pepper spray such as burn your eyes right right i mean it's like a derivative of actual pepper it's a food product essentially. this is much stronger than anything it's used by a lot of sort of these used thousands of times was stronger than any kind of ever put you know. welcome back to the big picture i'm tom hartman coming up in this half hour how is a big oil will do it in water way up to now with tar balls still washing up on the gulf coast greg palast joins me to expose the latest exploits of the world's oil

barons and vultures also is the right wing american legislative exchange council and doors seen letting children get poisoned by rat poison you won't believe what alec is up to now and later in tonight's daily take occupy wall street has reached a new phase in the battle against corporate personhood why the movement is finally winning. the finger pointing over the b.p. oil spill continues more than a year after eleven men were killed and five million barrels at least of oil blanketed the gulf of mexico dick cheney's halliburton is in trouble after was alleged that the corporation destroyed evidence that may have proved it was partly responsible for the b.p. oil spill and deaths poured into court documents filed in new orleans this week

albert destroyed the results of physical slurry testing and it has at best lost the computer modeling outputs the showed no channeling in part because it wanted to eliminate any risk that this evidence would be used against it at trial and quote so why does it seem like everything dick cheney touches turns criminal and the bigger question why does it seem like everything big oil touches turns messy here's shed some light on the tentacles of big oil and its corrosive impact on our environment economy and government i'm joined by investigative reporter b.b.c. contributor greg palast his new book is entitled vultures picnic in. petroleum pigs power pirates and high finance carnivores greg great to see it. again time banks thanks for joining us vultures picknick who are the vultures who are the vultures these are the well actually we these are the guys who grabbed the third world nations dying nations and made billions off it these are the most powerful finance years in america and in the planet in fact the vulture of vultures picnic was

a guy named paul the vulture singer everyone's upset about the koch brothers on the left they've suddenly discovered that the number one donor to the g.o.p. is not the coax there are two and three is paul the vultures singer i don't give him that name that's a name as bankers give him paul vulture singer so i'm doing good so this guy ok and by the way he doesn't he doesn't want you to listen to this report because he called my bosses at b.b.c. london i kid you not guys with four billion dollars he's mitt romney's kid advisor and sugar daddy and he called. he called b.b.c. london to say we have a file on greg palast oh well that's fine i know i have a file on here that you know i have a while and if you're like a little charity you guys you know i think what he's done is for example ok he bought the specificities history the it's best to in history in america went bankrupt i'm because they were caught poisoning their workers they were dying i'm going over there a long time father died of us yeah missile tilma which is exactly and what hatter

what this guy bought owens corning out of bankruptcy and used his connects with a guy named george bush to to screw down the workers that they lost eighty percent of their compensation that would end that eight yet and they say well you know what happened they offered everyone peanuts while they were basically dying and saying take it or leave it that's what you know and that's exactly so you got pennies he got he got the gold mine while your dad got the shaft and so what happens he flipped and he bought that company for next to nothing he flips it makes a billion dollars and that billion is now funding. the g.o.p. he's the number one biggest donor of the g.o.p. he does not want you to read vultures picnic he also made another request though for mitt romney's we have to want to be changed vultures picnic to job creators picnic ok i made that. the petroleum pig so much all in pigs half the book is an investigation of british petroleum and what really happened with the deepwater horizon and i'm an investigative reporter you know which we don't do here because

it's against the patriot act three so i do it for b.b.c. television where i get a i see that the deepwater horizon blow up within hours i get a cable from the caspian sea in asia saying i know what happened i'm an eyewitness how can a carnation be eyewitness the answer is that b.p. and trans ocean had a rig in the caspian sea two years before the deepwater horizon this thing blew up blew out exactly like the deepwater horizon in the gulf and by that used that same crap garbage halliburton kwikset nitrogen cement they knew when b.p. says they covered up the evidence that halliburton b.p. covered up the prior blowout for the same reason they know it didn't work spiro shock teleports cement didn't work two years earlier they went before congress b.p. and its oil company partners who you know all the big americans companies were in

with them in the in the caspian sea and they swore up and down that they had no problems for fifty years with this stuff. they knew it blew out the same cement the same operation in the caspian now wait a minute i get a cable if this is true deepwater horizon is not an x. that it's a homicide so in vulture's picnic what i do is different people knew my you know best democracy money can buy some leather for this different i think you were me and you got more time with me you know on the on the investigation so on this one i go off to zero by john and by the if you don't or is there by john that's because the eighty second airborne hasn't arrived there yet it will now because of the welcome you know of kabul i got you know they got a lot they got a problem they were coming and but i would go there to find out if this is true so i take off i use a cockney story to get my camera crew in we take off across the desert no roads and in a jeep bank i'm busted by b.p.'s private police army and then the military police

and the security ministry so you know obviously someone has ratted us out but he's doing so they come up here in the desert we're under arrest they say give us your film. and well course they got a fake press pass they've got real guns yeah i give him the film but what they didn't do is. this is one that. i had one of those pen they didn't mind me keeping my panix it was on those austin power jobs that you know takes over and i have film in a two so i came out with the evidence it was a homicide not an accident b.p. covered this up yeah the cement doesn't work they're not shocked it didn't work two years earlier it's a lie that's just one chapter then ok so goes on who are the power power pirates how are pirates ok i get through the mail about five hundred pieces of paper. and you know i burned the i can't tell you who sent it to me but this is the real

information about what is it's coming from inside a houston power company all right and what we're finding out this is the company that just got approval from the bush the bush administration the obama administration who's approved for nuclear plants by the way. that was stuck into the bill for body armor for troops in afghanistan ok a big five billion dollars or so they could build a nuclear plant for five billion the inside documents say seven billion right so by the way there is five billion and and seven billion is two it is two billion that's that's money in my neighborhood and used to be fraud but you love this tom. the supreme court has ruled that while people people can go to jail for fraud and racketeering corporation people who are power companies are exempt exempt from the racketeering laws like that now then i find out something fukushima blows up i used

to be a racketeering investigator for the government. which will upset your last guess that there's that there was a government there was one time a government was very very very upset and we used to actually investigate criminals and i've i had files on the nuclear plant villages in fukushima blow up and i know things are going to melt i go back in my files and you'll see the documents and here i go back in my files and what do i find from one thousand nine hundred eighty eight i have the engineers notebooks handwritten note books to see them there in vulture's picnic in the chapter called fukushima texas the engineers notebooks is this point no way can withstand an earthquake it will utterly fail in an earthquake they knew the company by the way where that notebook came from a stoner webster the company designated to build all four nuclear plants which had been approved by our congress and n.r.c. is going to show all construction which is the new shape in name of stone webster

the guys who faked the earthquake proofing reports and by the way there they got the contract to rebuild. so those your power pirates and that's just the beginning i get the inside stuff and the and the high finance carnival we have thirty thirty seconds high finance cardboards well paul the vulture singer that is the number one sugar daddy republican party that was on full circle when you read what you don't want to three yeah greg palast vultures picnic in pursuit of petroleum pigs power pirates and high finance carnivores my friend you have created another masterpiece thank you so much with the best great to see a great. greg palast. yeah that's the good the bad and the very very you now you unison it was only

ugly. thing the good u.s. district court judge james boas per after a tumultuous weekend between occupy d.c. and the police movement scored a small victory this week in ruin issued on monday night judge boaz byrd protected occupy d.c. from any bloomberg style midnight raids by police on the encampment but was burke said that the national park service must give occupy d.c. at least a twenty four hour notice before carrying out any sort of eviction the judge went on to say absent such notice the government will not restrict players' access to the square or his camping or sleeping in the square good move. the bad dick morris the notorious toes sucker was on g.o.p. t.v.'s fox and friends this morning and confirmed all our suspicions about the role fox so-called news plays in picking the next republican presidential nominee. you don't win iowa in iowa you win it on this couch he went on fox news she went out in

the debates you win it and you win a national primary and made it imposes itself on the early states that could make this the most powerful piece of furniture is apparently with five right now all of this is the casting couch. right it doesn't matter what voters want to matter is what billionaire rupert murdoch wants is anyone still doubt that the republican primary is really the murdoch. and the very very ugly rick perry with governor good hair is campaign now completely derailed kerry cut a new political ad in iowa trying to remake himself as the ultimate culture. are not ashamed to admit that i'm a christian you don't need to be in the pew every sunday to know that there's something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military when our kids can't open would celebrate christmas. is actually that's right right that's what's really wrong with our country gays in the military in the war

on christmas fact is kids can celebrate kids christmas and they can pray in school maybe the guy who was executed more people than any other governor in the modern history shouldn't be touting his moral convictions and all the hours he spends in church and he certainly shouldn't be making things up that's very very. after the break internets daily take i explain why politicians are not leaders never have been never will be and shouldn't be. 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 will is imbue it with a global mission a receipt where we had a state controlled capitalism is called satchels when nobody dares to ask we do our t. question more.

in our what is the shadowy right wing think tank known as alec up to now new news in focus on the issue of rat poison for those you don't know alex short for the american legislative exchange council is an organization made up of right wing politicians lobbyists and corporate c.e.o.'s who all meet together to write

legislation that benefits primarily the top one percent that legislation is then handed over to state legislatures where it is promptly passed by the very same virtually entirely republican lawmakers who join in with the alec meet ups with corporate fat cats and lobbyists for example alec is the driving force between behind the new voter id laws it's beyond state balance budget amendments that make it impossible to raise taxes on the rich and it's behind the war on the e.p.a. and now alec is pushing back against new regulations intended to prevent children from getting sick from rat poison that's right when it comes down to children and rat poison alec sides with rep poison for more on what alec is doing to help the rep poison industry i'm joined by marie diamond porter a blogger with think progress marie welcome back thanks for having me great to have a great to have you with here with us what what why is alec defending reptoids well sadly this is exactly the sort of thing that alec exists to do you know some of the

world's biggest corporations like wal-mart and koch industries funnel millions of dollars to alec to publicly fight these dirty campaigns so they can distance themselves from the said popular positions while alec does this work in the background so in this case the e.p.a. instituted new rules to limit the sale of super toxic rap poisons that every year are in danger at least twelve thousand to fifteen thousand children who become ill after accidently touching or ingesting it and so after thirteen years of fighting the e.p.a. finally implemented these rules and alec is. ending the few holdout rap poison manufacturers who just don't want to give in it's incredible rat poison is released it used to be made of a compound called war for which is a blood thinner and acquired one of the most as brats just believed out and it's also been used in. you know as

a chemical weapon in warfare is there some connection to the military industrial complex is a good old fashioned reptoids an industry i mean you know it's rapport as it is you know a super toxic substance and it's most dangerous but that's what in and what it's called the loose form it's a pellet form and it really gets everywhere and so it's incredibly easy for children especially poor and minority children who are disproportionately affected by this to become ill accidentally and talk alick representative recently wrote that the threat of thousands of children every year are getting sick from rat poison was what he calls an acceptable risk he said that this is a useful product product that shouldn't have to put up with any burden some regulation so this is a story that really encapsulates the extent to which alec and the corporations it represents are willing to sacrifice public health to push this right wing agenda so is trying to get. existing regulations done away with the road reporters on or are they trying to prevent new regulations that have been proposed or are they are they

trying to preemptively prevent any regulations from happening that haven't even been proposed well in this case they're trying to to prevent these recently passed laws in two thousand a manufacturers were given three years to comply fully taking effect so they're you know fighting this down to the wire even though these rules have already passed and even though a lot of manufacturers are voluntarily complying and saying this isn't hurting their bottom line at all you know it alec just won't give and i'm sure they'd love it if there were these regulations were repealed even more so apparently they can still make the rat poison they can still sell the rap exact going to have to do with how it's packaged yes i mean they're essentially there are just certain limits now on the way and ask you know it's all right so it has to be it can't be in this loose form any more than a few years ago they mandated that had to taste better so children would eat it so like very common sense regulations like that they just reduced their monumental risk children right so they're basically trying to make the stuff still palatable to rats but not the kids exactly and the rat poison industry doesn't like. a few

holdouts in the rat poison to do three don't like this but you know again this is this is exactly what alec here is up to do and this is you know they they spend most of their time doing this just this they fight regulations on toxins and pollutants right well what is if i recall the last time we talked about this and i believe it was with you it might have been somebody else from the koch brothers name came up you know in the context of alec is is there a connection here oh absolutely alec works very close closely with the koch brothers who are as you know fossil fuel magnets who have millions to gain if they can just avoid these environmental regulations and so you know their agenda is perfectly aligned there is a lot of that understand where but they're making benzene and and other chemicals are going to the air the e.p.a. is trying to regulate exactly are there. other you know what. what are some of the things that alec is up to oh boy we got a couple of well for instance you know alec has been doing this for years they're

very effective at their annual conference this year they handed out pamphlets that touted what they called the benefits of carbon dioxide and they not only read that you know exactly how bad could it be and so they not only deny the threat of climate change but they say that substantial benefits are to be derived to the u.s. from global warming and so you know companies like exxon mobil and finds there are well publicly say they accept the truth the plan would change but then fund alex to you know throw dirt on the science of climate change so in that case alec is basically doing a propaganda song and dance exactly but it seems to me that the most and city is still mention of alec is where they have these semi annual meetings where they invite state legislators from all over the country to sit literally side by side with corporate lobbyists in fact it's a wonder one ratio is not something like that yeah pretty much and and and one of

the alec representatives to come forward and say well here's a law that we think is a good idea let's make it harder for people to vote and then everybody in the room will be for come from your eyes for the law and if they all agree this is a cool law this is a good law or if there's a majority vote then the republicans take that home and the introduce of their state legislatures as do i have that right now is that exactly you know and it's really disturbing they sent to wait g.o.p. led state legislatures have just given alec free rein to essentially become legislators themselves and write especially anti health care reform and anti environmental legislation so if you look at these you know laws coming out of places like kansas and florida they're just cookie cutter bills that alec transplants from one place to a next to disenfranchise many minorities elderly people student right to deny access to health care to you know reduce environmental regulations and increase the bottom line of big health insurance companies the koch brothers oil industry the rep poisoning i think the battle dr drew thank you saying what about here i think

you're bringing it's a little discouraging topic as is cringeworthy thank you so. every two years or so americans have the polls to elect politicians to represent us the key word here is they represent us they don't lead us we don't like leaders we elect representatives in fact the world leaders doesn't even appear in our constitution or in any of our founding documents that's that's because the way our government is designed and the way our government has worked for over two hundred thirty years is the fundamental change starts from the ground up it begins with grassroots movements with people in the street it never begins with

politicians never has only once a movement gets big enough to politicians our representatives get behind it carry the movement's message forward in congress and push for actual legislation to satisfy the movement that's how women got the right to vote how minorities got civil rights and it's almost recently gays are in the right to openly join our military and also mentally it's going to be how corporations lose their personhood rights and how control of our nation will be rested re russell away from the corporate one percent and put back under the control of we the people and it's the occupy wall street movement this leading the way. to paraphrase gandhi first they were ignored then they were ridiculed then fought. and now they're winning yesterday the los angeles city council voted unanimously to approve a resolution calling on congress to pass a constitutional amendment ending corporate personhood it was an eleven to zero

vote los angeles joins a growing list of cities and counties that have passed resolutions fighting back against corporate personhood put in boulder colorado missoula montana madison wisconsin dane county wisconsin pittsburgh pennsylvania and congress is responding democrats in the senate have introduced two separate amendments to the constitution one that overturn citizens united and gets all the corporate money out of our elections and another one that goes all the way and ends corporate personhood all together way back in one thousand nine hundred nine when i first wrote an equal protection the first major nationally published book on corporate personhood nobody knew what the heck i was talking about but citizens united in occupy wall street have catapulted it to bestseller status and put the issue before city councils across america on cable news television shows and even into the halls of congress senator bernie sanders even quoted by writing at length there in his famous nine

hour filibuster and we have to keep talking about corporate personhood and keep fighting against the concept of corporations having constitutional rights because it's wrong that they have constitutional rights and the fight against it is working . that pedestal a corporation set up banks for their personhood rights and keeps them over from prosecution for their crimes is now starting to give way yesterday representatives in the cleveland city council voted eight eighteen to one to endorse the occupy movement and call on congress to start investigating the big banks for financial fraud and maybe even throw some bankers in jail attorneys general in delaware massachusetts new york and california are pushing forward with their own investigations into wall street that may result in blood in banks toure's going to jail the wealth inequality in america caused by corporate personhood and unequal influence in our government by millionaires and billionaires who've pushed for radical tax cuts for themselves as now come to the forefront in the public debate

people are talking about debt reduction anymore like the koch brothers weren't talking about job creation and inequality like the ninety nine percent like the movement is demanding even the president is now being forced to talk like a populist as we saw recently in his speech about teddy roosevelt. this is the defining issue of our time this is a make or break moment for the middle class and for all those who are fighting to get into the middle class this isn't about class warfare this is about the nation's welfare it's about making choices that benefit not just the people who've done fantastically well over the last few decades but the benefits the middle class and those fighting to get into the middle class our success is never just been about survival of the fittest it's about building a nation where we're all better off we pull together we talk is cheap but it's

a start when the parade is big enough politicians will always jump out in front of it hoist a flag and declare this is my parade and now the movement our parade has to keep it up. make sure that talk by our president by our representatives and by our news media is followed up by real action by real fundamental change in america we need to double our efforts occupied more congressional offices more lobbying firms more banks more foreclosed homes more public parks and like here more airwaves for the first time in over three decades in america corporate powers on the run the final section of an equal protection isn't titled let us begin and i am the book with a quote from john kennedy who said all this will not be finished in the first one hundred days nor will it be finished in the first thousand days nor in the lifetime of this administration nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet but let us

begin thanks to the occupy wall street movement the fight against corporate personhood has kicked into high gear and if the history of the past two hundred years of steady progressive change in this country is any predictor of the future we the people will when you get all the details at move to amend dot org. as the big picture for tonight for more information on the stories we covered visit our website to tom hartman dot com free speech dot org dot com also check out our two you tube channels or a link to tom parker dot com their shows also available as free video podcast and i tunes and we have a free thom hartmann i phone i pad app in the app store it's honest feedback on twitter at tom underscore our facebook at tom underscore arbonne blogs message boards and telephone comment line at thom hartmann dot com and don't forget democracy begins with you get out there and get active tag your it occupy selfie see them are.

wealthy british style sign it's time to. market why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike stronger for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into kinds a report.