stupid. stunts on t.v. dot com. this is actually the head of. the u.n. security council agrees military intervention in syria is not an option and fails to reach an accord on how to end of the twenty third. the assad regime overthrown but russian leaders against meddling in the country's domestic affairs. under the sea routes between government forces and rebel fighters continue on the outskirts of the congress so the opposition has rejected a transfer told to the country's president instead they are soft on really little blood eight and. six in the hall of million people are now to walk in the euro zone i've been implementing a record ten point two percent and they want to give the bulk of the single

currency the figures well it is just a day off so if you need is. here is to create more jobs about the first time in twenty two of. the headlines up next the second part political show the big picture. welcome back to the big picture i'm tom hartman coming up in this half hour the foreclosure crisis has devastated the lives and well being of many americans but it's one particular group theory are so you watch and just when you thought the

gingrich campaign couldn't face any more bombshells see how newt may be facing some new hurdles to sleaze his way through and the mainstream media has had a long lasting love affair with politicians who spew lies and misinformation and really break it off and start standing up for the truth. and the best the rest the news there's still no relief in sight for struggling american homeowners especially after we learned this week that mortgage giant freddie mac. which was in charge of keeping americans in their homes was actually making money betting on people getting kicked out of their homes since the george bush meltdown in two thousand and seven nine million homes in america have been lost to foreclosure and as of right now one of the four million are in danger of foreclosure but even more troubling than these disturbingly high foreclosure

numbers is what's behind them and how this foreclosure crisis is disproportionately affecting minority homeowners joining me from new york to speak to this issue is general ross business reporter with the huffington post jenelle welcome. thanks thanks for joining us you know as as from the statistics i've read as many as half of african-americans who qualified for normal fixed rate mortgages were not even told that they qualified but instead were sold exploding mortgages adjustable rate mortgages things like that can you speak to how much of this crime was because companies were behaving in a racist way versus how much of it was possible because white homeowners are more likely to have done so before have relatives who have whereas black homeowners more often were new to the process and easier to take advantage of basically white privilege. i think there's no doubt that there was probably some combination of

both of those things going on perhaps not always consciously in the minds of be there are people who were selling mortgages or. looking for them you know people who were shopping for a mortgage to buy a home there's no question that and during the boom there was a really large expansion in the number of first time home buyers of every race this was particularly true for minorities i mean if you yourself haven't had the experience of purchasing a home and perhaps don't know anyone else who has or don't have any sort of close family members or friends that you would feel comfortable talking in some detail about your finances with you're going to walk into that process with a little less information and you're also likely to come to the table with a little less of a down payment given the large number of people who actually receive some sort of authentic from family or friends with their down payment i mean even if it's. smart ways to go about saving that money i think there is also though unquestionably

and i think there is clear evidence given that the justice department is just last month entered into the largest residential mortgage discriminate discrimination settlement with countrywide which is now a division of bad. of america and this settlement according to the justice department was reached because there was clear evidence that countrywide and gauged in a pattern of not only failing to tell people that they could have qualified for a better mortgage or offering them a mortgage terms that would be more suitable for someone with say quality credit score or someone with a substantial down payment but people were also often misled about the terms of their mortgages or led to believe that some of the more difficult to manage aspects of a stay of an adjustable rate mortgage could be easily and automatically avoided through

refinancing accept or without making it clear that there is always the chance that conditions can change and you may not be able to refinance so i think without a doubt some people came to the table with less knowledge then perhaps other buyers or some minority buyers may have come to the table with less knowledge but there also was a clear effort to sell as many mortgages that as possible at the highest interest rate with the highest sort of. or the largest sort of exploding options and balloon payments because these were the mortgages that made these companies as well as the individuals who were sitting across the table from perspective homebuyers these are the mortgages that made them the most money whether everyone in those rooms consciously thought this is a black person so i'm going to do something nefarious in the course of processing this mortgage obviously i can't say. there were clear incentives built

into the process for mortgage brokers to be less than honest if they chose to be and there's and there's some evidence that in some cases they were specifically targeting minority. that is that certainly there's plenty of evidence that minority communities where many homeowners had substantial equity in their homes were targeted for pitches just as assessment pitches for refinancing options and you know of course or second mortgages which is you know a less full way of putting that people were you know being approached to church at school outside of community centers they were everywhere there were ads on radio stations specifically where advertisers knew that the audiences were largely minority there were ads and spanish there were ads in a you name it every language really aggressively targeting certain communities in

addition to that without a doubt i've talked to people personally who told me stories about people coming to their door who had clearly done quite a bit of research so they were able to make pitches like you know i know that you have you know thirty thousand dollars in credit card bills and another you know twenty two thousand dollars in medical debt that you need to pay off you're sitting on seventy five thousand dollars right here in your house why don't you let me help you get that out same as. such a seductive offer it's it's extraordinary general ross thanks so much for being with us smith i really appreciate your your your writing and your perspective on this thank you. thank you is time struggling homeowners in particularly minority homeowners get the help they need unfortunately that help will be coming from republican presidential candidates in particular newt gingrich things aren't going so well for newt gingrich as he's about to get blown out by mitt romney in florida believe it or not things could actually get worse like his campaign could be

investigated for election fraud you might remember newt failed to get his name of the virginia primary ballot when it was discovered that a campaign staffer for more than a thousand five hundred names. annabella petition new dismissed the forgery calling it a simple mistake. to make. sure buddy are you. returning. to. fifty. but whether it was a mistake or not faking signatures on a ballot petition is a clear example of election fraud the same sort of fraud that republicans claimed acorn had been committing back in two thousand and nine even though acorn wasn't doing it never did it and when they caught somebody doing it they reported it and turn him over to authorities but now authorities in virginia want to know more about exactly what happened in new campaign and they're launching an investigation

for more on this i'm joined by brad friedman founder and editor of the brad blog brad welcome. hey tom thank you good evening great to have you back with us what have you discovered about a potential investigation into gingrich. well it's not potential it's an actual investigation into gingrich i have confirmed that with both the virginia state board of elections and the virginia attorney general who is actually doing the investigation it was referred by the board of election to the state a.g. ken cuccinelli that is underway and i should also add to add a caution there you said that one guy. who submitted fifteen hundred fraudulent signatures in fact that's what newt gingrich has said we don't know if in fact it was only one guy newt called it oh just a mistake but he has not to my knowledge turned over the name of that one guy that's a whole lot of forgeries for one guy don't you think yeah i mean it could be one

guy who runs a company that goes out and get signatures and is paid by the signature and he's got ten guys sitting in a room faking him or something like that him or fifty go or it could be the campaign is itself we really don't know because he has not been forthcoming about this now remember newt gingrich has joined with the republicans over the years to decry acorn claiming that what they were doing when they were doing the same thing was voter fraud when in fact acorn wasn't doing it it was a handful of their workers and in all of those cases acorn was the one who checked those signatures who found the fraud who reported it to authorities as fraud and turned in those workers who were defrauding them they busted there are millions and begrudge has done none of those things exactly how prevalent is this kind of election fraud like what gingrich committed versus the voter fraud there

republicans are use is using as an excuse to strip away the rights of now five million people to vote with voter i.d. . laws and things. well you know we don't know the full extent of the fraud out there really in virginia not just in gingrich's campaign but in some of these other campaigns as well because you'll recall only mitt romney and ron paul actually succeeded in getting ten thousand valid signatures in order to get onto the primary ballot out there in virginia but but that sort of thing campaigns gaming the system insiders you know rigging the system throwing folks off the voter rolls making it harder for people to vote. messing with the results of the elections from the inside with a few keystrokes or stuffing the ballot box that is the great concern and that's election fraud what the republicans pretend to give a damn about is voter fraud specifically in person voter fraud in person

impersonate ssion at the polling place which is incredibly rare it almost never happens and yet you see these republicans in state after state implementing these photo id restrictions in order to keep this voter fraud from happening at the polls the fact is it doesn't happen at the polls republicans know that that's why they're implementing these measures to keep people from voting specifically minorities elderly students you know people who tend to vote democratic it's really quite extraordinary brad in in the last thirty seconds here what's the state of our election system in the united states. well it ain't getting any better we had a great start to the primary frankly up in up in iowa where they had paper ballots hand counted in front of all the people it's kind of gone downhill there ever since so with each and every primary where it's harder and harder for the people to oversee their own votes and to that end now you just see networks calling these

races based on exit polls not based on actual vote counting the. same ags of polls that they used to tell us you'll remember this time back in two thousand and four back in two thousand and eight at the new hampshire primary they would tell us those exit polls are unreliable don't use them count the votes instead but now you see the networks well used and you know it's out of the old clothes eight o'clock eight zero eight eight eight o'clock and two seconds they're already saying who the winner is and they're doing it based on exit polls not even bothering to count the votes anymore. brad thanks so much for being with us and for the great reporting you're doing over blog. thanks tom appreciate it so while republicans crack down on the right of voters across america by hyping up fear of individual voter fraud which happens less frequently than people being hit by lightning one of their top republican presidential candidates is apparently involved with a campaign that's committing a lection fraud you know you just can't make this stuff up. coming up after the

break conservatives are constantly feeding mainstream media lies and misinformation and the media just swallows it is it about time they started practicing some real journalism. means of protection can be used. when global supremacy does its take. between two thousand and five and two thousand and nine the u.s. has spent fifteen billion dollars in the price to pay for the entire program that we are dealing with right now here in two thousand and eleven is another one hundred fifty billion dollars that's larger than many country's entire military budgets twenty things because the best for. us.

the eat. him in the subsequent susie's to. come in. a slum is. coming. mission. critical three sports three. three.

three. three. three broken video for your media project. take my take is your chance to send in your questions comments rants and observations about anything we talk about here on the big picture or during my radio show our comments are night comes from nate on the tom hartman facebook page eight has some ideas about presidential candidates and special interest groups he says tom you are still supporting barack obama war of the largest recipients of these corporations special interests and other special interests what do you stop toady in the democratic establishment and get you had a candidate truly free to lead and get behind a candidate that does not have a super pac does not take a penny of pac money and limits all contributions to one hundred dollars per person

buddy roemer is not bought out by these special interests he should be invited to your show every week to promote his campaign well i actually had buddy roemer on this show last month and while it's great the buddy has sworn off pat donations and deep pocketed donors partly because he's not getting that money anyway it's still alternately comes down to ideas about governance and buddy and i don't agree all that much on these kinds of things including health care which we debated on my show in december. you know like our current system i think that we should have a national health insurer all that really works good it works good for the other three i'm a girl let me give an example like the post office tom you're crazy for what for you to use a one to sixty so numbers and to let it go all the way across you want choice and competition in our society that works best right now we don't have to show you want the profit motive you want the profit motive could mean for profit or non profit

that's up to the person but i'm set up to everyone if anything the world they say it asked to be non profit clearly are for profit health insurance system is broken and i don't think buddy has the right ideas to fix it but he's more than welcome to come on the show anytime and talk more about it any other issues that he wants that's it for your take my take tonight if you'd like your comments and questions heard on the segment the big picture listen up. we want to know your take send us your comments by visiting the tom hartman facebook page by a twitter at tom underscore hartman or in the chat room on the message boards or through the blog at thom hartmann dot com you can also leave a message on our rant line at two two five three six fifty three zero six agree disagree sound off it's all welcome but remember that your comments may be used on the ear. buds the good the bad of the very very melon aka mostly ugly their good

credit municipal. the three hundred seventy five year old french bank has made a decision to cancel the debts of many of its of its poorest customers the bank announced that it would cancel the debts of individuals who are the equivalent of one hundred ninety dollars or less a low interest roth loans for inexpensive valuables like most of europe the french economy is struggling the bank's decision to forgive the small loans is quickly help improve economic wellbeing of thousands of customers who now have more cash to spend and stimulate the economy imagine that a bank actually forgiving the loans of its customers to be nice and they didn't even make the customers take a vow of silence take that bank of america the bad ricky don't google my name santorum one of santorum is go to policy proposals over the g.o.p. primary season as entire career for that matter has been to limit the payments victims of medical malpractise can seek through lawsuits santorum argues medical

malpractise lawsuits help drive up the cost of health care even the cvo report found that tort reform what he's talking about as in limiting medical malpractise suits were only result in one tenth of one percent of savings on total health care spending and even worse rick santorum is a hypocrite surprise in one nine hundred ninety nine santorum as wife filed a bell. practice lawsuit for five hundred thousand dollars claiming that a chiropractor had left her with permanent back injuries that would result in a lifetime of pain this lawsuit came just five years after after santorum had proposed legislation to limit the rewards of malpractise lawsuits so while larger words are just fine for mrs santorum the root of all health care costs was for the rest of americans are another example of the hypocrisy that conservatives practice so well and the very very ugly the wall street journal w.s.j.

recently published an op ed piece written by sixteen prominent global warming deniers and various and minimal scientific backgrounds including the likes of oil company executives in the piece the sixteen argue that while man made carbon dioxide has some of the facts on warming the planet effects are small and there's nothing to panic about sixteen and ayers argued that all the other scientists who believe in global warming are just trying to scare the general public is other scientists who are trying to scare us include a group of two hundred fifty five members of the united states' national academy of sciences who wrote a much more scientific and reality based op-ed piece that they submitted to the wall street journal however the wall street journal declined to publish this blatant form of bias on the part of the wall street journal shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone after all it is part of rupert murdoch's empire and a close cousin to g.o.p. t.v. united states is the only developed nation in the world with global warming is still up for debate and we can thank journalists like those at the wall street journal or is just very.

there's one industry just one industry that specifically mention in the united states constitution and that's the press that's because the founders knew how important a free open and diligent press. is to keeping a two powerful government in check and for a population to be informed enough to make a reasonable democratic vote as thomas jefferson said we're left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government i should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter that's how crucial the press is to our form of government that's especially true during an election year when politicians will throw whatever the lie they can at the wall hoping that a few of the most stick to sway voters it's up to the press to make sure that none of those lies stick unfortunately today the press is dropping the ball for example

on sunday's state of the union morning show on c.n.n. republican senate minority leader rich mitch mcconnell told this whopper of a lie to candy crowley. they've been trying to pretend like the president just showed up yesterday just got sworn in and was starting for a fact he's been in office three years he got everything he wanted from a completely compliant congress for two of those three years were really a completely compliant congress for two of those three years really then why is that the mitch mcconnell himself led his republican minority in the senate to shatter the record for the most filibusters in one session of congress a record that goes all the way back to the george washington administration obama didn't get everything you wanted from congress far from it. from the very beginning he had to negotiate down his stimulus package and make a full third of a tax cuts just to get three republican susan collins olympia snowe and arlen specter on board with it and when it came to health care president obama really get

everything you want from congress he can get a public option and he sure as heck didn't get the cornhusker kickback or did didn't want rather the cornhusker kickback that so-called democratic senator ben nelson demanded for the louisiana purchase the so-called democratic senator mary landrieu asked for in return for her support it that's exactly the congress gave it in a cap and trade energy let reform legislation through the senate as he wanted because he couldn't overcome a unanimous republican filibuster he couldn't get the disclose act require full disclosure of who's spending how much money in our elections post citizens united because it too couldn't break a unanimous philip republican filibuster he couldn't get comprehensive immigration reform and legislation like the dream act passed again thanks to a unanimous mcconnell led republican filibuster in the sun and he couldn't get legislation through the senate and tax breaks for corporations that outsource american jobs a build named creating american jobs and ending offshore in act all of these bills i just mentioned passed the house had more than fifty percent of the vote in the

senate but couldn't break mitch mcconnell's unanimous republican filibuster which set the bar at sixty percent rather than a simple majority and all of these bills would have yielded tremendous benefits for our nation they would have put jobless americans back to work they would have provided health insurance for fifty three million uninsured americans they put it would have put our nation on track toward clean energy they would have strengthen our democracy and fix the broken immigration system so what the hell is mitch mcconnell talking about when he says that congress gave the president everything he wanted in those first two years he's lying it's a complete and utter lie and it's up to candy crowley to call him out on it. got everything he wanted from a completely compliant congress for two of those three years you don't hear him mention any of that so what he's been engaged in since the bus tours began last august is try to convince the american people that somebody else is standing in his

way but he's done that seem to be working well doesn't seem to be working are you serious so after mcconnell just lied to her face crowley takes the bait accepts the lie and then asks of president obama's strategy to rewrite history as asserted by mcconnell is working that's not journalism it's an odd griffey not challenging the assertion that congress gave president obama everything he wanted is like agreeing that president bush had reliable intelligence that saddam hussein was making nukes and chemical weapons both couldn't be further from the truth yet both echoed across the airwaves in the mainstream news to the point that most republicans and a few independent democrats believe them to this day in defense of candy crowley this is nothing unique to her or her show meet the press face the nation every single show on fox news you name it and you'll find republicans and occasionally democrats flat out lying to journalism school graduates who don't blink and don't call them on their lies and why don't they call it lies because they're afraid the

big name politicians will refuse to come on their shows in the future and those shows are set up in such a way that if they don't get the big names the show goes down in flames it's called needing access and it's why networks pressure good journalists to let a few lies slide. this is why the mainstream media has such a bad reputation today they've given up their job the jefferson vision of adversarial keep them honest journalism and handed the role of fact checking off the political talking heads often have no interest in the facts at all especially during an election year and since they've dropped the ball others have had to pick it up like julius songe at wiki leak is not an outlaw he's a journalist who's doing the job that the mainstream media should be doing speaking truth to power and giving people the facts to make informed decisions and there are other independent media outlets doing the same thing like democracy no free speech t.v. current t.v. in a pen a websites a democratic underground truthout buzz flash op ed news common dreams was story at

alter net among others it's time to turn the mainstream t.v. off and turn on those who are reporting news in the same spirit thomas jefferson vision our democratic republic will be the better as a result that's it for the big picture tonight for more information or to see any segment of our show check out our website tom arbonne dot com and don't forget democracy begins when you get out there and get active tag your suitable. shoes that so much that you each musician on the mark with siri on the brink escalates of the city's battle country the calls for strong sanctions and even a military intervention grow in intensity.