with the when he didn't manage to win over the evangelical voting bloc so can he get the republican nomination and presidency without the support of the religious right and super pacs spend millions of dollars promoting candidates in the iowa caucuses so how do we root out corporate money in american elections going forward and later in tonight's daily take the european caught it is quickly becoming a sinking ship but for germany it's full steam ahead always germany experiencing economic growth in the face of massive economic collapse around them. if the republicans slash mitt romney establishment hopes that the party would finally begin coalescing behind the most electable candidate mitt. romney of course in iowa they were wrong remains to be seen whether or not the rick santorum surge

will eventually taper off or whether ron paul can continue peeling off voters on the far right one thing is for sure republicans are not ready to fall behind mitt romney just yet especially evangelical voters in the evangelical epicenter of iowa santorum picked up fifty three percent of the vote ron paul picked up fourteen percent for romney only got eight percent clearly the front runner has a problem on his hands trying to get the religious right on his side so how long can this last evangelicals found their man and rick santorum and if not will they eventually come around to support mitt romney out of sheer desperation here to offer his take on this is dr robert jeffress senior pastor at the first baptist church in dallas texas and author of the new book twilight's last gleaming dr jeffress welcome. thank you tom for having me thanks for joining us are you declaring a crusade against mormonism. oh absolutely not in fact i've made it clear i said on fox yesterday that if mitt romney is the nominee i will

support him. and i think many evangelicals may have to hold their nose in november and vote for the u.s. and that his it's a nudge in is a call to you if you would support a cult member for president the united states well i've been very clear from the beginning in saying i think it would be preferable to support a non-christian who embraces biblical principles than a professing christian like barack obama who embraces non biblical principles especially those that are important to us as you're holding on to your notion that it is romney is is not a christian and the mormonism is not christian. you know absolutely and that is not an out of the mainstream view our usa today published a poll that said that seventy five percent of protestant pastors not evangelical pastors protestant pastors agree that mormonism is not christianity i mean that's a historical fact so what makes mormonism a cult that doesn't make your bad tism or baptist sect i suppose would be the right

word of christianity a cult that's a great question and again i've said it's a theological cult not a sociological cult a theological cult has a human leader like joseph smith it has another book of revelation other than the aisle in this case the book of mormon i mean there is somebody or somebody found to the modern day bad to movement i'm sorry i'm not sufficiently familiar with it to know who that was no but it's within the law as have other you know. no we have no human leader that we look to other than jesus christ but you say that claim a lineage back i mean you know the catholics actually try to claim a lineage all the way back to jesus you can't claim of a lineage back to john the baptist the there was no modest amount religion prior to at least the protestant reformation you know with martin luther agreement and that was just what five hundred years ago so you know but again how is how is your particular brand of christianity any less

a cult than mitt romney's brand of christianity setting aside polls other than the majority position first of all historic christianity has only one book of revelation the bible. we don't have a story about joseph smith coming in finding golden tablets and a new revelation that supersedes the bible that's the main difference between christianity and other cults and again and tom many people misunderstand this baptists do not follow john the baptist we are an offshoot of eventually of the catholic church all protestant denominations are but we don't have a human leader that's the difference between a cult and true christianity ok should people shouldn't people of faith be voting for their pastor basically based on the religion and vote for their politicians based on policy. well i think first of all i think that we have a right and a duty as christians to select those leaders who embrace christian values you know

it was john jay the first chief justice of the united states supreme court co-author of the federalist papers who said quote it is our duty and responsibility in this christian nation to prefer and select christians as our leader and i was just saying openly questioned the divinity of christ. if you will you know i can i don't know everybody and even a broken clock is right two times a day i mean john jay look at his february one thousand nine hundred twenty second letter to samuel miller's talking about whether or not jesus was divine so as for proof i've searched the scriptures diligently but without success i mean you know it's well. i don't i'm not everybody has one hundred percent market on the right so so but well ok you were given a tax exemption as a trade for staying out of politics why should i pay your taxes so that you can run around and preach politics. well first of all politics the word means governing its

influence and christians ought to have a right to influence government and they ought to have a right to influence the course of a nation and so we're not i have you for as you me that a your taxes to do that oh what taxes do i go well i'm assuming that your church does not pay property taxes i'm assuming that wherever you live you're calling a rectory and you're deducting that. i'm assuming that you know like most churches you're basically the rest of us are paying for your fire for your police for the public services they have a public services they use why should we do that when the deal that was made back during the johnson administration with churches in the united states was we'll give you guys a tax exempt and if you'll stay out of politics. boy that's a great point that you've made tom this is a recent in the course of our nation's history a recent development by lyndon johnson who added that provision because he was mad

h.l. hunt who by the way happened to be a member of my church and as if there is a john edwards has right or. so anyway it is a recent not a historic provision and there has been the feeling before lyndon johnson that the goodness of the good that the church does causes it to deserve a tax exempt status but that certainly can change any time government wants to change it it's an interesting time we live and dr jeffers thank you for being with us. thanks for having me tom sure tween magic moment underwear and crotchety baptist preachers and with rick santorum who's catholic heading into new hampshire which is over sixty percent catholic it's going to be an interesting race. just.

it's the good the bad in the very very. ugly the good mike huckabee exactly four years ago he won the republican iowa caucus in two thousand and eight former governor of arkansas and g.o.p. talking had some harsh words of truth actually for the two thousand and twelve republican field yesterday he said if i walked in a booth today i'm not sure who i'd pull the lever for so the radio interview it appears to me and still does to a large degree that many of the republicans are more interested in defeating barack obama than they are in rebuilding america defeating somebody without a plan to really resolve problems to me is a worthless and. that's right mike huckabee just called the entire republican primary season a worthless endeavor i could've said it better myself the bad pat robertson the televangelist went on his t.v. show the seven hundred club to disclose the conversation he had with none other than god himself. and i spent the better part of

a week in prayer and just saying show me something and our share with you. some things share with you think he showed me. the next president that i'm not supposed to talk about the leave you in the or i want to read what i wrote as if i'm hearing from the lord these words your country will be torn apart by internal stress a house divided cannot stay and your president holds a radical view of the direction of your country which is at odds with the majority expect paralyses so why does god sound an awful lot like sean hannity and god is telling political secrets to. billionaire pat robertson now and you and i are paying his taxes because he pushes the stuff on a tax exempt channel all the secrets god has revealed to pat robertson are said to include the location of noah's ark the perfect recipe for cookies and where donald trump's hair really came from maybe it's time for mr i'm hearing voices parrot

robertson to call it quits and the very very ugly peter johnson jr the g.o.p. t.v. talking head went on fox and friends this morning to bash what he called unfair scrutiny of the republican race by left wing media here's what he said. in terms of scrutiny there has to be fear in this and so if you're a commentator and an analyst and i'm a commentator now analyst say you're a commentator and that list if you're an activist say you're an activist but to pretend that you're a news person to pretend that you're giving a fair and balanced view of things when in fact you have no credentials to do that and you're only history is to engage in activism is to engage in politics is to engage in propaganda then that's an unfair portrayal of the news to the american people so what i'm saying great point question is what the heck does peter johnson jr think fox so-called news is up to i wonder if it disturbs in that every single

republican candidate has to get the approval of rupert murdoch in his fair and balanced news network before the even have a chance to win or that there isn't even one hour of straight news in the entire day on g.o.p. t.v. if peter johnson jr really wants to see propaganda you does not look very far and that's very very. coming up after the break corporations spent millions of dollars influence in the iowa caucuses but how could this possibly be good for american politics. drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions to break through to be made trots. no one. is imbue with a global mission the red sea where we had a state controlled capitalism is called the saxons when nobody dares to ask we do our tea quests in mourning.

in the best of the rest of the news of new hampshire will be anything like iowa then expect a lot of campaign cash to be dumped into the granite state recapping what was spent in iowa rick perry dished out over six million dollars in the state translating to about four hundred eighty dollars per vote he received not exactly money well spent romney spent over four and a half million about one hundred fifty six bucks for each vote ron paul spent

nearly three million again originally a million and a half but that's only spending by each candidate not including spending by each candidate super pac corporate front affiliated an affiliated group whatever it may be according to research from the center for public integrity super pacs spent nearly thirteen million dollars in december alone mostly on negative t.v. and radio ads romney's super pac made up the bulk of that spending point four and a half million dollars just in the anti-gay marriage ads apparently worked and perry's super pac spent three point one million dollars in ads that apparently didn't work so actually corporate front groups through nearly thirteen million dollars into iowa to nab just twenty five delegates in the nation's first primary contest this does not bode well for those of us who don't have a lot of money to buy a lections worth but despite the massive corporate spending campaign in iowa the fight against too much corporate influence in our elections continues in new york city council approved

a resolution today calling on congress to amend the constitution to strip out corporate personhood new york city is now the biggest city in the nation to approve a resolution against corporate personhood and join several other cities in america in america that have done the same thing like los angeles oakland albany missoula and boulder to name just a few for more on this campaign against corporate political campaigns i'm joined by mark hates the lead organizer of public citizens democracy is for the people campaign that's democracies is for the people dot org that's right and there is a great web site marc welcome to the program thank you so much for joining us appreciate it what happened in new york city today tom it was. really exciting events the city councilors responded to this groundswell of support that you laid out in your previous comments coming from other cities by introducing a resolution that effectively says democracy is for people not for corporations and the vote today really demonstrates that more and more people around the country are standing up to say that this is and they want their democracy to run so we expect

to see more of this happening throughout the weeks and months to come this spring as we and our allies organizations gear up for a whole range of actions that are going to put this effort on the map and really write the next chapter in this growing movement to challenge corporate power a few hours ago earlier today although i don't think it's played yet it was proof but i was over a bloomberg t.v. news and i debated a law school professor citizens united and the point and he was in favor of it and his point was that since citizens united we've had the most vibrant and open elections you know ever and you know more spending means more information it's better for people how do you respond to that i would say that sort of like turning a faucet full bore is a way to get a full drink of water when in fact you're going to drown yourself out when you look at my drinking out of this fire hose exactly exactly that's that's a better well put when you look at the amount of money that's being spent on these elections it's clear that what was

a chronic problem of too much corporate money in politics has now become an acute problem when we talk to people on the ground across the political map the small c conservative populist libertarian democrat there are a lot of people out there who really feel like this decision has made their voices count even less in a democracy that many already are starting to take for granted you know when when president obama was giving his state of the union address and he called out the supreme court that was five of its members were sitting as i recall were sitting there you know out of five years maybe seven whatever and sam alito said not true i think was what he mouth. it struck me in that moment i mean this was right after the citizens united decision in january two thousand and ten. it struck me in that moment that probably sam alito actually believes that. either he was duped because i don't think john roberts believed that and i don't believe for a minute scalia who had been through you know the two thousand election believe that. either he was duped or or there was some vision that they

had that somehow didn't get played out we all missed any idea what that might be. tom when i think about this i think about the fact that the movements that we've seen that have been successful in pushing for a response to supreme court decisions that that are at odds with where the ordinary people are at it's actually a sterling example of how the checks and balances that our constitution set up are there for a reason when people like this from court justice alito have a genuine belief in a belief system that's at odds with the american people they need a tool an opportunity to restore the balance and so that's why our organization others are actually pushing for a constitutional remedies to this decision that will restore that balance what might the unintended consequences be of overturning citizens united or of or of going full bore and saying ok we're going to go all the way back to the dartmouth case and eight hundred fifteen or more the santa clara county in one thousand nine

hundred six or you know pick your pick your milestone you know boston versus bloody . and say corporations are not people and money is not speech period end of discussion what. possible bad things could come up time that's a that's a really complex question i'm glad you asked and i think your work in your book and your other writing is really laid out some of those questions as well and i think public citizen and other groups are working with are working to have a conversation with americans about those questions we're not going that stand in the way of building this broader effort because the fundamental principles that we need constitutional reform that we need to run it money out of politics are there no one thing that public citizen things as a real priority is to protect the free speech rights of nonprofit organizations which are one way in which people actually assemble it to voice their values and priorities united itself is a nonprofit organization that's true that's true and actually we think that by working to pass an amendment that would deal with

a range of issues from giving congress more power to address campaign finance to addressing issues of corporate constitutional rights you'll have a whole toolkit to ensure that those. rights are protected but also curtailed in a way that prevents non-profits becoming a passthrough as they are now well that would be interesting. three ways to deal with corporate personhood basically you can wait for the court composition to change you could have congress and the president actually exercise the power they have and article three section two of the constitution which says that the supreme court shall operate under regulations in the stablished by congress and as is f.d.r. tried to do or amend the constitution why are you exclusively going for the latter . i think actually the work that we're doing is part of a range of efforts so to begin with we're pushing for some measures that would shine a spotlight on some of the new spending we're seeing with some of these super pacs that would slow the wheels of money down a little bit by forcing corporations to disclose their spending to their shareholders and other investors but ultimately we need constitutional reform as

a long term solution simply because the court's decision itself says united actually tied our hands in many ways it's difficult to litigate our way out of it we've seen in past efforts to wait for the court composition to change or to mobilize enough people around that effort that's a pretty long waiting game we're not saying that's out of the question but waiting for that composition change and to be able to mobilize people around it those are efforts that public interest groups and progressives have fought to do for a long time with mixed success so by using the constitutional amendment effort is as a flashpoint as a rallying point for these efforts as really captured people's imagination and you know we did it with the eighteen year old vote just a few months i think it could be done with this once we get that critical threshold mark thanks so much for being with us thank you tom appreciate you dropping by get involved in the fight against corporate personhood go to democracy is for people dot org.

here's a question for you why is it that the european continent in a recession and on the verge of catastrophic collapse and with unemployment steadily above eight percent the united states in economic activity cheer eyes creeping along with all that going on that germany is doing just fine why is it that amidst a tumultuous global economy where greece has an unemployment rate of eight percent spain is a twenty three percent unemployment rate the german economy just markets lowest level of unemployment in two decades twenty years how are they doing it well first the german government has recession proof programs like the short week or in german kurtz arbeit and the way it works is that businesses are encouraged to

cut back on the hours that workers work rather than laying them off during economic downturns the government then steps in to reimburse the lost wages of the workers who now have fewer hours so that but people will still have the money in their pockets to spend and so the economy keeps churning along despite the fact that there's a recession going on in two thousand and nine as the bush great recession took hold the kurds are by program saved a half million jobs just that year just in germany. and the second reason for the german success is that they're doing what we used to do plus more they're protecting domestic industries and they're empowering their workers while germany doesn't have a substantial trade tariffs programs they do protect domestic manufacturing with their vet tax domestic content rules in a variety of around the edges ways of helping domestic manufacturers and punishing foreign ones and while we subsidize transnational corporations that ship jobs overseas germany's subsidizes domestic industries that keep jobs at home they also

have in place high barriers to imports so the foreign industries with cheap labor don't undercut prices in what they consider important parts of their domestic marketplace that's no different than the united states where corporations like walmart undercut everyone for their supply of cheap foreign made goods germany also employs a whole array of quotas regulatory standards and custom standards all for the sole purpose of protecting german factories that employ german workers and thus stimulate the german economy germany also brings democracy to the workplace while labor unions in the united states are increasingly an endangered species nearly the entire german auto industry is unionized as a result germany pays their auto workers about sixty seven dollars an hour including wages and benefits united states we pay an average to our auto workers of thirty three dollars an hour also including wages and benefits and new hires are

coming in to us auto companies at fourteen dollars an hour and according to conservatives since we pay our workers less we should be able to produce more cars right and corporations should be more profitable and wrong. in two thousand and ten germany manufactured five point five million cars united states manufactured fewer than half that two point seven million cars on top of that german car manufacturers were highly profitable despite the large paychecks to their workers b.m.w. for example earned a before tax profit of three point eight billion euros and mercedes benz hauled in profits of four point six billion euros with such a high union membership rate auto workers hold a lot of sway in germany but they hardly ever go on strike that's because unlike here is actually collaboration and cooperation between the c.e.o.'s in the workers in germany why because there's actually

a constitutional amendment in germany that forces corporate executives to listen to labor unions it's called the works constitution act and it forces every factory to set up a works council so the code works councils to give as representatives of the workers a seat at the table in every decision making process at the factory that's democracy in the workplace expanding the decision making process to not just the corporate elite but to everybody in the company from the bottom up and it's working as horse mooned the head of the international department of the german auto workers says we have strong unions we have strong social security systems we have high wages so if i believe what the neo liberals or what are called conservatives here in the us are arguing we would have to be bankrupt but apparently this is not the case the journey the economy is working well in germany it turns out that in germany workers know what's best for the economy and the government knows those

that as well. in the aftermath of world war two as germany was in ruins president harry truman knew that europe and in particular devastated germany need to be rebuilt and working with the united states germany did rebuild their economy and put into place these protections for workers that today are responsible for germany's seemingly recession proof economy unfortunately during that time of rebuilding in germany harry truman couldn't help workers in the united states he was up against a republican controlled congress the eightieth congress was elected in one thousand nine hundred six truman called it the do nothing congress even though it did do a lot namely kill progress it sabotage truman's hopes for a single payer you know universal health care system for example and they passed half heartedly overriding term truman's veto which created the were right to work states were corporations could move in to do business with out unions i call them right to work for less states and because of that congress the eightieth congress

united states fell behind when it comes to creating an economy that benefits the ninety nine percent and not just the one percent while germany surged ahead and that's where we are today it took a crisis to put germany back on track and at this rate it may take a crisis to get america back on track as the big picture for tonight for more information on the stories we covered visit our web sites at thom hartmann dot com free speech dot org and our team dot com also check out our two you tube channels or links to thom hartmann dot com also thom hartmann 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 get active tag your it suits.

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