well i'm going to washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture. a new study of super pac donations finds that just ten donors are responsible for one third of the two hundred two million dollars of super pac money raised so far this election i'll reveal who those oligarchy are and what congress can do to stop the billionaire takeover of our american democracy from keith ellison joins me in just a moment also the federal reserve came out with his new forecast for the american economy showing that a full recovery is still years away but could there be another way to fast track economic recovery even if it means a fundamental transformation of the federal reserve itself and later earlier this week a cow in california tested positive for mad cow disease meaning that after several

years u.s. beef supply could be in danger again should washington be doing more to protect americans from a fatal outbreak of that disease. you need to know this the oligarchy there making their voices heard this election a new analysis of super pac donations by the center for public integrity finds the just ten donors are responsible for fully one third of the two hundred two million dollars in super pac money raised so far the selection of those ten dollars seven are individuals and four of those are billionaires leading the way as casino mogul sheldon adelson dished out twenty six point five million dollars so far most in new gingrich's failed campaign others in the list include billionaire texas home builder bob perry we spread his six point seven million dollars around between mitt

romney and karl rove's super pacs libertarian pay pal co-founder peter thiel who bankrolled ron paul's campaign with two point seven million and banks are foster freeze who propped up rick santorum for a couple million bucks and then there are the anonymous donors out there with the american people will likely never know about spending tens of millions of dollars on right wing super pacs these massive amounts of corporate and billionaire spending in our elections should worry all americans who believe in a democracy responsive to we the people and it should concern our lawmakers many of whom are trying to do the right thing yet have to worry that all it takes is one billionaire to take an interest in beating them just one billionaire decide to carpet bomb their district with negative ads and then boom they're out of a job sadly that's politics in america now houses and united.

in just to in just a few minutes we'll be speaking with congressman ellison about this issue. but first in screwed news the federal reserve is out with its new economic forecast and if there's some slightly better news as the unemployment rate is projected to die drop drop dip to seven point eight percent by the end of the year on the same time as the election the fed cautions there's still a long way to go until we reach full employment which is usually the case when the unemployment rate drops to between five and six percent as i expect that to happen until at the very earliest twenty fourteen the fed also announced it plans to keep the around zero percent interest rate policy in place for at least another two and a half years so that's what we're looking at right now but is there any way we can change that forecast is there any way we can stimulate the economy for faster growth and also put in place the reforms needed to make sure that our economy doesn't tank again like it didn't two thousand and eight there could be and it

could mean a drastic restructuring of the federal reserve itself and fundamental reform of our entire banking system for more on this i'm joined by stevens erlangen rector of the american monetary institute institute steve institute yes thank you welcome back well thank you thank you for joining us and the last science of money is your book which is a a toma worthy of a good read. first of all let's let's define terms there's this whole movement to end the fed what is the fed. the fed is the group which our congress turn them out of the money power over to one nine hundred thirty eight with the passage of the federal reserve act now the money power quite simply is the ability to create money and decide who gets it and the founders of the country wisely put this into the ads of our congress it's in article one section eight. paragraph five the congress has the

power to call in muddy and the way that this is being gamed by the fed is that they don't make our coins our coins are actually produced by congress but our dollar bills because it's paper or me are made by the fed but you question actually they were very interesting because a professor at harvard really did a good study by the way. and he showed that the word cawing meant to create paper money as well even in seventy's yes because most of our money at that point in time had been the paper currency the various so arguably it's even illegal to this day now there is this. interesting libertarian argument that we should just get rid of the fed and. have the federal government. minter coin or print our currency and perhaps define the amount of it but leave all

the other monetary functions which are currently being done by the fed determining interest rates it's like that leave those to the free market term are going to j.p. morgan turn over to goldman sachs this is the libertarian solution is this as crazy as it or you know a theory perhaps. yeah but it would happen if the libertarians got their way if libertarians really got their way what would happen is that we've seen what would happen pretty much with the crash in zero eight we've seen what would happen with the within twenty years after the fed was formed we had the crash of one nine hundred twenty nine or thirty three. these things are theories. but there is no experience to back them up the period says the opposite and elf and at five am ok the problem is that they do not value experience enough there's been a battle between logic and experience now franklin knew about this battle and he

wrote in seventeen twenty nine that. all the experience all the logic in the world cannot contradict our experience the great benefit of paper money i'm paraphrasing there it's not exactly got the exact quote in the book if you want but so this is a a dynamic struggle that's been going on for centuries well and as you point out from the founding of our country until the mid one nine hundred thirty s. when some real severe restraints were put on the banks by franklin roosevelt we never went more than fifteen years without a major national crash and major banking crisis or a major major crash and then we went forty fifty years without one from from thirty five until until reagan's deregulation and eighty's yeah yeah but it was not really functioning well because franklin roosevelt did some good things he improved things definitely but he didn't go far enough and he had the ability to do that because

there was a thing called the chicago plan which had been proposed but we actually had brilliant economists in this country back in those who were arguing we should nationalize the fed yes and the federal reserve banks and that's the first part of their argument the second part of their argument just as critical because just nationalizing doesn't work we know that from the bank of england the second part of their argument was. no more money creation no more fractional reserve banking they ended it for the day let's clarify that's not so much correct if i'm wrong not so much no more money creation but no more money creation by the process of debt that's right it that's they didn't use that terminology but they called in there in their day it was called hundred percent reserves it essentially it ended what we know as fractional reserve bank ok so do find terms for. tell me if i understand this is right with frank shore reserve banking what we have right now

is if if a bank loans out ten thousand dollars ten thousand dollars literally comes into being it didn't exist before but any so that all that matters is that that part of the process and and and when it's paid back that money vanishes into into into thin air although the debt is still left over so it's sort of like a. low into debt is paid back when the money vanishes but that's the heart of the process without without fractional reserve banking what you would do is you'd say ok we're going to have a money supply that's three trillion dollars period here it is and use it but it does not go out of existence right there and get bigger as they all are it's stable now this is what we're working on you know congressman kasich has been studying this with us for over five years six years and he introduced legislation which solves this problem twenty nine nineteen twenty nine ninety national emergency employment defense and it does three broad thing senates of porton to realize this

first. it dismantles the federal reserve system does not quite know it's pretty much like it's nationalizing the federal reserve system not the banking system but the federal reserve the money creation part of the system people think right now that our money is created by our government they don't realize it's created when banks make loans well first part of our act money will be created by government second part fractional reserve banking must and. the circulation of them is my is that with the way that it's done and in the arab countries with banking by fee rather than banking by n.g.o.s no we don't use any model from the arab countries. we replace that with real money right now we don't have the money to circulate that is regulated money if it cares oh i see all of

them already at the end of the day yeah you know we care about actually but we don't hear this to please the bankers the bankers are supposed to serve the country and what the archbishop of canterbury did in one thousand nine hundred two he gave a speech bombs are falling hundreds of thousands dead in world war two and he put out a speech and he said ultimately he said what should be the servant has become the master and he recommended nationalizing the bank of england they did it first thing they did after world war. two was to nationalize banking the way in which we solved this problem of where the money comes from that's part three over which i was getting together to have just one minute left so oh my goodness we have to someday do. part three the. government is a power it's empowered now but it's encouraged through this act to create and spend money into existence we've got two point two trillion that the engineers tell us we

need over the next five years just to make the infrastructure state one out of every ten dams in danger of collapse we just heard about another one a congressional meeting. in one one county that collapsed. one out of ten bridges structural problems it will take two point two trillion to fix over a five year period two point two trillion is not a problem to create thanks for creating eight hundred billion a year before this this crash occurred so that's the third part of the arrow and we do that would not be inflationary because it would be well controlled it would not be inflationary because it's creating real stuff stevens or longer the book is the last science of money oh and go to monetary dot org bars or in an auditorium the act is there they can download it ask questions we're happy to help bob and tom thank you very much great work thank you appreciate you being here we the people need to take greater control over our economic destiny and give congress its

constitutionally mandated job of controlling our money supply. congressman keyes keith ellison joins me in just a moment. if we just put a picture of me when i was like nine years old and to tell the truth. i'm a confession i am a total get of friends that i love driving hip hop music and for. that he was kind of a yesterday. i'm very proud of the world without you it's a 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 realize everything you thought you don't know i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture.

as promised congressman keith ellison joins me now to talk about how we can get corporate money out of politics congressman ellison represents the fifth this district of minnesota and is co-chair of the house progressive caucus congressman welcome good to be thank you thanks for joining us what's your reaction to this latest study that shows that just ten entities nearly half of them billionaires not all of them even human beings are responsible for fully a third of the over two hundred million dollars that has been raised and spent by super pacs just so far well i can't say i'm surprised that that is the foreseeable and predictable outcome of a horrible decision like citizens united and of bad decisions like the. on that

created super pacs the fact of the matter is we've got to do something about it and would be the constitutional amendment to change it but in order to get that constitutional amendment would you know a mass movement which is why the progressive caucus has joined with progressive leaders around the country to. have a declaration for democracy calling for the overturn of citizens united and joining with municipal leaders city council members state legislators and leaders in the community to sign this declaration so that when we get a congress that wants to get money out we can have the popular movement that can help demand it and drive it and then help us all to billy be successful at restoring the in the person the people's voice and the corporate one vermont just voted in favor of this recently this week god bless and good for them indeed and before that i believe was montana and hawaii if my recollection is correct so that

is so i'm not i'm just a little dumbfounded by this i hear from democrats and particular progressives the you know let's get the money out of politics let's roll back the citizens united decision but i don't understand why a republican member of congress or some democrats there may know there may be some would like the idea that they have to spend two thirds of every day raising money or that a cranky billionaire could come into their district and just blow them out of the water well you know it's really kind of one of those puzzling things that doesn't make sense to me but you know it's kind of like the on a wheel man they just keep on running and running and getting nowhere and they can't stop because if they do they they think they will i don't know not be able to move forward but they're not moving forward any way but you know the bottom line is . they are our days are taken up by it it's humiliating to ask people for money in the amounts we have to ask them and of course people who are writing the checks

often for. own you have some sort of. excess of say so over what you say and do and they like to threaten you they're not going to support i mean these kind of things that's no way to live you know we should be spending time listening to everyone and anytime you're prioritizing calls based on who donated to you you've got a problem but you know you know some people do that and i wish that no one would have to do that and no one would even have to worry about it but there that's the problem we're in we got to get money out and we've got to get it out now absolutely let's turn to the violence against women act this yassin one thousand nine hundred four was reauthorized in two thousand again in two thousand and five and it's during the bush administration was even considered controversial then why the hold up now and what's the republican opposition to the violence against women act well you know. a lot of women have been speaking in terms of the war on women and some

people on the right have pushed back on that term and i say fine you don't want to call it war on women let's call it war on women's rights these people don't even want to agree that well versus connecticut which gave women the right to contraception which gave women the right to control when and where and how often they had kids they don't agree that we're fighting over contraception now days a battle that we thought was settled long long ago here's the reality you know take a guy like rick santorum and you got admit that he was honest about his vision of america he wants women taking care of him he wants to be the big man in the head of the household doesn't want to partnership he wants the dictatorship and bottom line is that this is the vision of a lot of folks i mean think about the guy who said in his day they used aspirin the gal had aspirin between her knees you know this is the psychology of the people

we're talking to. who believe you know that you know women's sexuality is something that's threatening and bad and they just want to control it so you don't have to get down to what they really have against women you know takes more psychological expertise than i have but all i know is we've got to stand for equality women's rights and get that gets women passed it's shocking that they would stand against violence against women act i mean women are killed. nearly every minute of every day you know it's shocking the regularity where women are you know victims in their own home and to try to pass a piece of legislation to make people feel safe in their own home and have to encounter resistance as is equally shocking. on another topic foreclosures of increased in the first quarter of this year are homeowners getting the help they need and if not why not and what what this congress and what do congress and the

president need to do about it no homeowners are getting near the help that they need or deserve the fact is that we got into this foreclosure crisis based on slick practices no doc loans stated income loans prepayment penalties twenty you know loans is that had a balloon's after two years or three terms not explained people wrote these mortgages and didn't care whether the people could pay him back because all they want to do is sell them on the secondary market as soon as they could then these loans were polled pooled and packaged in a lot about with the rating agencies and the whole mess and then and then shorted so that when they finally somebody would get paid off bottom line is homeowners haven't gotten the help that they need but that's why the progressive caucus called in eric snyderman who's the a.g. of the new york to talk today about the settlement that was just concluded where we

have. several of our members including that sing waters has real critiques of the settlement but we're not doctrinaire we're going to take what we have and do all we can for homeowners and we plan on making sure that this agency that's supposed to bring accountability and extend help to homeowners has the resources that it needs so we're organizing them on on capitol hill to make sure that the homeowners and get what they need in that the administration really starts holding some people accountable congressman keith ellison thanks so much for the brilliant work that you're doing not just for your state but for the entire nation thank you thank you we will we need more progressives in congress to push back against this radical agenda being pushed by republicans on behalf of their corporate and billionaire owners center for american progress is out with a new study and how the republican budget cuts food assistance programs and is going to lead to millions of low income americans particularly children going

hungry earlier this month the house agricultural committee passed legislation that cut thirty three billion dollars from food assistance those cuts would lead to one point eight million americans a year getting kicked off food assistance nearly three hundred thousand children immediately lose in free school lunch programs and here's the kicker the republicans are already even using the savings from these cuts to lower the deficit or stimulate the economy they're putting the extra money toward three trillion dollars in tax cuts for the romney super rich in america the republican slash libertarian vision for the future of this nation is one in which the oligarchy ride to work in their stretch limousines while millions of working poor americans beg for food on the streets.

we have to come is that i've from international viewers the big picture and listeners to my radio show our first comment comes from brian in norway he says hey i've been listening since the dark days of the bush administration i found other workers radio or what it was called just before bush got re-elected for a second term oh yeah i live in norway i want to ask tom about bacha if a.t.c. eight thanks brian the. stance for the foreign account tax compliance act it's part of another a larger bill that was titled the hiring incentives to restore employment act and it was an act that in two thousand and ten during the bush administration by the democrats it takes effect in two thousand and thirteen and what it does is it requires that all foreign banks must scour their accounts looking for americans and they find american account holders they have to tell the i.r.s.

our folks about the balances of those americans have in these foreign banks about any wood drawls about any receipts and if the banks don't do that they get nailed for non-disclosure the account holders the americans who have their money in foreign banks must report them to the i.r.s. along with normal u.s. tax returns if they value more than fifty thousand dollars account holders would also be subject to penalties for not as closure the fact the act also closes a tax loophole this is particularly interesting part that many investors have used to avoid paying taxes on dividends people like mitt romney you know make all their income from dividends by converting them into dividend equivalence as he did a lot of speculation that romney himself as use this loophole over the years with his swiss and grand cayman bank accounts to avoid paying taxes particularly on his retirement funds opens answer some of your questions about the act. our final comment of the night comes from dill in singapore he had this to say about america's political system hi i'm deal from singapore and i've been watching the

big picture for several weeks now watching the g.o.p. debates from an outside point of view his almost comical most republicans only want to focus on foreign affairs and have no real answers for the situation america is in now other than simply discrediting every idea from the obama camp it appears that obama can't get it that obama can't get anything done because the republicans are blocking everything just so he will fail i think it all goes down to the political system in america is the american political system in need of major reforms could america be better off with the systems of australia canada or some european nations yes very simply there's a couple of things we can do first of all and many european nations it's illegal to put money in behind political candidates or it's very very limited in the u.k. for example you can't spend more than one hundred thousand pounds but one hundred sixty thousand dollars on an election that's why there are elections only last a few weeks number one number two in most of these countries they have what's called proportional representation if your party gets ten percent of the vote you

get ten percent of the seats and in parliament twelve percent of the vote you get twelve percent the seats now to do that in the united states of europe where a constitutional amendment but we can get the same effect with something called instant run of voting australia new zealand have a system very much like ours first past the post winner take all that typically would produce a two party outcome but they've made it into three four five six party systems with instant runoff voting rank to voting they refer to it so you get to vote for this is my first choice but if he or she doesn't win this is my second choice and so those are a couple things and then the third thing i do very quickly is say money is not speech it's property and corporations are not people they're corporations that's it for my take your take tonight if you like your comments and questions heard here on this side of the big picture listen up we want to know your to send us your comments by visiting the thom hartmann facebook page by a twitter and. tom underscore hartman or in the chat room on the message boards or through the blog at thom hartmann dot com you can also leave

a message on our rant line at two a two by three six fifty three zero six agree disagree sound off it's all welcome to remember that your comments may be used on the air. we just put a picture of me when i was like nine years old and so if you know a little truth. i confess and i am a total get a friend that i love traveling hip hop music and for. that he was kind of a yesterday. i'm very proud of the world without you soon as he plays.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so for langley is think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture.