type of infrastructure our intellectual infrastructure and later did a supreme court ruling yesterday really save our democracy from foreign influences or is our democracy still up for sale to the highest bidder regardless of which country they reside in. i. need to know this the votes are being counted in new hampshire and mitt romney is headed for a second straight when it looks like but what exactly will he win tonight sure new hampshire right to the polls and more of them voted for mitt romney than anyone else so romney will win some sort of democratic contest in the granite state tonight but is tonight's spectacle really about new hampshire is it really about which candidate spoke to the people of new hampshire the best we're told that is the first primary state in the nation new hampshire has a keen insight into which into who should be nominated to run for president but

does it really or is all of this all the debates all the campaign ads all the pun intrigue all of it is it all about something else consider this last week in iowa the republican candidates and their corporate super pacs dumped more than twelve million bucks into iowa to nab twenty eight delegates just twenty eight delegates there are two thousand two hundred eighty six delegates up for grabs in total in the republican race but twelve million bucks spent in iowa for just twenty eight delegates telling gets that aren't actually obligated to vote for the candidate that won the state delegates they can go vote for herman cain if they want donald trump so why was so much money spent in iowa for such a small and nonbinding prize. in the next few days we'll learn what the total money spent new hampshire was and like i would it will likely be a lot and new hampshire has just twelve delegates up for grabs less than half of

what i want and those delegates aren't even winner take all so romney likely won't collect all twelve so get why all the money for a small state with few delegates so early in the primary season what is really driving this frenzy behind the new hampshire primary what's really forcing candidates to break their budgets for a handful of delegates the answer these guys are. this isn't about the votes this isn't about new hampshire at least not any more than the super bowl is about indianapolis which by the way is the city that will host the super bowl next month this is about the game and it's about the national news media manufacturing most exciting game it can even if even if mitt romney is expected to win by twenty points and while it might not cost a lot of money to pick up some votes in tiny states like new hampshire and iowa it does cost a lot of money to get the attention of the national media and their ridiculous campaign spending so given that what should we really be taking away from new hampshire primary tonight here offer some more insight on this i'm joined by adel

stand on the phone she's washington d.c. bureau chief for alter net and she's been in new hampshire covering the primary adele welcome thanks for having me stamp right so you heard my set about and i'm borrowing this a lot from your article you wrote on alter net the other day you've been around going to the campaign events you've been seeing the spectacle what's going on is this really about new hampshire voters or is this is this a display put on by the national news media yes well as i've written that i see in new hampshire at this stage and at this stage that for a reality show called the new hampshire primary that runs on multiple networks on currently. and new hampshire provides a sort of. high heel i solved you know should know what america is or should be to a certain segment of the population and you know it quaint and it's people are

playing in it and also the caucasian state and so i think that that's really what you have just will this stage that. and then enjoy being that right i mean this brings in a lot of money doesn't it brings in a lot of attention a lot of money it brings in south and it brings the clinical clout to a state that would otherwise have not you know it. turn them all you know small town political brokers into it just every every four years you know. the guy who orchestrates the merrimac fourth of july parade has some power because all the candidates take off their campaign is that for a so and that's really the way it works here and we have just a minute a minute left adele let's let's play a little bit of punditry or let's play playing for a little bit as it is should there be any surprises tonight should we expect well i

think i think there is going to be a surprise and the candidacy of john huntsman huntsman the former utah governor was poised you know somewhere to be at the end of the pack and he could very well come in second or third so i think that's kind of a big story because he doesn't fit the ordinary you know the he doesn't fit in with the rest of the pack you know whether or not he can do anything with that going forward you know i guess we'll we'll have to wait and see and thanks for joining us today alan keep up the great reporting in new hampshire thanks so much thanks so much for having me thank you for more on on what's going on new hampshire i want to turn over to jay meyerson he's a contributor with truthout jay welcome. jay you've been covering the occupy wall street movement for the last three months almost four months. is occupying new hampshire playing playing up there. well what occupy new hampshire is doing is making it

a business to go to all of the different campaign events and each candidate does about four or five each day and make a nuisance of themselves chant and shout and hold up signs and disrupt and get kicked out and ultimately try and keep the message that occupiers care about it's in the forefront of what adelle rightly characterizes as a media circus around these incredibly far right candidates who are dealing with we should we read invade iraq and should we you know intrude on the rights of citizens to buy contraception so that's what new hampshire are. going to do it constantly all the time here rick perry coming out the other day and saying we should remember that's a bold move as we as we know it's not just the republicans that are taking money from wall street the democrats are two is is the movement reflecting the new hampshire i mean is president obama getting as much flak in new hampshire as mitt romney yeah absolutely yesterday occupy new hampshire went in front of the obama

reelection campaign offices and held the dye in. the mouth of the new hampshire family is live free or die and somebody declared free or die in the protestors opted for the second and they died and everybody died and a death certificate was was issued with the cause of death being you know too much corporate cash and what they were demanding was a response from the obama camp about why obama so heavily funds his campaign with corporate money especially wall street money and campaign responded by calling the cops just the same as if they hadn't issued any demand at all so. more fires here expected moving on from new hampshire down to new york i understand there's some action going on in zuccotti park is that true yeah yesterday the new york civil liberties union the national lawyers guild said the barricades around zuccotti park were illegal and today they have been taken down there is currently in progress down there there's a drum circle and everything and spirits i gather really high down there and that's

the real story i mean i agree with adele that this is you know a sort of a complete media circus but i don't think she's right that the huntsman stories a big story i mean whether pleasure paul beats huntsman by a point or huntsman being told by a point to lose to romney by twenty points is really trivial when what you realize is that no matter who is elected the basic premises of the american power structure will remain unchallenged in the real story is with the protest movements that are all over the country right now and i'm really really glad to see that the want to. occupy wall street is revived tonight well said and i think huntsman is probably on his way out whether he gets a second or third and i think ultimately mitt romney is the guy wall street's favor to and he's going to he's going to pull it off and really occupy wall street to play a role but we're not in the nomination and obama will buy the election well we'll see what happens thanks a lot we're out of time thanks for covering this. last month the national news

media's coverage of the republican race officially jumped the shark that's when the media bought into the idea of hosting a republican debate moderated by donald trump that's right reality t.v. star donald trump the guy who normally is dealing with gary busey and chloe cardassian well he's now be in charge of interviewing people for the most important job in the country the national news media was salivating over the attention this mock debate would receive luckily the candidates themselves thought better and dropped out of it. but tom gave his take on exactly how infotainment media in the republican race should interact with each other and someplace far far away. these guys are making a mockery of our political system with the help of the media that takes seriously people who don't even have campaign offices and don't report on the fact that they don't have campaign offices all the o.e.c.d. reporters today that the gap between the rich and poor is greater in history is greater than it ever been in history and worse in the us than pretty much anywhere

else on the planet except mexico did you hear that fact in today's news if the republicans want to turn our political system into a reality show which apparently is what they're up to that i say put them all on a remote island throw in grover norquist their lord and protector and let's just leave them there let them work it out some kind of a libertarian society no rules no government no welfare no not been and no no infrastructure sorta like lord of the flies right well let newton grow over a fight over who gets to play piggy nobody wants to pay into the into the into the system nobody wants to make it all work i think it is a perfect opportunity for the republicans to to demonstrate i mean you know one of the big questions one of the comments that's always been made is that there has never been in the history of the world a successful libertarian country there has never been in the history of the world

a country that cut its way to prosperity so these guys think they can pull it off stick them on a desert island let them in a lot of do it and we'll let newton grover fight over who gets to play the role pig here on the island. powerball drawings are held every wednesday and saturday night see why you should start playing the lotto if you plan to go to college in the future. let's not forget that we had an apartheid regime right now and. i think. even one well.

whenever the government says they're going to keep you safe get ready because you get their freedom. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you saw you don't know i'm tom hardy welcomes the big picture.

after their victory in concession speeches tonight the cadence will leave new hampshire and head down to south carolina and what they'll be leaving behind in new hampshire is a lot of college graduates saddled in enormous debt we're talking massive amounts of debt all around the nation student loan debt is a huge problem with the average graduate racking up more than twenty five thousand dollars in debt by the time he or she graduates but in new hampshire it's worse in

fact it's worse than in the entire country the average student there is more than thirty one thousand bucks in the hole after graduation thanks in large part to public universities in new hampshire being some of the most expensive in the country averaging twenty three thousand dollars in tuition per year but you hear republican candidates talking about student loan debt actually they are but not in a way that's helpful. the student loan program began when lyndon johnson announced it i think with the fifteen million dollars program it's an absurdity what does it do it expands the ability of students to stay in college longer because they don't see the cost would you kill the radical student loan program i don't think the federal government should be in the business of paying for programs and building up huge debt out there is nothing more dramatically failing then in that program so now there is no authority in the constitution for the federal government be dealing

with education we should get rid of the pro loan programs we should get rid the department of education education pay for it how do they down pay for college if there is not the way you pay for cell phones and computers. to pay for college the same way you pay for that computer or that cell phone you know that cell phone that costs twenty three thousand bucks a year. but it comes with you know one limited minutes and pretexting and all that moving on from ron paul who clearly doesn't give a damn about that saddled students to mitt romney who prefers to be a pander bear to students here's his promise to college graduates. what i can promise you is this when you get out of college if i'm president you'll have a job if president obama is reelected you will not be able to get a job that's the only catch is under romney's presidency you won't be able to afford to go to college in fact the way things are going with skyrocketing tuition fees and cuts the federal pell grant programs another part enjoyed services if you

plan on sending your kid to college in twenty years it's time to start playing the lottery and i don't mean join a lottery lottery for some high priced charter school i mean actually playing the lottery going to the store buying a powerball ticket and playing in playing and playing playing and. joining me now to explain exactly why you should start playing the lotto to afford college in the next few decades is marie diamond a reporter and blogger at think progress very welcome thanks for having me thanks for being on so let's say a kid is born today and he wants to go to college you know eighteen years from now . how much should he or she expect to spend yeah well his parents should have started saving about a decade ago because if trends continue the way they have for the past thirty years the average student born today can expect to pay two hundred eighty eight thousand dollars at a four year private school one hundred twenty three thousand dollars at a public university and the nation's priciest schools you know the ones we

encourage our kids to really shoot for the stars and get into the price tag is expected to reach four hundred twenty two thousand dollars for four years of school so we're talking about almost half a million dollars to get an undergraduate degree which most people say is you know indispensable in this economy this isn't like a brain surgeon during the ninety's getting a ph d. this is just for your college but everything will be ok right because you know everybody's wages are going up right or you know middle class can afford it you know gas gets more expensive housing gets more expensive health care has gets more and more expensive but they raise wages go up right unfortunately not so much you know you're right it's a situation that wouldn't be so bad a family incomes were keeping pace with tuition hikes but they're not even coming close you know since one thousand nine hundred seven average family incomes have only resit about one percent in real terms so what we're seeing more and more of is colleges that charge more for a year of tuition than the average family actually takes home. so it's mind blowing . so so we're ok we're already comes are going up by one percent college tuitions

are going up by some astronomical percentage of where they're going to be you know over four hundred thousand dollars if you were to go to a top notch school why why is college going up so much faster the price of college going up so much faster or the reasons behind it right well there are a lot of theories but you see you know particularly public universities is where a big part of the problem lies california state university which is the biggest the nation's largest public university system to twenty one percent in the last year alone and that's a large part because as states have endured these budget crunches they've slashed public school funding and funding for public universities and public universities have passed on that tuition hike to students and relied increasingly on that and meanwhile financial aid budgets have been shrinking so students are forced to take out huge debts to pay for college and so as you said you know the average student graduates with twenty five thousand dollars in debt students are borrowing on average more than twice what they did a decade ago i know i'm going to be paying off my student loans for the foreseeable

future so it's a really common problem well i mean as someone who has what does that do to you well what are the what are the practical implications of being saddled with debt when you get out of school i mean what are you what are you looking at the future right well i mean in addition because of the bad economy students are finding it hard harder and harder to have those good paying jobs after college that enable them to pay off their debt and it really has big ripple effects for the economy as a whole so as more and more students have this debt hanging over them as they enter the workforce they put off making those big life investments like buying a car buying a house and starting a family so it has long term consequences down the road for everyone so this is kind of the definition of a lost generation that we might be headed to a lost generation that's drowning in debt you mentioned how financial aid programs are disappearing what do. we are republicans and congress you know doing to accelerate that process i mean we just we saw that we saw the clips of what a lot of the republican presidential candidates are saying about the federal

student loan program right now what exactly i mean what are there not in congress what are the people in congress doing the people who are actually have the purse strings about this they showed a complete willingness to see pell grants programs for instance which already don't keep up with inflation you know gone completely in several of these debt ceiling standoff we've seen republicans have put. student grants on the table in a really major way and really zeroed them out because they a lot of them believe that the government shouldn't be in the business of helping students go to college they believe this to be a completely privatized industry i guess they don't buy into the argument that just like roads and bridges are an important infrastructure for the country having a well educated population a well educated younger generation isn't isn't as important as apparently not or you know that you know it that going to college should be a dream for the majority of americans and that's ok that only the rich should have access to good schools what to other nations outside the united states do about

this i mean how do they send their kids to college differently than we do i mean we see much more of an investment in public universities which educate a majority of americans but another school you know countries we see much higher taxes which in turn allows families to know that a college education for their children will be mostly paid for by the time they reach college age then i'm sure a lot of people if they were given the choice whether or not they'd like to pay is slightly smaller percentage of taxes you know growing up working as a young person and it completely free college education they would they would choose to do that right but we're all out of time right now marie thinks so or are coming on the show and great reporting keep it out. as we just discussed student loan debt will soon top one trillion dollars for the first time now a pasing total credit card debt in america the republicans in congress meanwhile are pushing for more cuts to the federal pell grant program many students will have

even less help paying for college in the future all while the rest of the world said young people to universities for free or drastically reduce costs we're falling behind the rest of the world when it comes to intellectual infrastructure here's what tom said needs to be done about the student debt crisis. infrastructure is one of the most important things that we have now you know what's the segue from student loans to infrastructure well frankly the most vital infrastructure we have in the united states is our intellectual infrastructure. its education look around you i look around here there's the screen the lights the floor the you can't see the camera that i'm looking at but literally everything you see started out as an idea everything you see started out as an idea whose jacket started out as an idea this ties or somebody had to say you know i'm going to design that i'm going to i'm going to i'm going to come up with the fabric i'm going to figure out how to do

this it all every three thing around us started out as an idea that idea came into being because of the intellectual infrastructure of our country in our world if we want to build our intellectual infrastructure we need to have free education i mean it's very simple we've got you've got people in the united states who are making a lot of money companies are making a lot of money because they have a workforce where people know how to read and write and do basic math they have an educated work force that's part of our infrastructure step it up to college that's. also part of our infrastructure it is absolutely insane. that's quite literally for the first time in the history of our country we have an entire generation that is that is going into life in debt bondage simply because they want to get educated young people need to start their life with a clean slate if they have no debt from school they can go off and become entrepreneurs they can become inventors we need a jew believe frankly

a forgiveness of all student debt we need to just say you know it was a stupid idea it's a trillion dollars we can pay for that that's less than the cost of iraq we will pay it all off and from this point forward all college education is going to be free. get out of your ass fold spatulas in bowie knives it's open season for road kill in illinois i know i'm headed there soon as the show's over you the new jacket a new law taking fact allows anyone with an illinois fur bears license to scoop up roadkill on the side of the road for pelts or even food or whatever else you might be into when it comes to that armadillos and deer. that law. you know legalize is people scooping up roadkill on the side of the road was passed twice by

the state general assembly they had to override a veto by governor pat quinn the second time because the governor feared that if you had a bunch of motorists stopping on the side of the road to scoop up road kill they might become road kill themselves. eleanor now joins thirteen other states of the nation who've legalized scooping up roadkill and making coats or food out of it and i go is expect to be the next state to take up the issue as one idaho state rep who's pushing for road kill retention right said quote to be able not to grab road kill was kind of stupid why you let it go to waste yeah that's so stupid to let road kill go to waste rumor has it that that sort of thinking you know why let it go to waste is exactly what's behind the tea party congress as it pushes for a federal law to decriminalize collecting road kill all around the nation they're

calling it an alternative to food stamps. up next the supreme court denied foreign nationals the right to give money to our political candidates or did that and answer coming up.

let's not forget that we had an apartheid regime right now. i think. even one well. whenever the government says they're going to keep you safe get ready because you get their freedom. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realized everything you saw. i'm

sorry welcome to the big picture. welcome back to the big picture i'm same sex in for tom hartman coming up in this

half hour despite the supreme court upholding a ban on foreign nationals contributing to our elections just how safe is our democracy after citizens united in just a moment i'll speak with marge baker from the group people for the american way on this issue also fans of internet censorship received a setback yesterday as paul ryan comes out against the stop online piracy. where you probably didn't hear about it on t.v. news i'll explain why that is later in the show and finally in tonight's daily take tom explains how to build a recession proof economy taking tips from one economy overseas that's booming despite its neighbors its neighbors crumbling. so should foreign nationals be able to contribute.