welcome back to the big picture coming up in this half hour for years biotech companies have been filling food store shelves with genetically modified foods whether or not they're safe i was a new grassroots campaign gaining momentum in the fight against these potentially dangerous foods also florida governor rick scott is on a crusade to examine the bodily fluids of all floridians he said in a few hurdles along the way who is the latest to say no to governor scott's fascination with bodily fluids and in tonight's daily take obesity is an epidemic in america with the obesity rate tripling since one nine hundred sixty so what's ronald reagan's role. in the best of the rest of the news since nine eleven air travel has been

a nightmare for americans as we're forced to take our shoes off get x. rayed get groped before we can just step foot on an airplane or one group of americans has a particularly bad sikhs according to the sikh coalition sikhs have to go through secondary t.s.a. screenings at the airport virtually one hundred percent of the time strictly based on how they dress many sikh men and some women wear turbans on their head as a religious symbol of equality and justice and unfortunately thanks to the mainstream media and the entertainment industry's portrayal of turbot wearing fur it's something that's not accurate at all by the way law abiding peace loving sikhs are unfairly targeted by the t.s.a. every time they fly but now the advocacy group the sikh coalition is doing something to push back against this a bitch will profiling by the t.s.a. today the group launched a new free mobile application to give sikhs a chance to report instances of religious profiling in real time. for more on how

this app works and why it's necessary i'm joined by emira deep saying co-founder and program director of the seed sikh coalition m.r.d. say. thank you for joining us what inspired your organization create this app e.o. in short the t.s.a. has been playing a game where we say they profile they say no we're not nobody's actually filed any complaints with us of profiling and so we created the app to create a quick easy way to send a message to the t.s.a. that there is a problem that they can't and i have is the is the app set up in a way that someone who's not a non sikh can also report profiling and it might fall into a different. category and you can absolutely i absolutely love this is the first person who filed the complaint this morning was a woman she complained that. the t.s.a. didn't follow the proper screening procedures with regard to her breast milk and so she had looked up the procedures was ready to go through screening the t.s.a.

screener according to her pulled her aside rolled her eyes and the words she wrote in her complaint was i was frustrated i was you merely added they didn't follow procedures which is what a lot of what our community would say about the screening procedures so it's for anyone. so you launch the up today we launched it today is that is that apple wally or is that it's apple and android so it's both that's that's a big deal. this is really at the end of the day this goes beyond just the whole security theater circus thing that's going on at the airport doesn't mean are are you trying to make a larger statement or maybe if you're not trying to you are making a larger statement about profiling in our in our society yes absolutely i mean you know at the end of the day folks post nine eleven as you point out at your intro they fear the turban they feared the beard now imagine what happens when right before you get on a. airplane the most security sensitive place post nine eleven the government is

targeting the very thing people fear the most the turban and of course that sends a larger message that you know if society fears you the government fears you too and so we have that sort of dynamic i find. this whole thing just incredible. i was at the correspondents' dinner saturday night and had dinner with the president amazing the third time this year i've had dinner in the same room with the president and then once i had dinner with the vice president of even smaller environment and every single time i just walked through magnetometers right that's it you know actually porno scans no gropes know nothing and it just seems to me like we've got this this hyper over reacted theater and the proof of it is that when you're actually you know in in what you would consider to be a really freaky secure environment right. but they're pretty i mean you know they're pretty straightforward are well you recall i think there is this reality

show where there's d.c. based couple of regina based couple was able to sort of enter the white house during the indian ambassador is a state visit to the white house there was a little problem right right but i think yeah of course security selective people like in the community the muslim community out the commute frankly were politically expendable if it were profiled who cares nobody cares it doesn't matter where they're essentially and i'll be honest republicans and to some extent democrats are scared to stand up on these issues and say you know what there's something really wrong we're totally missing the ball here when you're profiling me at the airport darn it i was born and raised in this country you know why would my mom was a soccer mom i'm a diehard yankees fan of i'm looking at my phone i'm probably checking my fantasy football scores i'm not a terrorist it's crazy that i mispronounce you said sick it's actually sick with the slightly aspirated age it doesn't exist in the english language but that is the actual pronunciation for my apologies that's ok. that's part of the education

process right there you go and here you are sure in the words beyond the phone app what else does the t.s.a. need to do the t.s.a. needs to you know they have the get to have their cake and eat it too they'll say we don't profile we tell our screeners not to profile but then they'll have a really long leash and the lab no effective measures to actually determine if they're profiling or not we want the t.s.a. to have an audit. on their screening procedures so we get visibility as to whether certain communities are being targeted and from that hopefully we'll have a more robust discussion as to whether this is really necessary for our security. thank you so much angus houston my thanks for being with me and congratulations on the appreciates the incredible religious profiling by the t.s.a. isn't making our nation any safer at least now some americans have a tool to fight back. so sometimes you know what you know and sometimes you know what you don't know and sometimes as the fires and theater says everything you know is wrong and. you know you're right. to make.

sure. you know is right. in the united states nearly seventy five percent of all supermarket foods are genetically engineer modified in some way and while this fact alone should be enough to make you think twice about what you buy your local food store it gets worse the united states does not require labeling of genetically modified foods so you really have no idea where you're buying something natural or vegetables filled with fish genes and that's how biotech and agribusiness companies want to keep it but a new grassroots campaign is underway with hopes of toppling the big biotech bullies and out in genetics or modified foods so if you think that you can't control whether or not you eat inadequate modified foods maybe everything you know is wrong joining me is a lot alexis bodden mayor. baden baden man they've been there i lived in germany

for years so the political director of the organic consumers association alexis welcome so i kind of default to german for months years how long has have agribusiness giants like monsanto been basically. in charge of whether or not we can know what they're doing. and you know anybody who's eighteen years old they've been living with this food unlabeled in their diet for since one thousand nine hundred since birth yeah thanks breasts we have our first generation of people raised. label genetically engineered. while we also have a we also have a bit obesity crisis in the states we also have an explosion of autism among people in that cohort. and my connecting dots the only crazy conspiracy theorist would or not at all and these are the issues that need to be studied certainly was a child with cancer together i mean i have an eight year old girl i'm very

interested in the issue of premature puberty you know and and we know that there's a connection between cows that are given growth hormone that make them over produce milk and the types of hormones that are in the children who have premature puberty but it's never been studied so that's what that's what we're being kept and kept away from the knowledge about what is happening with our food supply so tell me what's happening in california you know well over running the california right to know campaign we're going to put this issue on the ballot it has been unfortunately in american democracy with companies like monsanto being able to give so many campaign contributions spend so much money on marketing and lobbying we have not been successful in the legislatures even though this cause to have genetically engineered foods labeled house and support out of of nine out of ten americans and yet you know it could be one hundred percent it doesn't seem like we're getting anywhere with the legislature is we're not getting anywhere with the presidential

administration so we're taking our cause to the voters and we think with nine out of ten support at the polls we should be able to win the you know there are other countries where it is not just legal to label g.m.o. foods but illegal not to operate i mean almost of the industrialized world. just about how we're all here and europe everywhere you know why and what's their experience been well i think consumers now in europe and other parts of the world where to that if the engineered foods are labeled consumers actually know what they're eating they ask questions about what the health the facts could be and their government actually have to investigate and regulate genetically engineered foods i spoke a little bit about bovine growth hormone which is the very first g.m.o. the entered the u.s. food supply no other industrialized country except that they saw their research that this might increase cancer rates this would make

a lot of people to it less nutritious than normal not they saw that research which came from months out of the company who made the product and they said that's enough for us we're not interested in this product in the united states that went on with it on our show are they stuff. well. it's incredible the the. what can we do ahead of the california showdown and perhaps most importantly it seems like at the federal level let me back up a little bit i lived in vermont a decade ago and ben and jerry's you know the ice cream company was in vermont and they came out with a label on their packs and said contains no b g h or competent bovine farmer got huge and they got squashed like a bug for them i mean you know the issue so you know the story you know the u.s.d.a. i think was came down on them and said no you can't say it's not there because that will cause people to worry about everything else and apparently monsanto was behind this eventually they were able to change their labeling practices but it's like it

is so weird here in the united states. beyond california national plans oh absolutely there were eighteen states that introduced laws to label genetically engineered foods most of the state campaigns were amazingly successful we had hundreds of activists showing up at public hearings and the only reason that these laws didn't pass is because most of them weren't brought to a vote very few of them were even brought to votes in committee monsanto is a step ahead of us they have said what do you think you know i mean it's it doesn't seem like a lot of money but if they get five hundred dollars to the party chairs and then the rules committee of the people who decide which which bills get voted on and they do that over a number of years the legislators know who their friends are let's hope this time people power can trump money power like oh thank you tom thanks for the great work you're doing here now everything you know about stopping genetically modified foods

from taking over your food store right. coming up since one nine hundred sixty the obesity rate in america has tripled and one man is largely to blame for that epidemic i'll tell you who he is and how he's created a nation of overweight americans and i still eat or. just put a picture of me when i was like nine years old and just you know the truth. i have a confession i am a total get a friend that i was grabbing hip hop music and for. that it was kind of a yesterday. i'm very proud of the world without its 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 that everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harvey welcome to the big picture.

now a quick update on a story we've been covering out of florida were governor rick scott just can't catch a break as he carries on his crusade to examine every floridians bodily fluids last week a u.s. district judge out of miami ruled the governor scott's executive order forcing eighty five thousand state workers to subject themselves to a drug test violates the fourth amendment the constitution scott forced welfare recipients to take drug test too until that law was halted by a federal court as well but not before it was discovered that florida wasted a few hundred thousand dollars on the tests since only two percent of welfare population in florida tested positive for drugs which is well below the national

average so once again conservatives claim to hate big government except when it applies to what people are doing in their bedrooms or in their bodies and you just can't make this stuff up. just. it's the good the bad in the very very odd mood to essentially ugly the good. the f.c.c. the federal communications commission voted friday to rid wire broadcasters to post information on an f.c.c. on line database about who bought or attempted to buy political ads and how much they paid for it always do policy doesn't ensure full transparency when it comes to independent political ads it is a step in the right direction right now thanks to citizens united secret donors are

throwing millions of dollars in american politics destroying the power of we the people along with repealing citizens united we need to restore transparency to our government and this move by the f.c.c. is a good start. the bad fox news thursday and friday fox so-called news eerily promoted a new attack ad calling president obama a celebrity president and nothing new for fox news right now the ad was put out by american crossroads and super pac backed by karl rove who just so happens to be a political analyst who was paid by fox news now most networks would realise that this is a conflict of interest not fox news less than twenty four hours talking heads raved about the group and devastating ad nearly a dozen times it was also promoted heavily on the fox nation website we've come to expect fox so-called news to cross the lines of media ethics this is really taking

two. and a very very ugly e.j. dominic dieter last week dieter a popular d.j. and radio personality cleveland suggested that rape was a good way to turn a lesbian straight in email a listener told dieter that he suspected his daughter was a lesbian after a disco to discover her kissing another girl on air responded saying and should get one of your friends to screw your daughter straight and such an appalling eight full statement speaks for itself is kind of anti-gay hate speech has no place on america's airwaves or even in our society it is merely a field of. our first comments and i comes from lily and perth australia she had this take on

capitalism and democracy. over here in western australia and i love the show after following the g.o.p. race it's become more obvious to me that in australia we have the same problem the mining magnates buying into our political system. and into our media before which is the lobbying groups now the billionaires themselves who want to do this sort of capitalism a democracy can live together in harmony or does human greed always win at the end of the day it's the only reason i can think of for why people vote to allow these kinds of people more power well i agree you know thomas jefferson once said i depend on the people i do not look to the rich for our salvation as a nation now he came around and said he also talked about how taxes should increase exponentially i believe that or geometrically want to one word of the other as income goes up i personally believe that one of the greatest threats to democracy

is excessive i mean massively excessive concentrated wealth when that wealth is directed at manipulating the democratic process to make even more wealth or for any purpose frankly and we should do something about that and that means breaking up or . just disassembling the supreme court citizens united decision and saying no corporations are not persons and no money is not speech it's property. the next comment of the night comes from daryl who post on the tom hartman facebook page had this question on the credibility of the media love the show i'm a daily listener question and being interviewed by reporters political figures make wellknown statements which are not true why doesn't anyone follow up with something like justify your statement with facts or just ask about opposing views why let him get away with these statements we all would like for them to explain their statements in detail never never does this happen if not challenge what they say remains factual well here's the really simple answer i'm assuming that what you're

talking about is not this show where i actually do challenge people but things like you know the sunday morning talk shows the network shows the evening news shows what you will see is first of all those shows if high profile politicians would not go on those shows those shows wouldn't exist and go out of business so basically they let these people come on and say any kind of lie they want because they know that if they call them on it they're going to they're going to start refusing to come on and then they won't have a show anymore it's a really sad commentary on the nature of infotainment in america our final comment of the night comes from andy who had this comment about alec alec can disband tomorrow it'll just reappear under a different name with the same players doing the same things and the heat will be on in the cycle will repeat. given the current environment and this current supreme court decision that corporations are people and money is speech you're probably right and that's why we have to get at the root rather than just the branches of

the leaves of this of this problem to to. torture a metaphor and the root of the problem is the supreme court having come up with this doctrine that no legislature has ever proposed no president has ever said anything about other than speaking against it which is this doctrine that corporations have rights under our constitution and that money whether it's corporate money or whether it's billionaire money or whether it's ahmadinejad's money that money is the same thing as speech in american politics it's not it's wrong it's a completely court in vented doctrine and it needs to be done away with and that's why you need to go to move to amend dot org and sign up to participate in passing a constitutional amendment on do it that's it for my take your take tonight if you like your comments and questions heard on the segment of big picture. we want to know your to send us your comments by visiting the tom hartman facebook page via twitter at tom underscore her or in the chat room on the message boards or through

the blog at tom hartman dot com you can also leave a message on our rant line at two to three six fifty three zero six agree disagree sound off it's all welcome but remember that your comments may be used on the air. so what does this guy have to do with the american obesity an epidemic a lot actually. today the number of americans who are obese has tripled since one thousand nine hundred eighty and the campaign to end obesity is out with a new report showing the staggering economic costs of dealing with an increasingly more obese american population for example obesity and the health risks associated with it add over one hundred ninety billion dollars a year extra to the nation's medical tap it also drives down worker productivity as

the very obese tend to miss work more often they're costing employers on average thirty billion dollars a year not only that as a result of having to transport more weight cars in america are burning an extra billion gallons of gasoline every single year so clearly this is a pretty serious problem affecting all sectors of our economy not to mention the human beings so where does reagan fit in here well first we have to look at some research done by kate pickett and richard wilson wilkinson at the equality trust in the u.s. in the u.k. for decades pickett and wilson studied the connection between social ills things like crime drug abuse teen pregnancy obesity and wealth inequality levels in developed nations what they found is that the more on equal a nation is the greater the gulf between the rich and the poor then the more social ills that nation happens as you see in this chart it out of states leads

the developed world in social ills and is one of the most unequal nations. in the developed world and incredibly we're one of the one of those unequal nations even among developing nations and looking specifically at obesity guess which nations top the list is the most obese. the united states if you see there's a direct connection between wealth inequality and obesity healthier foods tend to be more expensive and when cash strapped working americans have to make choices between putting gas the car here in their kids' health insurance coverage or spending a little extra on healthier foods which when you think they skip all too often they buy cheaper less healthy fast food just to get by which brings us back to reagan the man primarily responsible for the massive wealth inequality in the united

states the day thanks to the reagan tax cuts which dropped the top income tax rate on the romney super rich in america from seventy four percent down to twenty eight percent eighty percent of all new wealth created in america since reagan is gone just to the top one percent wealthiest americans before reagan's tax cuts all classes in the american economy saw their incomes increase together our whole nation grew together during the new deal era all the way through the eight thousand nine hundred seventy s. with the lower classes actually seen their incomes grow at faster rates than the rich but after the reagan tax cuts only the top twenty percent saw any kind of cysts substantial increase in their incomes or the bottom twenty percent actually saw declines in their homes thanks to the reagan tax cuts and similar tax breaks for the romney super rich since largely since one thousand nine hundred since reagan came into office the united states now has wealth inequality levels that the

last time we saw them that were this bad literally was the year nine hundred twenty nine the year everything crashed and we fell into the republican great depression and as the equality trust in the u.k. discovered wealth inequality like we have in the united states today and social ills like obesity go hand in hand. this is really important to remember as doctors researchers and politicians throw around ideas to fight the obesity epidemic there are a number of things we can do such as investing in wellness programs taxing harmful harmful foods banning high fructose corn syrup all of those can do some good to fight off obesity but we won't be able to even begin to tackle this problem until we roll back the reagan tax cuts and attack the underlying cause of obesity in america wealth inequality make the romney rich pay their fair share in america give working people the means to eat healthier in america again and you'll see our nation slim down in the meantime let's make that goes to ronald reagan do some

jumping jacks as if for the big picture tonight don't forget democracy begins with you get out there and get active tag your it. hasn't been anything yet on t.v. . it is to get the maximum political impact. before the source material is what helps keep journalism we. we want to present. something else.

he is easy to. download the official t. application to go on the phone or i pod touch from the i choose ops to. launch all she lives on the go. video on demand.