welcome back to the big picture harben coming up in this half hour if he continues on wall street details of why thousands more could join the occupiers of lower manhattan and federal reserve chairman ben bernanke he told congress to get to work helping the unemployed find jobs there's something that bernanke and the rest of the power players in washington just don't tell you what that is and ideally take that first let's go back to the one. we have with this. neil. neil mccabe i've said i'm sorry carl fresh and bright and a new washington post poll confirms that the what the american people have known i

think all along that who cares about the haves and the have nots ok. they have nots fifteen percent first of all they were asking who the obama administration is looking for fifteen percent said they have twenty percent said they have nots forty five percent said the obama administration is treating this but that stands in contrast to where people are saying when they were asked about who the republicans are looking out for whopping forty seven percent of the abs publicans one of the ads only seven percent said they have nots thirty two percent said treated the same so nearly half the country believes the republicans are only looking out for the super rich are they and i think you should take those independent numbers and yet it's of the republicans most independents of republicans but if too embarrassed because of the social pressures on campuses that's going to get a lot he won't again i mean honestly paul you're citing these poll numbers and i do think that republicans maybe favor the house because they want everybody to be high . they want everybody to have

a job they love capitalism they love the free market but do you have a job why why does rick scott get applause when he's when he brags of atlanta fifteen thousand well because people don't want they don't like big government they don't like to see money squandered by state and so there's a lot of teachers and people are applauding. fire fighting for they literally laid out or teachers the last forty years where a person could take so that they could concentrate on helping children you really and truly are in favor of the you think americans should make progress unless the rest of us money you think that is the private sector has moved from good jobs down to taco bell wages that the public sector should do the same what i'm saying is that teachers who want to teach if it comes a point where the budget won't support it they should say our love of teaching and helping children is more important than our material benefit bankers who want to bank because they so love banking if they can get the two billion dollars a year we should we should be very very concerned about that i don't think there's a direct connection that they were talking about teachers and i think i think what

is honestly you know the truth is that a republicans don't like unions the republicans don't like public education you know they don't believe that the government has any role in that they should be left up to a couple parents in the garage. and we if we want to invest in our economy this is where you do it don't give the tax cuts to the billionaires and millionaires in oil companies put those moneys into schools we're going to be getting a long term revealed out of that out of teacher should be teaching for taco bell wages because they love teaching doctor or soon we should be doctoring to riyadh why don't we see any articles about teachers leaving the profession because they weren't making enough and there's a real problem a lot of the money to good portion of money goes not to teachers now in the classroom and bureaucrats because the teachers union has set up these massive bureaucracies that are sucking up money so you're not spending money on actual teachers or talking to kids it's a bunch of lazy bureaucrats actually teachers who were laid off and a bureaucracy with teaching your apprentices. get laid off nothing there is

a for example in the health insurance industry to the private for profit health insurer maybe of the greatest teachers in the world are actually nuns who have taken an oath of poverty so i think it has nothing to do with celery and chastity so if you want to teach america there's a solution and it will if it works great for the children supreme court justice clarence thomas' jigme idea a group of twenty house democrats have called on the department of justice to launch an investigation into what thomas is up to there is this thing called the ethics and government act which was passed back in one thousand nine hundred seventy eight which said that supreme court justices now the supreme court has recused itself or not recuse itself it has it has taken itself out of the federal code of judicial ethics so they've been breaking the federal code to with i mean you know like a scalia duck hunting with dick cheney two weeks before he was deciding this case if any other federal judge did that they would find themselves in jail because supreme court has said that doesn't count but this law specifically names the

supreme court is having to comply with and and it's so that they have to raise reveal expose as income and yet thomas for almost a decade to see six years i believe it was failed to reveal that his wife was taking over seven hundred thousand dollars from the heritage foundation of her. i think you have some affiliation with a hot head of a political right and and you know and he has. and thomas himself at fifteen thousand dollars in the american enterprise institute and and then ruled three times in favor of them in cases before the court. this is and he's been a koch brothers john pitt and you know the list goes on and on so wouldn't we be better off without corrupt justices like clarence thomas and all these are not i mean we all know that his wife i mean it wasn't a secret that she was working at the heritage foundation for one thing and second about well was the secret how much money she was making right now he's disclosed that he it's a paperwork error that he corrected now are we going to go ahead very well listen to this. not effectively fill out their own paperwork what are they doing on the

bench i already know i have their security secretary i understand the ways and means i understand he doesn't you know like to talk of the bench but at least i figured he'd get his paperwork are all right so we have your saying about the conflict and what about justice kagan the fact that you practically wrote she definitely worked for an administration and helped craft obamacare yet she's going to be deciding a case and we don't know if she's going to revisit it was it also is she we also don't know if thomas all year in the justice department has already recused herself from one case that she has refused or for a start from obamacare and we know she won't that had the case has not come before the supreme court here was the reason here the psyche ok but you would dissipate the chill withdraw from the case i would expect that she probably will and that thomas should and i hope he will you know which is very well yeah there's no way she will is too important to her former boss that put her on the court i mean we all know that kagan is tom her purpose on the court is to be an advocate for the

obama administration was and it's why it wasn't only in a kagan against whom this you know who was asked to be investigated by the justices are by thirty members of congress it was clarence thomas and all the kings and democrats are just democrats and his wife has spent over has taken over one hundred fifty thousand dollars to lobby specifically against obamacare right isn't there a problem here that this is not new for the thomases by the way. ginni thomas has been part of every major right wing interest going back a couple decades and she's deeply involved in the efforts behind the tea party so we know that we know there's going to be capital we know that we know that she's a partisan what we didn't know was what she was being paid and to conceal something like that i mean part of the reason these laws even exist is to expose that type of potential conflict of interest but look at his anybody really believe that clarence thomas does anybody doubt where he's going to come out in this case i mean we all know that he's a con. situational conservatives we know where alito is going to come out if you

know what roberts is going to be coming up so they have to say that all of you here all has to accept that women work in this is sidey and that these conflicts are going to happen if the one being to use the rights best intentions only mortgage children go karl if she was staying over the kitchen you would have no problem unfortunately these are skills that we'll see so he's just hearing i thought i heard that there's something very interesting from brian the heritage foundation in eighty seven came out with a paper saying the individual mandate was constitutional in fact it was their idea they called it they heard it was their idea now yesterday they got him out of the talking points memo i got back there and show it to you familiar with the same calling that the heritage plan referring to is there with a memo they congratulated romney when he put a. program and in fact the heritage foundation's been in favor of a mandate and back when when the clinton administration came out with their program heritage supported newt gingrich's plan which was an individual mandate all along the heritage foundation and all the conservatives have been going home for an

individual mandate until we get a democrat in the white house i don't get it well i don't think constitutional i mean it's not if the constitution suddenly changed you know if you go look at the heritage foundation website right now you'll find a paper that discusses why it's on condit with an internet maybe that's what if you're trying to there now you know we didn't write anything about the legal aspects of forcing all americans to buy a product in private commerce and if you if you allow the federal government to force people to buy health care because of course you assert that mandate has no penalties associate if you don't do anything if you are forced to buy health care you know you will if you ignore about anything that you don't want you don't get hurt but once you introduce the system you can voluntarily pay that seven hundred dollars but you there's no mechanism to punish them where you go where does the punishment come in time well it's a good question i mean you know probably their shoes when you actually show up at the emergency room and they look you up in the computer and they say oh by the way you all have been grand that's what happens to fifty thousand americans are you know you're absolutely right ok. let's talk about the post suppose the workers

across the nation gathered to try to save the postal service four hundred twenty two hundred ninety two different sites the back in two thousand and six the bush administration passed this very bizarre piece of legislation some democrats from boredoms people got snookered that said that the post postal service uniquely it is the largest unionized employer in the united states it's the second largest employer in the iss number one unionized so of course the republicans are going to take a train take a bite out of their butts the post office uniquely over ten year period would have to set aside five billion dollars a year to pay to fund the health benefits of retirees seventy five years from now we're not yet even born there will be no other company in america does this know whether they will be born until twenty fifty seven ok so some people who will not be born until twenty fifty seven the post office right now has to set aside their retirement funds this was clearly a poison pill and attempted to bankrupt the post office and you know there's a good effort now being made by people now as representatives to repeal that law so

that the post office can be funded like every other rational business in america and well it was no i'm talking about you know like he and t. you can if you need are not increasing the cost and when you go into a post office is getting you know everything had to wait if this bill was not you has most of us would have a one point five billion dollars surplus put in the black every year until this happened in till they put this in since one nine hundred seventy three when they changed the law saying the post office from fund itself through postal stamps it has been in the black and in two thousand and seven the first year that this. law was in effect they were in the red for the first time ever in that period they have been in the black and they've nobody ever thought that a post office they could make it through rain sleet or snow would be tripped up and killed off by the republican party that's in the constitution well i mean the only authority we have to build roads is because they can be had but it was a huge postal strike where the national guard was delivering mail. and that's why

nixon in congress had to take it sort of out of its constitutional place where it was no longer a cabinet position and it has been changed since then that that reform in two thousand and six was supposed to put it on strong footing are committed and this is poison pill this pain shit is just strong push fiduciary responsibility that is i think this is going to be i think you make business they have to do this for their work we've got to move to the quick question if we could figure out ok it looks like the tea baggers are fading fast no more rallies the public has kind of turned against them and now the occupy wall street movement seems to be capturing the discontent america has to get back in the headlines it seems baggers are looking for a name change which they probably should have done a long time ago so what would be a the zombie corp the force that will take down president obama's brownshirts also known as america or or be the kansas kitchen clan a k k k k k or c big dick army's army. you guys i don't think we say tea baggers i don't know if you know this tom but actually it was used by conservatives so you'll find that a friend ok so you may know that i would call them the we party because you get the

double entendre just like you do with the tea party ok it's all in the winner of party because if you party one of the last let me and there are no women is not really a day ok and my answer in part in response in response to what you would say is on the screen. you can't read it can you but i'm not going to like this it's like a soda ladies and. karl thank you for your time spent with them but if you. coming up the occupy wall street protests is picking up speed the latest details of the movement after the break. what drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions to break through get through the pain made who can you trust no one who is your view with noble mission receipts. where we had

a state controlled capitalism in school sessions when nobody dares to ask we do our t. question morning. the occupy wall street movement is picking up some critical support demonstrators have been camped out for thirteen straight days now in lower manhattan for reinforcements are on the way top unions and progressive organizations like the you

united federation of teachers and the transport workers unions as well as move on dot org and a slew of others frankly have pledged to join the demonstrators next week transit workers union alone which voted unanimously to support the occupy wall street movement on wednesday it's a membership of thirty eight thousand people with this new support the number of people on the streets can swell by the thousands each day this goes on it's looking more and more like something big really is happening in america for the latest on this i'm joined by jay myers investigative reporter contributor alter net jay welcome back. tom thanks for having me back thanks for keeping up to date on this with with us and for us it was reported today that over one hundred new york police department officers are refusing to come into work in solidarity with the occupy wall street movement these reports true. i haven't gotten confirmation from the n.y.p.d. but it sure makes sense right i mean if we're facing austerity budgets because of

wall street nefariousness and fraudulence it stands to reason that all public workers have to fear for their pensions and police know that they are one unemployment away from being right there with so if it's not true it certainly ought to be what do you think about these new endorsements from labor unions and progressive groups do you think it's going to mean for those who've been camped out there. oh it's going to mean everything if there is institutional support by groups with any sort of political power and any sort of organizing power then that means that it's a perpetuation of the movement i don't know if you've seen occupy together dot org but it's got a list of all of the solidarity occupations that are going on across the united states and even some abroad this movement is really really picking up steam today in liberty plaza park there was no room to move there was no room to sit it was i would say forty five hundred people and then they all virtually all of them had a silent march past police plaza. in protest of the policemen

incurred last week this is really starting to capture the imagination of america and all of the progressive organizations that work to make a fair economy are seeing that this is what's really energized this is not an organizational superstructure this is grassroots activism at its finest and they all want to help out for obvious reasons j one back in the early days of mahatma gandhi's protests. protest is not anywhere near a strong enough word but you know his taking on the machine the british government . he he made it very clear to the people who were with him that even when they were being whipped from horseback even when they were being beaten and those things happened as you well know that if if they respond if they lifted a hand in response he said one i'm paraphrasing here but basically said one one violent response to their violence one small but violent response their violence is

the equivalent of a drop of arsenic in a glass of water it turns it sour and it's a poison how what is being done you know assuming that you share that promise with gandhi what is being done by the groups in zuccotti park to prevent the crazies among them to prevent or or not crazies just people who think that they righteously have a. reason to respond to violence with violence. well they've had nonviolence trainings i mean part of what made such a graph such an effective tool and part of what made snick and the s.e.a.l. see such effective organizations in the civil rights movement is that they took time to very diligently ensure that anything that could interrupt the group's message was provided against right if the sit ins woolworth counters had turned violent it would that would have been the headline right and then the

civil rights message and the equality message would have been completely lost now today we had a really interesting illustration of this because mayor bloomberg was on the radio this morning and he said that sure protesters have a right to protest but we also have a right to make sure that people can walk down the street unmolested which was news that he was such an ardent supporter of being able to walk down the street unmolested to the many people who were beaten and had their hair had me put in their face by officer tony bologna last week. but the fact is that all passers by are offered to come in have some free food discuss the issues there has not been a single instance of any. violence or assault or even really hostility from the members of this community that's living in liberty plaza park this is a community that is doctrinally against violence and all of its actions show it and

it takes great care to train its its participants in how to be nonviolent in case of arrest in case of harassment how to do that because it's critical for advancing the message that this remain a nonviolent protest the weekend seem to be the time when the press isn't looking even a lot of the weekend shows the news the news shows are recorded on friday afternoon and they play on the weekends. and it was last week and the officer that you talked about you know. attacked this woman with mace or pepper spray. do you have any plans for this weekend. i plan to be there i mean i'm going on tomorrow i'm going on up with chris hayes on m.s.n. b.c. in the morning because he's he's. covering it and i'll be on with allison kilkenny of the nation and citizen radio so it is getting some press over the weekend the other thing about the weekend is that it's a time when people aren't working right and so that's

a time when the numbers in liberty plaza park find themselves making a lot i guess they will the. larger question here is that you know it seems like the possibility of a violent confrontation of the police is greater on the weekend for all these reasons our. plans to prevent that or are you anticipating that. today i talked with the director of the n.y.c. oh you know this whole week we've been in conversation about having observers there to make to sort of supplant the media as the sort of watchful eye that can make cops apprehensive about using violence but today she told me that actually folks have been were so you're gathering that it's not going to be a very vengeful weekend on that front so here's open it's a good sign i mean you know because because it was last week and with so many ok last question we have just a little less than a minute what's going on with the other occupy programs all around the country. oh they're taking the country by storm and even the world by storm seattle's about to

start new orleans are starting my friends all across the country or are going to these these protests incidents chicago's going well boston is going well people should go to occupy together dot org and see what a movement this is sparked the front page of the times yesterday had a thing about how this is part of an international mood of protest that spans from israel to india and right on back again to wall street so this is a very exciting moment anyone who's in new york who hasn't gotten down there must it's the american spring jay thank you for being with us. here is thanks tom thank you it looks like corporate greed crony capitalism and the for the rich by the rich economy they have finally reached a tipping point here in the united states of america. i. there's something seriously wrong with our economy and federal reserve chairman ben

bernanke he acknowledged as much yesterday in cleveland. this unemployment situation we have the job situation is really a national crisis. we've had now you know close to ten percent unemployment now for you know a number of years and of the people who are unemployed about forty five percent of it on employed for six months or more this is unheard of this is never happened in the post-war period in the united states he went on to ask congress to get to work helping the unemployed but what ben bernanke he and speaker john boehner and even president obama just don't seem to get is that our economy will never improve until we end our insane so called free trade policies i saw another stimulus package but it's better than doing nothing won't do nearly enough to get our economy back on track take for example president obama's two thousand and nine stimulus package well it did inject billions of dollars into the hands of working people and small

businesses the problem is that the stimulus didn't work in the classical keynesian way the way that it did work back in the one nine hundred thirty s. back in the thirty's when the government paid workers to plant trees or build dams for the c.c.c. or the t.v. a those workers would then spend that money in local stores to buy clothes manufactured by americans in american factories by american workers who then took that money as pay and bought more american made stuff in stores making selling things we had by americans the money kept circulating from hand to hand from business to business for years all the while staying right here in the united states so a dollar a stimulus back then could over many years produce many many dollars of stimulation of the economy. but with the obama stimulus since so many of our factories have been packed up and shipped off to mexico china vietnam and dozens of other low wage countries over the past two decades because of so-called free trade the money

american spent buying things is not going back into american businesses anymore so it ends up stimulating the economy of those other countries instead of ours and even want to spend here for products ostensibly made here the profits often end up offshore because of so-called free trade for example if people went out and bought a new cd ninety seven percent of that money went offshore if they went to a movie seventy five percent of that money went offshore or if they just wanted to relax and take their mind off economic troubles by purchasing a bottle of wine in a good book in that case sixty four percent of the money spent purchasing the wine went offshore and sixty three percent of the money in the book went by buy into the profits of anything anybody brought that was made of rubber fifty three percent of that money went outside the u.s. . the simple fact is since our nation got conned into handing our sovereignty over

to trans national corporations under the guise of free trade we no longer make computers or t.v.'s or clothes or power tools or toys or pretty much anything in the us anymore except military hardware junk food and burgers so unless you were using your stimulus money to buy a cruise missile or lunch at a seven eleven then more than likely that money was just going to go to a foreign business to pay taxes to foreign governments and employ foreign workers who then go out and buy foreign things all the while the c.e.o.'s of what used to be american corporations but are now transnational giants are making more and more money paying slipping americans and hiring workers in bangladesh for a tenth of the price where by the way they can also pollute pollute all they want our economy used to be focused on empowering american industries and empowering american workers are now the focus is on paying them less and less to compete with former labor as sir james goldsmith one of the richest men in the world the time noted in his book the trap in the great days of the usa the henry ford stated that

he wanted to pay high wages to his employees so that they could become his customers and buy as cars today we're proud of the fact that we pay low wages we have forgotten that the economy is a tool to serve the needs of society and not the reverse the ultimate purpose of the economy is to create prosperity with stability. and that purpose is best served through government policies like tariffs and the support of labor unions to protect american industries and make sure americans have good wages and good benefits as i talk about my book on equal protection when our government is hijacked by corporate equals so-called people with huge armies of lobbyists and the purpose of an economy shifts to serving the needs of the corporations and it no longer serves actual human people or free trade does is peel away government protections of national industries and thus let go of global billionaires and transnational corporations dive in to feast on the goods and that's where we are today with our economy being

devoured by transnational corporations who have no allegiance whatsoever to america but instead only to profits to cold hard cash and that's it until our lawmakers most of whom have either been bought off or drank the free trade koolaid realize this fact that no stimulus will ever truly help our economy and therefore our economy will never improve over the long term every stimulus effort will last only a few weeks or months the few weeks or months it takes for somebody to take the wages from the stimulus job into a walmart and buy something made overseas poof goes the money poof goes the stimulus we need to wake up and ditch so-called free trade before it's too late that's the big picture for tonight for more information on the stories we covered visit our web sites of thom hartmann dot com free speech or. also check out our two you tube channels there are links to top part of her shows also available as a free video podcast on i tunes free thom hartmann i phone or i pad app of the

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