welcome back to the big picture i'm tom hartman coming up in this half hour greece is hanging on by a thread after goldman sachs out the sugar their debt numbers so they brought a five for membership in the e.u. so now that they have what they want it clearly such a basket case economically what does this mean for americans we've seen a greek scenario play out right here and in tonight's daily take this year's republican primary as badly hurt mitt romney why didn't the democratic primary for barack obama in two thousand.

been screwed news european austerity continues to take its toll on tuesday greece issued a warning to all the banks toure's who've invested in about two hundred sixty billion dollars for the greek debt telling them that they'd better take a new deal except in about half the value of their investments or risk getting nothing at all greece is hoping that about ninety percent of its investors will agree to take that haircut given greece a chance to restructure the debt in a way that's more manageable and investors have until thursday to decide if they're going to take the deal they choose not to and once again a greek default becomes a very real possibility or is asking investors to take a haircut is nothing compared to what the greek people have had to sacrifice over years of austerity with massive layoffs huge cuts to social services and wage cuts all of which would lead to an rest of the streets hostility with neighboring nations like germany and even the ousting of democratically elected leaders he's right now is the epicenter of the crisis of corporate capita. it isn't golf in the

world today and the question isn't how things will work out in greece but instead how long until what we're seeing in greece comes to the united states russia wolf joins me now he is an economist and visiting professor with the graduate program in international affairs at new school university in new york city and dr was great to have you with us thank you very much and also the author of the book we are the book capitalism hits the fan i don't want to forget that. but believe that on screen most americans look at greece and think oh that's far away that's going to do with us you know why should i care why should we care we should care because greece is a little corner of europe it's a few million people it couldn't by any stretch of the imagination be held accountable for the global economic crisis and yet that crisis is being played out in a way that crushes that entire nation and let me just give you a few of the basics of it in the deal that was just struck so that they could get

a little more help from europe they have to cut the minimum wage by twenty two percent the poorest people in a poor country and says this is a global economic system in which you are a tiny corner that didn't cause any problem but we're really going to whack you and you're the poorest people number two part of the deal is to cut one hundred fifty thousand more workers off the payroll of the government in greece there are eight hundred thousand people that work for the government now it's a little country and that's a big part of their job see you're going to cut a hundred fifty thousand people from a payroll of eight hundred thousand in a country whose current unemployment rate is nineteen point nine percent this is lunacy this is a way of crushing a society and making a kind of demonstration case for all europeans and for americans. this is an economic crisis and we're going to solve the crisis on the backs of the cloris

most distressed art of the population that's how we work in a capitalist system that's what we victimize and i think americans ought to be very very concerned certainly the rest of europe is because this is a model that says we need to have the united states are going to be thinking about cutting minimum wage cutting back social security cutting back as almost every state and city are doing in our country on public education on public safety and so on so the greeks are the advance case being tested how far you can push a population so that other countries that are moving in that direction will have a clear idea of what best to do what not to do it's a little bit like an experiment and it should give all of us real pause but in the united states we've seen we have twenty five states that are run by basically democrats have actually increased taxes increased spending as a result of that unemployment gone down g.d.p.

has gone up twenty four states that are run by republicans as one nothing's happened twenty four states run by republicans where they've laid off government workers they've cut their government spending they cut taxes the way and the result is that the g.d.p. has gone down and their unemployment has gone up so you think we can see it here the u.k. is doing their austerity thing they're they're they're already going to say austerity is not happening in germany it's not happening in france it's not happening in sweden denmark finland norway those countries are all spending like there's no tomorrow and then their g.d.p. their commentary is well over thirty percent g.d.p. doing just fine so how can the world look at this and think that i mean why doesn't everybody get this i like the given example it's a little bit a kind of amnesia. for americans because the last time this country was in a serious economic crunch of this sort when one thousand thirty s. the great depression we had a president who came in and started out being

a centrist balanced budget all of that that's what roosevelt campaigned on in thirty two out there and so but within a year or two of taking office as the horrific nature of what was happening to the mass of people became clear and more important the mayors of people found an organized way to express themselves he completely reversed himself and suddenly all those things we hear today there isn't enough money we have to cut back. but it was the worst depression they had a bigger problem of not having money but the reality was roosevelt created social security with a hundred one he created the unemployment insurance program he gave all people a lot of money for the rest of their lives and he gave unemployed people lot of money and then the capstone he hired twelve million people in the next four five years government killed soulless reserve suddenly the government was going to do what we might call trickle up economics give the market bottom let them have the money to spend it keep their horns and take care of their families and that will

make money for corporations and when everybody wanted we had to get the money the answer was clear he taxed corporations and we tax the rich at higher rates than they've ever paid since and he found the money and that changed the dynamic didn't solve the great depression but it made the burden of it much less for the mass of people and help change the whole direction that got us out while it isn't even just measuring today it's our own history on a teacher's sure but this is not austerity and greece is not the way to go and as people say well government spending because of the great depression world war two my response as well wasn't that a huge government spending program it was i mean it was the extension of what had been done before around salary security and then followed with the g.i. bill. when you describe the situation in greece you were talking about. we are they there was a there was a pronoun in there of the group that is testing you know how far can we push chris

let's take this as weak and feeble old poor small country and slam him up against the wall and see what see how far we can push them who's that group that's doing that is that you know greece is now being run by a guy who used to be a banker and it was never like that he was put in office when the guy who was elected said hey let's have a national referendum on whether or not we should pay back the bankers they got him out of office that week you know the the. who is the real simple it's the president of france who's probably not going to be president very much longer because those are cozy it is the chancellor in germany mrs merkel it is the bankers of greece who have a lot of at stake because they have the biggest lenders to the greek government they want a settlement that takes care of them they're willing to forego some of the debt but they want to get in exchange for the bonds they're giving up another set of bonds which is what this neal is which will in burden the country of greece for years to

come with servicing that pain the interest pain that backers and i can be allowed to do this again so it's people who want to solve the problem of this great economic crisis on the backs of those people but that that sounds a lot like the dynamic tensions that exist in the nineteen teens in europe when our ferdinand was assassinated concert mean is this the kind of thing that could literally trip off a injury european war absolutely and you can see already from the footage that you've shown your your viewers that the tensions increase no one has ever seen this before this is going back to the end of world war two when greece was right between you know the eastern part of europe and the western part of the world those struggles the greeks are beside themselves i mean i have students of mine who are professors in greek unit universities eight had their wages cut as a teacher because all universities are public they are forty may have thirty to thirty three percent since may of two thousand and ten eight function as human

beings they can take care of their families they can't maintain their omes good driving people who really had nothing to do with this crisis weren't part of the banking system didn't negotiate the loans didn't demand any of this you're now saying you're going to have to pay so in the two minutes or so we have worked who did precipitate this crisis who created this crisis. and what's your suggestion of how grecian get out of it and we should avoid any of the grease a situation many people participated in producing this crisis i'm not going to say it's this one or that one it's a system that doesn't work and i don't want to blame the bankers either they're caught up in this they're caught up in a system that makes it reasonable to do things for example to give loans to greece year after year even when the conditions are very questionable when the hustle that goldman sachs and others did is very well known in the banking community they've

made loans you know the job of a banker is to have be a prudent lender they weren't real prudent to say the least and they hustled with their fellow bankers and made a country put a country in iraq to deal with the results of what they did wrong and we are now seeing that that is being taken to the extent of really breaking down a whole country and i think there's going to be a blowback and a pushback from that that is going to take scary shape in europe and beyond because so many of these when they're coming to america i think we have to face the fact that austerity is morally ethically and economically unacceptable and that we have to change the direction of the united states so it isn't here for states one way or the other but here's a radical remembrance of what we did in the great depression and we bring it back as a key part of what has to be done here and and what would you say then then you would say to the republicans who are saying cut social security card medicare or stop it

stop which are issuing realize that the way to go is to take the money from where it is corporations who pay lower taxes now than at any time in the last half century wealthy people who pay lower taxes income taxes then at any time in the last half century or they're doing better than they have any better than ever before they helped bring this crisis you know in the one nine hundred fifty s. and sixty's when we had ninety one percent top bracket on our income tax the rationale we tax corporations was we're coming out of a world war we have to. get out and the people who have the most should give the most that's the logic we should use today then the money would be there to stimulate the economy and no debt that would have to borrow because we tax that from the people we're now borrowing it from and that's a mistake we have it ourselves we can do it richard wolffe thanks so much for being with its look it's great to see and still. coming up in size daily take is the primary season drags on republican candidates continue to emerge bruised battled

and beaten by republican primaries for their candidates all democratic primaries help democratic candidates. just put a picture of me when i was like nine years old until the truth. i mean i am going to get a friend that i love brad because he's a i'm pretty sure. that he was kind of yesterday. i'm very proud of the role without conceding its place.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else here sees some other part of it and realize that everything you saw you don't i'm sorry welcome is a big issue. for .

crazy awards not bad for a nice work alex hope a foreign currency exchange broker in england reared up a bit of a bar tab at a club in liverpool over the weekend and the damage was done the bill total ran to a whopping three hundred twenty three thousand dollars as two hundred three thousand nine hundred british pounds help started off the night with a one hundred ninety seven thousand dollars bottle of champagne followed that with an additional eighty seven thousand dollars worth of bodily he then tapered his spending a bit dangerous six thousand dollars for some vodka a horoscope made sure to be a gentleman one witness to the night of debauchery said there must have been about sixty women any time vying for his attention and he then ordered shots for every single woman in a club hope closed out the night by getting his waitress

a tip of only twenty nine thousand dollars after hearing about all that i'll call john boehner called mr hope to congratulate him on his remarkable achievement and said he would join him on his next night out. h.t. . it's the good the bad of the very very point below thermal was slowly ugly the road the citizens of vermont as i mentioned yesterday communities across vermont were voting on whether or not to tell congress to amend the u.s. constitution to keep money out of politics but that effort passed fifty three communities across the state yesterday sending a resounding message to washington these communities join the likes of portland oregon new york city and los angeles fishel introducing measures to push back against the citizens united sime washington listens to the people of vermont and

all over our nation stops corporate cash from both driving and county elections. the bad georgia state some georgia state senate voted yesterday to ban un documented in immigrants from attending any of georgia's public colleges passing a vote comes despite the fact that state college officials repeated leasehold government officials at the bill was completely unnecessary federal law does not prevent undocumented immigrants from attending public universities and colleges leaves it to the states to decide whether or not to admit undocumented immigrants and guard was the nine undocumented immigrants who wouldn't get the chance to further their education is not a value on which america was built and a very very ugly representative cory gardner despite only being in his first term as a u.s. congressman gardner is doing all he can to line his pockets with money from big oil and then center cozy up with oil executives and gardner introduce legislation that would link the revenue from sales of our strategic oil reserves to increases that

oil and gas leases on federal land basically if we sell five percent of our reserves president obama must increase the amount of federal lands at least for oil and gas to the big companies by five percent it's a gardener was to destroy american land just as well they go is destroying our environment harming our economy and gardener support of the industry and it's actually it's very very. we're learning one thing this republican primary it's the democrats should never ever run to the center or become blue dogs to get votes here's what. primary elections forced candidates to talk specifics to tell the truth that's because the party base is made up of the well informed voters and the political junkies and

they're not going to like candidate speak in generalities for long before getting better up they want to know specific causes not only that all the candidates in a primary generally have broadly the same political beliefs so to differentiate themselves from each other they have to get down into the weeds politically speaking the wonky we have to talk about the micro details of the ways that they do things that differentiate them from their opponents i mean specific cuts specific investments specific tax rates specific foreign policy goals and in a republican primary that's tough to do since over the last one hundred years the republicans have essentially had a plutocratic platform one of favors the tiny wealthy elite over the middle class it's a platform that doesn't play well with the majority of voters but if i have a platform they have to embrace to win over their far right wing base but most of the american people hear the actual specifics coming from the republican candidates

they're horrified they hear about letting people without health insurance and die they hear candidates calling social security a ponzi scheme they hear candidates pledging to end medicare as we know it and they hear candidates beat the drum for more wars in the middle east because listen to some of the things that have been said during this year's republican primary. my view on other social issues such as the gay marriage i've always opposed gay marriage under your proposed tax plan he would pay zero taxes explained oh depending on where the and whether the particular kind of payments you made were counted under that plan as capital gains or whether counties with the republican candidates are talking about ways to transition this program it is a monstrous lie. it is a ponzi scheme this whole idea that you have to. think here.

are you saying society should just let him die. we must not allow iran to have a nuclear weapon if they do the world changes america will be at risk and someday nuclear weaponry will be used by the tea party might applaud but no one else in america will so this answers a question that a lot of pundits have been asking why is it that republican primaries produce such damage candidates like mitt romney weakening mitt romney yet the two thousand and eight democratic primary made hillary clinton and barack obama stronger and more respected i mean just look at the numbers forty one percent of americans say this primary season has given them a less favorable view of the republican party and by a margin of forty six to forty one percent americans want democrats in control of congress next year and if romney is the nominee and his approval rating stays like it is he'll have the lowest approval rating of any party's nominee in modern history at just twenty eight percent by comparison around this time in two thousand

and eight president obama's approval rating was thirty four points higher at sixty two percent so again why do republican primaries hurt their candidates the democratic primaries help their candidates. it's actually very simple although you'll probably never hear the simple truth on the corporate media the reason why the approval numbers of republicans are falling during a primary is because they are in a primary the candidates are forced to tell the truth about their plutocratic agenda and that truth is ugly and the reason why the democrats got a boost in their primaries is because they're forced to tell the truth about their populist agenda but they're actually on the side of the people instead of the plutocrats in the archives during the two thousand and eight primary you didn't hear candidates running around talking about ending medicare and social security when the democratic primary in here i'm talking about giving more tax breaks to the

rich or starting more wars you heard stuff like this stuff our job should be to try to create the conditions that enable people to live up to their god given potential and that means health care for everyone no exceptions nobody left out what i have proposed is that we. raise the camp on the payroll tax because right now millionaires and billionaires don't have to pay beyond ninety seven thousand dollars a year that's where it's kept i was the first to come out with a strategic energy fund where we need to be investing in clean renewable energy and i think we could put five million americans to work what i'm talking about is not just hope and not just inspiration it's a four thousand dollars tuition credit for every student every year that is to. call it becomes more affordable i think we have to invest in our infrastructure that also will get the economy moving again and i believe we could put about three million people to work and good union jobs where people get a good wage with

a good set of benefits they can support a middle class family with a rising standard of living. the core democratic message that you just heard is popular with the american electorate so i hide from it move to the center it's the republicans on the other hand who have to hide their real agenda and move to the center this is why as soon as the primaries are over inevitably year after year republicans start acting like democrats they move to the south or at least talking like that actually they move to the center and they start talking in general terms like reagan's shining city on the hill and romney's believe in america to hide the fact that they're really only looking out for millionaires and billionaires and the corporations that got them that way for example they start talking about preserving medicare and social security and helping the middle class even though these are euphemisms for programs that will privatized social security. medicare as we've

seen over the past thirty years of reaganomics savage the middle class moving our wealth up to the top one tenth of one percenters and with the so-called independent voters a phrase that basically means people who don't know much at all about politics only pay attention to t.v. ads during the first the last few weeks before the election they can often get away with those people president franklin roosevelt was on to this republican gimmick we back in one nine hundred thirty six evander do you. really think i can't explain. that. we believe thank you we. don't know yet if we do even. if we believe in baby. through. them thank. you. thank you.

the brave enough thank you doing man. the. we. we will be. an enemy. but doing will. any anti and it. goes. right well we can't trust you're going to see this play out over and over again over the next eight months as the republican candidate most likely mitt romney begins drifting toward the center in his rhetoric once he feels he has the nomination wrapped up it's a republican survival technique it's the only way he's going to have a chance at winning in november because the plutocratic message he's sending out during the primary election won't give him

a chance in the general election as proven by his twenty eight percent approval rating today for president obama and democrats in congress who are up for election this year hey guys do not do what the republicans will be doing as we get closer to november and democrats should not slide in the center the democratic populist message resonates well with the american people so democrats shouldn't loudly embrace it as they had for november be proud of health care reform and defend it fight against too much corporate power and stand up to overturn citizens united fight against taxpayer subsidies to oil companies and push for alternative energy fight against never ending war and speak up for peace this is what the american people want to hear especially now during this time of crisis in america americans don't want so-called corporatist centrists who just preserve the status quo who are too afraid to take on wall street big oil they won gold progressives who speak populist truths so be proud of who you are democrats and electoral victories will

follow. that's it for the big picture tonight we know that our daily radio show is going to be moving from noon to three a three to six starting monday and don't forget democracy begins with you get out there and get active tag your it simmer. down to your social anti ugly cation job on the phone or i pod touch from the aren't you saps to. watch on t.v. life on the go. video on demand fox she's mine gold costs and our essence feeds now in the palm of your. questions on the job com.

we'll look at sunny's technology innovation called the list of melamine from around russia we've got the future of coverage. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so for like sleep you think you understand it and then you've lived something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm sorry welcome to the big picture .