on target in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture. president obama introduces this twenty thirteen budget to congress is the budget have a prayer of passing as a deal way also the massive mortgage settlement is supposed to help those hurt most by the mortgage fiasco homeowners so why are some states leaving homeowners in the dust and who is really gaining ground in the g.o.p. nomination battle rick santorum or his wealthiest backers and how are the corporate elites with their endless funds pulling the strings in this twenty twelve election cycle. you need to know this and so it begins the battle for the future of america today president obama unveiled his vision for the united states by releasing his two thousand and thirteen budget proposal remember budgets aren't just numbers on

a sheet their priorities and paths for the future they define what investments will be making as a nation moving forward and how we're going to pay for those investments here was the president today pitching his vision the budget that we're releasing today is a reflection of shared responsibility it says that if we're serious about investing in our future and investing in community colleges investing in. new energy technology and investing in basic research what we've got to pay for . and that means we've got to make here is some of the details are choices that the president lays out overall spending for the two thousand and thirteen budget is pegged at three point eight trillion dollars that includes significant new investments in roads and infrastructure education and our manufacturing sector it also includes year long extensions of emergency unemployment benefits and payroll tax cuts for one hundred sixty million working americans then on the side of

deficit reduction the president proposes reducing the deficit by four trillion dollars over the next decade does this by forcing millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share of taxes that means letting the bush tax cuts expire for america's highest income earners closing the capital gains tax loophole and for some people like mitt romney to at least pay the same tax rate as middle class americans and closing a slew of corporate tax loopholes that are mostly taken advantage of by transnational oil corporations are also a few reforms to cut costs out of entitlement programs like medicare and medicaid and a five percent reduction in the defense department budget over ten years but the bigger picture here is that the president has laid out a vision for america that makes much needed investments to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure to educate a new generation of scientists and engineers and to get america back to work building things again all of it paid for by making the super rich contribute just

a little more. this is going to be the defining issue of the two thousand and twelve election and it comes down to this are we going to tax millionaires and billionaires who've been paying historically low rates a little more so we can make critical investments to keep the american economy competitive in the twenty first century or are we going to delay those critical investments just to protect the millionaires and billionaires from any sort of tax increase seems like common sense unfortunately the president's budget is dead on arrival in the house of representatives that's because he's going up against one of the most radical republican parties in our nation's history a party that has a drastically different vision of america from the vast majority of the rest of us there is a cycle of radicalism in the republican party fact we've got to laid out here let me walk through. well this is basically the cycle from the twentieth the entire twentieth and part of the twenty first century so we start out at the turn of the century from the one thousand nine hundred to the one nine hundred s.

teddy roosevelt a republican president a progressive back then there were progressive republicans a fact there were a lot of them and he had teddy roosevelt passed the tillman act in one thousand and seven that being an illegal for corporations to give money to politicians and bust that up the trusts the republicans of that era were you know quite significant but it seems like every generation i mean literally every generation there's this shift from rational republicans to insane republicans nine hundred twenty warren harding comes into office nine hundred twenty one actually he is motto was more business in government less government business he dropped the top income tax rate from seventy three percent out of twenty five percent deregulated markets which produced of course the the book the bubble of the twenty's and the crash of the one nine hundred thirty s. and so in this in this period of time you had the new deal republicans basically during the during the f.d.r. administration and the new and. well republicans. you know they they were

functionally powerless actually then came in one nine hundred forty six the do nothing congress this was during the presidency of harry truman right after the war and in in this. incredible con is it only lasted two years they passed the taft hartley act the blew up the right of individuals to form a union to a large extent at that point in time right about here it's thirty five percent unionization the country has the highest ever half hartley began that is structure that. harry truman introduced literally a universal single payer health care system they blocked that. truman ran against it and was so successful that the republicans didn't take the house again for forty six years so they've they collapse and they were followed by a rational eisenhower administration massive infrastructure investments eisenhower famously said should any political party attempt to abolish social security

unemployment insurance and in the eliminate labor laws and farm programs you would not hear that party again in our political history is a tiny splinter group of a few of the texas oil millionaires an occasional politician or businessman from other areas their numbers negligible and they are stupid so that was the rational eisenhower republicans but then a generation later came the irrational goldwater republicans who oppose the civil rights laws thought it was all about states' rights they wanted a belligerent foreign policy which just handed lyndon johnson the daisy ad you know hey let's have a nuclear war and of course barry goldwater wanted to cut taxes for the rich and deregulate industry he failed and they collapsed and so we got the nixon republicans back to some i rational republicans i mean you could argue nixon was mentally ill but you know it for nixon actually nine hundred seventy three proposed what is almost absolute identical program as obamacare. and go back and look at the history of it it's quite a stone they created the e.p.a. during that time progressive taxation was you know strong and in place in fact the

top tax rate was ninety one percent richard nixon thought that was just fine. the nixon rational republicans were followed by the radical republicans again ronald reagan reagan comes in office created the biggest tax cut for the rich since warren harding which produced and by the way that was so bad i mean that hurt the budget so badly that he also passed the biggest tax increase on working people in the entire history of the united states he started a war on working people by bus to the patco union this was in the spirit of the do nothing congress in one nine hundred forty six forty seven taft are. the result of reagan's tax cuts massive tax codes and his war and working people was a twelve percent unemployment rate a great market crash these were the worst since the great depression the rayna ministration of the most convicted criminals of any administration in history and produced the biggest debt in history that was followed by the rational republicans george h.w.

bush course the radicals didn't like him much they kicked him out of office and they end he was followed by his son the irrational george w. bush who cut taxes on the rich again dick cheney famously said deficits don't matter they had two wars and the poison pill and medicare in the post office and then the radicals in the zero eight election they lost power again they lost the house the senate and the white house and then in two thousand and ten the tea party better so i guess the question now for two thousand and twelve is what's going to happen with the moderate republicans is going to be romney is going to become a moderate republican how is this cycle going to play out i'm not sure but i think our guest might have an idea. so with radical republicans on one side and president obama on the other side how might this budgetary battle shake out and what does it mean for our still very

fragile economy for more on this as well as what we can learn from budget woes across the atlantic in greece i'm joined by max fraud will economist instructor at new school university and senior analyst with green crest capital max welcome. thanks for having me great to see you we've seen some good economic signs in the last month but can our economy really sustain this sort of growth without massive infrastructure investments. i don't think we can sustain the growth we've seen although we've seen four or five months of relatively better and better news on employment which is a big and important help we haven't really seen the news improve on wages which i think we can sustain without and we haven't seen the housing issues sort of begin to work themselves out and i don't see a long term sustainable recovery without that what we are doing better credit where credit is due it's certainly better to sit here and talk to you tonight with five months of relatively positive employment data as opposed to when last we spoke when we were still worried if we'd ever get relatively positive employment data three

four five months in a row so that's probably positive on the other hand we have a kind of economically reductive agenda floating around out there for huge budget cuts and i think we really do have a pretty serious risk to a fragile recovery both from budget cutting inside the united states and also from fairly severe austerity passing really all over the european union even if were most likely to see it discussed around greece with the riots in the streets of athens but in places like ireland in the united kingdom portugal and spain we're seeing a pretty serious recession take hold and what is the world's first or large first or second largest economy depending on how you count it up and i want to get to that right after the break but first just to kind of wrap this up what's the real economic effect of raising taxes on millionaires and billionaires when we. they're all these dire warnings and yet it seems like the time when they're there their top tax rate was ninety one percent was the time of greatest growth in this country. yeah i mean i think we're going to see a pretty lurch

a pretty aggressive increase in dividend tax rates and that might be where we'd see a little dislocation in general what we're doing is going back to the pre-book tax cut levels which are still both internationally and historically low so affluent americans will still be paying less than they did in most of modern american history and most more than you know much less actually than most of their counterparts in other developed countries so we're not looking at a high tax regime or an enormously progressive tax regime we're just kind of looking at undoing the regressive a-d. and the drawdown in tax collection that we've had since two thousand and three so it's more of a return to baseline and while i don't know that will be short term helpful for economic growth there's no long term shock and suring up the situation of the federal as well as some state local governments so if we were in very dire condition we'll probably do a lot more good than it will do harm. bax i'd like to like to get into the whole thing with with you about what's going on in europe and in greece let's take a quick break and we'll come right back that's right. coming up athens is on fire

so what can we learn from austerity in greece as republicans try to bring it to america more from economists max fraud wall after the break. wealthy british style. market why not come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with my stronger for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to conjure reports .

welcome back i'm speaking with economist an instructor at new school university max fraud wolf max let's move on to greece there were massive riots all week as the greek parliament passed another austerity measure to pave the way for bailout

number two while the new york times is reporting today that quote a quarter of all greek companies have gone out of business since two thousand and nine and half of all small businesses in the country say they're unable to meet payroll the suicide rate increased by forty percent in the first half of two thousand and eleven nearly half the population under twenty five is unemployed max is this disaster capitalism a work. i mean this is an ambiguous the a disaster this is a sort of accelerated greek depression shock being delivered to greece we've never really seen anyone cut their way to prosperity in fact this is reminiscent of the least successful most painful and often politically destabilizing programs associated with the i.m.f. structural adjustment policies all over the developing world in the one nine hundred seventy s. and eighty's and one had kind of hoped that by the ninety's we had learned our lesson in fact even the i.m.f. had often begun the process of discussing the mistake in nature of trying to force

a country that obviously can't pay back creditors at the cost of denying its future its most vulnerable citizens in its youth the opportunity to succeed and of course pay for a functioning social safety net we've never seen anyone cut their way to prosperity and the cuts being pushed through in greece send the country into something like a receivership and are fairly savage in terms of their political impact their physical impact on the population and of course their political impact which we literally see alumina in the night sky in the form of burning buildings around the parliament every time one of these parliamentary push through votes x. you know pretty much yields to the pressure from the troika of the european commission the european central bank and the international monetary fund max how does the republican vision here in the united states of balanced budgets and cutting spending correlate with the greek austerity program. was pretty hard to imagine any government kind of imposing austerity program as

harsh as the one being pushed on the greeks internally without an external pressure that being said i think we should be watching greece and to a large extent ireland which we talk about less than the u.k. which we talk about less even though they're less severe as the ghost of christmas future if we follow the sort of scrooge approach to try to balance this budget you simply can't cut your way back to prosperity you need growth you need opportunity and casting off a generation of young people their dreams their aspirations their edges. haitians and offering them no opportunity i mean greece is pushing through one hundred fifty thousand more public sector job cuts across the board double digit wage cuts for people who've already seen two rounds of these this is now the third attempt to cut your way to strain in the last two attempts to cut your way to strengthen greece less savage than this one produced a deteriorating economy which is now contagion is sort of skipped the border and is sending a signal greece is clearly being made to punish as an example to other countries and the idea here is do what you're told you're end up suffering what greece is

suffering so it's a demonstration of fact it's nasty on a human level and it's an efficient in an economic policy context from our maxim thanks so much for being with us tonight. my pleasure thank you so much for having me you know this budget fight is just beginning and of greece is any indication the direction republicans want to take us could get very very. white the rican reason mortgage settlement deal struggling american homeowners are still screwed questions are still swirling around last week's mortgage fraud settlement to force the five biggest mortgage lenders in america to cough up twenty six billion dollars pay for their high crimes in the robo signing scandal in exchange the banks are off the hook for future investigations into at least the robo signing part of that massive foreclosure fraud scandal that's not so bad but

many are questioning the twenty six billion dollar figure and whether it's fair there was rolling stone reporter matt taibbi comparing the settlement deal to tarp . when you think about her the robo signing was so extensive and so pervasive throughout the entire economy that the actual liability that these banks would have faced was a lot more than twenty twenty five billion dollars in fact there are some people who would argue that this turned out to be a bailout that was really as big as tarp because the negative equity produced by these programs practices could have been as much as seven hundred billion dollars so in other words this wasn't a deal for homeowners this was another bailout for the big banks even worse a lot about twenty six billion dollars is supposed to go toward helping struggling homeowners and it won't go to homeowners at all instead for example america's most hated and on the verge of recall governor scott walker plans to use this money to

plug budget holes created by is tax cuts for rich people and corporations wisconsin homeowners are supposed to get more than thirty one million dollars from the subtle but walker is peeling twenty five million off the top of it to cover general state expenses democratic governor jay nixon is playing do the same thing with the settlement funds in his home state of missouri so how are homeowners once again getting a raw deal while the banks once again make off like bandits literally conservative commentator david sullivan joins me now to give us his take david welcome back. thanks for having me as always it's a pleasure being allowed to take the other side of the position of well in that case love me as the obvious question why do you hate all moaners. well i only ate some homeowners and i want to tell you and your listening audience we should really sympathize with these banks they have been victimized by some of wisconsin's failed liberal policies and by unscrupulous borrowers many of whom or

illegal aliens who really did not qualify who lied about their income on their no income check mortgages and subsequently defaulted those poor people they brought out they brought down our economy is that we are saying really those people or volunteers they weren't victims and they should not be bailed out at the expense of the hardworking american the hardware the banks legal immigrants who's paying their bills but you know what you did make me see the light after our last conversation i pored over the tax code i found a loophole that the banks are exploiting section want to wait they're writing off their losses and i think it's very unfair to the consumer but the wisconsin case that's outrageous well i understand that actually what the banks are doing is if they renegotiate a mortgage loan you know a loan with someone say somebody's got

a. one hundred thousand dollar mortgage and their house is only worth eighty thousand bucks of the bank says ok we'll turn that into an eighty thousand dollars mortgage they take a twenty thousand laws they take that off their taxes and then they issue a ten ninety nine to the homeowner saying you just had twenty thousand dollars in income so the homeowners not to pay taxes on that money is that is that right. yeah ten ninety nine see debt cancellation because when this law was originally written the government didn't anticipate this increase of short sales and modifications downward modifications but what's happening in this particular case is the banks are making a tidy profit and there are in essence being bailed out by the consumer it's really not right now i've being apparently i'm the only voice who is calling for this to be looked at because the obama administration is either deliberately turning a blind eye to this issue or worse yet is complicit in this scam because it's

a way you can point to the banks and say you're awful pay this pay that and here i only problem david wohl and the i mean it may be that your conspiracy theory is right but the fact the matter is the legislation that's going to change the tax code as you well know has to originate representatives which right now is controlled by john boehner and eric cantor and i have not heard word one from them about the people in ohio boners home state or the people in virginia cantor's home state or the entire nation that they theoretically represent as the speaker in the majority leader that about you know the banks when they when they do do something that looks like it's the right thing actually get a nice tax benefit plus the consumers get screwed id you know why any idea why the republicans don't you know as i said the legislation has to start start the house the president can propose legislation he could propose it but right he can't

legally initiate the legislative process only cantor and boehner can tell they're doing nothing. well i think this is something that you and i are going to have to address the two opposite ends of the spectrum be cos it really has to be corrected these banks are negotiating various new deals they're in fact modifying their contracts there's a lot of promise. going back and forth it's just not right for them to be able to do this and you know this we have to say enough is enough now normally i support big business but in the face of the neckwear they like this we have to take a stand perhaps the two of us can speak out on it. we'll see but i you know it sounds like you're suggesting david that the banks are not necessarily the victims here and yet just a minute ago you were saying that the bad guys oh no not all of the banks were the the hardworking victims no no no. what i'm saying is in this particular wisconsin

case the banks are in fact being victimized but they don't they're not listening have been all over the country illegally in hand it's not just wisconsin there's several governors the problem is that this legislation was written in such a way up there apparently this deal was cut in such a way that the money is not dedicated to homeowners or the dollars so the governors are just used well i don't know if it should go to those homeowners remember there was a lot of to plus the going on individuals who deliberately let you know our government should stop selling guns to like street gangs in mexico and start prosecuting these fraudsters who helped bring down the whole house of cards to the best of my knowledge they have them this is since the bush administration started selling those guns in mexico. the practice has been put to an end thanks a lot for being with us then i don't know about all that thank you very much and thank you to your viewing audience you're welcome good night this mortgage settlement deal is a bad deal frankly as long as the banks toure's are out walking around with little fear of ever being thrown in prison for their crimes it's time to throw the bank's

doors in jail like reagan did. crazy alert so much for soap in the mouth after reading a very abusive facebook post by as daughter one dad decided to take action he posted a video response on the daughter's facebook page in which he read the curse word laden o's sed in which she complains that her parents had her do too much around the house and she said numerous times they should stop treating her like a slave after reading her rant dead then proceeded to do the unthinkable take a look. i'll put a stop to stop right now. right there surely after. you see said here on the ground. this right here is not forty five.

it was at first glance. these are exploding all hollow point rounds. from. and you have to pay back for these two because these are bet a dollar apiece. one two three four five six oh yeah and i saw that comment you're made about your mom your mom told me to be sure i put one there for her show that was from her if i got says that video is first posted it's received over a million views and a large following from fellow parents with selfish or lazy children is also raised a greater debate over what is acceptable parents with many arguing that executing a laptop isn't the right way to go regardless the father clearly proved a point and probably helped the n.r.a. corner a new demographic that of parents who want to shoot dead their kids computers. after the break one winks at rick santorum except that is his victories last week is wealthy a supporter was right by his side how much of corporate tycoons and private wealth

wholly in the puppet strings of this year's election cycle. resistance is not of politics but a culture of. this couldn't stand. on its own. cultures of resistance one party. he. do.

you on the. rise as tel aviv accuses iran of being behind the times targeting israeli embassies in georgia named yet the people were injured in a car bomb blasts in new delhi while they need to be nice said device was discounted this point when tall.