from secret muslim caliphates to the threat of shari'a law why are so many americans fine and while a phobia it has something to do with the major cable news networks were feeding its viewers a war in the south of the border from. what drives the world of beer mongering used by politicians who makes decisions to break through get through to people in may who can you trust no one who is you know maybe you would have noble mission or would see where we had a state controlled capitalism is called sessions when nobody dares to ask we do our t. question more.

welcome back to the big picture i'm tom hartman coming up in this half hour fox viewers aren't just the most uninformed cable news viewers are also the most intolerant the new report confirms what we all suspect that if you're in islamophobia you get the most bang for your buck on fox so-called news and later a daily take our eye opening trip to the dentist i had today confirmed what i fear most of the american dream is all the dead in america is headed straight for the futile dark ages.

don't know where islamophobia is coming from look no further than fox so-called news the brookings institute just released a new report charting americans views toward islam based on their political views and where they get their news turns out those who identify themselves as republicans tea partiers or fox so-called news viewers feared muslims the most fifty two percent of fox viewers believe muslims want to establish sure real lot america compared to just twenty percent or watch c.n.n. and twenty nine percent are watching as a b c also sixty percent of fox viewers believe islam is not an important part of the american real religious community or muslims are probably more accurate would say that again far more than c.n.n. and innocently see in a whopping sixty eight percent of fox viewers think the values of islam are at odds with the values of america far more than the thirty seven percent of c.n.n.

viewers and thirty nine percent of innocent b.c. viewers of course considering that you know what comes across the fox so-called news airwaves on a daily basis this report shouldn't come as too big of a surprise. not all. muslims are terrorists but all terrorists are muslim if you are an eighteen to twenty year old muslim man you should be strip searched and if we don't do that there's a very high probability we're going to lose an airline building that victory mosque on what's in that since a burial site would be both destructive and cold hearted for the families of nine eleven victims the most dangerous scenario is that radical muslims seize power and put sharia law into place same thing now joining me now to talk more about fox so-called news role in this right wing islamophobia machine is the jalopy reporter and blogger at think progress that welcome back thanks for having me thanks for joining us you know i want to get into this investigation that you all are doing in

the brookings reported on but even before that i'm troubled by the fact that even twenty and twenty nine and thirty three percent or whatever those numbers were of c.n.n. an emissary see viewers think that there is a disconnect between american values and muslim values when this is one of the three great religions of the book you know the three abrahamic religions the be the values of islam christianity and judaism as a value system i mean the procedures may be different are essentially a gamble. oh no that's exactly what's really shocking because if you look at the american muslim community it's probably the single most best and most modern in the liberal muslim community entire world i mean the muslim american community has been emigrating to the united states for decades and decades and it's always been i really value to a treasured part of the american social fabric a muslim americans have elected to congress they really elected to lower positions they're prominent authors of prominent activist people in the n.b.a. n.f.l.

you know muslims are all around us and they're not really that different from the. ira from the rest of the country that's why they enter here because they want to come to a great accepting country and what's really unfortunate is that we've seen not only fox news but really an entire us on the phobia industry pop up in people basically for political favor or for their own fame or fortune or demonizing muslim americans and fortunately turning a growing minority of americans to feeling that they should fear muslims when really they are a fantastic part of the american community that makes us stronger just as all racial and ethnic minorities religious minorities do so tell me about this islamophobia industry. how many how many dollars are involved were they coming from how does it work we actually put out a report the center for american progress action fund recently called fear and basically it tracks seven large foundations and other donors that channel something like forty two million dollars a year in two books seminars tours for j.d.

is usually right it's a multimillion dollar industry i mean there's people who make their it you know their entire livelihood based on pumping up this beer muslims in america shari'a law things that really you know have no sort of relationship to what's actually you know threatening this country and threatening american life of goods in the middle class but rather just you know almost racist sort of fear you know in russell court nine hundred fifty three the conservative mind the nice little book. of the modern conservative movement he identified the ten tenets of conservatism and one of them this is i'm paraphrasing from memory but he said conservatives understand that people are more highly motivated by emotions than by reason they recall a motive in logic. fear is certainly one of the most powerful emotions why why why pump this why spend forty two million dollars a year trying to make americans afraid. well i think a lot of this is the fact that the people who are doing this there are gaining

political power and they're getting political favor and personal fortune from doing i mean people like zuhdi jasser there are people. you know have very well read blogs they get to appear on fox news or other networks they have to write books that are going tories and they're learning that you know unfortunately in this country right now for yourselves and fear is selling very well for them it is creating a base people like glenn beck you know made entire t.v. shows based on crazy hypothesis that you know muslims were trying to take of the entire world and teaming up with communists and then you sort of said there was almost an islamist atheist conspiracy in the united states as absurd as that sounds i mean the people are saying that there's actually a lot of power to be found in propping up this fear and unfortunately it's something that's popped up especially among the far right throughout this country's history whether it was against you know irish catholics against the japanese against the you know leftists against people in labor unions or women and unfortunately now the target is muslims and i think the positive thing that we have to look at here is the fact that most americans still in these polls do not agree

with the basic concepts that you know fox in the far right and sort of a great japanese the world are pushing and family go to the world of pushing and i think that most americans a bunch they're going to are going to sort of reject this sort of hate what when you exposed the funders and exposed to the industry this long history there was a lot of pushback i mean i was i was reading on the web blogs people calling you names people you know liar being gentle. but kind of blowback did you experience and how do you respond to what was really interesting was that as soon as we started to expose these people for what they were which was basically making money off of fear and then we were part of the conspiracy of the islamic conspiracy coming to the center for american progress and we come here to washington d.c. and it's really interesting some of you want to impose sharia law right we were the ones that are trying to push me a line and you know there are people like frank gaffney doing this it was an old reagan hand you now has a sort of fear mongering toward this is a man who also went after george bush and governor. also being part of this conspiracy so you know where these people are coming from they're you know they're

not above sort of muslim baiting anyone out there in the world. and and have you have you been successful in rebutting their rebuttals you know i think we have you know we've gotten a fair amount of media attention i think that a lot of not just muslim groups but a lot of other sort of interfaith groups and groups in america that are sort of pushing for religious tolerance and you know groups that have fought for a long time for civil rights and civil liberties have been allied with us in the house better message and i think that the reason that with the pushback has been so fierce because we have exposed them we are calling them what they are which is merchants of fear and we're saying that this is the next sort of country that things just sort of bet sort of things that fly said thanks so much for being with us thank you for just the last month the center for american progress released this report out of the networks of think tanks and their donors that have spent twenty four million dollars fear of muslims in america it's like these fear mongers get the biggest bang for their buck over fox so-called news.

it's the good the bad in the very very air in asia silly ugly the good california senator barbara boxer reacting to president obama's decision last week to delay due regulations curbing pollution until two thousand and thirteen boxer encouraged environmental groups to sue the administration she told reporters yesterday i disagree strongly with the administration's decision and i hope bill these sued in court and i hope the court can stand by the clean air act clean air isn't something that we should be waiting around for and it's time for the president and his campaign promise to heal the planet so if it takes lawsuits as senator boxer is suggesting i'm all for it but bad alabama senator richard shelby shelby has been

one of the most outspoken critics of the newly created consumer financial protection bureau it works to make sure the middle class isn't screwed over by banks toure's again like goldman sachs even wrote an op ed in the wall street journal back in july in which he called the new consumer protection bureau dangerous well as the public campaign action fund discovered this week we now know why senator shelby wrote that op ed and most likely he hates the consumer protections but it's because he was water out by the banks toure's the day after writing the op ed shelby was handed a five thousand dollars campaign check. you guessed it home and sex so much money to unemployed americans need to send shelby for him to write an op ed on their behalf my guess is they don't. and the very very ugly and coulter as more and more people realize coulter is just a hack trying to sell books and stop listening to her she always has a home on the couch over. that's where she was this morning attacking public school

teacher. james hoffa is labor day rallies. this is jimmy hoffa president of the teams are they using truck drivers and pipe fitters together history now is representing a public school teachers function or a gun teachers cafeteria workers fighting for every last bit of their government pension what a pathetic downgrade and how does this tough talk back on the teamsters supporting drilling in anwar you know real jobs for real man as opposed to kind of our genes and the little part above god i don't want you know fighting for nuclear power plants being installed this just that is evidence of the decline of the nation that he's not even representing manny what the actual jobs he's represented some to our viewers this public sector worker who doesn't want to kindergarden teachers are pathetic i guess and still has a bad memory from kindergarten after all she still has yet to learn the want to lesson from that grade play nice with others and that's very true. coming

up when more people participate in our democracy is not supposed to be a good thing i guess doesn't think so in fact he thinks it's close to criminal or and there's a liberal. what drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions to break through. who can you trust no one who is you be you would have local machine see where we had a state controlled capitalism is called satchels when nobody dares to ask we do our tea question more.

so god makes a healthy democracy some say it's a high voter turnout as in the more people who vote then the more the will of the country is reflected in the government however or however over the last fifty years the average voter turnout in our national elections has drop dropped out about forty eight percent ranking us thirty eight the nation yeah nations like poland india and is stony and that's why several organizations have sprung up around america with the sole purpose of registering more and more people to vote to spur greater participation in our democracy but conservatives have always been wary eye or voter turnout as the story is republican strategist paul weyrich said as our as

the voting populace goes down our leverage frankly goes up now another conservative i think is doubling down in a way which is a message arguing that registering poor people to vote is vote i can email burglary tools to criminals and quote really joining me now to explain this position and why more participation in our democracy is actually a bad thing as matthew data investigative journalist and author of the book subversion and matthew welcome thank you great to have you with us. democracy i think you can see why doing the poor. the poor are part of democracy though i mean disenfranchising any group of people is harming the small democracy no one including my so if ever argued anybody should be disenfranchised the article that brought me here today that was an american thinker a few days ago i pointed out the clouds were putin strategy which is

a real thing and the i.d.f. behind it was to register as many people who were poor who were welfare recipients in order the first part of it was to overwhelm the welfare rolls in the one nine hundred sixty. and early seventy's and that succeeded to an extent in michigan and in new york state in new york city however the second prong of it involved in acting the motor voter a lot of one nine hundred ninety three richard clough worden francis fox have been . who glenn beck used to talk about all the time after i told him about the collaborative in strategy for i think i was the first according to the nexus database so i'm actually kind of proud of that anyway so if you my work talked about every single day i wouldn't it's well they're your friends from they're your friends from the democratic socialism america but they they argued in one nine hundred eighty three article in social policy magazine the official magazine of acorn and that and it was the article it was very honest called toward a class based realignment of american politics and they said if you take advantage

of the apparatus of the welfare state and you. use class warfare techniques on people in emphasizing class warfare language no of course not because they're very clever academics these are your interpretations of what they said well they're very clever academically as i drive home the point that why did the republicans want to serve them why would you call the president on america for wanting to register when i didn't call the president of america and i said that a cloud pavan strategy of registering welfare recipient and president was was the way it was an american i said it was un-american but i didn't actually leave while he was in the sentence with the time he was ok so let's just get them all right what happens if a lot of poor people are. the idea behind strategy no not the straight lives just you and me what happens if a lot of people vote for people who are. encouraging poor people to vote.

like welfare recipients and what have you are not employed people what it should be the idea it was to harangue them into supporting redistributionist politicians so if poor people vote what happens is they elect officials who will take money from wealthy people and give it to them as our say and they will support redistribution of wealth policies that redistribute wealth you know i'm not i'm not trying to play the we don't understand how to get to the essence of this so you've got a lot of poor people and they vote for politicians and those politicians pursue redistributionist economic policies welfare taxes on the rich money comes from the rich it goes to the poor people those poor people are no longer poor. no because if you go to the money you know if you encourage people to get one welfare they will stay poor you should not be encouraging people to be on the dole could be unproductive so eventually you know you don't you don't believe that eventually if

people if enough poor people are voting at those and those poor people are encouraging redistributionist policies that eventually that they are going to become a little. like that the history of america i mean lyndon johnson cut poverty in half in four years of the great society he was the classic redistributionist politician who you're talking about and when he cut poverty in half the effect of that was that he created an entire generation. of basically black middle class in the united states that didn't exist before that or to a large extent it makes exist you know what i would dispute that according to thomas so will the greed economists research there was a thriving black middle class and as you put it there's always a long wait long before many others wanted long before the war on poverty and the great wall and any obligation to racialize it because a lot of the a lot of the middle class that emerged as

a result the great society was white. far more people who are white and poverty are the middle class no one in the middle class who didn't have the urge because of the great society but the no but it was certainly helped i would dispute that ok so so your argument is that poor people should not be allowed to vote no it was never i never said that i said that i said it's like a motor voter one thousand nine hundred ninety three that i wouldn't have been going to mention them again and you don't like that you can measure them only without it so i'm the art i was on about fans of color and yes i know it's hard spending has been on this program i know i don't count i'm older motor voter required that people be registered to vote and that it and it was illegal to even ask them if they're citizens that's fine i have a recipe for fraud and we have what fewer than thirty cases of fraud a year even when when the bush administration spent millions of dollars we're going to pay that's a whole good thought as voter fraud thirty one million in the five in two thousand and eight one four hundred thousand registrations were thrown out lose all could

have been attempts at fraud one in five men right now in america or out of work or listening to those people not be allowed to vote i did never said they shouldn't be or not everyone should be everyone who is legally entitled to vote should be encouraged and should be allowed to vote but why this strategy courage to not with tax dollars i don't i don't think any voter registration drives are a good idea and in fact over the louer the policy of the government to encourage people to vote is a bad idea i don't have anything to do voter registration groups and ocracy is a bad thing bertha lewis of acorn agrees with me she said that voter registration drives are nothing but trouble and if you look at australia were ninety eight percent of the people vote yeah. so ninety four it was a little the idea of the leader senator austria ninety two percent belgium ninety one percent the poor people were all voting in those countries as countries are doing just fine. and which countries are they doing just fine australia is not

doing too well at the matthew we're out it's a thank you for being with us them all right thank you. as we speak republicans are working hard to keep the poor from voting over a thousand was a bit introduced in the past decade to make it harder for poor people to register to vote and even when for people who are successful in their history their vote they were teen lee end up having to wait five ten or more hours in line to vote on wealthy white neighborhoods the way it is typically far less than an hour we're seeing right now is in the words of the advancement project the largest legislative effort to scale back voting rights in a century welcome to the new conservative america a nation of by and for the rich and to hell with the rest of america. i went to the dentist today to get

a filling replaced and walked out with. but more troubling than the extent of the painful dental procedure was that the dentist told me it was what he told me before he went to work i had thought about the posed offices financial problems and i told him my theory about how republicans want to privatized the post office or place you know a little over a half million you know his workers with a little over half a million taco bell wage employees and that's when he said words to the effect of well at least detroit understands what's going on they have new hires coming into the auto plants they're making thirteen bucks an hour no reason to pay someone thirty bucks an hour to put screws on a tire. i mean really wanted to say to him that the reason why automakers in detroit used to make thirty bucks an hour was so they could become part of the middle class raise a family have a home and car take vacations but their kids through college back then our government believes that a strong middle class was good for the country and wanted as many people in that middle class as possible. people who could spend money people who could afford

a good education who could invent and innovate in that happiness thing thomas jefferson wrote into the declaration of independence my dentist was a young guy probably in his thirty's and doesn't remember what a made america was like before reagan when taxes on the rich were above seventy percent when two out of three workers had a union job or its financial equivalent and when our social safety net cop people when they felt back then you didn't need a college degree to pursue the american dream if you worked hard you kept your nose clean you can get by with just a high school diploma but now thanks to the thirty years of reaganomics corroding the american dream instead of new auto workers in detroit getting a shot at the middle class they're destined to join the ranks of the rapidly expanding who are the working poor here in america according to a new report from pew one in three people who grew up in the middle class in the one nine hundred seventy s. have now dropped out of the middle class they are part of the working poor they just couldn't cut it anymore in the new america where billionaires and their bought

off politicians have raised the bar for entry into the middle class higher and higher until eventually very few people can actually climb over it and more and more people have just accepted that as the new normal rather than pushing back against this downsizing of the american dream and asking why are we kicking more people out of the middle class instead of bringing more people into it that's what i wanted to ask and let us since he was about to stick a drill in my mouth i decided to stuff it but it's the same story i hear from young conservatives who have have on my show all the time they also don't remember what it was like before reagan but since they have their college degrees they think they're going to be just fine chasing the new american dream and to hell with those who didn't go to college they don't deserve a good life and what these young college educated conservatives don't realize is they're in the crosshairs next. this year for the first time ever student loan debt

in the united states outweighed credit card debt trillion dollars the average student leaves college already twenty four thousand dollars in the hole and job prospects are getting dimmer and dimmer as today's unemployment rate among eighteen to twenty four year olds is over sixteen percent so at this rate even a college degree doesn't guarantee entry into the middle class anymore in america welcome to the college graduate working poor class but it is sad group of americans who thirty years ago would have enjoyed the perks of living in the middle class but in today's new american dream are stuck in low paying dead end jobs but working people around the nation are facing now is there a whole new generation coming to power today people like paul ryan and eric cantor people like my dad his people who never knew what the american dream used to stand for and instead they bought into the vision of america promoted by billionaires an olive groves one of a wealthy ruling elite looking down on

a vast underclass of working poor and a sliver of something that used to look like the middle class it's not about failed supply side economics anymore it's about a great forgetting to use daniel quinn's term and a reeducation of this nation. just getting by is now the new normal and if we don't remember soon what the american dream used to stand for and just how important the middle class was in making america the economic superpower that was for most of the twentieth century but america will quickly come to resemble mexico let's stop forgetting and start remembering. that's the big picture for tonight for more information on the stories we covered this in our website at tom hartman dot free speech dot org dot com you also check out our two you tube channel sarah links over thom hartmann dot com entire show is also available as a free podcast on i tunes and you have

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