what drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions completely break through. trust know who is a real one with the global it's clearly state controlled catholic school. we know the terrorists need to our t. question more.

welcome back to the big picture i'm sorry coming up in this half hour these college students are buried financially before they even counter the job market but some familiar faces are benefiting from this new era of money well then millions of londoners stick to the streets today to protest their government's austerity measures but as the global financial crisis spills even further out of all this any chance of being and it's nice that we take hundreds of thousands of cancer patients are getting sicker and watching their chances of fighting that horrible disease slip away because they can't get the drugs that i mentioned these are hundreds of thousands of cancer patients in the united states.

for the first time ever outstanding student loan debt this year will top one trillion dollars more than credit card debt and which wishing for college soaring and prospects for jobs after college plummeting the situation for students across america looks grim but now with the occupy wall street movement in full swing student debtors are feeling empowered and are striking back against the big banks that got bailed out three years ago but are unwilling to help their debt saddled customers now for more on the shady banks behind the trillion dollar student loan bubble and what options are becoming available for students around the nation to escape their debt i want to welcome sara jaffe associate editor alter net from our studios in new york sarah welcome hi tom thanks for having me thanks thanks for

joining us great to see you again first how to student loans work what's the relationship between the big banks and the government and the students. oh my goodness so up until recently there were the student loans were subsidized by the government were lent entirely from private banks or private lenders like sallie mae which are not actually banks. that changed recently the government will now directly lend you up to thirty one thousand dollars for undergrad that goes up each year to a little bit more so thirty one thousand dollars though is not even a year of tuition at a lot of schools now so let alone books room and board anything else that you might need in that time if you're expected to be a full time student so a lot of private banks step in and fill up the gaps and that is basically you know you're signing up for these loans when you're eighteen years old. and the government still guarantees these loans student loans can't be discharged in bankruptcy even the private loans. and the government can go after you to the point

of garnishing your social security so if you make it to sixty five and still haven't paid off your student debt they can still can get it from you. so i'm wondering a little more scary about you you know that that makes student loans fundamentally different from those though the types of doubt there are very few things you can discharge in a bankruptcy and one of their code and why. well our good friend my favorite piece of legislation for the last ten fifteen twenty years is up here from two thousand and five is one of the things we can blame for it before that it's been creeping though i mean that was sort of the last. the last straw in that movement but it's basically they've been moving to make student debt harder and harder to discharge conveniently as tuition has been going up and up and the other thing is that the states i mean we know that we're in a state budget crisis right now one of the first things to get cut and have the state start slashing funds is this the public universities so tuition is going up

everywhere the states are paying less and less towards educating their their people and conveniently your loans are getting harder and harder to get out of if your education turns out to not be worth what you thought it was do you see any kind of a future in for example strikes or you know any other any other way of pushing back fighting back. changing things i mean so i've been following it talking to some people who are working on organizing different types of debt strikes last week on november twenty first a group of people associated with a working group at occupy wall street and why you professor andrew ross announced a student at refusal to pledge they're trying to get one million students to sign this pledge that when they get to one million they will stop paying their loans now of course the problem with that is that if you go into default the lenders just start piling on more fees so if this doesn't you know if people start striking

and it doesn't work the lenders are just profiting off of it now they have it the idea behind getting a million people is that it serves as a stronger form of a petition is something that people are saying we believe in this struggle enough that we are willing to take the hit to our credit ratings we're willing to suffer the consequences we are all in this together and we believe as the pledge that these students came out with that educate public education to be free. and that both student loans for any private education should be interest free and that the private universities should open their books so that students can see where their money is going so so basically what you're suggesting is that by getting a million people signing on. it's a demonstration of political pressure the idea being that all it's asians typically are not leaders they are followers they try to jump in front of the parade rather than follow it from the behind and claim that it's their parade but they wait for

the parade to form so you guys are are creating the parade was that common well arnie duncan this week our good friend the secretary of education said that the administration needs to get serious about tackling student debt problem. the obama administration came out a couple months ago with a little band-aid that will help a little bit income based repayment for it but it only affects people who are in school now so it really doesn't do much for the majority of people who are in trouble right now which is people who are you know been out of school for the last couple years haven't been able to get a job or get a good job and are eleven percent of these this one trillion dollars student loan bubble eleven percent of those people are already in the fire so there's already a de facto student debt straight going on right now it's just not organized you know we wouldn't make some sense to try and organize those folks is there any way to reach well hopefully. there is i mean there's all sorts of things but it's hard to gather them up just the same as everything else the student loan industry

operates under a lot of secrecy it's a lot of you know this consumer financial protection bureau i reported is doing an investigation into the industry because it's so shadowy it's just hard to keep track of and i thought that there was an attempt to to diminish the power in fact it was successful to diminish the power of student loan industry by having the federal government be a primary lender yeah ok so that yeah it it did to a degree but sallie mae and that these two massive companies that aren't just exist to produce and service student loans they're still getting government contracts to service all these loans they still have put out billions of dollars on their books in student loans that were subsidized by the government that are not the government didn't take those over so they're still getting handouts from the government every year to basically stick it but a lot of amazing sarah thanks so much for being with us tonight sherry thanks for having me appreciate it infrastructure is one of the most important things that we

have now you know what's the segue from student loans to infrastructure of frankly the most vital infrastructure we have in the united states is our intellectual the structure. it's education look around you look around here there's the screen the lights the floor the you can see the camera that i'm looking at but literally everything you see started out as an idea everything you see started out as an idea this jacket started out as an idea this ties or somebody had to say you know i'm going to design that i'm going to i'm going to i'm going to come up with the fabric i'm going to figure out how to do this it all everything around us started out as an idea that idea came into being because of the intellectual infrastructure of our country and our world if we want to build our intellectual infrastructure. we need to have free education i mean it's very simple we've got you've got people in the united states who are making

a lot of money companies are making a lot of money because they have a workforce where people know how to read and write and do basic math they have an educated work force that's part of our infrastructure step it up to college that's. also part of our infrastructure it is absolutely insane that quite literally for the first time in the history of our country we have an entire generation that is that is going into life in debt bondage simply because they want to get educated young people need to start their life with a clean slate if they have no debt from school they can go off and become entrepreneurs they can become inventors we need a jew believe frankly a forgiveness of all student debt when you just say you know it was a stupid idea it's a trillion dollars we can pay for that that's less than the cost of iraq we will pay it all off and from this point forward free college education is going to be free.

it's the good the bad in the very very simple i'd only ugly the good newt gingrich you probably didn't mean to make this list but he ended up on it because he let out a little bit of truth while he was a tell all about in south carolina. after it was stumped by a question regarding aids back scenes gingrich reverted to some candid humor. as president will you support prioritizing existing funds for a test and treat strategy that we know will work well i'm going to say what you just said is information's needed me i don't know enough about it to give you a direct answer tonight when i can assure you that if you'll give me a paper afterwards with your name and your e-mail address i'll have my folks talk with people who are really knowledgeable mr i'm certainly sympathetic to what you just said one woman rule changes the comes when you're running for president as

opposed to being an analyst from fox is right you know i have to actually know what i'm talking about thank you i. will hold off on whether or not newt actually knows what he's talking about but he does know that analysts on fox don't know what they're talking about well said you know bad runback ever heard of a guy that continues his descent into irrelevance after leaving g.o.p. t.v.'s five so-called news but he did return to his old employer and spew some nonsense on the o'reilly factor here's his take on the field of republican primary . but in listening to all of them and really. you know i'm not friends with any of them but i know all of them there's really only two of them that i think really fall into the abraham lincoln or george washington character category and that would be rick santorum and michele bachmann and after talking to all of them i think michele bachmann is just the be the best choice out there. that's right he

compared rick don't google my name santorum and michele are you get the ties bachmann able lincoln and george washington. bachmann rallying tea partiers it's just like washington crossing the delaware and santorum stash defense of don't ask don't tell ranks up there with the gettysburg address on this one back smoking . and a very very ugly. nari freewill baptist church the pike county kentucky charge jumped in a time machine and travel backward forty years to issue a resolution that bans interracial couples from becoming members of the church were participating and we're back to that it's unclear if they'll also be taking the word free will in the name of their church in defense of the minister of the church said the resolution quote is not intended to judge the salvation of anyone it is intended to promote greater unity among the church body in the community you serve

and as in promoting greater unity in their community by excluding more people in the community that's a very fair. coming up millions of brits took to the streets today in massive protests that brought the european capital from a standstill and their demands are all too familiar. what drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who make decisions to break through that sort of economy who can you trust know. if you will and with the global that's where we have a state controlled capital so it's clear that we know the terrorists need to our t. question more.

group it seems the world massive labor strikes rocked the u.k. today as public workers took to the streets to protest ongoing austerity measures last year the conservative government passed a slew of austerity measures laying off public workers cutting back on pensions and ending social welfare programs claiming this is what they needed to do this is what needed to happen to get the british economy back on track a year later version gonna be still hasn't grown and now the government is calling

for even more austerity in response over two million civil servants are protesting schools hospitals airports courts government buildings all being affected by the strike which is the largest in over a generation in the u.k. since the winter of discontent to the guardian. newspaper the u.k. nine hundred thousand out it's running one thousand seven hundred schools in england and wales are closed or partially closed and roughly six thousand non-urgent operations in hospitals were cancelled the occupy london movement made their voice heard today storming the offices of mining companies disaster up the targeting the highest paid c.e.o. in the u.k. they made it all the way to the roof of the building and hung a banner that read all power to the ninety nine percent before police regained control so worried the british government go round and where is the sort of social

unrest that were seen springing up all around the world taking us our birman joins me now is a contributing writer to the nation and author of the book herding donkey's the fight to rebuild the democratic party and reshape american politics ari welcome back. hey tom thanks for having me thanks for joining us two million people in the streets in the u.k. it's the largest strike since the winter of discontent what does that tell you. it's a very significant it's the largest outpouring we've seen not only since nine hundred seventy nine but in response to the austerity regime that britain has been under since two thousand and ten when the tory liberal democrat coalition took over and there's been a lot of social unrest in or in response to the massive cuts that we've seen in britain and the lack of public investment and really the scapegoating of public sector employees that we see in britain is not unlike the scapegoating of public sector employees that we see in america at

a time when their pay is frozen they're asked to be paying more for their pensions and they're asked to be retire later really the union that think has said enough we've got to get out in the street to make our message heard to put some pressure not only on the conservative government but also to put some pressure on the labor opposition to stand with us and to make the public aware of what we're going through and so by all accounts of the chilean people that turned out for this protest it was a very successful day of action the i understand the teachers for example although this is true probably most public workers the retirement age for teachers was under this conservative government and david cameron's government was raised or he's proposing to raise at one of the other from sixty to sixty eight and the pension payment which here we would call social security tax has been double and i can't

imagine in the united states saying ok we're going to raise the retirement age by eight years and we're going to double your social security tax throughout your lifetime. this this and on top of that you know when cameron was campaigning he was basically campaigning on a pledge of austerity i'm going to do what the i.m.f. does to other countries and every time the i.m.f. does this to any other country they go down the tubes and. now the u.k. is going down the tubes how how is it a that cameron is his even still in power i mean you know why isn't this breaking up the coalition between in the lib dems and and and b. how much longer before this really does start to to to shatter british politics. yeah so tom it's interesting i was just over there for a week and i was under the perception which i imagine you are to that the lib dems should be more liberal quote unquote than the tories on economic policy but that's

not really the case actually the lib dems under nick clegg seem to be as conservative as the tories or certainly pretty conservative compared to labor and also they're interested in power for power sake they want to be part of the governing coalition so the lib dems aren't having a lot of influence on that government and the conservatives are preaching this myth of expansionary austerity just like the republicans are doing here and they're saying listen if we cut government if we cut spending the economy will grow well in fact that hasn't been the case at all in britain what's happened is they've instituted this massive austerity program and it's been massively can traction ery not expansionary and so growth has slowed to a halt unemployment is rising and business confidence is plummeting as a result and it's in this vicious circle where the government is saying things are bad we need more stary but the problem is us terry is making things worse and it is putting a lot of pressure on the government now there's not another election for five years

but what's happening is the labor government which left it pretty much in distress disrepute after tony blair and gordon brown is getting a shot in the arm and the public is starting to be very unhappy with the coalition government there i think i think a lot of the opposition labor came out of blair's going along with bush on iraq and that that tarnished just never went away but back to the united states since obama took office and labor has i think a bright future will see in the u.k. but since obama took office here in the united states in this country has killed over a half million public sector jobs so why is our series still on the table when all the economic indicators show it doesn't work and no country in the history of the world has ever successfully cut its way to his prosperity. yeah so i wrote a big article about this for the nation called how the austerity class rules washington and i think there's a few different factors here i mean one is the debate is so dominated by advocates

of austerity in both parties you have all this can these configuration of think tanks and policy organizations and pundits who are just a very very powerful and they have a stranglehold over policy makers and over much of the media obviously utah being an exception and it's very hard for the anti-us ferrety advocates to get their message out and the right has been very effective in demonizing public workers and demonizing government and only now when when austerity is being proved to not work are the people that are pushing back against austerity starting to have their voices heard more and you're seeing that in the u.k. with the massive strikes there and you're seeing it in the u.s. with occupy wall street. though at the same time we're seeing a sturdy is still being preached across europe i mean this is this is seems to be the thing that's coming to the. ari we're time i'd love to continue the conversation and thank you very much for dropping by and for writing the book in

article about thank you tom i appreciate it for sure so with a shrinking economy and social unrest were once again seen why austerity is not just a bad idea it's an insane idea so the question is why republicans intent on bringing it to the united states you might want to call your member of congress particularly if he or she is a republican and ask them. so if you ever scalped a pair of tickets for a baseball game better yet have you ever scalp some cancer drugs to save your life . that's right scalping rugs is the latest get rich quick scheme in our distorted healthcare system it's costing tens of thousands of people their wives every year but it's making big bucks for doctors health insurance providers

and pharmaceutical companies right now there are more than half a million cash cancer patients in the united states who can not get the medication they need to save their lives and the reason is companies are buying up all the drugs at wholesale and then trying to sell them back to hospitals and patients that anywhere between six hundred fifty to four thousand percent above what they paid for their scalpers and they operate a gray market without safety regulations call up hospitals all around the nation to pass off their drugs at these new super high prices and here's the kicker it's perfectly legal nobody's in a drawer dark street corner nobody's using an alias it's right out of the open all while cancer patients are dying because suddenly they can't afford or even find the medication that they need oncologists cancer doctors have their own little scheme

go into their own little game they've been doing something similar to this for years because chemotherapy drugs can be hazardous on colleges cancer doctors are one of the few types of doctors who can legally sell the drugs that they prescribe so they got the habit of boosting their bottom lines by buying the generic cancer drugs at a low price and then selling them to their patients and billing the patients to the health insurance companies or medicare at a much higher price it's why so many on college on college ists are millionaires. so when the bad bush administration got wise to the scheme in two thousand and three and medicare was getting squeezed by it they told the oncologists that from now on medicare would only reimburse for the cost of the cancer drug plus six percent costs you know of the basically the cost to administer it put the needle so what are they could doctors did they stop buying the generic drugs they went to the

big pharma companies and give us the expensive stuff after all why if you could make six percent why make six percent off a drug that costs a few hundred dollars a dose when you can take six percent off a drug that cost a few thousand dollars and there's so demand for the cheaper generics collapsed and the drug companies stop making it so now there's a shortage of generic cancer drugs i guess the oncologist didn't get the memo that saving people's lives comes first having a vacation home in the bahamas come second pharmaceutical companies also got in on the screen whenever the patent on one of their designer drugs is about to expire they slow down their production line or they hoard their inventory so there's a shortage just in time for their new super expensive replacement designer drug to come up if you have a kid or know somebody with a d h d for example you've seen this played out as a decade ago the ritalin shortage now it's an added role shortage thanks to all these schemes run by doctors pharmaceutical companies and scalpers actual legal

scalpers over the last five years prescription drug shortages and a particular cancer drug shortages have tripled and people are dying these are all examples of what happens when you let the so-called free market run our health care system when the profit motive is put above the healing motive there is for the doctors the drug companies or whatever and americans will continue to die and scammers will continue to get rich as long as the united states doesn't join the rest of the developed world and adopt a single payer health care system. you know europe doesn't have a problem scalpers they don't have a problem with oncologists gaining their patients this is basically only one drug purchaser in the marketplace in most european countries that's the government and it's elected by and it represents the people so it has to be responsive to them

there's a price for the drug there's no middleman trying to turn a quick profit and there's no doctor who forgot the hippocratic oath chemo drugs in the back room in their offices everybody gets paid what they deserve doctors make really good money patients get the care they need that's what we need in america and it will be really easy to make it happen ever heard of medicare just added to the end of medicare part d. medicare for everybody drop the eligibility age from sixty five down to zero your cover the moment you're born and the drug shortages and leave the scalping to the sports fans that's it for the big picture tonight for more information on the stories we've covered visit our web sites. free speech dot org r t dot com and also check out our to you tube channels there are links to thom hartmann also tom hartman caught dot com check out all the different ways you can send us your feedback and don't forget democracy begins when you get out there and get active ted your occupy something super.

template the official policy of the cation cio high phone the i pod touch from the i ching sampson. life on the go. to man's. mind becomes. a registry it's now in the palm of your. skull.