book twitter and blog sites including possibly your comments are really doing this one of the looking for and how long will it be before somebody kicks in your door because there's something to you wrote on the web and later even though he's a conservative french president nicolas sarkozy is pushing for a robin hood tax cuts and fury aid in the banks there's explain what a robin hood tax is incentives really take why the u.s. must adopt one of its own. you need to know this today we will don't just memorialize a revolutionary civil rights icon we recognize a revolutionary moral leader a man who not only fought for equality among races but also fought for equality

among economic classes and fought for peace around the world it's been more than forty four years stock to martin luther king jr was gunned down in memphis hotel balcony and in those forty four years reverend dr king's legacy as a civil rights leader has endured today his name will be mentioned in homes across america in newspapers and on television he'll be heralded as the man who move the nation forward toward racial equality who preached progress and who laid the groundwork for the election of the nation's first african-american president three years ago barack obama and there's no question that dr king deserves this praise he did do all that and it was a brave tremendous and revolutionary work for which he paid the ultimate price. there's still tremendous work to do in terms of racial equality in america for example more african-americans are in prison today than were in slavery and eight

hundred fifty and the nation's highest unemployment rates are among young african-american men racism is still very much alive in america today and very much a poison in our nation's veins but even at that it was dr king's work on work on civil rights that really changed the game but in those forty four years since his death other large parts of his legacy have been a research out of our pop culture history he's remembered as a civil rights leader but forgotten as a fighter for economic justice he's remembered as a nonviolent demonstrator but forgotten as a fierce critic of war he's remembered as a pastor but forgotten as a bold progressive as dr cornell west west wrote on august twenty fifth of last year in the new york times king's dream of a more democratic america had become in his words a nightmare owing to the persistence of racism poverty militarism and materialism

he called america a sick society on the sunday after his assassination in one thousand nine hundred sixty eight he was to have preached a sermon titled why america may go to hell king did not think that america ought to go to hell but rather that it might go to hell owing to its economic injustice cultural decay and political paralysis in those forty four years since his death we've forgotten that he died while standing up for the rights of workers in memphis to unionize and that he railed against the horrors of the vietnam war and that he echoed franklin roosevelt in calling for basic economic rights for all americans. conservatives have so robbed those things out of this history that a right winger like mitt romney claimed falsely to have marched with dr king while at the same time working shamelessly against the rights of workers to unionize in

those same forty four years union workers have been under continuous assault by trans national corporations and a handful of our nation's billionaires and the words of dr king spoke back in one nine hundred sixty eight in front of the striking memphis sanitation workers are just as relevant today for americans who are watching their wages spiral out of control to compete in a global race to the bottom. your argument. for. this to. where respect. the dignity of labor. you are reminded. not only. but you are reminded of the nature of. bad. crime.

to the good in this month today from andruzzi starvation wages. as a result of this ongoing assault on dr king's values since his death the middle class is vanishing across all races and the basic economic rights that came with it are disappearing all just to give the very very wealthy at the top more money taken mostly from the very poor as dr king said in one nine hundred sixty one at the a.f.l.-cio convention i look forward confidently to the day when we bring into full realization the american dream a dream yet unfulfilled a dream of equality of opportunity of privilege and property widely distributed. a dream of a land of a land where men will not take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few today in assessing these such as health care home heating oil during the cold

winter food assistance for the impoverished all are being taken away to sustain luxurious tax breaks for the very rare very rich and the very very few and then there is war every single president since ronald reagan has launched their own new war in some far off place around the world committing young men and women to die just for greater access to dirty fossil fuels or just for what george w. bush crudely called political capital that he could get from being a wartime president this endless war was not part of dr king's vision of america it was one of the loudest critics of the vietnam war even going so far as to say silence in opposition to war was a betrayal of america king had this mission's message for the nation back in one thousand nine hundred sixty seven. that we need to hear once again. we still have

a choice today nonviolent core existence a violent crime nomination we must move past in decision direction we must find new ways to speak for peace in vietnam and justice throughout the developing world. that borders on a door if we do not act we shall surely be dragged down by long dock and shame for prayer doors of time reserved for those who possess tyler without compassion might without more relative and strength without sight non-net us again not let us rededicate ourselves to the moment bitter but beautiful struggle for a new way. to our many problems today from racism to wealth inequality to

never ending wars dr king's words offer us solutions we just need to listen to them to all of them and get off this road to feudalism and servitude and back on the road to progress as dr king would say we must bend that arc of human history toward justice once again. we need to continue dr working this fight for the right of workers to unionize a basic right there will be under attack tonight during the south carolina republican presidential debate not just by candidates on stage but also in the form of t.v. commercials like this one. one of the labor bosses control drusie lections do you. want to assure you that a vote for me is best for you miss hudgins as just agreed that there isn't going to be any secret vote sign these cards shown as you like the best my campaign

committee will collecting count today sounds of workers are being forced to do unions without a secret ballot vote reason number five for the employee rights act you sure about this that ad is part of a ten million dollar campaign by the right wing center for union facts to undermine unions across america the organization is pulling for the pushing for the so-called employee rights act a piece of legislation that would make it much harder for workers to start or keep a union and much easier for employers to bust one it's the right wing opposite of the employee free choice act or card check which makes it easier for employees to unionize so the question should be harder or easier for american workers to unionize will aspirate joins me now he's the host of the radio show truth for america and author of the book conscientious equity welcome back. thank you tom it's always good to be here neal why do you hate democracy in the workplace. i

don't hate democracy in the workplace and that's exactly what the unions are fighting to eliminate i mean the unions are out for a privileged few to create this elitist class the unions are in the business of promoting the financial interests even when a union leaders union can only exist when a majority of its members vote for something unions or are democratic institutions work places corporations or kingdoms how could you call it a union how could you say a union is working for a privileged few when you when a union can only exist to fifty one percent of its members say they want it. well you just you just played a clip about card check which was to take away the secret ballot because unions are in rapid decline i would not say where there's nobody setting knob numbers from the height of unionism in the one nine hundred fifty s. to work nearly sixty percent of the private workforce was unionized today it's less than eight percent so then tom why are the unions in such rapid decline if they're

doing the good work of those that they're unionized and one hundred sixty the largest lawyer in the days of able laws today that is doing the things that the unions were doing back in the fifty's right now the unions are wrong let me know let me answer your question there's a very simple reason in one nine hundred sixty the largest employer in the united states was general motors and it was unionized today the largest employer in the united states is wal-mart and not only are they not unionized but they spend millions of dollars fighting unionization it's very simple and we changed our trade policy in the united states ronald reagan and bill clinton changed our trade policy so that we no longer have tariffs we no longer have any got protection for workers in the united states we give tax breaks for companies to move their unions offshore as a consequence the union positions have been busted and union busting is a two billion dollar a year industry no the united states in the meantime the guys who are the c.e.o.'s are making a fortune on the average worker is getting screwed people used to started at g.m. of forty fifty dollars an hour right now in germany the average auto workers union

is wages sixty seven dollars an hour g.m. is hiring at fourteen dollars an hour tell me that there's not a problem. well the g.m. can't make cars in america profitably but toyota b.m.w. and mercedes can why because the unions are not destroying their businesses america can build great things in there is going to be in the millions of dollars it's going to have some of the things to the union bosses they're not protecting their workers tom and that's the problem why they're in such decline mail there's no such thing as union boss they're union representatives and there is no person who is able to assert themselves as a boss in a union and corporation the person with the most money can say i'm the boss you're the employee i like it or i don't like it you know you get out but in a union the person at the top was elected unions are democratic institutions ok so tom if their democratic institutions in they only need fifty one percent to

unionize a workforce why are they not getting the fifty one percent expression since they have president obama in there because ever since ronald reagan a bust of cabinet organizer to a union boss because everyone at the from the one from the day that reagan busted patco until last week when obama finally appointed a couple of people of the n.l.r.b. can function again you have had a national labor relations board created one hundred thirty five to defend labor that has been actively hostile to the to the interest of all of labor with the single of exception of a couple of years of robert rice was running in the clinton administration basically for thirty years we've had reaganomics and reaganomics has been hostile to workers and and friendly to billionaires then why under president obama cannot the unions get their mojo back if ever they were going to be successful because we bring all their goods into science and he has done everything possible to go against businesses for the unions and by the way tom that's why we don't have the i don't want you to name one thing that he did. name one thing i'm so excuse me tom

i'm sorry you said you said obama has done everything you can to go for the unions against the businesses the senate has been refusing to put anybody into the n.l.r.b. he's about the last function at the end of one thing putting two more stooges on the onion on our big i mean they're forcing business is out of out of spite of union states they're forcing them to right to work states they're forcing businesses overseas and they're all they're scratching their heads saying why is this happening how you have admitted what a bad for you in the twenty seconds we have a lot of detail not the john three hundred and so that's the goal of this country in one instance of force that obama has used to push people into right to work for less states well is that just by his economic policies his tax policies what he's trying to do making it so much easier for people to unionize where they you know where they leaving the states that are heavy union i states for places like south carolina what did what did obama do when he's a ministration to win but we decided to build

a plant in south carolina the day they brought a suit against boeing because they wanted to move to a right to work state that i mean that's something that was another reason why that business is you and i gabriele were under attack and we are we're out of time thank you so much for being with us hey tom thanks for having me. i learned some very important lessons about you news when i was an ice the last week i'll tell you about it right after the break. and what drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions to break through it sort of it being made who can you trust no one who is in view with the global missionary zeal where we had a state controlled capitalism is called fascism when nobody dares to ask we do our t. question more.

i was in iceland last week stopped in iceland went to sweden in the u.k. and back and it was pretty insane trip but in think he's one of the interesting moments you get these these little moments of insight the consequence of things that happened to you louise and i were in a taxi and i tried to tip the taxi driver and he seemed offended

and i say you know you don't want to tip and he said i am very well paid thank you very much then we went to dinner restaurant and i tried to tip the waiter the waiter brought me the check actually with a credit card as if it were right the tip he said you know we don't we don't take tips so you don't tip in iceland so i asked my friend who was who was an icelander who was with me i said you know why is everybody upset when i try to offer a tip he said because it implies that you know we're poor or something it's almost an insult he said we have eighty four percent unionization in this country everybody recognizes that if you have a job you have a right to a decent salary it's not even a debate in this culture. and that eighty four percent unionization has produced a culture that gets it the workers the gets the fact that basically workers drive everything in an economy by virtue of the fact that they're also the consumers and if they're appropriately pager going to have an economy that works and if not like

in the united states increasingly as our wages are going down and down and down and now it takes two workers in a family to make what you know to maintain a living status that one of the ronald reagan became president you could do with one worker in a family. our country slides into third world status which is what's happening to the united states right now and what we need to do to some to fix frankly and probably the best way to do it is to have card check is to bring back the right of workers to have a democracy in the workplace also known as a union. progressivism enjoy reading the huffington post and conservatives may enjoy reading the drudge report the department of homeland security apparently enjoys reading both web sites as well as social networking sites like twitter facebook so why is d h s monitoring popular news and social networking websites well the agency claims it's just trying

to keep tabs on major developing events and has been since two thousand and ten just monitoring web traffic around things like the haiti earthquake or the winter olympics to keep the d.h.s.s. command center in a position where they could better respond to things like. but is that what's really going on not according to the electronic privacy information center or epic which recently filed a freedom of information act request with the department of homeland security to find out what's really going on here and tell us what epic discovered is genuine call director of epix open government program ginger welcome back thank you for having me great to have you with us what were your main findings as a result of this four request what did you learn so what we got were some very recent contract statements of work some reports prepared by the department of homeland security and what we found that what the department of security homeland security is actually monitoring is far more than just the sort of security oriented

news things that you would expect actually one of the items that they had paid a contractor about eleven point three million dollars to monitor among that was monitoring for news media stories which quote reflect adversely on the department of homeland security or u.s. federal government. so i'm sure i could criticism we're going to spend ten million eleven million bucks to see if anybody doesn't like us yet that's part of the economy i know that it is to monitor for criticism to monitor for dissent so if i go off on a rant on this program about how i think the chertoff x. ray porno scanners are just security theater somebody is probably writing it down and putting in a file someplace it may in fact be prepared as part of the weekly or daily summary and what we found also interesting lee enough the department of homeland security prepared an analyst handbook or an analyst training guide and this has their letterhead on it it has their insignia on it and this was to train the contractors on what sorts of reports the department of homeland security wanted and one of the

things that they held up as an exemplar was a report prepared and summarizing dissent about the plan to move kuantan of a detainee is to standish michigan and it actually had quotes from washington post comment board from some social networking sites. chris critical to that plan amazing so the example i gave before was me going off on a rant i'm a public figure public figures don't have libel protections they don't have presumed privacy protections at least when they behave in the public. but what you're so what i think i heard you just say is that if i was an average citizen and there was a news story and you could comment on the news story and i said on the news story well i think that those chertoff x. ray porno scanners are just security theater and i'm going to get groped at the airport instead of taking the x. ray scanner then that comment would be true yeah it may when your name may be

redacted the comment would be tracked perhaps even in quotes and that according to this report we've got from the department of homeland security so if the name is redacted they're not actually common to find out who. hopefully not although if it's a media source they may not be redacting the media circus or so it could perhaps be russia today thom hartmann show. or or if it was you know if it was a washington post story it was a blog and i yelled mattered on it you know and also if you have the quote the comment in quotation marks you could probably just google it and pull up the person that it's associated with it might not be that difficult to trace it back are they trying to do that i mean is it is the government now assembling a database of people who are just centers it's hard to know really but we've found this profoundly troubling the fact that they are keeping track of stories that are critical to to the agency to the federal government have the ability to do this i mean do they have gabi so they have the technical capability but but do they have

the legal abilities well actually just monitoring for criticism is really outside of the agency statutory bounds what they're supposed to be doing is looking for legitimate terrorist threats they're supposed to be enforcing immigration laws it's a law enforcement agency it's not a p.r. agency they should not be engaging in monitoring of criticism of the department of homeland security or the u.s. federal government this is not the white house press office yeah nixon did this he had this thing called an enemy's list and it was i think bob woodward was quite proud that he was on a lot of other people were harassed as a result of being on a lot of people got their taxes audited because of things like that and it's very troubling to think of them being this far outside of their bounds this is it's a law enforcement agency it has a statutory duty is to protect the american public it doesn't have a statutory duty is to to collect dissenting opinions and database are there any other dimensions to this surveillance program that we need to know about well i think that it has

a troubling effect on legitimate dissent and free speech on line. if you have a freedom of expression if you know freedom of speech i mean you wouldn't expect that the government would be there taking notes and i think that has a real chilling effect it does have a tendency to to quell that adamant dissent why is it that most americans don't know about this. well up until now the department of homeland security hasn't really been releasing these sorts of documents we actually had to file suit to get them there had been reports that there was perhaps media monitoring some of the privacy impact assessments were leaked very recently but i mean what we have are actual statements of work and contracts describing what this program is so i would encourage people to check them out on our website epic dot org and the website is epic dot org yeah of course. and is there are there any efforts to to litigate a stoppage of this sort of thing or is there or or for that matter to legislate

a stoppage of this. there has been some interesting expressed by congress to sort of bring the department of homeland security before congress to explain what it is exactly they're doing and why they're engaging in this behavior and we'll see where that goes wait until the wait until the ten million dollar contract goes out to watch members of congress suddenly there will be attorney general thank you so much for being with you so much it's great to have you with us in the studio again now might be a very good time to read george orwell's novel nine hundred eighty four. here's the good the bad of the very very spurious sightly ugly the good fracking free bowl garia throughout the world areas saturday thousands of citizens participated in organized protests against plans for the exploration of shale gas by the u.s.

companies chevron these protests came just days after it was learned that fracking caused earthquakes in ohio and it's been widely proven the fracking subjects' both the environment and citizens to poisonous chemicals group that organized the protests fracking free ball garia was assured by the ball gary in parliament that legislation imposing a moratorium on fracking would be considered a big applause was out for the citizens of bulgaria for standing up to american corporate greed and for fighting to protect their environment the bad georgia republican state senator kip smith smith was arrested for dui on friday morning at the feeling of sobriety test why is this of note because kip smith is the same georgia state senator who introduced georgia house bill four six four which requires random drug testing of states citizens getting assistance from public welfare programs the same sort of legislation has proven to be a complete waste of taxpayer money in florida as only two percent of those screen

actually tested positive for drug use far below the national average regardless of a being a bad idea mr smith wants any chance of being taken seriously in politics maybe he should try to follow the principles of his own legislation and less drug test. and a very very ugly cancerous house speaker michael neil o'neill has developed a habit of forwarding nasty e-mails regarding the president and first lady but this one takes the cake. two weeks ago in an e-mail to fellow kansas house republicans o'neill referred to president obama and a verse from the bible that says let his days be few it also calls for his children to be without a father and his wife to become a widow this text comes from psalm one hundred nine which is actually been a popular conservative motto since president obama was elected and o'neill connects the dots in that same e-mail writing at last i can honestly voice

a biblical prayer for our president look it up that is word for word let us by our heads and pray brothers and sisters did i get all about. despite repeated calls neither mr oh no neal nor his office office have offered any sort of apology for the even. you know it's one thing to be against the president seemingly wishing for his death and his wife to be widowed and their children to lose it and to lose their father is really taking it to a whole nother. and frankly is becoming all too commonplace in today's vitriolic rhetoric that's very very. after the break we all know that mitt romney strapped his dog to the roof of his car and drove for hours but did you know that he's also a serial killer of persons our next guest is going to try to defend the serial killers like romney and even tell us why we should bow down and respect when they walk by.

and what drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions to break through that sort of to be made who can you trust no one who is you can be you who with a global missionary zeal where we had a state controlled capitalism is called fascism when nobody dares to ask we do our t. question more.