their homes for example you know the rather than throwing the money to the banks two years when the when the mortgage meltdown happened why didn't they give money to to homeowners it would have been by this what franklin roosevelt did back in the thirty's. he created because most people had five year mortgages back in the thirty's and they were blowing up he said that's fine we'll create a federal agency will buy your five year mortgages turn him into thirty year mortgages and you can pay them off over time the federal government actually made a profit on that over a forty year period with a lifeline for the unemployed they can say ok unemployment insurance like with virtually all the european countries it lasts as long as you're unemployed it doesn't end at the end of fifty two weeks or ninety nine weeks or whatever it lasts as long as you're unemployed so the unemployed still have money in their pockets to spend on creating that demand which is what stimulates the economy congress could close the corporate tax loopholes that allow companies to ship us jobs overseas by the millions they could get our students out of jail debt and into

a job but more importantly to fix the problem for good we need to build a new dam dam with a solid foundation of a protective trade policy that allows us industries to prosper and not have to compete with cheap labor around the world began pieced together by a reasonable tax policy that helps grow the middle class and not just the top one percent of wealthy americans or the four hundred dollars a damn that's not the pen and upon the military industrial complex and endless wars around the world like george bush brought us but damn it's agile and can bend and move according to the pressure behind it in other words a damn built by lawmakers who know what's best for america and aren't afraid to tell their corporate donors go. we need to give ben bernanke you rest and call on congress to fix our economy by rolling back reagan's in same taxing and borrowing policies and clinton's failed so-called free trade policies it's the only way to

keep our nation from being washed away by the damn finally progress that's the big picture. coming up cutting from wasteful spending is the new republican mantra for one of the so-called ways both spending has actually hurricane disaster relief one congressman is leading the push to leave flooded i remove the dems high and dry. let's not forget that we had an apartheid regime right. i think. either one well.

we never got the shows the safe get ready because their freedom. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so poorly you think you understand it and then you glimpse else you know here's some other part of it and realize that everything you thought you knew you don't i'm sorry is a big issue. now

welcome back to the big picture i am lucy craft now and tom hartman now coming up in this half hour residence in burma continue to struggle in troubled waters and are in desperate need for emergency plans are surprise surprise the house majority leader eric cantor has decided to turn the disaster until political war later on the show tom will give his take on why he would legislative powers that be to

refocus their attention from overseas in their own backyard in just about. all right will the republican house majority leader eric cantor has officially chosen his next hostage unfortunately they're the victims of hurricane irene now with flooding as as high. nearly a foot in some areas the hurricane has left the state of vermont struggling in the worst natural disaster in more than a century in fact several towns still remain cut off from funding sorry from aid because the washed out roads and bridges are just blocking any efforts there and the storm did kill more than forty people along the eastern seaboard we can one in ten billion dollars in damages not to mention the fact that hurricane katrina is still fresh in everyone's mind so it would seem that funding for the disaster relief is one of those rare few things that both parties can perhaps agree on not

so much it seems especially not if you are eric cantor the congressman decided that this disaster was the absolute perfect opportunity for him to take a political stance to show the world just how serious he is about cutting frivolous spending you know frivolous spending on disaster americans very very frivolous here now here's a congressman on fox news yesterday explaining his stance. in instances like this yes there's a federal role yes we're going to from the money we're just going to need to make sure that there are savings elsewhere to continue to do so. now cantor is now calling for huge cuts to thema as well as first responders programs to offset any additional disaster relief funds as an cutting a cut from disaster relief programs to fund disaster relief we don't really know how this works but apparently he does now the irony of cantor's demands didn't escape for louisiana senator mary landrieu who asked rhetorically does it really

make sense to pay for response and reconstruction costs from athens asters by reducing our capacity to prepare for future disasters and of course this isn't cancerous first foray into disaster relief irony when the tornadoes a white tell joplin missouri back in may only agreed to a billion dollars in disaster relief if a billion and a half dollars were cut out of the green cars initiative in other words cut funding for. programs to curb global warming to pay for disasters caused by a local warming you just can't make this stuff up now for more on what is wrong with eric cantor and these policies i'm joined by pat rock low he is the economic policy director at think progress dot org perhaps thank you so much for being here so explain this to me now i get the republicans want to make cuts you know they're trying to balance the budget when they're talking about making cuts to things like eight or nine and p.r. planned parenthood i mean agree with politically but i get how these could be

little flash points for their followers but to cut from female and first responders in order to pay for a first response efforts that doesn't really make sense to me no it doesn't make any sense at all you're literally literally wants to cut fema to pay for fema the problem we have now is that down to its last legs it has about eight hundred million dollars it's bank account for disaster relief and obviously this storm caused billions of dollars in damages. cantor is now saying that that needs to be cut from somewhere anywhere the bill that he suggested was cuts to first responders but interestingly eric cantor in two thousand and four when his district was hit by a storm had no we did not hesitate at all to ask for federal funds to pay for relief and in the letter he sent to the disaster relief funds to fema to the executive branch didn't mention offsets anywhere surprise surprise and virginia i mean it was hugely affected i was flying out of the country are supposed to fly

back i couldn't fly back on sunday because the airports were flooded. for under threat of being flooded so i don't know is there some it's his state. exactly it really makes no sense and not only are the republicans asking this particular set of disaster relief be offset by budget cuts elsewhere if you look at the appropriations bill the pay passed out of the appropriations committee in july it actually cuts funding for hurricane monitoring this particular kind of hurricane monitoring as per plane military planes that actually fly into the hurricane and look around to get a better sense of exactly where the hurricane is going this particular organization see an estimated one hundred to one hundred fifty million dollars per storm their total budget is twenty nine million dollars and republicans are looking to cut it is just absurd to being you know especially when we're looking at a situation where this country economic woes aside it's still the wealthiest country in the world country think that when it comes to something like natural disasters that the u.s. government could be like ok guys we've got this one well it's

a sense of priorities right how many freedom bombs that we're dropping on afghanistan and what could be put to what would it take to pay for the disaster relief here and in the history of this country how have there been other examples of the government potentially being stingy with things like disaster relief in the past century it's really unheard of i don't want to speak to every single disaster back to the history of america but at least in modern history there's never been an instance where one party was standing against relief for people with acted by a natural disaster and eric cantor himself said had no did not hesitate at all to ask for federal funds when his district was affected as well as he well should have exactly what a congressman is supposed to do and i'm wondering in your view i mean you've covered these issues for a while do you do you think that this is just the regular sort of back and forth rhetoric that we see out of the republican party or is that has there been some sort of a shift sort of a more radical shift perhaps to you know hold whatever issue regardless of how it affects americans hostage in order to really drive home the point of. the bud. it

we're going to make cuts has it as isolated that is absolutely has escalated making look at the debt ceiling fight that was a political feel that was something that never been used as a political football before and suddenly the republicans were willing to let the country fault in order to get their budget cuts this is kind of if you think about the next logical step will frighten the country with default and now will hold hold some disaster relief funding hostage to get our agenda through it really is a new phase and it's partly because of the tea party and cantor's particular instance it's partly because he wants to look even more extreme than john boehner because i think he has an eye on that job in the future. john boehner has some less aren't competition i guess but but at the same time i mean can't this campus fire back backfire if you're talking about something like disaster relief i mean virginians are affected by that vermont residents are affected by that real americans are affected by that if this is all for what i don't know the twenty fold election. can fall through and hurt them at the end i certainly hope so i have no

faith in the american people that this is one instance where they will realize the g.o.p. is really going to have certain lengths in this anti federal government in crusade that they've been on the right and it is interesting we saw the white house spokesman today point out sort of. admired cantor for his his stance and laments that the republicans are more and more proactive about their firmness to cut spending in the previous administration but let's look at that contrast really briefly i mean we didn't really see this kind of rhetoric coming out under bush when we were spending money on a lot of all tax cuts that are a huge medicare benefit that was unpaid for two giant tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefited rich people and never a peep out of republicans about maybe we should pay for it every once in a while you see somebody so you know maybe it's a terrible idea and just get mowed down by the rest of the party but now something as critical as disaster relief is an excuse to ask for budget cuts right and given the fact that this has gotten media attention we're talking about it you guys have

been posting about this. it's you know there are other networks sort of start to look into this realistically is this going to be it an actual issue or are they going to get on to something they need and i would like to think that someone g.o.p. communications side will realize that this can turn into a big disaster and backfire on them and the money will go through but you never know we've already seen female say that they will not do any more reconstruction on the joplin tornado relief effort because they have to move money over to the hurricane relief effort so already it's having an effect it isn't something that is a theoretical effect and somewhere down the line it's already having an effect on people on the ground right now and just a place populated what's the next fight over a certain issue that's going to get stuck in the political crossfire here we have the government funding resolution runs out in a few months the gas tax expires pretty soon there's going to be no shortage of things that you if you can hold hostage essentially are saying my job as a journalist is going to be plenty busy and in the coming months absolutely well at

least more employed so at least there's some film or lining here not so much for the folks in burbank for a prince of india where my parents are still without power so i think that somebody all right well thank you so much for your time thank you. well that may have been a movie but there was no snakes on a this plane a passenger trying to board a flight out of miami international airport didn't exactly make it past the mike chertoff or no scanner the t.s.a. agents discovering. say a strange gold in his hands now it turns out that this man was trying to smuggle

bags of exotic animals in his trousers all in all t.s.a. agents found seven snakes three turtles stashed in nylon bags in his pants all those photos you saw there right there and his underpants the whole legibly the man tried to avoid a search by telling the t.s.a. agent that he was just happy to see him i guess a brings a whole new meaning to that saying there's a party in my town. and which war is a bigger threat the war on terror or wall street's war on america well tom will break it all down for us in tonight's daily take stay tuned.

we are in a park right brooke. well . the e.u. will never says they're safe radek because freedom. of movement. will or are all. of them. you know sometimes you see the story in the soup so. you think you understand it and then you give them something else here's some other part of this and realized everything you saw you don't charge is

a big. love that music has you know what it means it's time for the good and the bad and the very very cold dealy ugly you learn a new word every time again now first up the good larry powell

a superintendent in california a surprise no county is sacrificing a month of his own a stunning two hundred fifty thousand bucks put in his has strapped school can stay afloat now for the remainder of his term power will make a meager thirty one thousand dollars a year salary which i have to say for some americans this is all they can bring home with the rest of his paycheck going back to the school budget over the next three years now when he was asked about the decision to take a cut alice said quote my wife and i are very well compensated we've been very blessed these are tight budget times in california for public schools and my wife and i thought that what we can do to might help change the dynamic in my particular area well done i certainly hope a few lawmakers here in washington will take a page from his will. well i have to say i can think of a lot better places that we can find some extra cash to help schools namely wall street running all that stuff the bad sean hannity that hannah ties or as

tom likes to call him and then hannah ties are devoted an entire segment of the show last night to calling president obama dumb for mispronouncing the word corman take a look. this isn't a gaffe he wrote his teleprompter three times and he doesn't know the name corpsman and he's such a commander in chief and you don't have the courage to admit it if you read them three times this is fascinating right because he's such a genius i'd like if you did me write a thesis of columbia i look for them to release it i love to see what it was about i think in the spirit of being the most transparent administration if you will to give it to us but go be asking do you think he made a mistake or do you think he didn't know what a cordon was i think it i don't like every liberal he genius that drives the economy i did and then you say this guy's brilliant and i'm just curious because that's what. the economy a message true wars three wars forwards are going and how you count i am very happy to see that fox news is really taking up the the real issues that affect this

country and let's remember the facts folks president obama was president of the harvard law review and sean hannity is a talking head on fox news who dropped out of college and traveled in birth there is i'm now i have to also admit that if we were to play a compilation of all of the bush seasons around season bale's probably be on air for a little bit longer so when it comes to intelligence i think this case is closed and now the very very hideously ugly rush limbaugh yesterday on his radio show limbaugh ripped into the comments made by former press secretary of state colin powell who in a rare political honest moment actually revealed that he's not sure but there he is going to vote for president obama again next year so naturally little balls play the race. hard take a look. in the end powell will vote for obama. there's no doubt about the titular head of the republican party ideal. republican who will

vote. for obama milton is thicker than water for. him and may be thicker than water but i'm not sure if anything is asked of that man's head i guess when all else fails there's always over reason to stay in the headlines and that's a very very. well with the war in afghanistan still raging on the economy still saying thanks to the banks there's not much has changed in the united states of america in the last few months now tom took on this troubling scenario back in may calling on americans to their priests replace the war in afghanistan with a war on wall street out of control behavior think about the last decade america can be defined by three words war on terror it's a definition that's been advanced by both our politicians and our media and while we've been so focused on this war on terror but it's a good imagery of

a smoldering world trade center the bearded anti-christ osama bin well and our soldiers and desert camel patrolling across the middle east is another war that's been completely forgotten and that's wall street's war on america we're only three years removed from one of the worst financial catastrophes in the history of this nation but since you are right down down since it went down right smack dab in the middle of the war on terror it was on george w. bush's watch it's been ignored. nine eleven nearly killed or did kill actually nearly three thousand people a terrible terrible tragedy no doubt and i'm not trying to downplay the importance of being vigilant against terrorism. there are people who want to kill americans around the world that's a fact but the financial crisis of two thousand eight hundred s. is that banks toure's on wall street can do far more damage to our nation that any terrorist could ever dream of well the cost of nine eleven or mostly american lives

damage to symbolic buildings and a blow to our national psyche the costs of the wall street meltdown are far far greater. millions of people have lost their homes millions more are losing their jobs millions of divorces an explosion in child abuse a spike in suicides and trillions of dollars of growth we literally removed from hardworking americans it lost equity lower wages lower paid if you are benefits or the worst unemployment our federal budget most state budgets have enormous holes blown in them threatening to take down our economy and undo all the progress that's been made since the new deal helped create the american middle class the dollar is teetering on collapse thanks to bush borrowing five trillion dollars to fight two of necessary wars and give tax breaks to his oligarchy billionaire buddies. and china is going to take us over as a world economic super super power in fewer than five years in large part because

we've devoted or our resources to chasing terrorists around the middle east instead of investing in our own nation like they've been doing very wisely. the days of the american empire a number and it's not because of been law. it's because we'd been added by our own banks toure's. hurt as bad. but wall street nearly ended america as we know it. and still damn well could and frankly almost certainly will do it again. al qaeda is considered public enemy number one and our politicians have spent trillions of dollars fundamentally remaking our society compromising our freedoms and ideals and burying our reputation around the world just to engage in a worldwide jostein match with this sorry small band of crazies and criminals. seem to be willing to pay any cost to make sure nine eleven doesn't happen again even

stupid costs like stripping our rights and putting charity off for no scanners in our airports it's all with radiation. and we're in the financial collapse what are we willing to do to make sure that doesn't happen again. but we've spent trillions in corporate welfare to bail out banks we haven't spent a dime on preventing another crash. wall street lobbyists went to work making sure that any financial reform laws were either killed our right or watered down to the point of view relevance. and they've been successful. and now republicans in congress are even making sure that those miniscule wall street reform laws that were passed back when the democrats controlled congress won't be enforced. basically nothing has changed since two thousand and eight more bubbles are being created and is the reason standard and poor's warn there's more risk in today's market then there was before the meltdown in two thousand and eight. it's like if

after nine eleven bush said what me worry everything's fine. i think the american people would have been satisfied with that answer i doubt it so why does the republican party think they can sit back block any hammock efforts a democratic reform and let wall street take down our economy. so how powerful that wall street lobby use it is bribe some politicians and get back to business as usual ruining our economy like nothing happened. it makes you wonder if i had lobbyists with the war on terror ever of happened pakistan for example actually does have lobbyists right here in washington d.c. and they're already pressuring lawmakers to tone down the rhetoric and pakistan's involvement in hiding but a lot of. in the next few years thanks to our trillion dollar plus so-called war on terror america may escape not getting hit by again but one thing we want to escape

is another wall street tape and this time when wall street implodes we will find ourselves in the midst of the second great depression and we wonder why we didn't see it coming. why why were we chasing terrorists instead of bankers this decade is closing was a huge victory of the nine eleven for taking open law unfortunately looking at the next decade in america and the mess that has yet to be cleaned up on wall street terrorism is the least of our worries. as well that is it part of the big picture now as always for more information on the stories we've covered as well as more as there are websites thom hartmann dot com free speech or r t dot com you know forget you can catch the full show on our youtube channel two towns in fact those links are out there at thom hartmann dot com now the entire show is also available as a free video podcast on i tunes and if you're lucky enough to have an i pad or an

iphone from hartman has a true action for you all for free course you can always send us feedback at twitter at tom underscore hartman and on facebook at tom underscore hartman and honor of blogs message boards telephone comment line all of that info is that thom hartmann dot com he's taking over the internet and don't forget as tom always says democracy begins with you. but out there get active and talent you are it. more news today violence is once again flared up. and these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets and chanted lasts for a shelter all day.