that speech is persuasive to voters some of it isn't persuasive to voters but ultimately what's happening is voters are making the decision who they want to have in office that's what the essence of tomato years you're suggesting that the essence of democracy is that. if if a company never advertises their food product and nobody ever goes out and buys the . that doesn't matter well people will eventually find it as advertising doesn't work. i'm not sure how that plays into what's going on here with the oh i just said the the essence of democracy whoever runs the most ads is going to win may mean when he said may or may not work and i'm challenging that assertion i'm saying the reason why advertising is a trillion dollar industry in the united states is because it does work and so if these if the big coal and big oil and these guys are buying ads they are buying votes well they're not out handing twenty dollars bills out from the polling place what they're doing is they're running ads that put a political message out there those political messages may be persuasive that's

certainly what they're intended to do but ultimately they have to have an effect on the voter when a voter goes into which they have to use well crafted ads you of course yeah so that that has nothing to do with the with a candidate who's a state's person. the message that's being conveyed in the ads has to persuade the voters that this person is worth having that doesn't mean it's a person actually is it just means that the ad agency to put the ad together was successful in convincing the voters will who should be deciding who has the qualifications to be in office other than the vote i don't think i don't think a billion dollar trillion dollar corporation or a multi-billion dollar corporation or a billionaire frankly should be making that decision i don't you know i i think it should be up to with the people well it depends on what you think the role of voters is if you think that voters have their minds made up for them by advertising that might be you know i don't know i think that the voters i think that the the the people running for political office are that have access to free time on television and radio and you know like like the nixon kennedy debates in one nine hundred sixty were were very very little money was spent on advertising and there

was lots and lots of free media and it worked very very well and you you ended up with candidates who by and large are up to hold and. what the government can't do is tell independent people or outside groups that you've spoken too much about a political candidate actually it can except that the supreme court says it can't know actually going back all the way to. one thousand nine hundred seventy six the supreme court has said that an individual can spend as much as they want to get their political message out there so you know situations like you know we've spoken before all about oakleigh tucker says ok with it it's it's not plutocracy because people aren't buying votes that it's only the rich guys can afford to run for office that's right. not only rich guys can afford to vote to run for office it does cost money to get ads on television it costs money to put television shows on the air but that's just part of speaking out to a mass audience there's no way to get around that in our modern information economy

well i'll leave you with a last word of thanks a lot for showing thank you very much if you buy. in my opinion we have to get money out of our politics if we want our government responsive to we the people again it can be done like a social member this is corporations are not people and money is not speech goodwill to amend or to get involved. why is there any seemingly endless number of young people showing up at occupy wall street movements first and obvious answer is because this is the first generation since the one nine hundred thirty s. who are coming of age in a world where it's unlikely they'll do as well as their parents thirty years of reaganomics has ripped a hole in the american dream but it's also something to do with the fact that fewer young adults have a job in america than ever before only fifty four percent of americans between the

ages of eighteen and twenty four are employed right now as the lowest number ever recorded since the tracking began more than sixty years ago and to make matters profoundly worse they're drowning in over a trillion dollars of student loan debt the most ever recorded in the history of this or any other country. reaganomics and clinton omics has created a lost generation of americans which is helping to fill the ranks of the occupy wall street while the choice is simple live in the streets or take to the streets but that doesn't explain why the movement got as big as it did as fast as it did it doesn't explain how a small encampment in zuccotti park with little street mainstream media attention turned into a worldwide movement for that we have to thank the police images like these led to occupy spreading like a wildfire women getting corralled and pepper sprayed in new york the streets of oakland turning into a war zone cops firing tear gas canisters canisters of people's heads and shooting

rubber coated steel bullets students sitting peacefully in protest at the university of california davis well within the rights laid out the first amendment getting doused with chemical weapons in the face these are the images that have inflamed the american part of this revolution and we can thank citizens citizen journalists who took out their cameras when times got dangerous to record these images they needed to make sure that the chance around them were true that the whole world was indeed watching this video is as crucial to the movement as are the horrors of the unemployment figures the ongoing corruption in washington d.c. and the crimes that it looks like wall street bankers are going to get away with scot free but in illinois and chicago where a massive occupy demonstration is scheduled in may with the g eight and nato coming to town to hold joint summits videos like we just saw those kind of images are

illegal according to the illinois eavesdropping act of one thousand nine hundred sixty one it is against the law to record a police officer and those who violate the law could face up to fifteen years prison. with tens if not hundreds of thousands of patriots set to converge on occupy chicago in a few months this could be a big problem luckily one illinois state representative elaine nec writes is proposing an amendment to this law under illinois house bill thirty nine forty four which she introduced citizens will have the right to film law enforcement officers in any public space and most of the brutality we've seen from the n.y.p.d. the opi to the u.c. davis police has occurred in public places been able to videotape what's happening is the people's best defense against excessive police force and ironically web cam videos are also the police's best self defense when anarchists begin trashing

things and the police actually have a legal obligation to respond even chicago police superintendent gary mccarthy agrees with us as he told the panel of oil and university recently as far as the use of videotape by certainly endorse it for the protection of the police as well as civilians there's no argument when you can show videotape and can look at what happened and of quote the occupy movement the acolyte suit they are by wall street movement has been remarkably peaceful in the nearly five months of its existence and the proof is out there in the thousands of hours of videotape that's been recorded showing peaceful demonstrations all across the nation let's hope things are peaceful in may when the movement has to chicago a city that seen its share of violence and police brutality in the past but for self-defense or just for the historic record we just so that we all know just so that we can all look back on these moments the movement needs to have its cameras

handy and legal to make sure the whole world is really watching so if you're in illinois be sure to let your state representatives in your state senators know to support this legislation to amend that one hundred sixty one. as the big picture for tonight for more information on the stories we covered visit our website to tarver dot com free speech or there are two dot com also check out our two you tube channels there are links to tom hartman dot com this entire show is also available as a free video podcast on i tunes and visit tom hartman dot com to download the party oh podcast of our daily to new to three radio show and we have a free time tom hartman i phone and i pad app at the app store you can send us feedback on twitter at tom underscore her on facebook tom underscore her to our blogs message boards telephone comment line thom hartmann dot com and don't forget it doesn't happen until you show up. this is a constitutionally limited representative democratic republic the representative

part means we elect their representatives and they don't do squat unless we're out there telling them to how do they know what we want if we don't stand up movement politics has always throughout the history of this country from the very beginning movement politics has always driven party politics and national interests and movement politics begins when you and i show when we get out in the streets when we write the bets when we call in to talk radio shows when we when we get it when we join movements and participate. so get out there and get active participants occupy something tag your it will sort of.

you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lengthly you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture. the live. science technology innovation all the latest developments from

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welcome to the lower show we'll get the real headlines with none of the mercy we're going live to washington d.c. now it's not going to take a look at the new foreclosure fraud settlement between forty nine states and the five biggest banks is this really a good deal for america or just an easy out for wall street then lieutenant colonel daniel davis who's on our show the other day well it turns out that the pentagon now has launched an investigation into that report that he released about afghanistan and we're going to speak to richard i ask out as well and david sirota

about whether it's time for a national popular vote or have all that work and i couldn't get us a happier but first take a look at the mainstream media has decided to miss. all right so as i said big news announced today that after sixteen months of wrangling forty nine states with the exception of oklahoma federal regulators have all agreed to a foreclosure fraud settlement with the five biggest banks now those with the bank of america j.p. morgan chase city wells fargo and ally financial the obama administration is obviously trying to show that they've got the chops and that they've got the will to go after wall street so they're making a big deal of it and the mainstream media is following suit. a legal settlement that could help home homeowners rather who over more than their house is worth to turn a juror recalled are talking about this deal that has been reached officials announcing a deal between the states of the nation's biggest mortgage lenders over foreclosure

abuse through a foreclosure abuses on a deal that would mean nearly two million current and former homeowners could get some relief from big mortgage lenders but the deal addresses a more sinister side of the mortgage crisis homes that were wrongfully seized because the banks cut corners government officials and five major banks that worked out this reportedly twenty six billion dollars settlement that we know it's twenty six billion dollars and it breaks down in a variety of different ways for days we've been reporting the expectation that it would be cash to states some five billion there are seventeen billion in consumer relief and three billion dollars for borrowers so they can refinance at lower rates . now are going to get into more details of what exactly this settlement means in our first interview tonight but first let me point a few things out see once again here we see the classic example of the media just putting the press conferences repeating verbatim the details of this settlement without really putting it on context on its face it seems like

a big deal forty nine states settling with the five biggest banks over what was really a sickening case of fraud and abuse being robo signing forging of backdating of documents in many cases kicking people out of their homes wrongfully but what you really have to get into here are the figures in the government the media would like to paint this as a historic deal but if you put it into perspective how many people does it really help relative to how many people need that help just think of it this way there are eleven million homeowners that are underwater meaning that they owe more than their homes are worth this deal is only going to help about one million of those people so this is a deal for twenty six billion dollars some say could go up to thirty nine billion and that collectively negative equity is currently at seven hundred billion dollars in this. so on average these homeowners are also underwater by fifty thousand dollars each and some estimates of this deal put average aver the homeowners at twenty thousand still a lot of money to make up for and the banks have three years to even make it all

happen so that is a long time for those without a home to wait now for about seven hundred fifty thousand people who lost their homes wrongfully they're going to get a check from the government ranging from eight hundred to two thousand dollars if they choose to sign up because david de in a firedoglake put it today that's basically the equivalent of saying these people sorry we stole your home here's two months rent so while it's good to acknowledge that a deal has been reached and some homeowners or former homeowners will be held you really have to put it all into context so that people understand what big lawsuits and government programs actually result it that way we can hold them accountable and we don't just let them off the hook i have the mainstream media from what i've seen today has chosen not to dig deeper into the figures they've chosen to repeat the details of the settlement but of chosen to miss on how many americans don't get a piece of the piece of the deal.

all right so let's talk more about this twenty six billion dollars settlement reached between forty nine states government authorities and the five biggest banks and i've just pointed out to you have a twenty six billion won't go too far in helping the millions of americans that need it but what is twenty six billion dollars to the banks is this even a punishment if you look at with the new york times reported today that the banks have already largely set aside the reserves for the expected cost of this and if you think about the fact that over a three year period those are losses that amount of chump change compared to their profits doesn't really sound like all that much so is this a step in the right direction or just another example the big banks get off the hook joining me from our studio in los angeles is richard scouse senior fellow with the campaign for america's future richard thanks so much for joining us tonight. and there are a lot of details to get into name some of them are ready but just overall if you look at the way that this deal panned out or this settlement panned out what would you say do you think that the american homeowners won out or that the government

won out on behalf of the homeowners or that it was really wall street that took the lead. well you know i think you actually hit the right note and setting up the story because i think the real story is. it's up to us to stay on everybody involved to make sure we get the maximum for the american homeowners out of this you know i i'm sorry that that this deal trades away the best negotiating power the authorities have which is that the banks were caught dead to rights committing widespread crimes in the robo signing scandal and you know in an ideal world would they would use that we would use that on behalf of the american people that's what these guys and get them for everything we can that didn't happen and that's a big disappointment and dollar for dollar even though the figures are absolutely right they're way way way low for the wrongs that have been done but now what the deal does that it didn't do before that eric schneiderman and new york and some

other attorneys general insisted on putting in was it leaves the door open for indictments investigations lawsuits all sorts of other actions for other types of bank crimes and i think now we've got to make sure they get all the resources they need to do that including federal government resources and you know one of the one of the things that's getting overlooked in this is that some of this money goes for legal aid that will be given to homeowners that have been wronged so if that legal aid can be leveraged to a lot of lawsuits we could be turning this into more money than it is today and if it if the federal government you know reverses course and starts getting serious about bank crime and backs up schneiderman and some of the others and pushes them for some of the other wrongs they've done even though these doors that they've left open could be a big deal but it's up to us to make them a big deal by pressuring the administration and the government and some of the attorneys general to use the tools they've been given and yeah i'm sorry about you know the crappy aspects of this deal but i'm glad that those tools are there and we

should make the most of them. well you know that's a good point you bring up in terms of the fact that people still have this power to pursue litigation and there are still investigations that can be done and that's something that you know definitely attributed to schneiderman from new york but i thought that eve smith brought up an interesting point on her blog in a capitalism today which is looking at there is now a task force that's been set up by the obama administration and just the way the order in which things go why do you settle on a deal before you actually do much of the investigating well it's a horrible idea look you know i don't disagree with that are you know and i'm really disappointed that they did that you can't settle i can't pay you for the furniture i've broken your house if we don't get to look at the furniture first and that's what this deal because that's one of a number of things that's wrong with it but look let's let's be realistic the administration's been pushing for this kind of deal like a lot of other cushy deals for a long time and you know if i were eric schneiderman i don't know what his thought

process was but he probably thought this is the best i'm going to get the statute of limitations is running out on a lot of the other frauds they did that created the housing bubble if i can horse trade this make it less of a bad deal leave these guys open to prosecution and get some resources if is it best i can get i'm going to go for it so are you understand that thinking but that doesn't mean that any of those criticisms are wrong or that i haven't raised them myself a million times now if you had it your way if you think about the fact that you know what was going on was so much of this fraud was going on with robo signing backdating documents as though a lot of people were kicked out of their homes when they shouldn't have been and you know what we have with the settlement is that they get you know what do we say maybe you eight hundred to two thousand dollars which really is a minuscule amount but it's interesting because now it seems like you put a price on forging documents you put a price on robo signing and you know at the same time there is no criminal

punishment here do you think that somebody really should go to jail for this. well i do and i'm sorry you know it's not happening but again you know and it's weird because i'm in the position of kind of defending aspects of video i don't like but but just to be clear i've heard that criticism that it's just two thousand dollars for losing your house and certainly that's insulting but if it's two thousand dollars and a lawyer so i can sue the guy who took my house away it's not quite as insulting because if i can get another fifty thousand or one hundred thousand or whatever through a good lawyer then it's not as bad a deal as it sounded but the trick is will i really get that that's up to the local attorneys general and it's up to the way the justice department handles it and a lot of details we don't know so that's why i'm saying look yeah i hate what's not right about this deal but let's press for getting the maximum out of it that we can and that's a great example of it yeah i'd say getting two thousand dollars is a lot more than just insulting but you know one of the things that this really brought up and we saw this massive fraud going on is that

a lot of people thought there was an opportunity here that maybe this is the perfect chance to really sees on it and create across the board reform of our financial system that hasn't exactly happened with this settlement but do you think about opportunity is still there at that door as. well you know look they arrested al capone for tax evasion right so even though i mean we could have gone that route we didn't i think a huge opportunity has been lost it's tragic i'm disappointed in obama i'm disappointed in eric holder but you know there comes a time to say don't mourn organize is the old saying goes yeah i'm frustrated yeah i'm ticked off but look let's get what we can and in terms of changing the culture and really ending the way business is done that's a political fight we've got to have for years and now because we did lose this opportunity we lost the battle but we didn't lose the war so i'm going to come down

on the side of it's aggravating but let's roll our sleeves up and and get back to work let me just throw more thing at you here too which is that warren buffett leaked to fortune magazine this annual letter that he sends out to the berkshire hathaway shareholders where he gives his advice on what you should invest in and it's kind of interesting he basically told in the instead of going for a treasury bonds and said i'm going for a gold you should go towards things that actually produce stuff like maybe real estate maybe farmers maybe businesses do you think that's a good piece of advice. you know it probably is he's a pretty smart guy you know he also said trading in currency is risky which i think is true unless you're george soros who's brilliant at it but yeah sure but i mean the other thing to look at is that if you want to be a good corporate citizen you should invest in things that grow the economy at this point you know our government has you know treasury bonds show people still trust the u.s. government enormously but that's not getting translated into investment in goods

and services so i think and i hope that what he was really saying to investors and to the banking community was stop investing in things that don't produce stop skimming the system by just using all the free money from the fat if you're a bank to buy treasury bonds and rake off the difference and go to work doing what you're supposed to do which is investing in business is that build the economy that's the way i choose to interpret his letter y. and i think that it makes sense to with buffett pushing for so many of the reforms that he has been lately in terms of tax reform and you know the patriotic millionaires record thanks so much for joining us tonight sure always. nice to have the shall we have another update for you on bradley manning and just a few days ago tenet colonel daniel davis came on the show to discuss his report about the pentagon purposely misleading congress and now he's reportedly being investigated so it's not one hundred discussion about the u.s. government's ongoing war against whistleblowers.

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now as promised we've made sure to bring you all the latest on bradley manning just days ago we told you that it was decided that the army private would be court marshaled and now a date has been set for that on february twenty third manning will return to fort meade maryland for his arraignment and according to the a.p. the army private can request a trial by jury or by a military judge if features a jury it would include at least five officers and he has the option to have at least a third of the soldiers on the panel to be enlisted manning has been court martialed on twenty two charges including aiding the enemy which could carry a life in prison sentence as well as a dishonorable discharge in the meantime there is some positive news for the army private he's been nominated for the nobel peace prize by members of the icelandic parliament for the movement and the nomination describes how his alleged leaks have shaped uprisings around the world helped and combat operations in iraq and exposed corruption within the government so be sure to keep you updated all the latest details surrounding many as they commit now on two other whistleblowers.

who can i say other than i had a feeling that this would happen the other day we had the tenet colonel gangle davis on the program active duty army officer that it's a bit of a classified report to members of congress and what he thought the real situation was in afghanistan report the told him that the pentagon has been intentionally misleading congress and the american public about so-called progress or success and there's also a more than eighty page unclassified version of this report that davis wrote the pentagon hasn't cleared for release but we all know the pentagon doesn't like to be criticized and when davis was here on the show he was accompanied by a former state department official matt ho matthew hoh and i asked them both just two days ago if there had been any criticisms or attacks waged yet and what they thought the chances were that that might happen. and so i'm just wondering if you think that there's going to be backlash and wondering if anyone has already attacked you already.