koch brothers a bit of links a political bribery funny to right wing think tanks financial ties to foreign businesses and now cancer details of their alleged contamination of an entire city after the break. let's not forget that we had an apartheid regime right here and. i think. even well. we never government says they're going to keep you safe get ready because of their

freedom. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything you saw you don't know i'm sorry welcome to the big picture.

welcome back to the big picture i'm tom hartman coming up in this half hour what's going on in the city of west crossan park and saw the maker robert greenwald joins me to talk about what or who is behind the cancer epidemic plaguing the small town and republican scott walker could soon get an addiction notice from wisconsin governor's mansion details of how state democrats are working the racially to serve him his pink slip.

last week bloomberg news broke the story the subsidiaries of koch industries the corporation owned by the very politically active billionaire brothers charles and david koch at the bribing foreign governments for better business. steel's not only that it's also alleged that the coast of secretly been doing business with iran as in the country with whom we have a trade embargo but beyond the illegal dealings with various nations there's now another troubling story coming out about the koch brothers it concerns the possibility that they poisoned an entire city it's a story the filmmaker robert greenwald tells in his new project cancer risks for coke profits as part of the koch brothers expose series take a look. at this right here is probably property but if you can follow it in a straight line you would be at georgia pacific supply and own back ok industry.

is pitiful that coke allowed this kind of push to be don't just don't in the wide open market run fast. histories where the culprits they know that these people are see the neighborhood a panel isn't ground zero run through these woods or these beaches carrying bags various types of pollutions from georgia pacific client and thus through a process includes the use this charges to the air and into the water of a lot of nasty chemicals the georgia pacific robert greenwald joins me now he is a filmmaker activist and founder of brave new films dot org robert welcome thank you tom what got you started on this particular story. this particular story was a focus for natalie and jeff and joseph for about three months because what we've been trying to do with our koch brothers expose has been put a personal face on it you know it's too easy for all of us to kind of debate

ideology or debate policy and it becomes removed from the very real lives of human beings who day to day pay a price for policy what the government's doing or not doing and in this case what the koch brothers are doing with their incredible passion for more and more money for profit at any price and for to hell with any kind of protection for ordinary citizens so when natalie heard about this story we decided the media but it took her a lot of talking to the people of gaining their trust and the more they opened up the more heartbreaking it became and the more committed we became to doing the story and getting it out to the world tell us the story of the city rather blue. a city cysts more than in r. and sa and it's a town which has been a coke on ga ga pacific is the primary source of employment for people in the

town have been intimidated have been terrified to speak out about the fact that literally neighbor after neighbor is sick there are people are dying and it is an extraordinary disproportionate number of people who have cancer and it's not an accident or cancer as you see in the video as the as the people in this in the town talk to us as the experts explain to us comes about because of the georgia pacific factory and think about it think about the billions that the colts are spending to influence politicians to weaken an already weak e.p.a. to change the rules to change the regulations so it literally becomes ok for the cokes to be poisoning and ultimately on camera these people talk about their dying and their relatives dying has anybody tried to do anything about the the the

alleged abuses in the standings his people. well the been some efforts on and off and i hope that is video will help them get some protection if it's possible to to shame the coax if it's possible to put pressure on the e.p.a. if it's possible so that people will come forward and say we're going to try to stop this but when you come face to face to this look tom you know we live in a in big cities but when you come face to face with a very small town you see the poverty and you see this fear this fear about speaking out against the employer in town and then terrible fear when your relatives are dying in front of your eyes that has a hireable effect on people so it took a while of talking to people. giving them a comfort zone letting them know we were here only to tell the truth and to put the facts out there and i hope that the video and your viewers will become involved in

spreading the word and letting people know that this has to stop and damn it if you've ever seen the perfect example of why we have to get money out of politics this is it because the koch brothers over and over again are literally paying politicians so that the rules will not protect people like those that you just saw in the video aren't the regulations against poisoning communities. well there are an e.p.a. regulations as we all know but the e.p.a. has been so weakened it was an article the other day that they've been in this new house of representatives controlled by the republicans i think it's almost fifty votes to further weaken the e.p.a. so you have a weakened d.p.a. you have very low standards any efforts to strengthen the standards are absolutely dismissed and rolled back and in fact they're trying to weaken already weaken standards and so we have scientists talking blogging and working to let the world know that the e.p.a.

standards do not make you safe enough and so some of this is allowed to continue but it's political pressure it's money in politics it's buying elected officials and it brings the whole system face to face it's if you will the one percent that the ninety nine percenters are talking about here are the one percent here are those hope brothers who are controlling and distorting arkham ocracy and these people in arkansas are paying a terrible price for robert it seems from from watching your documentary that this is an affluent largely african-american town and a very very poor town does that have any is there a racial element to the siting of this plant or the inability of these citizens to take on their coats. well i think the inability of the citizen certainly in arkansas small african american community is going to be further disenfranchised there's aspects of the story we didn't get into with some folks in the white community were given some money and text in

a world loud to move with the african-american community was treated worse but we know there's a history of environmental racism across this country where plants are located in areas of or communities communities of color and people are taken advantage of they are used it's its race and its class and then those two things come together and they make a hell of an opportunity for those who say you know what it does not matter how many billions of dollars i have i want more and i don't care about anybody else i don't care about the price a big cancer survivor should be ashamed that he would allow his ideology and his greed to impose what he's imposing on these people in arkansas. very well said robert thank you so much for the work that you're doing and brave new films or and brothers expose. which is

a common. expose dot com or you can get it on facebook we have brothers exposed on my twitter account any and all of them and we need everyone's help so we very much appreciate this please get over and check it out robert thanks so much for being with us tonight your. now that would be the good the bad and the very very does generally ugly for good national people's action your organization is centered upon chicago this weekend a protest the mortgage bankers associations annual conference about forty protesters took to kayaks and paddled up the chicago river dressed in robin hood costumes and they reached the michigan bridge they put up a banner that read wall street steals to ninety nine percent gives to the rich let's take it back and more protests are expected today at the conference the good

work. but bad police of seattle and i could buy movements around the nation it's become a custom for drivers on the road to honk their horns in support of the camped out demonstrators well seattle police are clamping down on that by picketing drivers on one cabbie was even given one hundred twenty four dollars a ticket for doing so. he's not your home. and even if you lock your hand line you know you did why did you think you have to be able. to go just like that. i ought to be allowed showed us the ticket and told us he won't pay the one hundred twenty four dollars fine or one point the police will understand eventually the ninety nine percent movement includes. the kids are on the streets protecting the jobs of police officers from the one percent would rather hire blackwater to do all the police. and a very very ugly to use talking head moniker probably piling on with others of

so-called news probably went after the occupy wall street demonstrators. so what you're seeing is a bunch of useful idiots in the streets of manhattan chicago boston elsewhere in america and around western europe and rest of the world useful idiots who probably haven't paid much in taxes their whole life have no concept and all they know is zero profit is a four letter word. just like g.e. and the rest of the corporate giants who not only pay no taxes tax rebates probably the rest of the gang at fox so-called news made it pretty clear in recent weeks when it comes to siding with the ninety nine percent or the one percent they side with the one percent. actually it is for billionaires that's very very ugly. coming up republicans are really good at messaging but fervent message has just fallen into laps of progressives they what it is and alchemy used to enact a real change in america and i believe.

let's not forget that we had an apartheid regime right here and. i think the rock bombings feeding on the well. whatever government says they're going to keep you safe get ready because you get their freedom.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and she hears you some other part of it and realized everything. you don't. charge is a big issue. democrats

in wisconsin have not forgotten about governor scott walker after nearly a year of attacking working people's rights to unionize and putting private sector employees against public sector employees scott walker's days a live in the governor's mansion in madison who would be number one says democratic party announced yesterday that it will be in sending a recall petitions against governor walker on november fifteenth i did get that gives democrats two months to collect the five hundred forty thousand signatures necessary to launch a recall election against walker as soon as he's eligible for recall at the beginning of next year as was crohn's and democratic party chairman mike tate said it has become clearer than ever people wisconsin editions and institutions of our great state cannot endure anymore of scott walker's abuses so will democrats in the

badger state put an end to the war on unions that scott walker started to give us an update is graham zelinsky communications director with the democratic party walk of wisconsin graham welcome back. hey thanks for having me tom thanks for joining us for those who may not know let's go over the procedure here how do you how do you recall one. well you get a lot of signatures and one thing i'll know from your introduction it's not just going to be democrats who sign these signatures there's plenty of independents and republicans who have had enough of scott walker but we have sixty days we're going to start the process and november fifteenth we'll try a turn of all and by january thirteenth we have to get five hundred forty thousand two hundred eight valid signatures to trigger the recall we're obviously going for a lot more than that and we're going to do it there's a lot of appetite for recalling scott walker what you're seeing over there wall street not deprive protests all over the country you can really actually do

something concrete here in wisconsin to stand up to discorporate agenda and its descendants koch brothers governor package i understand that you have over two hundred thousand people who've already basically signed up to help get petitions and which means if each person gets like can reinforce signatures you know it's a slam dunk is that i those numbers wrong i think what you yeah i i think it's going to be pretty it's we take nothing for granted it's going to be difficult but we're working with a group called united wisconsin and several other grassroots groups we've been led by the grassroots. i don't think that this is normal procedure i don't think that this is what we would normally be doing this time of year in an awful lection year but it's precisely because of the radical overreach that it started the grassroots burning in wisconsin that led to the success full senate recalls the summer which were a smashing success and that showed us really that we could use the recall too which is introduced by progressives into our constitution in the one nine hundred twenty s. we can use that tool precisely the way it was meant to be used to stop radical governors

who are not listening to the people who are trampling on democracy and we're putting our government in the hands of a corporate few this could have for the benefit of the many so we think we can do this with grassroots groups like united wisconsin we need to help people out there they need to go to recall walker h.q. dot com they can maybe give what they can or tell their friends it was. johnson decided to petition and get ready for a ride here you had a senate recall election a few months ago and didn't quite hit the mark you needed one arguably i know that you know one of the republicans this is sort of in between but came up one short basically in terms of recalling the senators did that hurt or helped the momentum to take down walker. back absolutely help the moment that we actually won five of the nine recall races if you recall the republicans try to recall three of our democratic senators and they're the ones who started the recall first so if they're saying they're going to recall well they frankly they started it first and scott

walker ironically came to office as the result of the threat of a recall election here in milwaukee county but we really were encouraged by the results we swung these red districts these very red districts from red to blue that eight points would be like president obama competing for utah or something like that and we were about a thousand votes short of winning a district that hadn't gone democratic in more than a hundred years so we felt very good about what we did we took two of their seats in districts that had gone republican by more than ten points we really have changed the dynamic in wisconsin and now with the level playing field we're fighting on our turf we think we're going to do pretty well we think we're going to recall scott walker and replace him with water on that i mean genuinely if walker is recall what happens next. if we trigger the recall then the non-partner supposedly nonpartisan government accountability board will set a date for the election we think they could be probably in may we're in uncharted

territory here we don't really know exactly what's going to happen but one thing that we can guarantee and why we need resources is that the republicans are going to be up to their dirty tricks in the recall effort this summer they ran a candidates they forged signatures they hired violent out of state felons to come in basically run these pay for play recall pledged schemes so we know that they're capable of doing pretty dirty tricks here and already today i saw that they're gearing up to put pick signatures on the cell of the recall efforts so we know that they're going to try to be lay delay delay to give scott walker more time to raise unlimited corporate cash from the koch brothers from the club for growth from all these shady sleazy outside interested in coming here and this sleazy money that stinking money has been fixed here in wisconsin and we know we're going to get outspent three to one or two one five to one but we really can't afford a little bit any more than that so we're asking people to go for a recall walker h.q.

that com or go to our web page with. org and contribute what they can even ten bucks because what happens here in wisconsin really will resonate out working to the rest of the country and it really will set the tone for two thousand and twelve whether the middle class whether working families where workers can stand up to these corporate special interests and impact. as we've as we've seen before and yet it seems to me like you guys were the in many ways the spark that has led to so many other things it was it was the first major uprising. arguably in the american autumn so we'll see how it goes graham graham's all in here wish you the very best and thanks so much for being with us and thank you for giving us the attention we really appreciate it time we hope to see you again. i look forward to it too let's hope it's one and done for scott walker in wisconsin and from now on scott walker becomes a symbol of what happens when you attack the rights of working people. i

got an email today from the one percent is sure it was actually from a business p.r. firm whose e-mail list serv i somehow got an e-mail read small businesses are hiring right now one of the main reasons is excessive government interference with the free market grows to doing business is driven up by overregulation pending changes create tremendous uncertainty complex tax codes and a legal system stacked against small businesses exacerbate the problem however there are some things the government could do to lighten the regulatory burden reduce costs and get small businesses hiring again. you know goes on the list five simple clear bullet points and how we can all fix our economy five policies that

are basically ripped right out of the mouth of eric cantor they are repeal obamacare abolish labor unions reduce frivolous lawsuits and lighten the regulatory burden and dramatically simplify the tax code i mean these guys are really good at messaging and to the average low information voters all seems like common sense solutions right after all obamacare is evil i heard on fox so-called news and labor unions are corrupt we all need to be able to talk back to their boss anyway and why should there be frivolous lawsuits or burdensome regulations and what's wrong with simplifying the tax code of course once you dig a little deeper. you realize that these policies are organized to only benefit the top one percent repealing so-called obamacare will allow for profit health insurance executives who reside in the top one percent to continue on with their

death panels and continue making money off the nine children with preexisting conditions health care and abolishing labor unions will allow c.e.o.'s in the top one percent to keep making paychecks five hundred to five thousand times greater than their workers and keep offshoring american jobs to jack up their own profits and reducing so-called frivolous lawsuits will protect ones one percenters like the koch brothers from having to compensate families of people who die with one of their pipelines blow up or there's downstream cancer causing pollution from a paper factory and trashing so-called burdensome regulations one percenters at b.p. and exxon mobil keeps skirting safety laws that protect another oil rig from exploding pollution laws that prevent entire cities from acquiring asthma and yeah let's simplify the tax code occur mccain wants to do is nine nine nine plan that will

give the top one percent and enormous tax cut forcing poor people to pay for that rich people's tax cut by paying nine percent income tax on their food and giving the other ninety nine percent of us on average about a nine hundred percent tax increase. oddly even though these proposals are custom made to benefit only the top one percent of americans most americans don't realize that rarely are people able to dig below the soundbites and bullet points like i just did and figure out what these policies will actually do which is why republicans are so effective at messaging and why democrats need to play copycat democrats need to do a better job of messaging and luckily for them the new clear is dave message is right in front of it's simple we are the ninety nine percent we are the ninety nine percent say it over and over and over again and out of that message everything else flows we are the ninety nine percent who want free healthcare so that we don't

have to spend fifteen thousand bucks a year just for the right to see a doctor when health care should be a basic human right like it is in every other developed nation when we are the ninety nine percent who want to mock or see in the workplace in the form of labor unions so that our employers can't screw us over with low wages unsafe working conditions and discrimination we are the ninety nine percent who want to end the so-called free trade so that we can build things in america again and employ millions of good paying manufacturing jobs we are the ninety nine percent who expect a decent retirement when we get older and expect a social safety net if we. we are the ninety nine percent who deserve a free college education like young people everywhere else in the developed world again we are the ninety nine percent who are tired of footing the bill for running this country since ronald reagan dropped the top one percent federal income tax rate from seventy four percent down to twenty eight percent and we think it's time for everyone to pay their fair share but i'm obviously works when the will of the

majority is represented and not just the will of the top one percent and it's up to progressives in america to make sure that that happens and it starts with a clear message you young people in new york city in washington d.c. and boston and los angeles and chicago and hundreds of other cities across america have invented that message now it's time to use it for real progressive change we are the ninety nine percent now let's get to work. 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 dot org and. also check out our two you tube channels there are links of thom hartmann dot com this entire show is also available as a free video podcast and i tunes and free thom hartmann i phone or i pad app and the app store it sends feedback and twitter it's all mothers who are on facebook at time underscore our blogs message boards and tell from comment lines of tom foreman and don't forget democracy begins with you get out there and get active tag you're

it seal.