and this is the big picture broadcasting live from washington d.c. so over a half a billion homes you know one hundred million in over one hundred countries. you need to know this goes to ronald reagan his return to haunt newt gingrich all the republican candidates trying to be president there's one who has relied on ronald reagan the most is one candidate above all the others he likes to name drop the messiah of the republican party every chance he gets it every single debate and that one candidate newt gingrich. i worked with president ronald reagan i started working with governor reagan in one thousand nine hundred four under ronald reagan we had the right job when i became speaker we went back to the ronald reagan playbook i worked with ronald reagan in the early one nine hundred eighty s. and that's just a fraction of newt's reagan name drops as nate silver over the new york times counted newt gingrich as mentioned reagan's name fifty five times in the republican debate so far averaging three mentions per debate no other candidate comes even

close santorum for example has only mentioned reagan fourteen times. gingrich has now serves to the top of the field following his race baiting strategy in south carolina a strategy i might add that helped reagan in one thousand nine hundred eighty when he went to philadelphia mississippi where three civil rights were workers were murdered to kick off his presidential campaign to talk about states' rights a dog whistle to races southerners but now a new at the top of the field the republican establishment is turning on him and guess whose name is being invoked to criticize newt ronald reagan on wednesday the conservative national review online published a hit piece on gingrich written by former reagan staffer and convicted criminal elliott abrams abrams wote wrote mr gingrich voted with the president regularly but equally often spewed insulting rhetoric at reagan his top aides and his policies to defeat communism was voluble and certain in predicting that reagan's policies would

fail and in all of those he was dead wrong abrams then runs down a few quotes from gingrich about reagan that are over twenty five years old in one thousand nine hundred eighty six for example gingrich said about the reagan administration measured against the scale of momentum of the soviet empire is challenge the reagan administration has failed is failing and without a dramatic change in strategy will continue to fail or reagan is clearly failing and in one thousand nine hundred five and reagan met with soviet leader mikhail gorbachev gorbachev gingrich said it was the most dangerous summit for the west since adolf hitler met with the neville chamberlain in one nine hundred thirty eight in munich piling on conservative joe scarborough said this about newt gingrich's past criticisms of reagan this morning on innocent b.c. . i think all this really told this is about newt gingrich is what most people already know and that is that he is just ideologically word he will say whatever he

thinks will do you mean advantage that day and when the tide turns he too will turn with that tide apparently the reagan tide has now turned against gingrich so once again the reagan litmus test has been put to use despite touting reagan fifty five times in the debates anger just being hammered for the three times he mentioned reagan's name twenty five years ago in a not so positive light but the big picture here is this why the heck is reagan still playing such a huge role more than twenty five years after he left office in today's republican presidential race if things keep going at this rate there won't just be for podiums and four candidates on stage at the next debate in florida will be a fifth podium with a moment the reagan propped up against it because to republicans ronald reagan is a god he is the man by which all their policy should be measured he is the owner of a conservative that all candidates should strive to become what's lost in all this

reagan worshipping and idolatry is reagan's actual record as president and when that's examined and we take a look at what reagan actually did in the white house you're really have to question the wisdom of today's republican party and their reliance on the reagan test take a look back at what reagan actually did for example the s.l.c. deregulated them early in his administration leading to the financial crash of the one nine hundred eighty s. and the s. and l. crisis in one thousand nine hundred six it cost the nation eighty seven billion dollars. on the other hand he put about a thousand banks to his in jail so it's interesting in one nine hundred eighty six he granted amnesty to three million illegal immigrants not exactly a model for the hardline anti immigrant stance of today's republicans he tripled our national debt with the trickle down economics adding more debt than all the

presidents from washington to carter come behind not exactly a fiscal conservative right he was rocked by scandals he had the iran contra scandal the cocaine and honduras the october surprise but there were a few things reagan did even though they were few and far between that would make today's republicans eds totally explode he bucked his advisors they begged him not to talk to gorbachev of about this but he went to gorbachev and said hey let's get rid of all the nukes both our countries are bishops a good idea it sounds like appeasement to me to a lot of the republicans these days and he raised the capitalist against tax you know the one that romney only pays like fifteen percent and that's it picked out a fifteen percent rate or raise that up to be identical with the ordinary wage income tax engaging in what today's republicans call class warfare.

we're going to close the other part of the text of the loan some of the family will think it would be their theory. in theory some of those who were understanding that it renders they sometimes made it possible for a million years to be a bus driver was being presented itself and that's the phrase you think the billionaire or maybe more intense than the bus driver or the way. that puts reagan to the left a baracoa bottom up reagan's record has been rewritten in the last twenty plus years there's in fact there's this whole project was funded by a bunch of very wealthy people grover norquist heads it up the reagan legacy project one of their one of their explicit goals in addition to rewriting all the history about reagan or glossing over things like what you just saw is to make sure that in every county in america at least one building gets named after ronald reagan or one statue of gets put up when you look at his actual record he was he was no god he counted for much of the destruction we see in our economy today and

the few good things that he did today's republicans would be running away from. the republican candidates for president try to outdo each other over who's more like ronald reagan or at least the mythical ronald reagan was consummate governor scott walker's actually emulating reagan's legacy of busting up unions thirty years after reagan fired all the unionized air traffic controllers akko walker tried to dismantle public employee unions in wisconsin and go in so well for. more than a million signatures were collected to recall him from office and wednesday night he had to face the people of wisconsin to give his annual state of the state address and let's just say that didn't go so well either and then this morning a legal nuclear bomb druck dropped on walker for more on the republican governor's

troubles and what's next for the recall effort in the badger state i'm joined by john nichols washington correspondent with the nation magazine john welcome. it's good to be with you tom great to have you with us john first of all the the low hanging fruit the state of the state address that didn't go so well as well the governor did get through it and i guess that counts for something but it didn't exactly have an obama ring to it the governor seemed to be rushing through the speech and i think some people didn't understand why even even apart. cause for what we traditionally be an applause line it was because thousands of people were in the rotunda of the capitol and surrounding the capitol shouting shame so loudly that you could hear the chants through the morrow walls of the capitol into the chamber where the governor was speaking and therefore he couldn't pause because then then the mikes would pick up the chant that's a crowd you hear the people now so the the nuclear bomb this morning crimes in the

walker camp. yeah pretty serious stuff too long time aides to the governor were charged with major crimes in one case for felonies of using the office of the milwaukee county executive that was walker's office when he ran for governor just set up what the prosecutor describes as a secret secret network to communicate about fundraising and policy and they actually hollowed out and anwar and put in a secret internet router so that they could send e-mails from staff who were paid by the taxpayers back and forth with big campaign regarding particular campaign fund raising issues this is totally legal and what's fascinating is that in f.b.i. raids and other investigations the prosecutors have gotten access to thousands of e-mails including some e-mails from governor walker which suggests an awareness of

what was going on let's be clear we haven't got walker has not been charged we don't know everything that's going on here yet but people very very close to him abin charged now with felonies involving abuse of office and campaign finance and potentially tax filings amazing speed of campaign finance houses fundraise you know on where to get this money very well the governor may have troubles in other areas but he is extremely popular in texas. he has raised raising money at the rate of almost five million dollars a month and at this point sixty one percent of the money is coming from outside was constant including a lot of checks for one hundred thousand and even two hundred fifty thousand dollars from texans one of his biggest texas donors is the guy who funded this with boat ads against john kerry. that's amazing. is you know he's facing this recall election there's also you know going to be an election if he if he gets

kicked out. against the democrat right i mean how does this work by john and are there any democrats who have come forward yet to have a chance of meeting walker sure no governor is the target of a recall million signatures have been filed that's almost certain to force a new election that's how it works in wisconsin the governor's name will go on the ballot he could face a republican primary you most certainly face a democratic opponent a number of democrats stepped out but certainly the field is full. are encountering second kathleen follow county executive for many years the second largest county in the state is running she seems to have a good deal labor back a state senator tim collins a veteran democratic state senator is also served in good material candidates is running. there's talk of milwaukee mayor tom barrett former congressman dave obie and of course in wisconsin there's always a discussion about the possibility that russ feingold might be convinced to make

the run that would be remarkable john nichols thanks so much for being with us tonight thank you it's good to be with you john thanks coming up in the rest of the show deep pocketed political donors aren't just throwing their money in political campaigns and super pacs are also giving wads of cash to prominent t.v. networks a bombshell new report examines just how corrosive the spending is to our democracy also the organization that brought us occupy wall street has a new plan to tell you what it is and why literally the whole world will be watching and finally what's behind the uptick in cancer diagnoses among t.s.a. agents explain in tonight's daily take. issue is that so much different each musician on the mark with libya intervention

like in the specter of civil war libya's transitional way from the get go off you. she is proving far more problematic.

after american saw over three hundred million dollars in outside corporate cash flood two thousand and ten midterm elections we know full well who benefited the most when the supreme court's citizens united decision that would be the republican party and their deep pocketed corporate donors meanwhile average americans who don't have as much money and therefore don't have as much speech according to the supreme court are screwed but no one seems to be talking about who else stands to gain from the citizens united decision that's commercial t.v. broadcasters after all these super pacs need to pay t.v. broadcasters to air their negative ads in their hippies documentaries and already we've seen more than twelve million dollars spent on t.v. advertising during the iowa caucuses and fourteen million bucks last week in the south carolina primary alone so what effect a corporate super pacs and huge amounts of money over to commercial broadcasters have on that branch of the fourth estate and thus on our democracy here to answer

that is craig present. now that was just published a new report on this exact issue titled citizens inundated democracy under threat greg welcome thanks for having tom great to have you here so how much money do t.v. broadcasters stand to make this year well the reliable estimate ses could be as much as three billion dollars raked in by broadcasters cable channels and whatnot so really sixty cents of every dollar going into the election which is far beyond you know spending is far beyond anything it's been before the people who are where those checks are being cast is that local television stations national television stations with ad after ad after ad as the people of iowa south carolina and now florida can tell you you know there's no more ads for car dealers or anything getting on airs it's one that's hack ad or election ad after another and these companies at the very same time they're cutting back on coverage are cashing in on what i worry is really the demise of our democracy how how are they influenced by

that money i mean does this well you know i think their influence it's an addiction really and so you have these broadcasters just making money hand over fist during an election year but unfortunately not putting that money back into actually making sense of the elections for the american people so we have an electorate that's more misinformed more inundated than ever before and yet at the same time these broadcasters are getting rich basically by peddling that misinformation my radio i do a three hour commercial radio show you know during the day and it's on commercial stations all over the country and one of the one of the ironies we used to joke about this we've been doing it for nine years is that both left wing radio and right wing radio don't get these these ads because the republicans are in advertising on rush limbaugh's show because they know what he's already doing they're going to have to and they're not going to advertise on my show because they know that i'm kind of doing their as it were you know i'm in the mode in their their worldview and so it

all goes to like music radio and things like that. but it. if and therefore you know i've been talking about this for years it's like you know this is like it's like looking at another world and one of the things i noticed in the last two elections is that whenever one of the candidates in primaries or in the actual election or one of the candidates started really pull and i had all kinds of never negative coverage would come out or all kinds of positive coverage but the other can it until they were neck and neck and then when somebody collapses they you know and it was almost like the national media narrative and it seemed like this was right across all the networks and it was also at the national media narrative was keeping a horse race continuously it seems like that would optimize the number of advertising dollars coming into their coffers and i just imagine in this is this some kind of wild no i mean you know i think it's a legitimate question because certainly a tight race is going to get people to tune in and we've certainly seen it here in the for example the republican primary which is our leading example here in two thousand and twelve i mean it was one that candidate after another being you know

pulled up off the scrap heat and being named the front runner to make it a more competitive race maybe we finally have one now but certainly the you know the michele bachmann boom late in the herman cain fiasco and everything that went on certainly you know that's a story to tell and there's no question that these broadcasters especially at the local level are benefiting from you know the uglier the ads get the more ferocious the attacks well that's just even more incentive for the other side to get involved and keep spending spending spending so the focus of your you know the focus of what i'm looking at is is is is there actually a skewing of the bias circuit coverage toward or against a candidate as a consequence of a corporate imperative to keep you or or just you know individual shows say you know what are our numbers today that kind of thing but it sounds like what you're looking at more is how corrosive the the ads themselves are that's right and what people are learning about what happens in elections you know the television is the

number one source radio right behind and how people are learning about their elections and. what they're all they're getting are these misleading ads so i think if we have something like citizens united which is only going to pour more and more money into our elections we're seeing it already that three billion dollars what are we doing to actually keep our voters informed about what's happening their communities but what's actually in these ads there's no disclosure on who is behind these groups it doesn't tell you who's really paying for these ads but it could we could put information online showing hey who's actually buying ads in these local television stations we could put disclaimers in these ads themselves saying that hey this group you've never heard of puppies and kittens against barack obama well it turns out that's a project of karl rove that would give least give voters information allow them to you know cut through some of the spin in noise but what are broadcasters are doing so often is not trying to cut through that spin and noise as you suggest they're trying to just raise the volume and saying more spin more noise more confusion and more ads and thus the disclose as a as a or act rather as a as a first yeah i think it contains it contains parts of that but there's things that

the federal communications commission could do that are already on the books to force this kind of disclosure and actually give voters more information while we sort out the bigger picture while we sort out you know what we're going to do about citizens united there's things we could do in this election cycle in the general election to force disclosure and give people more information now any time a campaign finance law comes everybody says oh i'm all about transparency well here you go here's some transparency we can push it through now greg thanks so much appreciate it great great great work now on to the movement pushing back against the corporate takeover of our democracy occupy wall street adbusters the organization to put out the initial call for an occupation of wall street back in september of last year now has its eyes caught go the g eight and nato are scheduled to hold a summit in chicago during the first week of may and adbusters is calling on fifty thousand people from around the planet to set up tents and occupy the city in hopes of pulling off the biggest multinational occupation of some of the world's ever

seen list of demands adbusters is promoting include a robin hood taxes. centrally tax on stock trades a ban on high frequency flash trading a binding climate change accord and a three strikes and you're out law for corporate criminals adbusters is calling on demonstrators to bring a tent or as the occupy chicago movement has been thriving for months now without adbusters and plans of already been made for similar demonstrations against the g eight and nato so too many add boasters call for action chicago's ruffling some feathers of others within the occupy movement joining me now from new york from our studios in new york for more on the story is jay meyers journalist and contributor to truthout dot org and participant in the occupy wall street movement jay welcome back. great to have you with us how do the occupy chicago folks react to this call from adbusters. well the thing is that adbusters put out this call without consulting anyone i mean that they have this. you know alert going out to say fifty

thousand people should show up and should support this agenda but there's then we're going to occupy chicago but there is already an occupy chicago and in fact i talked to a man named joe i guess baker who's with the coalition against nato g eight who had filed for a permit to have a mass action on the summit the day after it was announced in june so adbusters is is contributing publicity to it which is really really excellent and all of the official statements by all these people you know thank adbusters for the publicity but i'm afraid that people aren't a big fan of adbusters. positioning itself as the sort of per group that's calling for this when it's actually been in the works for some time and especially not advancing as you say its own agenda it of course has no right to determine the agenda of the occupied sure well they they said that this was their proposed

and you know in the in the general assemblies and things other things would be those things could be considered other things could be considered. what yalit how what would the alternative be for all adbusters to have done i mean do you think that they how else could they have approached this. well here's one one tweeter i'm sorry i have notes so i don't get anybody's words around one tweeter said dialogue would have been nice even acknowledgement another one these are all occupy chicago people another one said that there were lots of heated opinions going around one person called them horrible allies the fact is that occupy as with it's brother and sister movements all over the world in the middle east and in europe and in latin america and in asia and all over thrive on the horizontal ism on the situation which everyone is a leader and no one has any sort of. officially designated leadership role you know apart from that everyone has. and so i think that when. any individual

or a publication like adbusters attempts to position itself you know in the helm of the thing which they've been credited by you know the new york times and the new yorker and rolling stone as having been for occupy wall street that's bound to ruffle some feathers of people who are committed to leader listeners or universal leaders or so so what do you think is going to come out of this what's going to happen. well i think it's going to be incredible i mean as i say the organizers have been hard at work doing this and they are actually genuinely probably grateful for the publicized that this will bring to the thing the occupy chicago has been organizing a thing called the chicago spring you can visit a website about that as i say can eight as it's called the coalition against nato and g eight coalition has been putting together actions i think that this will probably bring a lot of people out which is very exciting but look for it to be multifaceted as the movement is one facet that you're going to see is a sort of family friendly union endorsed action that's going to be probably well

mobilized well organized and have a lot of people and look for some folks who are ready to occupy some stuff and shut some things down bringing a sort of radical flank to the action well apropos of that mayor rahm emanuel has already set things up to be very very difficult for any sort of occupation and frankly the secret service can arbitrarily make it even worse by declaring any time they want any place a security zone so isn't this a setup for a riot. well it's difficult to say i mean the the the image that adbusters put out was this image of police brutality in one thousand nine hundred. see which is of course what everybody's thinking about when they think about this there doesn't have to be a riot i mean people have been fighting these ordinances that rahm emanuel is putting through including. chicago and actually they've got some of the more odious provisions struck of course that secret service provision remains in place it doesn't have to be it's up to the authorities if they want to turn it violent as

we've seen all over the place as occupy movements have taken off around the country the only violence that's actually being done is official violence against nonviolent protesters who occasionally get a little rowdy in vandalize some stuff but ever mains nonviolent the whole time another it's haven't harmed any people or any living things jamie thanks so much for the report. thank you occupy wall street is now over four months old it's getting stronger and resisting forces that want to co-opt it for personal gain here's to a year fighting for economic equality on the streets. after the break bishop desmond tutu told those of the world economic forum that it's time for a revolution of women in the world economy how the world's wealthiest react to his call and what else are the corporate elite up to in davos.

is he he. used. to. very warm welcome to you here's a quick look at your headlines thousands march in poland us government websites are down by hackers opposed to warsaw signing up to an international anti-piracy agreement the pact was negotiated in secret and covers a broad swathe of copyright material from pharmaceuticals to films. iran considers

cutting its oil supply to europe before the european union sanctions come into full force in july the move comes as an attempt to head off the trade ban imposed earlier by sunday european nations to curb its nuclear program. and in syria the arab league observers resume work after a week's break and are already set to take their findings to the u.n. security council however any prospect of foreign intervention or sanctions has been opposed by russia this is government troops launch an all out offensive on a protest in a damascus suburb. those are the headlines this hour now back to our washington studio for part two of the big picture with tom hartman stay with us for our.