as independents are only growing misty to dean baker and matt welch also a few mainstream news organizations like the new york times and the a.p. are getting together to monitor and eventually charge for the use of their content on blogs and aggregators whatever happened to fair use we're going to all that and more for tonight including a dose of happy hour but first take a look with the mainstream media has decided to miss. well it's official nonstop wall to wall campaign coverage is all the mainstream media is going to pay attention to for the entirety of this year as we head towards the elections in november i was already behind us this weekend there were two more debates before new hampshire and the primary train is just going to keep on chugging week in and week out if you like to know that anything else is happening in the world then you should just go elsewhere because this is the only thing we're going to get from c.n.n. and m s n b c and fox the countdown to the first primary of the twenty twelve race

tomorrow voters in new hampshire will cast their votes for the republican nominee and mitt romney still leading the pack five candidates are out there in force boy are they busy today folks all over new hampshire only jon huntsman that was going make it north of the capital of concord you can see there's a whole bunch of them crunched up in the course with area today john huntsman is going to visit mary's bakery and cafe it head of her and then later this hour rick santorum is going to reach out to the right with a town hall meeting on faith family and freedom in salem this is the day of the last chance for these candidates to get out there and connect with the voters and that is what they are all trying to do john huntsman has been working the crowds you've been working the voters here he needs to come in the top three some would say that he needs to come in the top three but he needs to be closer to number two for his campaign to go on here's the latest poll conducted by the university of new hampshire and you are it shows mitt romney with a commanding lead over ron paul forty one percent to seventeen. all right now i

know that i say this stuff all the time but i'm just going to have to say it again because it hasn't stopped being true despite the nonstop obsessive nature of mainstream election coverage it's still painfully shallow there we hear a lot about campaign strategy comparisons to other presidential campaigns throughout history or who's endorsements might matter most if you'll be lucky. if you could a real analysis or a real breakdown of what the plans are these candidates are offering what the economy just might look like probably more specifically the soaring deficit if taxes continue to get cut or would social programs that have to go while defense spending continues to grow so we're going to get into all that in our first interview tonight with dean baker but first let me just point out another little tidbit that the mainstream media is ignoring. it's no secret that discontent with washington is very high that americans are frustrated with their political system they've an utter lack of trust a lack of faith in it at the moment any polls going to show you those results we learned earlier this year the congressional disapproval is an all time low the

occupy movement will also tell you this the momentum that's building at a local level to overturn citizens united to get corporate money out of politics will also tell you that even david gregory stated it was fact during the debate on sunday morning but despite noting that the site is dissatisfaction exists the mainstream media just can't help to continue to live in this two party bubble they only know how to work within the parameters that have been set up and they are deathly afraid of those expanding of watching their little bubble burst it can't happen or their world will be throwed upside down so they will resist it by ignoring it so more specifically what i'm talking about here is not just a just a growing dissatisfaction with washington in general but with the only two choices the voters mostly give it a new gallup survey shows that in two thousand and eleven forty percent of voters identified as independent that is a record it is the highest percentage in at least sixty years so they also know this is more common in years before presidential elections and we'll get into that tonight with matt welch but common or not for these numbers to rise in pre-election

years there is now a record there that has been broken and i haven't seen the mainstream media even bother to mention it i mean sure we'll start talking about independents once they start talking about swing states but it's always in the regard of which direction will they go now what if they don't want either direction that's how those within the occupy movement are feeling that's why i went out and spoke to those occupiers there in d.c. after the i was results came in because the truth is that our political culture isn't so black and white it's not just democrats and republicans and that's it yes the country is polarized but there's a lot more that connects us and what brings us apart and the candidates only want to focus on those social issues that lead to his black and white scenario and the mainstream media completely plays along just a little ounce of nuance well that's of the mainstream media chooses to miss. all right so if you listened to or watched any of the g.o.p.

debates over the weekend you heard a lot about the economy mostly about how the president has killed it because he didn't work in the private sector which is apparently the real world and we need to bring confidence back into the economy by electing somebody who's been part of this so-called real world and then everything will be just fine all right but then how about some real solutions how about some real questions you may have noticed that the foreclosure crisis went basically untouched so did europe sovereign debt crisis so the massive loss of public sector jobs which let's face it the private sector isn't exactly making up for with record speed we heard more about austerity and covered cutting government programs except of course with the issue of defense so let's cut through some of that b.s. and ask why we never hear any substance at today's debates or discuss this with me as dean baker co-director of the center for economic and policy research and author of the end of loser liberalism making markets progressive thanks so much for being here tonight are you with me when you are forced to sit through and watch some of these debates or at least maybe watch a recap and that we hear

a lot of platitudes right i believe is to avoid listening to him but you know i mean a lot of this is just utter nonsense i mean i was sort of struck governor perry from texas refer to a president obama is a socialist you know i've never encountered that not even a moderator said i don't think that's true can you define socialism yeah that's absurd it's utterly absurd and mitt romney you know everyone's betting i'd put my money on him gave the nomination he made a speech in fact i think he said this in several different points about how president obama believes in equality of outcomes regardless of how much effort people put in or what their recent success is you just go what it would what are we talking about what planet are we on and this isn't you know this isn't the way to have a serious debate on issues this is just name calling and nonsense but do you think that we can't have a serious debate and what's the problem part is. it this american psyche that we can't necessarily say things are really bad so let's just have a serious discussion instead of talking about why we're always going to be number one and always be the best without really getting down and i don't like it so much so i can't really do think that you have a political system that's rigged to avoid serious discussion of the issues so we're

going to have this kind of nonsense i mean i've been old in the moment i've been through other campaigns remember back in eighty eight when when when mike dukakis was running against the first president bush and the big issue there was willie horton you know this person who had been let out on furlough and end up telling someone a horrible story but what did they have to do with the presidential race you know see you get these distractions that become front and center and the politicians you know in this case president bush became president bush certainly had every reason the world to put it there and the media who should have been calling him on this saying what does this have to do with your presidency you know willie horton sin jail that doesn't matter now they just let this go they enjoy spectacle are evil so let's get the and into a few specifics because what we do still hear a lot of is this idea that austerity is going to have to happen right forget about what's going on in europe that it might not be working over there that still the general consensus is that we need to cut spending and so mitt romney had an interesting answer to this and he basically turned it over to the states i want to

take a listen. well what we don't need is to have a federal government saying we're going to solve all the problems of poverty or across the entire country because the what it means to be poor in massachusetts is different than montana and mississippi and other places the country and that's why these programs all these federal programs that are bundled to help people and make sure we have a safety net need to be brought together and sent back to the states. is what i think about that well i'm not sure exactly what he means personally what he means block granting sort of fact you take presumably medicaid which is a big program i think he has said this other times it does make a block grant all states do what they want in fact states already have a lot of discretion in programs like medicaid but the national role is to ensure they're getting federal dollars but they meet certain standards so that they actually if you're getting federal dollars to cover poor children you're actually covering poured children and giving them health care i would be very disappointed very unhappy about this idea that you know you're not going get big savings at

least not real savings i'm going to say we're not going to cover children but the idea that somehow these states are going to these great ideas that we haven't thought of or they haven't thought of already or they're being prevented from doing that just absurd basically would you be doing is saying ok you can take the money from the federal government and don't use it to cover for children so we're going to give money to you know i don't want to pick on particular states but whichever state you know most and probably will cover poor children some might just say oh we're doing just fine don't don't ask us any questions and meanwhile kids aren't going to get health care when talking about states that we have to also realize that there are a number of economic woes for many states across this country right now one of the things that we really have seen while of course the white house likes to tout the fact that the private sector has been adding jobs that december seemed to turn out ok if the unemployment rate is going down is the fact that we have seen a massive public sector job loss right from two thousand and nine on through last year it's continued to drop and so why do you think the people of us think that they can just divorce those two public sector jobs doesn't count well it is kind of

bizarre i mean it's it really doesn't make any sense and they should. able to do it because the end of the day we care main jobs we have an economy and we have good public sector jobs teachers firefighters a lot of people are doing good important work and they're often decent paying jobs we should be happy people have them and when they lose them that's a problem and of course we have people in private sector doing jobs we probably don't think are all that useful so you know so the idea that private sector good public sector bad is just silly at the end of the day we jobs some will be in the public sector some will be in the private sector but then today it's also just an inconvenience right even if we do look at these figures that just came out last week for the month of december they never really factor in the full employment situation they never factor in the marginalized or excuse me marginally attached workers the people have completely dropped out of the workforce so all of our government reports are perpetuating the cycle of not really getting down into the nitty gritty or you blame the government on that i mean that's actually in the data so the bureau of labor statistics that puts out this report every month it's right there in the dead of what you can blame learned media for yeah that is it is it right there that's right you know it's or it's right there so this is no excuse and

i should also point out that there was this is a really erratic report this is one of these things that you know if i was dead a very closely in the other people economists to comment on the should also fall very closely this is a very weird report because there is this issue with couriers this would be like u.p.s. and fed ex they hired people last month guess what they all lost their job this month so it's really foolish for people to go out and celebrate that because i mean it's good they had the job for a month but they're going to lose it we're going to lose all those jobs in january once christmas is over and everyone stops sending so many presents everywhere how i want to bring up one more thing here which is the administration is about to unleash a new foreclosure plan something again that wasn't really discussed was really touched upon in any of these debates and so here what they want to do is they want to have investors buy in bulk and then rents these homes out and you actually propose something similar as well right but for most something similar but what i would prefer is let's do it for the people who are already in the home so rather than foreclose through the people out then find an investor to come by and rent up a whole pile of houses why not try and keep people in the house and say ok you lose

your house you know if you. your mortgage payment but you get to stay there is a renter for say five years long enough to put your kids through school whatever it might be that would give people a lot of housing security and it would keep the home occupied you have to go through all this process ok and then the last data point here that i want to touch on with you is that you wrote recently about the fact that eight states out there decided to raise their minimum wage and we keep hearing argument this is going to lead to job loss for others because once you start paying more than their employers are going to start hiring last then you say that's bogus too that's right so we'll research topic and there's an awful lot of studies that find zero job loss and when the surveys say you'll be absolutely zero but even the studies that find some job losses very very little basically we're talking about the situation raise the wage by ten percent maybe one percent fewer people are employed in the way these jobs work the rapid turnover job so what that might mean is a typical minimum wage worker is going to work one percent less but for each hour they work to get ten percent more dollars to take home nine percent more money at the end of the year see that as being a bad thing on for say again didn't get discussed at the debates but that's why

we're here and dean thanks so much for joining us tonight thanks for having. i thought to come tonight president of to make pennsylvania have been dealing with unsafe well water for years but why they still having trouble getting the water they need out is a growing number of americans identify themselves as independents but have herman when news will finally be reflected in our political system right after the break. into an american military mechanism to do the work of bringing justice for accountability. i have every right to know what my government should do if you want to know why i pay taxes. but i would characterize obama as a terrorist no version of american exceptionalism. you

know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then something else here says some other part of it and realized everything. you don't know i'm tough hard welcome to the big picture. welcome to the capitol and i'm laura mr.

either the we the rough innit. one protester nobody seems to know. the number of pepper sprayed the face but part of the argument that they're being overly dramatic . hydraulic fracturing also known as fracking that's a process the energy companies are relying on to help them acquire natural gas we've covered the great lakes they've been willing to go to do so for monitoring environment environmental activists to spending of millions of dollars on lobbying campaigns a prime target for the companies is the marcellus shale rock formation that spans new york pennsylvania and ohio and just last year our chief correspondent christine

took us to dimock pennsylvania small rural community were several residents signed up to allow houston based cabot oil to drill under their property for the natural resource coverage became obvious very quickly that hydraulic fracturing or fracking fracking scares me came at a high price. i could start getting sick early on. in the drilling process i think i think i think they started throwing up and. having you know it's sort of like a very bad intestinal bug our son broke out mark like open sores down his legs from from use no water here her daughter had big. big sores of eczema so what is going. on now the illness is a result of methane gas leaking into residents wells permanently contaminating their water supply and just to prove how methane is in their water just take a look at what happens when one resident took a match to a jug of water. a lot like a flavor

a gal would like was here we were the closest like kind like that i think. now since the reports of contamination cabot has been banned from drilling within nine miles of dimmick and even though they took legal responsibility for the methane they like to claim that it was already in the water before they began the drilling so for several months cabot was responsible for providing clean water to the properties with contaminated water but state environmental regulators were allowed to stop that process just over a month ago since that affected residents have been relying on groups to provide them with clean drinking water for drinking washing clothes and bathing but the e.p.a. was going to offer up their help and send clean water up to pennsylvania as well and then in a last minute move they change their mind according to the associated press agency officials wouldn't explain why they decided against a liver in clean water and obviously the residents aren't happy about it several dimmick homeowners are trying to find out who's to blame for this change of heart whether it be the pennsylvania governor or cabot the energy company and when they

try to sort it all out the environmental group water defense which was founded by actor mark ruff low is going to suspend supply of h two over the rural town of democrat maine's under the spotlight as the testing grounds for fracking results of which has led to calls to stop that process of natural gas drilling entirely in fact george washington university's school of medicine hosted a conference about the effects of fracking on humans and several doctors have said that a moratorium should be placed on all of the drilling operations a lot of people believe that energy companies need to push the pause button while more studies are conducted on the process one scientists from the c.d.c. noted that the substances used in the fracturing process contain potentially hazardous chemical classes so it's pretty clear that many organizations and doctors all want to put this profitable drilling process on hold while they can determine the true facts of fracking but the question is will energy companies allow that and why did the e.p.a. turn their back on to make we're going to keep you updated on any more details that are released on their reasoning. and our let's get back to the results of this

gallup poll that i mentioned at the top of the show or a new gallup figures forty. cent of voters identified as independent in two thousand and eleven that is the highest percentage in at least sixty years it's not a huge jump from two thousand and seven when it stood at thirty nine percent but it's a jump nonetheless so as we pore over the issues that we hear brought up by the g.o.p. candidates of the debates on the campaign trail in interviews if we say the political establishment doesn't really know what to do with these figures and these people joining me is matt welch editor in chief of reason magazine and co-author of the book the question of independents how libertarian politics can fit's fix what's wrong with america now thanks so much for being here and i thank you i mean so yes you and nick wrote an entire book about this so in that sense i'm assuming that you're not all that shocked to hear that maybe more people are defying as independents you know this is the long term trend since one nine hundred seventy that number was around one thousand or twenty percent people who self identified not necessarily who you register with it's not the two you're

a registered independent but how do you feel do you feel like a democrat if you like republican or you feel like an independent nine hundred seventy that number was twenty percent now it's forty percent the trend line has been pretty steady over time and really really kicking up the last five years especially and the new gallup thing that just came out remarkable when you look at the actual line graphs and all of you guys showed but since two thousand and eight a super target rich environment for republicans right terrible economy democratic presidents you had both democratic house and senate for a little while there republicans keep going down they are not converting this completely right of opportunity into more roles has been something like two and a half million voters have detached from political parties in the last four years which is really remarkable and from my point of view beneficial and interesting thing looking at so where do you think of that's all leading to because if you look at gallup results they're going to tell you that every free election here this happens more people identify as independents then once you get into the actual

lection year by the time november comes around and the probably going to pick either side but is something changing in that the people don't. want to take either side the more i mean you've seen the discontent around the country in the fact that people think that two party system is broken the government itself isn't functioning the way it should be the two party system is really entrenched and difficult it'll be the last thing to be kind of broken up because they write the rules for their own existence and they have guaranteed revenue stream it's kind of a deadly combination so people will want a third party but there's no structure to allow the third party to really happen right so yes they're going to probably vote for one of the two but what will happen even more and more and more every day is that independents or non party members will influence the results even of primary elections of a certain party last time around john mccain won the republican nomination without ever locking up even a plurality of republican votes in early state primaries it's a hard notion to brush your mind around he won by attracting independents and republicans in new hampshire and florida ron paul right now is dominating among the

other republican candidates among independents forty three percent to nineteen percent that makes romance if you think about what it is that these republican candidates choose to harp on during the debates and here i'm going to show you a clip from the debate on sunday in our saturday night when there is one on saturday night another one on sunday i don't want to wake up for but they spent at least thirty minutes talking about this stuff take a look. with regard to gay marriage i told you that's what i would have meant amend the constitution contraception it's working just fine just leave it alone for selling contraceptives the interstate commerce clause protects this because the interstate commerce clause was originally written not to impede trade between the states but it was written to facilitate trade between the states so if it's not illegal to import birth control pills from one state to annex it would be legal to sell birth control pills in that state the sacking of marriage was based on a man and woman has been for three thousand years is at the core of our civilization and is something worth protecting and up holding it's

a constitution says marriage is between a man and a woman that marriage is between a man and a woman. and therefore that's what marriage is and would be in this country and those who are not men and women who are married are would not be there. i mean i do they really live as i was sitting there and i was live tweeting and i couldn't believe that they were just spending so much time focusing on contraception and on gay marriage when you have an economic crisis when you're fighting so many wars and i mean is that because it's worked for so long right if you harp on the issues that tug at the heartstrings of america if they're going to verdine the heart in fairness to our awful republican friends over there there's the moderators kept hitting away at this kind of stuff by and they're going to their dance or at some point said you know ok what would you say if if you're gay friend came to you on the couch it's like you know i don't want the president i want all gays to marry each other and marry me and whatever but i mean at some point

a president isn't supposed to be talking to people on the couch they're supposed to kind of leaving the country and we have some problems right now that actually aren't about your gay friend on the couch there are about trillions of dollars worth of debt we're you know we're in in the middle of a kind of catastrophic fiscal situation that requires kind of urgent attention and let's talk about that the eurozone is potentially breaking up that has huge implications for foreign policy was not discussed europe was only talked about as though some social state that we don't want to end up becoming so the republicans have a lot to do with that although the media had a lot to do with it but ultimately you're right i mean to the core your question this is part of the reason why people turn off republicanism and politics in general and that same debate included rick perry saying well obama is obviously a socialist you know period and you know his foreign policies is deliberately trying to undermine american this kind of. arms race of hyperbole on both sides you know one republicans run the show that's the fascists who are going to come in and steal steal american values and vice versa and it's not just that we are defecting

away from the political parties which we are because they're terrible. but also from the politicization of everything this awful mindset i think is they want to start using our brain think and i really like to believe the voters out there want to start voting according to what logic tells them and in terms of somebody laying out a plan that might help fix the economy or not fix the economy or end our wars or not end our wars rather than you know what who we're going to sit next to on the couch and how gay they are and and and there's also a great opening here whether it's wrong paul or somebody else but specifically precisely on those issues we're both parties when they are in power governed the same which is to say the all star wars they all spend money they all force the drug war if someone goes against that kind of two party system in the bipartisan bad governance then there's a tremendous opportunity for people who are sick of this terrible misgovernance from both parties i want to show you a clip rick santorum talking about ron paul and i i think he does get that all

wrong all disgusted and i think like. one of the reasons people like congressman paul is his economic plan he's never been able to accomplish any of the problem is that can do as commander in chief is he can do on day one do what he says he wants to do which is pull our troops back out of overseas put them here in america probably with the recent polls all the things that republicans like about him you can't accomplish and all the things they're worried about he'll do day one and that's the problem. i don't personally i disagree because what we've seen is a rise in ron paul and his popularity amongst young people he could say even he's getting a lot of acclaim from a lot of liberals and progressives out there because of his foreign policy stance and so i think about tries most people to ron paul and then second his economic policies that he see that exactly the opposite way well he's also talking in the context of a republican primary season republicans who like ron paul tend to like him more

because of his economic views his constitutional views than necessarily his foreign policy views you know i welcome or i'm happy that rick santorum is in this debate i disagree of almost everything that comes out of his mouth but that's an effective line you know and there should be someone out there who sort of smoke him out ron paul and drawing out these differences because these differences are important rick santorum is a classic archetypical big government conservative and huge huge sort of escalation is when it comes to war and we need someone like him who is has a hostility openly hostile against individual freedom going against someone who when they ask you know what you want to do with your life you just freedom freedom freedom that is actually a good proxy fight to have with what's the what is going to be the future of the republican party is going to be this george w. bush like santorum conservatism on steroids or is it going to be some ghost of republicanism past which actually cares about civil liberties or do you think ron

paul might run a third party take it or not since doing it no no i think there's no chance in hell that he's trying to win or change what the republican convention is going to be he doesn't want to screw it up for his son rand who's got who's going to run in twenty sixteen i think and he would undermine his work in the senate he's never shown any willingness or interest in doing it but he likes to torture people by saying you know i'm not going to totally rule it out where all those independents all right matt thanks so much for joining us thank you very much. well coming up in a found out that you said it i read it and then i think about sharing a link here news to a news story on your blog you might want to think twice after the break or to speak with david sirota about how a new company could affect their youths why wander as it might be forced to pay up . through there the police the roughing it.

but what a protest nobody seems to know. but never a pepper sprayed the face quite heart of the argument that they're being overly dramatic. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so silly you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else here sees some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm sorry welcome to the big picture.