and as the rest of the news occupy the courts the anniversary of the supreme court's susan's united decision that has fundamentally perverted our democracy is fast approaching and the day before january twentieth anti-corporate personhood organization moved to amend dot org has big plans inspired by the occupy wall street movement activists with will occupy courts across america that day including the supreme court to challenge the judiciary which is giving corporations the rights of actual people despite not a single elected lawmaker in the house senate or presidency ever voting or signing into law any legislation that gives corporations the rights of people after watching corporate spending records get shattered in the midterm elections of two

thousand and ten and watching corporate front groups bombard newt gingrich with negative ads in the iowa caucuses this declare that our democracy is not better off thanks to citizens united joining me now to offer his take on this is brad smith former chairman of the federal election commission during the bush administration professor of law at capital university law school in columbus ohio and chairman of the center for competitive politics brad welcome thanks tom appreciate although i'm not happy to come on right after the crazy alert i don't think that time got to break up the show a little bit ok montana state supreme court just tell upheld a law that right has back in the era of the copper kings and in that ruling they wrote this is a quote from the montana state supreme court ruling sure you're familiar with it they wrote anaconda company controlled ninety percent of the press in the state and a majority the legislature one thousand nine hundred fifteen the company clearly dominated the montana economy and political order and local folks now found themselves locked in the grip of a corporation controlled from wall street and insensitive to their concern. even at

that time it was evident that industrial corporations controlled the state those converting the state government into a political instrument for the furthering accomplishment of legislation and execution of laws favorable to the absentees stockholders of the large corporations and inimical bowl inimical second and efforts that were to the economic interests of the wage earning and farming classes of cars two by far the large population of the population of montana why on earth would you want to go back to that kind of a sister well first i don't think you're going to go back that kind of situation and i don't know all the details of their time about for example bribery which is certainly still legal they're talking about direct contributions to campaigns which are still illegal but the other one is one of the voices that ninety percent of the press in the state right well that's another question obviously nobody really wants to censor the press and they could still ninety percent of the press i presume mitt romney has been financial loans clear channel which owns a big chunk of the radio press so you eventually right so the press has a lot of power and that's one reason i don't move there should be

a press monopoly on that sort of power just because they have something that says that they are press and ultimately you know you have to say the voters have to vote people out and it is true that you know when you hear more of one view or more of another it makes a difference obviously any candidate would rather have more money than less money and so on but ultimately you have to rely on voters to be able to vote people out of office do you. do you think the corporations should enjoy fourth amendment rights of privacy or any rights in my view is going to in my view is that corporations have all the rights that people have as as groups of people so you know can a corporation run for office when of course not just like you and i together can't jointly run for president you know and you'll do it on some days now that on others we can't get the corporation can't get married just like my family can't marry your family or the law school faculty at capital can't marry the law school faculty at columbia but are you. just as we as people can come together and speak or own property together corporations can do. those five so you're suggesting the

constitutional protections given to you and me as people like the first member right of free speech the for the men right of privacy the fifth amendment right against taking or or right you know self incrimination the fourteenth amendment right against an equal protection under the laws that those rights should extend to corporations because corporations are people i mean if you extend the thirteenth amendment to corporations the moment explicitly says that one person can't own another person and yet corporations by other corporations all the time are the giver guilty of slavery no no because again that's that's that's kind of faulty i'm going to have it both ways no it's the kind of faulty analogy is just like i have no problem saying corporations have a right to speak corporations have a right to own property. from what from what because they're legal if no they're not corporations or legal abstractions no no if you want to start a corporation you go to the secretary of state's office for a while papers right they say you know and if they're all properly done they acknowledge you and they say ok you are not we have birth a new entity it is

a legal fiction it consists of people if you take a quick break property it's less not you're not taking some it belongs to nobody you're taking the property of the people who formed an only or operation it's not people but the people at the scene of the property but it's property it's not people what was your kind of doubt is going to hurt people and why would anybody care about speech of people who i think people care about both of those things but per particularly property owning people or people owning property i mean dred scott eight hundred fifty six said people or property citizens united twice in two thousand and ten said property is people not all of those decisions were wrong that's not what says it says that people own property and therefore you can't take that from them let me let me suggest that you're barking up the wrong tree i mean exxon tomorrow to quit being a corporation i don't think you simply sell that's fine effects on spends money which you really want to be concerned about the debate we need to have is money in politics not whether it's a corporate form or partnership or an organized an unincorporated association of people. well whether it's

a wealthy billionaire who often spent far more on politics the question is is money and power more than the form under which people who work at the fact the matter is that most very wealthy people got that wealth hold that wealth and exercise that wealth through the corporate form and but i agree with you i'm not you know i i don't think that union should have this right i don't think that nonprofit corporation should have this right and for profit corporations should have this right and i don't think that if twenty thousand people get together and say we're all going to kick in fifty bucks and let's buy a t.v. commercial that they should necessarily have the right to do that individual e.p. what if those same people want to get together by a radio station stead then do that then do they have the right or do we censor the press to because there are bunch of people getting to that then it becomes problematic it is a that's a much more subtle argument because as you and i both know the press is the only industry that is called out the entire constitution they didn't say you know the most important thing for the republican is to have a cannon manufacturing although they thought that pretty well i think that's the reason why he has a reasonable position but don't call me it that says you know both no because i

think what the constitution says is the press meaning the activity of publishing and anybody has a right to publish you don't have to be a member of the press club here in d.c. to have that right i don't disagree with the new york times a very powerful corporation why would we care why would we want to have the times have all that kind of power but it has it as a corporation i agree with you and i want to defend the press and i would include in the press things things like julian assad you know the work at wiki leaks i think the press needs to be broadly but but this is the situation of saying what i just don't get is why anybody would say that having more power particularly more money particular more corporate money or or even foreign money in water through corporate front groups in the united states is a good thing in our political discourse we have we have a half a minute here but first thing is longer longer in foreign money through a corporation in this case remains in the legal thing i mean that's not been. but

the thing then is with corporations or with it money generally is that the alternative is to have the government deciding who can speak who spoken too much who needs to speak more and that's a very risky think this is a government us didn't want know the gentleman and we're not necessarily shouldn't we have just a moment ago you were sorry you have a republican governor in the republican legislature of michigan was sticking it to democrats and the people are rising up well but the point is you can't rise up if you can't organize and speak ok thank you brad thanks for dropping my pleasure. two hundred years ago thomas jefferson warned us about a two powerful judiciary saying it would place the nation under despotism and oligarchy including that the only safe depository of the ultimate power is a society his words are with the people time to exercise that power go to move to amend to work.

it's the good the bad and the very very both basically ugly the good and. as a result of a defense of marriage act same sex couples are recognized by the federal government and thus could be subject to deportation if someone in the relationship is not an american citizen so they happen to san francisco couple of bradford wells and anthony mack mack who is an australian citizen has lived in the united states for twenty years has no criminal history and is the primary caregiver to his husband since they were married back in two thousand and four but none of that mattered as mack was put up to be deported back to australia as him pelosi stepped in on behalf of her constituents and staved off the deportation thanks to her work immigration services has granted a two year to ferment and deportation and the couple isn't broken up. now let's get to work repealing the discriminatory defense of marriage act all together. the bad newt gingrich serial adulterer and campaign and bookselling huckster newt prides

himself and his knowledge of history at a town hall meeting in new hampshire yesterday new used his so-called knowledge of the founding fathers to go after marijuana. jefferson and george washington would strongly discourage of rowing marijuana in their. view would be more violent than they would be today said newt right the founding fathers hated growing marijuana suffer the fact that washington and jefferson both grew marijuana m. plants on their plantations nice try to and the very very ugly herman cain disgraced fake republican presidential candidate herman cain is back he appeared on g.o.p. t.v. last night was sean hannity to make a big announcement was an endorsement. he's not getting back in the race he's starting a bus tour to con more people into giving him money. but now that bought a new movement the biggest comment that i got in that my candidate was keep.

alive that's what this is about and i'm going to keep it alive with what i'm calling cain's solutions revolution and the first solution we've got to promote to have a bus yes or got a bus we can picture the first solution we're going to promote actively isn't. that revolution the other thing a bus tour just like sarah palin in reality the point of the bus tour is to continue what he was doing with his presidential bid to get his name out there for higher speaking fees more book sales and since pretend to care about america by driving a bus around the nation's work so well for sarah palin i mean cain is going to give it a try so please don't give him any money it's very very. up next is the ongoing housing crisis about to wipe out our economy again and later why do transnational corporations get away with threatening the president of the united states. what drives

the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions to break through that sort of being made who can you trust no one who is you know in view with a global missionary see where we had a state controlled capitalism is called sasha's when nobody dares to ask we do our t. question more.

four years ago the economy went into full meltdown during the bush administration today the banks are doing just fine making pre-crash profits again homeowners on the other hand are still drowning in our economy as a whole is still spotter last month the wall street journal pointed out that the ongoing housing crisis is killing progress on job creation more than ten point seven million americans are unable to move to find better work because they're stuck in an underwater mortgage and yesterday the federal reserve called on congress to take concrete steps to address the ongoing collapse of the u.s. housing market that quote continues to impede the economic recovery ideas include making it easier for struggling homeowners to refinance or restructure their mortgages changing how mortgage lenders are paid and allowing banks to rent out foreclosed homes the fed argues such policies will lead to banks saving money and

more homeowners saving their own because these really work or could there be something we're not being told about with regard to the ongoing housing crisis is a worse than any of us can imagine michael all nick joins me now he is the founder and c.e.o. of legal prize and the creator of the find the fraud a crowd sourced foreclosure document review system michael welcome. thank you thanks for joining us for having what are we not being told about in this housing crisis just how bad is it. it's actually awful it's. atrocious we have a couple elements of the housing crisis and one of the key ones is what we call are what the banks call shadow inventory the shadow inventory is the number of homes that either are now or will be are projected to be in for closure and the number of these shall him into area homes is astronomical when i say projected to be in for

closure i don't mean one's kind of far down the road people have already stopped paying they haven't been paying for and they were from three months to sometimes years and nothing's happening at this you know only the homes are moving through the pipeline and being sold i'm a man type for closer activists i work strongly with into the foreclosure movement i don't want to see people thrown out of their homes for the i also work with economists and. that the numbers here are are just staggering we've. searching the web and sorting through things and it's really really difficult to find actual housing data is that. that's a very good question it's very then honestly twenty six hundred different court houses and the companies to disseminate it the politic gather i have mine and

there's a few other little ones but the major ones are either owned or operated or invested by the banks and we have very little visibility and for whatever reason the government keeps a lot of this information either bottled up or releases it only in aggregate numbers to give you an example of how widespread the data is what the economic ramifications are you have one large company that comes from a company that says the shuttle and unserious about. a million one point two one point three million homes another that says no it's more like four million and then my data which is based on of there is another evidence and then also laura good men another well known analyst says it's actually more like eleven million homes and the problem with eleven million homes is that when you get to a number this big the banks they don't have to take a loss on these phones and sell their soul so when they actually sell the house and

they have to write that they have a five hundred thousand. house it's worth two hundred fifty thousand say and there's an aria after of a large on all these fees and might fetch one hundred twenty thousand one hundred thousand dollars for the investors who funded that no. those write downs don't happen until after the houses look with it finished taken away sold out and if we add up what i call the shadow liability the amount of money that the banks are going to have to write down. the liabilities comes in about two and a half trillion dollars and now so they're probably or about maybe one point. maybe. one trailer that one show you in the just as we're looking at that one of the has this sort of thing happened back in in the one nine hundred thirty s. as well and the way that franklin roosevelt dealt with it and back at that time most people had five year mortgages you know basically balloon mortgages and the

way he dealt with it was to create a federal agency that bought those five year mortgages from people and gave them thirty year low interest mortgages that agency resolved itself in the one nine hundred sixty s. went out of business than showing a profit is that the kind of solution you're suggesting or is this so much the result of fraud back in the thirty's that arguably wasn't fraud it was just you know people got caught in the middle of the explosion that that we need to go after the fraud for example with you find the fraud thing. the for the fraud that just happens at every level along the line at this point what's really different between now and back and back then there was kind of bad lemmings sessions back now there's just so much money swishing through the system if we go along say somebody had to take that same example somebody has a four hundred thousand dollar mortgage sunnah else is for two hundred thousand dollars if the federal government reef eyes nervous right now floating around

proposals to do that for the four hundred thousand dollars well then you have a person still stuck in this house still paying four hundred thousand dollars and the federal government has turned around and said hey we're going to take this piece of paper this low and that it's worth one hundred fifty thousand dollars and give you four hundred thousand dollars for a socialist that kind of a giant giveaway to the banks this was in the thirty seconds we have left what's the solution. the solution is to let the notes float auction be purchased by what we call vulture investors or allow people to buy their own notes and then buy them at auction value the million dollar mortgage a person should be able to buy for maybe it was flowing eighty one hundred thousand dollars and they could find out about the bank's take the hit absolutely i mean they were trying to keep alive zombie heirs or you're going to see now that all the banks created to let them go michael thanks so much thank you so much for having me on we have seen now from close what happens when the banks tears are deregulated

and hopes that some of the small steps that dodd frank like the creation of the consumer financial protection bureau for example actually begin to protect us from another way of banks for odds. so well barron's and not just american ones just threatened the president of the united states speaking at a conference this week jack gerard the head of the american petroleum institute which is in a just nation's largest lobbying organization for oil and gas corporations told president obama i think it would be a huge mistake on the part of the president out of states to die in the construction of the keystone x.l. pipeline clearly the keystone x.l. pipeline is in the national interest a determination to decide anything lies though that i believe will have huge

political consequences do what the oil barons say build the dam pipeline or suffer huge political consequences the sad part is in today's post citizens united world we have to take these threats seriously but before we get to that let's take a look at exactly what the oil baron demands are oil barons are demanding. this is the proposed keystone x.l. pipeline the dotted line is the proposed pipeline there's already a keystone x.l. pipeline in place it's the solid red line and it's carrying oil to refineries in the midwest and in illinois and in nebraska kansas and you know all along the route so it's already there so here we have now this is proposed pipeline down to the gulf coast it's sixteen hundred sixty one miles of new pipeline that will carry nine hundred thousand barrels each day of canadian tar sands oil some of the most

toxic stuff in the world all the way from alberta canada to the southern tip of texas in the process that pipeline will cut right through some of our nation's most precious natural resources including the aqua for the largest aquifer of the world that sits underneath eight states as far north as south dakota all the way down to texas that area has also been known to experience seismic activity that could rupture the pipeline contaminating this giant aquifer that provides drinking water for twenty three million people and supports twenty billion dollars of agriculture in midwest think b.p. oil spill only way worse any leak anywhere along a sixteen hundred mile route could do one thinkable damage to local communities and natural habitats and already there been twelve spills in just one year along the existing keystone pipeline environmentalists have called the pipeline

a ticking time bomb for the environment and looking at how much more dirty oil would be burned and spewed into the atmosphere thanks to this pipeline nasa scientists james hansen called completion of the project game over for the planet. but the oil barons want it really really really bad they argue it will help end our dependence on foreign oil that once we turn on the spigot from canada which is a foreign country by the way we'll be a warship neulander put in our cars and heat our homes or just storing barrels in our backyards well have so much oil but that's a lie if these guys really cared about supplying the united states more oil then what's the point of extending the pipeline all the way down to texas why don't just expand the existing pipeline that's already supplying refineries in the midwest turns out the real reason why the oil barons want the pipeline to go to taxes is

not so they can supply the united states but so they can export the refined products to the rest of the world the oil barons see dollar signs and if they can get that crude oil down to texas refine it there and put the gasoline and diesel fuel into ships in the gulf of mexico they can export all over the globe make enormous profits much of which will not even be taxed in the united states that oil will never make it to your car it's going to go to south america or europe or asia on proof did you know that gasoline just became the number one export of the united states that's right we're already shipping more gasoline around the world than anything else that we make or do in the united states so if we don't really need more oil well what about the need for jobs that's the second sales pitch they argue that the x.l. pipeline will stimulate our economy and create tens of thousands of jobs turns out

that's also a lie pipeline will only create a few thousand jobs anywhere between fifteen hundred four thousand and those jobs will be temporary lasting just two years plus more jobs may be lost than gained as a result of the pipeline. since this dirty tar sands oil is going to be moved into export oriented refineries demand for oil in the us will actually go up and prices will go up too according to an independent analysis gas prices in the midwest would increase by twenty cents a gallon as a result of that pipeline reaching the export ships in the gulf of mexico and american farmers who spent twelve point four billion dollars on fuel in two thousand and nine could spend as much as fifteen billion if the pipeline is built higher gas prices always translated into fewer jobs so in reality this pipeline is a job killer but there's something even more disturbing than the lies coming from the oil barons on this issue and that's the threats of a transnational corporation in any other developed nation threaten the president or

prime minister of that nation that if it didn't bend that person didn't bend to their will then there would be consequences the people would be horrified but here when transnational corporations threaten the president the united states it's no big deal it's just another wednesday in america that's a sign that corporations have far too much power and influence in our nation and instead of corporations being the quote carefully restrained creatures of the law and servants of the people and quote that president grover cleveland said they should be we especially our politicians are quickly becoming the servants of the corporations the president has less than sixty days to make a decision in the case keystone x.l. pipeline republicans who are owned by the oil barons have even started up a countdown clock to remind him and so he makes the right decision the decision he was elected to make by we the people and doesn't bow to the unelected oil barons

who think they get whatever they want america now that they can spend as much money as they'd like in our elections. do what's right mr president and the rest of us will do what's right and fight back against corporate personhood and the citizens united decision that made it possible for these oil barons to threaten a sitting president of the united states and corporate personhood now go to move to amend or. that's 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 an r t dot com also check out our two you tube channels the links to tom harpur dot com this entire show is also available as a free video podcast on i tunes and we have a free tower of an i phone i pad app in the app store and send us feedback on twitter at tom others who are by facebook at tom underscore hartman our blogs message for the telephone comment line for tom hartman dot com and don't forget democracy begins when you show up and participate get out there and get active tag

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the biggest on the get snow the whole president obama unveils plans to shrink america's military manpower shifting its. presence in asia. syria's opposition calls on the un to establish a no fly zone accusing our opponents as a. preemptive also. the. stronger of your you know. continental currency collective that symbolized a united europe but ten years of pit. ruining the union.