welcome back to the big picture i'm john arbonne coming up in this half hour rick perry's flat tax plan is just flat out wrong for the country's ninety nine percent one of my guests this hour begs to differ on the big perry's new tax because the nation and my pretty flat line and can't we just all get along and ideally take i'll tell you about the one thing occupy wall street and the tea party should agree

on it could revolutionize the united states with. the rick perry team is reaching into their bag of tricks to desperately revamp a campaign on the edge of failure to looks like they may have found a nifty little scheme that republicans can't get enough of nowadays a flat tax hike when herman cain's nine nine nine plan which imposes a nine percent tax on personal income nine percent flat tax on corporate income and nine percent splat sales tax on everything perry introduced yesterday a twenty twenty plan he replaces the corporate tax rate currently at thirty five percent with a twenty percent flat tax and it also lets the wealthiest americans those who pay thirty six percent income taxes right now to opt into this new flat tax system so they only and made twenty percent oh and eliminate capital gains taxes. the taxes

paris hilton pays while sitting on her but around the pool waiting for the checks to come from her stockbroker for americans who pay less than twenty percent income taxes right now generally people who make less than thirty five thousand dollars a year they can stay with the old tax system that means the wealthy will get a big bad tax cut thanks to rick perry and the poor get squat as for the national debt just like how the bush tax cuts blew up the deficit and made up a majority are actually right now make up a majority of six trillion dollars and knew that it was tacked on between two thousand and one and two thousand and eight rick perry tax cuts for the rich will blow an even larger or in our federal budget don't worry rick perry has a plan for that to just hand social security over to wall street and replace medicare with a voucher system and some of the government spending so people in the streets protesting the one percent not paying their fair share just out of touch is rick perry and what's with the republicans have such an flat taxes for their takes are robert founder and president the institute for america's future and co-director of

the campaign for america's future and anthony hall republican strategist author and your cation specialist welcome to you both and we start out with question for you anthony sure thomas jefferson wrote another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt from all taxation below a certain point and to tax the higher portions in geometric progression as they rise there was thomas jefferson proposing a progressive income tax. was the guy who wrote the government back origin of independence well well thomas manifesto it's a mainstay also is a progressive income tax but let's go back to your one constant manifesto has nothing to do with progressive income tax it certainly does apply to the manifesto is going to become taboo collinson you know and marx and engels suggested that all property should be should be nationalized this has nothing to do with that this is we're talking about an income tax that people are making in the private sector i understand and your one percent just alluded to pay thirty six percent of all taxes in america and then explore the percent of all the income. thirty six percent of

all and they make forty percent of what i'm hearing and the next the top five percent pay it he eight percent of all taxes in america and the top four hundred people own more wealth than the top of that one hundred eight million dampen it the top five percent pay more than the rest of the ninety five percent combined and what i'm hearing you say is that's not enough and maybe that's inaccurately and i hear it was rick perry say that's too much he tried to imply it is leave them out here and you know the problem with that tax cut is but their plan they're holding i only really got it going or they need to be paying more it's one of those two if you have a problem with them lowering their taxes they're either paying enough well five percent pay fifty eight percent tax here it is and then he starts his plan and says america is being crushed by the federal deficit and he first step in dealing with federal deficits is to cut to give the wealthiest americans a massive tax cut that is sort of illogical what actually in the past often cutting taxes on the job creators has increased the entire aggregate tax base for america

so one can one can debate that you try to do is really well this is the reagan gave us our five percent of taxpayers through trickle down. is that enough they can pay fifty eight percent more than all the rest of the ninety five find is that enough i mean that's a fair deal it's not the question we're facing the question we're facing now is you know warren buffett said we'll make sure that billionaires don't pay a lower tax rate than theirs secretaries but rick perry saying is we're going to make sure that billionaires will never pay a higher tax rate than their secretaries in this sort of ridiculous time when the country is facing significant we have an enormous investments we have to make an infrastructure that's true and what perry is calling for is first step eliminate tax on taxes on wealth eliminated taxes on the states lower the top end tax rates so that they don't pay a higher rate than their secretaries blow a hole in the federal budget and solid. by dismantling medicare namely medicaid

privatizing social security this is not a this is not a policy that will be popular with americans but it is also ruinous for the country as it is the current tax code the i.r.s. one were on its way to understood or actually one has the option of the state a little or so to billionaires are saying slow down in the settled areas but ending everett if they have an account they're going to learn i'm curious why you keep obsessing on the five percent of the top five percent of people making about one hundred sixty thousand dollars or less org and go in the top. like you the top one percent of people making about three hundred eighty thousand dollars or more correct and the top two tenths of one percent of people making a million dollars or more and president obama was only talking about the top two tenths of one percent and he said let's add a point five percent tax to you know to put four hundred thousand cops and firefighters and teachers which unfortunately yeah well you know i don't think any of us do a punch and that's here this is it fair flat tax yeah your tax bill is

a rarity somebody there in a million dollars and here they are for five percent of america to pay fifty eight percent of the taxes and they're going to do we wanted to pay more because they look somebody was earning thirty thousand dollars a year can't pay much in taxes they've got a huge sort of necessity. for if you're making a million you pay for your necessities and you've got a lot left over so it doesn't make any sense you know doesn't make any sense that we should ask more for them from them partly because they're the ones who benefited from the system we've built over two hundred years and they've been successes and they should give back to that system of. the knowledge america does not pay federal income taxes and then those who use a five percent or less an f.a.q. five percent pay over one majority of it relative to the tax which is really a question on the table. there's a lot of ways to break it down or attack it way i look at it is different than you do obviously it's a flat tax versus what we currently have i believe quite strongly as it is in all.

well mainly joy. well the good center is there you can have it i think it would ever benefit you the most so so is always green options wine we have a broken system everyone agrees on that no one can understand it so why keep it in place that's a very fair question but at least i have it you are saying you know that accountants perhaps everybody gets their hand to see which aisle to get the best texture when just to get out of it system i understand twenty percent across the board room i get it makes sense and if you're wealthy and you pay a higher tax rate now you'll take that system if you're if you're a working american so yeah you know he's taking twenty people are what i cross the border is what i'm hearing you say are you i recommend a progressive tax and a simplified progressive texas with lots of standards but without all the productions of the stuff that makes it complicated that the corporations have built into our tax code i would support a strong if we just arrived at a consensus i mean isn't isn't there an issue those who are the wealthiest are also among the heaviest users of the commons that fly around in private jets they're

using the air traffic control system they're using the court system more heavily more than half of all of course is an act of the united states is for corporations and wealthy people that you know they should be paying more for the cup. that's questionable actually in the court system i get one hundred percent but it's a little tough to say that a billionaire drives on the road more often than a family of five living on twenty eight thousand dollars i'm not sure that it is a thriving or that if you're making money in this country you're hiring people you count on our society to educate them you don't pay for that education because. that is one of the benefits that we've chosen to do it's not right what's really going to fit in from an infrastructure that you don't pay for except through your taxes an educated workforce that you don't pay for to educate except through your taxes so there's there's a there's a whole set of benefits you got from the fact that we have a society of rule of law that we don't pay for some thirty or thirty six percent tax out there were being that one provider you out asked them to pay more than thirty six percent to pay no no. we're talking about peri's claim which is they

have been paid less than they pay now at a time when we have massive deficits were not understood me as just told the news there are not a way that's what i think they may be on his russian drivers and i'm not seeing any here he doesn't think this revenue neutral he says it may raise eighteen percent g.d.p. which is we're now at twenty four percent g.d.p. and spending and it's fourteen percent in the recession in terms of tax receipts but he doesn't claim that he was going to can i have to you know i have to wrap this basically to include it's you know we're we're just but i was i'm i'll just add i think we should roll back the reagan tax cuts and go back to what works so well for them in the fifth forty's fifty's sixty's seventy's and early when we had a middle class yeah when we had a middle class exactly. thank you robert and thank you for sure.

it's the good the bad of the very very benfold pelagic really ugly good former supreme court justice john. paul stevens even though he's retired justice stevens has a lot of insight the current high court justices should be listening to it interview with time magazine stevens went after the war on drugs and citizens united first on drug penalties even said i think generally the so-called war on drugs is emphasized more severe punishment than is appropriate throughout the country there are some instances where penalties are so disproportionate they could well violate the eighth amendment and stevens went after the citizens united decision decision he descended on laying out the absurdity of the money is speech argument saying if hollowed out to it's a lot of logical conclusion that would have provided first amendment protection of the watergate burglars they were financed with campaign expenditures so now the question is how do we kick clearcuts thomas off the court and put justice stevens back on. the bad bank of america c.e.o.

brian moynihan first bank of america takes forty five billion in bailout money from we the taxpayer and the bank announces it will start charging a five dollar a.t.m. fee on the taxpayer because it has a right to make a profit yes that's ok so that's their quote and now the bank of america c.e.o. brian morning and wants us all to thank him and he is speaking at an employee town hall meeting when hands. like you get a little incensed when you think about how much good all of you do whether it's volunteer hours charitable giving we do serving clients and customers well then referring to people who criticize bank of america one and said you know to think a little about that before you start yelling at us let's see bank of america plays a role in crashing the entire world's economy in two thousand and eight they gladly take a forty five billion dollar bailout and decide not to lend that money out to people who are trying to refight their homes or small businesses and instead decide to take more money from us by living a five dollar fee debit cards c.e.o.

brian moynihan is right we should be yelling at bank of america we should be taking our money out of it and breaking up that group because. and the very very ugly rush limbaugh yesterday on his radio show limbaugh has made a pretty outrageous yet revealing comment about the obama administration. we've got the most incompetent dangerous goods people running this country in my lifetime in his lifetime so i guess rush was born after the george w. bush administration was incompetent in defending this nation from the worst terror attack in its history and started to dangerous wars that we're still fighting it was incompetent in handling the financial crisis in two thousand and eight and everything the lead up to it they dangerously politicized the justice department and dangerously leaked the name of a cia agent just naming a few i've always thought limbaugh had the maturity of a child he's now just confirmed manchild rush limbaugh nearly.

coming out today officially marks ten years of the you know the watchful eyes of big brother so as a decade of the patriot act helped or hurt our nation. drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions to break through it's already been made who can you trust no one who is in view with a global mission that would see where we had a state controlled capitalism is called satchels when nobody dares to ask we do our t. question more.

today is the tenth anniversary of president george w. bush signing into law the patriot act so happy birthday to extended wire taps to library books snoops to x. ray porno scanners to no fly lists to terrorist watch lists to the department of and the whole phrase homeland security and everything else that's come out of that massive giveaway to the security state complex since the patriot act became law so a question about our nation is radically different today as a result of the patriot act and it was just ten years ago but are we safer and has this new era of big government surveillance been worth it service susan harman is

in our new york studios to talk about this she is the president the american civil liberties union and law professor at the brooklyn law school she's also the author of the new book taking liberties that war on terror and the erosion of american democracy susan welcome thank you tom thank you for having me thank you for joining us ten years. as the patriot act actually made america safer or more. small d democratic small our republic. well i think it certainly made us less democratic and i think that it's really impossible to say whether it's made us much safer at all and certainly whether it's worth it as i was reading my book i was beginning to get you more and more skeptical about some of the claims the surveillance provisions and many other provisions of the patriot act which is actually hundreds of provisions amending previous law in all sorts of ways whether any of those have made us safer and you know up i'll give you two examples of the kind of thing i'm talking about one kind

of thing that most people i think you've heard over at the national security letters which allow the government q you were mentioning libraries but they allow the government to go to librarians telecommunications providers internet service providers and demand information about patrons and clients without having to a court at all so this is kind of a departure from our usual norm where you've got a court to give a second opinion before the government can get important private information so you know all this happens behind the curtain you're national security letters are issued the people who receive national security letters are under gag orders and are not to permit it to ever tell anybody that they've received any sort of request from the f.b.i. at all so you would think you'd be pretty hard to tell what's going on and that you know maybe we've been made safer but after some people actually stood up to a couple of people stood up to the national security letter power congress finally asked the inspector general of the department of justice in two thousand and seven to issue report on how the national security letters had been used and the

inspector general is one of the only people who can peek behind the curtain so this report looks at the korea time from two thousand and three to two thousand and six where the first thing that's astonishing was that one hundred ninety four thousand four hundred ninety nine requests had been served under national security letters and the inspector general could only find one terrorism related prosecution that used any of that information but it seems as if that conviction could have been obtained anyway so you know i don't think there's a lot of evidence that the nash. security letters are keeping us safer and they're certainly making us less democratic because in addition to the government knows everything we're doing and we can't know what they're doing people are already been allowed to testify before congress about you know their experiences with national security letters so if i got a national security letter to say i knew you personally but. we want the information that that you know about susan i couldn't not only could i not tell you but right now we were on the air and i mentioned to i go to prison just for mention

you are back you could be subject to federal prosecution for ten years in prison now this is new these are a little bit more limited than some of the other provisions of the patriot act in terms of the kinds of information that you can get but with astonishing to me too is that although hundreds of thousands of these things have been used only six people so far as we know have stood up to this and said wait a minute isn't that unconstitutional which which raises another question in the minute a half or so we have left here susan hermann president obama has continued this is there no political party that will stand up to the whole idea of a national security state peter dunne. well i think no political party is going to stand up to that idea if we the people don't let our elected representatives know that we're not willing to just be sold placebos i saw today there was a new poll about the level of distrust of the government i find that very hard to square with the fact that people seem to be willing to just trust the government to help all these fragments and do whatever they want to give away our rights because we're assuming that things are keeping us safer where we don't really know whether

we're getting any benefits or indeed what the costs are you know it's an interesting contradiction chuck grassley talking about we can't have national health care it will be government death panels but by the way let's look at government into our lives. not to make it partisan. i know you guys are are that's why i wrote this book because i wrote the book because i think it's very important that the american people begin to focus more on the cost of the tape create act and all of these antiterrorism measures to ordinary americans i don't talk about continental in torture and i think people have the assumption that all of this doesn't affect them if they're not terrorists well it does affect them if they're applying for mortgages or dealing with banks or telephone companies or internet service providers and yet many more you know more obviously issues than i can mention to your viewers right now so i hope they read my book yeah ok there you go susan herman we thank you with you so you thank you so much for being with us thank you so much appreciate it.

in two thousand and eight the nation wanted a revolution and they elected barack obama a man who promised to quote fundamentally change the country and quote if he was elected i'm not talking about a violent. revolution in the sense that the old ruling elite and the old economic powers that be. had pretty much worn out their welcome after crashing the economy both our country and the planet and there was a broad consensus among the people in the united states that it was time for some new ideas some major reforms it was time for the country to take a big step forward just that just as it had done in previous revolutions be it the civil rights movement franklin roosevelt's new deal or the progressive era of teddy

roosevelt the man who wrote the declaration of independence sparking the first american revolution promise jefferson wrote repeatedly about the need for generational revolutions he said no society can make a perpetual constitution or even a perpetual law the earth belongs to the living generation they manage it and consequently may govern as they please its every constitution that in every law it actually expires at the end of thirty four years he said naturally is talking about as an a lot of nature so after those thirty four years roughly the span of time that it takes for one group in power to get old and step down a new generation comes to power and governs as a sees fit and a revolution of hers which jefferson also wrote about what happens if these sorts of revolutions these periodic transformations are stopped or blocked he said if

this avenue be shot to call of sufferance it will make itself heard through that of force and we shall go on as other nations are doing in the endless circle of oppression rebellion reformation and oppression rebellion reformation again and so on forever. barack obama's revolution never materialized at least not in the first three years of his presidency for a number of reasons republicans creating a debt crisis paralysis in the senate with the use of the filibuster fox news is tireless efforts efforts to sabotage the obama agenda is just a few of the reasons why jefferson's generational revolution that we're going to realize and as jefferson warned if that avenue to revolution is shot off then it will make itself heard through force we're seeing that today in the streets of oakland a nation pregnant with revolution as ours is today doesn't just give up but the

real question is what kind of revolution does the nation want that's the real change people are looking for since president obama took office two reveller revolutionary groups or ideologies have sprung up just in the past three years and a key party and the occupy wall street and on the surface they may seem like they're about bringing about completely different things from political revolutions a closer look reveals that there is a common thread i saw this chart on democratic underground today and it breaks it all down this is pretty pretty straightforward and pretty amazing actually the actually the kind of commentaries of the most important this this is a people who protested occupy wall street is that corporations are too big and don't care about average people etc and corporations are ripping us off ok this of says the people who support the tea party government is too big they don't care about the average person and working people are suffering from the government's tax

into much but if you put it together enough with corporations donate huge sums of money to government officials then the government officials do what the corporations want then the corporations give more money to government officials and then the government officials do it the corporations want and at the very end the people are left out totally this should upset both groups. and i would submit to you that this is right this this right here which in congress is all of this is really what this what today's revolution is about whether it's the occupy wall street revolution whether it's the the tea party revolution or whether it's frankly the election of two thousand and eight of president obama which i believe was a revolutionary moment is that the people are saying on both sides whether whether they're concerned about big government or whether they're concerned about big corporations it's too big they're in bed with each other there's too much going on like this the idea that corporations are people and money is speech is

contaminating america the idea that government should be in our face it you know with the patriot act for example is not america frankly so what do we do where do we go from here it's all about ending corporate personhood the idea that corporations are people and money is speech that is the cornerstone of the next revolution america the supreme court enshrined corporate personhood into law way back in the eighteen eighties so according to jefferson's thirty four year long expiration date on laws in the constitution repealing corporate personhood is long overdue and it's at the top of the list of what occupy wall street is trying to do and what the tea partiers know it or not it's the real reason why they were in the streets back in two thousand and nine if you keep the corporations out of government then you end crony capitalism in our elected representatives have to work for we the people again as our founders envisioned so how do we do it. it won't be easy and in corporate personhood the good news is that the hard part is

already out of the way people are organized they're in the streets they're pressuring congress on both sides just ten years ago when i wrote the first major book on corporate personhood unequipped to action corporations became people and how you can fight back no one even knew what corporate personhood meant but now it's in the forefront of the debate in america. so with the with with people aware of the real problem corporate personhood it's time to undo all this damage the supreme court has done with the doctrine of corporate personhood and the only real way to do that is to amend the constitution the amendment can and should be very simple and just say that corporations are not people and thus not entitle to constitutional rights and that money is not speech and so corporations and rich people can't rule the nation any longer but the power goes back to the people corporations are not people buy from and after the next revolution that will be the

law of the land. that's it for the big picture for tonight for more information on the stories we visited we covered visit our web sites at tom hartman dot com free space dot org and our team dot com you can also check out our two you tube channels there are links over time hartman dot com this entire show is also available as a free video podcast on i tunes and we have a free thom hartmann i phone or i pad app in the abstract send us feedback to twitter at thomas carlin on facebook atomosphere arbonne our blogs most of course in town and telephone comment line it's all part and i know forget the modesty begins when you get out there get active pay your it occupy something. he.

says.