tell your elected representative. we've got a media waiting for you you're going to be there till the media broom make it happen. it's time for the crazy or the great diamond heist the honey bun the dog makes the pig panther look like a petty thief thinking they were tasty dog treats our friend and all of pristine

diamonds last week belonging to john ross jewelers in albany georgia the owner of the store and the owner of honey bun house hunch this caper was an inside job and took anyone to the animal hospital for x. rays sure enough the x. ray showed had ten thousand dollars worth of our police diamonds stashed in his gut eventually the diamonds were past cleaned up and sent back to the shop. makes the afternoon true of some we were invited to go home and recover. and ok. i hear the republican presidential candidate and i'm in love or newt gingrich is now trying to adopt. coming up i'll speak with one of the x. purchase clearheaded a project that exposing the lies behind the threat of being the atlantic or legend in america.

but given that we had an apartheid break. i think. even well. we haven't got the says to feel safe ready because their freedom.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so easy to understand it and then you glimpse something else here's you some other part of it and realize that everything you. don't. charge is a big issue. it's. a. little.

welcome back to the big picture america canadian for tom hartman coming up in this half hour a new study has uncovered the originators of the of llama phobia wave in america right down to the very funny i'll tell you who's behind the growing disturbing trend and from religious scaremongering 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.