well i'm john berman in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture george zimmerman is still a free man gangs of white supremacists are patrolling the streets of sanford so bad is the situation that city is the worse yet. also gruesome gruesome known as the koch brothers have already done enough damage to them but they're still at it what is the code to put a few now is there a way to stop this and don't get tangled in a sea weed off the california coast it's radioactive what does this new discovery

tell us about the safety of nuclear power in america and across the globe. you need to know this more than six weeks after seventeen year old trayvon martin was gunned down in sanford florida the man who pulled the trigger george zimmerman still walking around free and now we know for sure that zimmerman will not be charged with first degree murder on monday the special prosecutor in the case angela corey decided not to use a florida grand jury to file first degree murder charges against zimmerman now it will be up to corey alone to decide whether or not any charges at all such as manslaughter or second degree murder will be brought against zimmerman meanwhile zimmerman is looking for a new lawyer since his legal team quit today saying that they've lost contact with him. now today as of now we're withdrawing as counsel for mr zimmerman we've lost

contact with him up to this point with a contact every day. he's gone on his own zimmerman is also appealing to the public for financial assistance he recently launched a website at the real george zimmerman dot com to give his side of what happened that night in february and solicit donations for his legal thought on the site zimmerman writes on sunday february twenty sixth i was involved in a life altering event which led me to become the subject of intense media coverage as a result of the incident and subsequent media coverage i had been forced to leave my home my school my employer my family and ultimately my entire life but this morning on a.b.c. an attorney for the martin family responded to zimmerman's website saying this. anymore he said he experienced a life altering event where. the more experienced of life in human

beings life ending event now has the city of sanford on edge there are reports that gangs of armed white supremacists are roaming the streets and the mare of sanford florida jeff triplett warned of the town has become a kindling box his phrase for george zimmerman isn't the only one who needs to be blamed for this tragedy and also need to pin the blame on those who pushed for these shoot first laws in florida that are today giving george zimmerman cover here that here is the bigger picture of. florida and twenty other states and put together these stand your ground and shoot first laws and basically what they're doing is that turning america into a battleground and it's a battleground where the rules of deadly force are even looser than in iraq and afghanistan as a vote vets dot org points out american and coalition forces in those countries like afghanistan and iraq must have very specific things that they must do before

they can shoot somebody even if that somebody that they're thinking about shooting they're pretty sure is an enemy intent on killing them it's called the shout shows shove shoot and here it is from the rules of engagement you must shout a verbal warning to halt you must show your weapon and demonstrate your intent to use it you must physically restrain block access or detain the person if the none of that works you fire a warning shot if you are authorized to shoot at all and if that doesn't work then you shoot the person and states with the koch brothers promoted stand your ground gun and shoot first laws in place there's no need to shout no need to show your weapon no need to try to restrain anybody and no need to fire a warning shot all you need to do is as the law says feel afraid and you can shoot somebody dead which means that wal-mart america's largest gun seller can't be sued for selling a gun because the homicide is justifiable and the gun sellers trade association the

n.r.a. makes more money selling guns and ammo which may be why both worked on the alec task force that created the stand your ground and shoot first law the first place you're wondered who is the most afraid of the other black people or white people. i got a call in my radio show yesterday african-american who said this. assertion of this author was that black people are far more afraid of white people in the united states and i've heard that from friends who are african-american but. your thoughts it pay of course we're poor for you when you think you don't want to deal yeah right why should i be afraid yeah you could walk through that i feel cuckoo clock climbing up in there you could have to rethink everything every black can't be able to do the not the field looks awful and that fear is put on steroids by these shoot first laws the power lobbying groups like the n.r.a. and wal-mart are turning america into a battleground filled with fearful trigger happy people and it's

a battlefield where the rules are even more violent and less rational on the battlefield of afghanistan it's time to quit being ruled by the constant drumbeat of fear drumbeat by the way that is pushed and promoted constantly by fox and the right wing media i return to being the home of the brave. for more on this topic to turn over to our progress a commentator big picture producer sam sacks sam welcome they sound great to have you with us on zimmerman's lawyers jumped ship today. actually before we get to that you grew up about thirty minutes from sanford florida right yeah yeah a group about thirty forty minutes away from sanford and it's on a beach and i've been through sanford a lot this isn't exactly in a fluent place i think the. median income is somewhere below twenty five thousand and the unemployment rate there is a level percent so when you hear all these reports coming out that that the

community is on edge. you know it's kind of a perfect storm there it's economic turmoil and now this this act of violence that is tearing the community apart i mean if you remember the london riots last year. that was started when police shot and killed someone. but that wasn't the real reason for the right i mean the real reason was because this was a place that was devastated by austerity economics and here's another part of the country that's feeling the recession very hard but has a governor and rick scott that is pushing austerity actually turned down federal money which would put people working exactly so we're you know you don't want to say well you know a black kid was shot suddenly there's going to be race riots but we could see a perfect storm of bad perfect storm here that could lead to a very uncomfortable situation in the city and had the coca-cola is not been operating if we didn't have the stand your ground laws and if there wasn't this

this push to austerity has to trickle down austerity that the republicans are promoting and rick scott says no we're not going to take money for light rail i mean that would put a lot of people who where is sanford that light rail route was what tampa orlando tampa to orlando so it's sanford is farther east of orlando and a little bit farther north so on. we wouldn't have been him begin i mean it's it's not a it's not a long commute from sanford orlando for workers have been. there. the lawyers pulled out of this thing it might you know looking at having wires pull out of cases is nothing new it happened they can see casey anthony case it is happening a number of high profile cases years but usually when lawyers pull out a if they hold a press conference they say things like you know. we have other things we have to do or we wish him well or you know he's got a new lawyer so good laugher whatever this lawyer comes out and says basically this

guy's going flaky he's not communicating with us he might a runaway i mean this is all implicit in what they were saying is that malpractise on the part of a lawyer it could be very much could be and i mean. you think that the lawyers might be trying to telegraph the sanford authorities that this guy's on the way out well i think lawyers are trying to telegraph that zimmerman might be losing his mind on the i mean let's look if you're under investigation the last thing you want to do is be talking all over the place and since then he created a website which if you want to reach the most out of people you create a website and start talking he reached out to the prosecutor's office which is probably the last place you want to go talking to and he's apparently reached out to sean hannity hannity and held an interview with sean hannity so i think this is a guy who you know i don't want to come to the defense of zimmerman but at the same time he's one of the most reviled people in america and perhaps with good reason

you don't want to judge someone before they've they've been in a court of law but you you would think that he would almost be a favor to him to prosecute him at this point to be able to have his day in court and i mean i think you all there's you know it seems to me that. there was an autopsy and that auto. he will reveal the truth after the board is either going to comport with zimmerman's story or it's going to blow it apart and i mean you know it's going to it's going to tell us who was on top it's going to tell us what the position is of them were relative to each other how close they were whether there were any signs of a struggle you know on on the part of trayvon whether there was you know skin under his fingernails or bruised knuckles if he actually punched zimmerman hard enough to injury zimmerman that's going to show up on the kid's novels i mean you know all that stuff is going to come out and the fact that none of that stuff has come out says to me and not an expert or a speculator. that they may be putting together

a second secretary murder case yet we have searched three murders off the table with the special prosecutor basically canceling the grand jury convening which was supposed to be today. and so it's going to be strictly up to her to choose what charges she wants to bring or didn't zimmerman and it's looking like it would be manslaughter or similar instead as a judge right he's and zimmerman has vanished. you know and his lawyers are coming out and saying he's a man i just want his lawyers are doing to see a way here that they they have knowledge that their former client is doing something illegal like fleener was over the country and or something on the edge of it or they want to do this her way from a spot that's right and they they want to cover their butts they want to they want to telegraph this message to sean hannity part i found this fascinating frocks has been constantly promoting this idea on fox that maybe zimmerman was really the victim you know i mean the fox plays the very race card really really subtly but well what they thought of years and years and it seems to me that hannity was no

idiot i mean sean hannity's a smart guy if he interviewed zimmerman it would have been with an eye to thinking asking himself the question if i put this guy on t.v. is he going to be is going to come across as sincere is it going to add to the fox news narrative zimmerman was the victim not the perpetrator and if hannity didn't put him on t.v. which he didn't do. that says to me the even hannity thinks this guy's guilty and that's that's kind of interesting too because this would be the bombshell interview i mean this would get so many ratings and that's what fox cares most about is getting the ratings but it seems like they would put getting the ratings second to their agenda of. you know protecting george zimmerman here or making it look like that there are. you know black hood limbs patrolling the streets. that are threats to all of us around here. i don't know we'll see apparently there's going to be a comment on that mates and i don't have to show him what his interview was about

or what you've learned from from zimmerman so we're going to have to see if there's some sex thanks for. after the break. after the break there's an evil two headed creature attacking america right now and it has its tentacles all over our economy and democracy that's the call to put us up to now and is there any way to slide. we just put a picture of me when i was like nine years old and since you told the truth. i think i am going to get a trench that i was proud of because he's making the trip. he was kind of yesterday. i'm very proud of the rule that

it's place. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realized everything you thought you knew you don't i'm sorry welcome to the big picture.

echoed through pauses through it as all it begins a new jersey governor chris christie a frequent guest of the billionaire koch brothers annual political strategy sessions and one of the larger to articles of the go propose turns out christie was a lie again to keep more of his constituents in new jersey out of work back in two thousand and ten governor christie bakst plans to build a new train tunnel across the hudson river would have put thousands of americans to

work building one of the largest infrastructure projects in the nation governor christie said you jersey couldn't afford the project and side of the potential for cost overruns as a reason for killing but new or a new report out by the independent government. accountability office shows that christie was lying was lying to the citizenry in new jersey and the citizens of america well christie claimed that the tunnel would cost fourteen billion dollars to build and that his state would have to pay seventy percent of that cost the new g.a.o. report shows that the tunnel was only going to cost fourteen billion dollars and most importantly new jersey was only going to have to pay fourteen percent of the costs not seventy percent the real reason why governor christie claim to state could spend money to put more americans back to work even that little fourteen percent is because he's already promised billions of dollars in state tax cuts and tax breaks for big corporations and rich people but again that's just one spectacle

of the koch took us to get to the heart of the koch suppose you have to take a look at the american legislative exchange council or alec i think tank partially supported by the koch brothers fortune here for the latest news coming out of alec and what the koch of course is up to i'm joined by as to get a reporter with your public report communications an outreach coordinator with united republicans said welcome back great to be here great to have you can you give us an overview of the. yeah there's a basically these billionaire industrialist they made moves their money from oil gas and chemical storage histories and they fanned their money all over literally hundreds of organizations everything ranging from organizations like americans for prosperity had to also funding alec to even funding universities and academic departments it's extraordinary and in fact you know with thing i find very ironic is that their father made his money cutting deals with joe stalin for you know the old soviet union back in the forty's and fifty's and then funded the john birch

society didn't. exactly exactly true i mean this was the really it was is the mid twentieth century when there was a gigantic push by a lot of industrialists and sort of billionaires and they saw what happened in the new deal there's no we've got to stop. otherwise we'll keep going until we have a prosperous someone who had serious faith society although we can't have that. so if you were so basically you know we had this massive movement and the way that they impact faith legislators is alec alec ships legislation written mostly by its corporate members and it's more than ninety eight percent funded by corporations very little grassroots funding and they ship that legislation to different state legislatures and those legislators passed their corporate for the legislation and they never let you know that it was odd legislation so it's all done very secretive very surrounded the table it's quite remarkable you guys have done some really good really great reporting to the link between eighty and t. the koch to pause and climate change denial this is

a particularly fascinating. to me corporate friendly. bunch of other companies also find out in eighty one of them now please very much along the lines of saying we need to deal with climate change we believe it's me and me we need it control carbon emission and so on and so forth but yet secretly funding this organization which all over the country is passing resolutions a state legislator saying that there is this thing is a global warming fighting any sort of efforts to limit carbon emissions requiring schools it's really interesting requiring schools to teach both sides of the global warming debate so that means. the science as a legitimate in the teach now in science in a science classroom basically propaganda saying this isn't exist and so you know we're catching the act here in a bunch of groups that got together and started to call and then to stand up to its words if it really does believe in global warming you shouldn't be funding this organization that's trying to brainwash kids into saying that there isn't equal or mean it's very much the same tactics that the tobacco companies were using twenty

years ago in the suggestion that there were two sides to the debate over whether tobacco caused cancer now it's really very very similar and there's a similar debate going on over evolution i mean basically the idea is that corporations know that when it comes to. it's americans love scientists and our kids love to learn it in science classrooms so they can just all right at night where they can say there's a huge debate you need to include all these views that aren't driven by science but may be you know sponsored by exxon mobil or in this case reports of color change the p. triple c. have threatened corporate donors with boycotts of corporate interest aliquid boycotts pepsi cola coca-cola kraft now the gates foundation i didn't realize bill and melinda gates foundation was going under it's of thousands of dollars to this town called the coke to put they've all backed out is this a new model for fighting the corporate you know i think it is because basically alec is like a union for corporations not every company in alec necessarily agrees with everything they do like i doubt he has a position on you know the stand your ground shoot first laws what we're doing is

we're shaming where time member you are in this you need you have to defend what your money is used to do so if you don't agree with that poll and i think you know five or six major corporations everything from pepsi and you call it the gates foundation of pulled out of alec and they get they want to continue to stand up for values that they espouse in public they shouldn't continue to fund this organization in private as all these terrible things are better a better analogy might be a gang than a union it's i get it i get it said thanks a lot for being with us tonight great to see the influence of the koch topos can no longer be ignored in american politics today but how did the coax get so pervasive well they have someone to thank for it here's the bigger picture because of course it maximum power over the past few years but it was ronald reagan really gave them their launching pad back in one hundred sixty four barry goldwater had revived this odd idea that goes back to the age of the robber baron sears school. i ask you to join me in helping restore the individual freedoms and initiatives this

nation watched you to make government more of a servant and knock the master of us all. yes this this old idea that the corporation should be able to do anything but anyhow it turned out goldwater didn't pull it off so successfully he lost pretty badly in sixty four the front man was a better speaker than goldwater here's what goldwater front man ronald reagan had to say in one nine hundred sixty four in support variable. this is the issue in this election whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the american revolution in best that a little intellectual elite in a far distant capital can plan our lives for as better than we can plan them ourselves and so by the ninety's in one hundred seventy one lewis powell wrote a memo to his neighbor and the president of the u.s. chamber of commerce saying that business is under attack and needs to fight back this fall of the publication of rachel carlson's carson's silent spring and ralph

nader's unsafe at any speed these were really attacks on business i mean paul was characterizing it that way but what it was was an attack on the willingness of businesses to put profits above human lives whether it was pesticides poisonous pesticides or exploding cars all of this stuff was being revealed of the media to the public via the media by people like carson and nader and lewis powell and ronald reagan were freaked out about it so pall said the business had to organize and push back they had to change the wording from that elected government thing that protected us from corporate predators into the big government language of ronald reagan that stole our freedom freedom freedom for example to pollute or g.m. freedom to build pulled exploding cars that's what workers. so a group of very rich people took up the challenge and in one thousand nine hundred

four they started the charles koch foundation known today as the cato institute coke's and others founded the heritage foundation and helped birth many other smaller think tanks and media watchdog groups which has water said worked the refs the referees being the media so whenever the media said anything nice about. liberals you know they would get its act or if they seemed critical of conservatives they would get attacked throughout the one nine hundred seventy s. the koch oppose was under the radar but they needed a front i would say that government was an elite ignoring that it's we the people and saying over and over again the giant corporations and billionaires running our lives was somehow freed of was a good thing now it's in code they would talk about individual freedom the individuals they're talking about are the billionaires and they found that in goldwater's front man ronald reagan if the reagan selection mco to push his words found their biggest front man the president of the united states in reagan's

inaugural address echoed the main mean theme message of the billionaires that they are billionaires could run a nation better than an elected government reagan called it self rule the billionaires would run the show and suggested that they were we the people and therefore those few people that billionaires can solve our problems better than an elected government. government is not the solution to our problem government is the problem. from time to time we've been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self rule but government by an elite group is superior to government for by and of the people. now the koch suppose owns legislators in every state funds bloggers and think tanks and media stars all pretty much saying the same thing and the government that our

founders fought and died to create ten generations of americans fought and died to defend that government is as reagan said the problem it's somehow a very bad thing and we should as you heard barry goldwater say back in sixty four have government serve rich people like goldwater and his funders or reagan his funders that are passing laws to make cars safe and protect us from pesticides and so now rounding the modern day ronald reagan himself worth a quarter billion dollars a little richer than a lot richer than reagan is echoing reagan's idea that government will bring down billionaires and big corporations if we the people and elected government have our way. four years ago many americans trusted candidate barack obama when he promised to bring americans together but now we've learned that president obama's idea of bringing us together is not to lift us up but instead to use the invisible boot of

government to bring us all down you know the question before all of us alternately is willing to post when and really is that even the coke the puss it's the ghost of reagan really goes to reagan and democracy be replaced by a government owned and run by the plutocrats or will we the people with it and democracy be restored it's up to you and me the only thing that can overcome corporate power like we're seeing today is grassroots activism tag you're it. crazy alert aliens after at lemnos official video of the latest nasa space shuttle mission appears to show what might be u.f.o.'s in space a segment from the live nasa feed shows the cargo bay of the space shuttle atlantis what appears to be three flying objects directly above the shuttle the objects are

in motion in a triangular formation we often imagine you have posed by. the narrator of the live feed tries to explain the objects away with less than convincing story to there was . this initial intro he stood with the latest intervention talking with. control about an object he remembers. outside the window. describing it as some kind of. callous looking plane i reach it or a metal object. or just happen to be three identical pieces of massive metallic cloth moving around in a constant formation in space so one of the most convincing u.f.o. videos yet it appears more likely than ever that we might have property in our universe. a. we just put a picture of me when i was like nine years old i think there's

a little truth. i'm a confession i am a little get of friends that i love rap and hip hop is second hand. but he was kind of a guest today. i'm very proud of the role without you as place. you know sometimes you see a story and the seem so sorely you think you understand it and then he glimpse 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.