i'm laurie meister. welcome back to the big picture i'm tom hartman coming up in this half hour by twenty thirty nearly half of our nation will be obese so what's driving this epidemic how do we stop of the four america becomes the land of diabetes and filling up the gas tank can be pretty painful to most americans struggling in this economy what if i told you as much as fourteen dollars a gas in that tank yours is courtesy of corruption in washington d.c. investigative reporter lisa joins me later to explain this good and corruption tax that we're all paying and finally why is fox so-called news supporting the

christian taliban an answer coming up in tonight's daily take. in the best the rest of the news today the number of americans who are obese has tripled since one nine hundred sixty and a new study the warns that by twenty thirty forty two percent of all americans nearly half the country will be obese also by then one in ten americans will be severely obese meaning there are more than one hundred pounds above a healthy weight a recent report by the campaign to end obesity shows 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 to the nation's medical tab also drives down worker productivity as the very obese tend to miss work more often and are costing employers on average thirty

billion dollars a year not only that as a result of having to transport more weight cars in america burning an extra billion gallons of gasoline every single year over what it would have been a nine hundred sixty. so clearly this is a serious problem affecting all sectors of our economy but if only our nation can get ahold of this problem now we could save an enormous amount of money in the future and lives according the center for disease control of obesity rates stay flat at two thousand and ten levels and our nation could save more than a half trillion dollars and medical costs from now until twenty thirty but to do that we're going to have to understand exactly what it is that's driving this obesity epidemic in the united states air to help us do that as frank melly producer of the weekly free speech t.v. program meet the farmer frank welcome thank you you know a lot of reasons for the surging obesity rate have been kicked around from wealth inequality to farm subsidies the proliferation of fast food restaurants high

fructose corn syrup genetically modified foods what do you think is causing this. i think the biggest cause is the disconnect. and we need to reconnect that disconnect and i'm talking about how children you know don't know that string beans don't grow in cans. i mean. they don't have a they don't have a clue after eighty seven episodes of meet the farmer t.v. let me tell you i learned a lot and it's been such a blast wonderful thing if we could just get kids growing up to made a little little plant in their home a lot of a lot of schoolteachers are and they're doing some good stuff there's a lot of school to farm farm to school programs but the real way to reconnect our kids if you get kids help and to grow ok what is anything a vegetable of lettuce tomato something and you get them helping to cook it you get them you reconnect where it's such a big disconnect that's what i'm talking about they'll eat anything it's amazing

delete delete delete the the things you would think eat. you know. because you've reconnected them and that is a huge huge you know you really need some radical education and i see it here and there and it's going to take time yeah but you know we could do a lot more and i think that's one of the biggest reasons right there just you know helping to reconnect through education through you know hands on community gardens you know if you can get children in your community to get involved in a community garden help grow something help bring it home teach them how to cook something i mean that's a good place but frank you've got an entire and massive industry that is hugely investing in keeping that separation there in causing kids to think that string beans come from delmonte cans rather than from the ground in causing them to

think that hamburger. come from mcdonald's not from a cow you know phil and. carry the metaphor as far as you want. how do we push back against this commodification of our food supply that has that has turned food from an essential that we use to fuel our bodies and keep alive into a brand logo on a product that is sold particularly to our children and particularly you know a product that is packed that is packaged and and processed in ways that are not even good for the kids. that's a great question. and i hope i have a great advance of for you but what would we need you know a mass media. you know we would need a main street marketing system that does not exist as opposed to madison avenue

marketing which is what part of what you were talking about you know what the branding and what not and i so appreciate that very much you know i've had the opportunity to work with children and teach them you know what that really means you know teach them media literacy you know when you it's only like your packages i'm sorry yeah yeah yeah good point you know so so you know if we could teach kids you know that this so much subversion in advertising you know like the wacky packages we were growing up you know stickers they got rid of those you know but now you have like adbusters with the spoof ads that they do that's what i'm talking about the madison avenue market and we need to see more joe chemo joe camel which was you are getting the children then they the they did a spoof ad they showed joke camel with joe chemo because you got kerry or the jew or the you know so and so if we could frank frank we just have a minute left here you've worked with first lady michelle obama on this issue what

solutions are you working on is she working and what do you see on the horizon in this this minute we have left. sure the connection that she's doing with education is huge. i mentioned that early about a repeat at the farm to school and school to farm with actually bring in some kids to the farm and bring in farmers to the schools that education it has to start you know it's like we've got to let this whole generation die off and let the new kids come up you know i'm going to be at the rio earth summit you know we're all going to be working together you and i i don't know if you produces yet if you're off on that or not yeah but that's really exciting i just want to plug that you know and i'm working with some great people and there are all the heads of states are there and no one's doing anything i'm doing something i'm going to i want to dialogue i want to continue this conversation on a future episode and if you and we will do it we will absolutely do it frank melly thanks so much for writing it is that go ahead thanks much one way to look at how

our food is doing incredible damage to our national health is to look at the effect of drugs is here's the bigger picture let me extend this metaphor drugs become dangerous when they become concentrated coca leaves for example or no big deal i was down in south america was mad regional people i chewed some coca leaves like strong coffee but when you turn into cocaine then you have a problem you've got a seriously dangerous drug similarly opium poppies make a gentle tea but heroin refined and distilled from opium will kick your ass food in its natural state is good for us we're frankly just talking about fruits and vegetables take them out the farm say that this is a real food but when you're refined it into a concentrate. they you never find in nature it's no longer food it's essentially a drug from high fructose corn syrup to highly processed breads and means to vegetables turned into something hardly distinguishable from the original instead

it's a t.v. dinner they're addicted if they have negative health consequences and because big food companies can take the bruised and damaged fruits and vegetables and put them into processed foods or the range of fish and fish sticks or the pink slime into our burgers or fast food and processed food is cheaper than the high cost of picking carefully handling transporting and displaying actual fresh vegetables and fruits your local store is there for people end up living in food deserts where it's hard to get good fresh food and everything is super process and the result of that is an epidemic of obesity and the problems that come with diabetes heart disease at the top of the list not to mention the cancers that come from the food additives and processes used to make processed foods so the next time you drive by a fast food place just imagine that it's actually a crack house selling drugs because it essentially is. just. the.

it's the good the bad in the very very lax use. her only ugly they're good to know all city council with that old california city council adopted an ordinance this week banning the sale of firearms and ammunition from all businesses prior to the council's decision it's been a huge debate the city about going to rights however gun control activists flooded public hearings on the issue which ultimately influenced city council members the way it's supposed to work across the country cities and communities are plagued by needless gun violence that could be prevented if lawmakers simply stood up to gun rights in quotes organizations like the n.r.a. and large gun sellers like wal-mart it's time the communities all across america followed in the halls footsteps the bad south carolina indiana and colorado according to a new report by the center for public integrity lawmakers in all three of these states have exempted alec the corporate lobbyist front group american life

legislative exchange council from state lobbying registration in disclosure laws that means in all three states alec can spend millions of dollars pushing corporate friendly pieces of legislation without ever having to reveal how much they've spent . alec is responsible for everything from voter suppression and environment laws to the now infamous shoot first laws bottom line alec is destroying america and legislators in indiana colorado and south carolina are letting it happen with no question no questions asked. and the very very ugly house majority whip kevin mccarthy yesterday republicans in the house pushed ahead bills that prevent any cuts in military spending but cut over two hundred sixty billion dollars from programs like food stamps medicaid and other social services a mccarthy was on fox news last night when asked about the cuts to the programs he had this to say. and he writes i mean these pensions and many some of the countrymen just you know there are there's money sitting in our government there's

some that you know we go there some are the family i did you know some of these cuts we had i mean that's not the fact is incredible then you would support what we're doing that you would have committed by committee. what representative mccarthy calls trimming out the congressional budget office calls literally pushing one point eight million people off food stamps which would cost two hundred eighty thousand children their school lunch subsidies and three hundred thousand children their health insurance. so by trimming the represented because his republican colleagues are endangering the lives of thousands of our nation's children and that is very clear ugh. after the break a pastor goes on hinged about women's rights to vote and while most americans would write the guy off as a crackpot boxer golders calls him a contributor to explain why that was deleted.

the line of american power continues. things in our country are so bad that might actually be time for a revolution. and it turns out that a procurer drink at starbucks has a surprising him greedy year old. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything is ok. i'm

charging welcome is a big issue. here even when i was growing. up in the alona so we'll get the real headlines with none of them are the problem with the mainstream media today is that they're completely disconnected from the viewers and what actually matters to those viewers and so that's why young people just don't watch t.v. anymore if they want news they go online and read it but we're trying to take those stories that people actually care about and transfer them back to t.v. . thanks.

to the capital account i'm learning mr. americans are getting hit pretty hard at the gas pump that is average national gas prices a hair above three seventy five a gallon which could rack up pretty quickly if you're a working parent who has to drive some distance to and from work but here's the worst part high gas prices today have virtually nothing to do was supply and demand and very little to do with instability in the middle east instead it has to do with corruption it has to do with the slew of lobbyists who are working on behalf of wall street to shoot down regulations that would have otherwise curbed oil speculation our children a commissioner with the commodities futures trading commission so that as much as fourteen dollars of the cost of every tank of gas that you buy is a result of oil speculators driving the price up for their own gain that comes out

to a seven hundred fifty dollars a year tax on all american drivers with the money going directly to the wall street banks. leave fong joins me now live from san francisco bay leaf good to see you again good to see some very great thank you first can you briefly explain what oil speculation is now moving the price of oil. well speculators usually wealthy investors and shoot funds hedge funds and that sort of thing will buy up contracts for the delivery of oil now unlike bonafide hedgers like commercial airlines and that and the like these speculators have no interest in the actual delivery of oil instead they will roll over these contracts over and over again to boost the price so they can then sell them and make a tidy profit and pay and i saw a report today that u.s.

oil stocks inventory is at the same level it was twenty one years ago it's of a twenty one year high right now which would not certainly justify high gasoline prices if anything it should mean that the gasoline prices are lower than they were over the last half a decade or so in your recent republic report article you know how as much as fourteen dollars out of the total of every tank of gas is the result of corruption how does that play into that disconnect from supply and demand how do you explain all. well starting twenty years ago our government began deregulating the commodity speculation market at first taking off some of the caps later removing some transparency and then eventually with the infamous enron loophole moving this entire market on to private unregulated exchanges these exchanges do not have any checks and balances the government doesn't even have

a full view of what's going on and the problem of oil speculation excessive oil speculation by these. parties like hedge funds and pension funds has gone completely unchecked and driven up the price of oil for many years now and every attempt to try to write delay these oil speculators keeps getting smacked down because the spoiled speculators are very powerful political players hiring many lobbyists hiring law firms and of course keeping many politicians in their pocket ms lee in the in the minute we have left n.b.c. is just now calling the indiana race dick lugar the the longtime senator has lost can you tell me about who is behind the effort to unseat him what's going on there well this loss if you look at every other news program is going to be touted as a victory for the tea party but i would caution viewers to look the between the

lines bank lobbyist were very upset at senator lugar for voting against them last year in a big pivotal vote so this is actually a clash of interest groups bank lobbyists poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into attackers and into dick lugar's opponent and we're seeing the ramifications of that night and night spoke amazing so it's no longer candidates going against each other it's supporting. you know industries going against each other in the candidates are really the proxies. it's basically a proxy fight between big box retailers who supported lugar and the big banks who supported moredock. markable thanks so much for being with us today thank you tom and for the great reporting you guys are doing unfortunately for americans who can't afford these inflated gas prices at the top republican financial watchdog in congress congressman spencer baucus believes that his job is not to regulate the banks but instead to quote him regulators are there to serve the banks those are

his words so if americans are looking for help from wall street predators the republican party is not the place to go. the robber and jesse lee peterson someone who's not a big fan of women or any of the progress women have made in america in the last century in fact reverend peterson things giving women the right to vote was one of the greatest mistakes this nation has ever made i think that. one of the greatest mistakes that america me with women the opportunity to vote we should never turn it over to women and these women have voted in the wrong people they have voted him people who will who agrees with them who can take down

his pathway of destruction and this is how evil is coming in is coming through the woman that's pretty hateful in massaging istic but notice how no one in his congregation spoke up no one protested what they were hearing. you know there's always been a streak of massaging in america especially religious america after all in their view eve was you know committed the first sin at the apple so it shouldn't surprise us that there's a pastor in america giving a speech like this there's a room full of people in full support of that happens but what would surprise me is of a national news organization like for example fox so-called news gave reverend peterson a platform to speak to his anti-woman message or a fox so-called news say hired reverend peterson actually gave him money to be a contributor to the television news programs now that would surprise me and i don't

agree great american power panel he is the founder president of the group bond action brotherhood organization for new destiny which i'm a board member or just really peterson is here that's right reverend peterson most americans would call a massage honest and who i call a member of the christian taliban is called a contributor by fox so called news and notes here how sean hannity the face of fox so called news refuses to condemn reverend peterson's faithful remarks toward women most people most americans know to normal women on destroying today and the women they hate men they hate going on what i would tell them to talk about the guys i gave you every up and you as a good many other i didn't i mean i do you want to bring this up to not one of the topics that i plan on using to hijack the show i didn't ask about i don't know i reason why hannity the reason the reason why hannity doesn't go after every peterson is simple fox is the mouthpiece of the republican party

a party that is currently waging a war on women that takes many different forms one form of supporting lawmakers who want to end women's access to contraceptives. another form is to enter a venture out of health programs like planned parenthood or jump to the defense of shock jocks like rush limbaugh who call women sluts and giving air time to a christian taliban pastor who thinks we should repeal the nineteenth amendment just like with homophobes and islamophobia republicans have to appeal to massaging this as well in order to expand their party base how else can they get joe afraid of women sixpack to vote republican if joe knew that the only real agenda the republican party is to look out for the top one percent so fox so called news gives a platform to christian taliban reverend peterson and sean hannity bites his tongue that's business as usual over g.o.p. t.v.

but lost in this whole mess is how much better the it that it states would be if we actually gave women even more power compared to what they have now rather than less power for example in the iroquois confederacy upon which our founding fathers model our democracy women enjoyed freedom and a lot of power the result was a federation a nation the pretty much had no war they literally played weeklong games of lacrosse to resolve conflicts was a painting over the national gallery here in d.c. and that provided a very high quality of life for all the members of the community as ben franklin noted in the seventeen fifty one letter to james parker it would be a strange thing if six nations of ignorant savages should be capable of forming a scheme for such a union and be able to execute it in such a manner as that it has subsisted ages and appears in dissolvable and yet

that alike union should be impracticable for ten or a dozen english colonies. what franklin knew but didn't mention was the iroquois confederacy in the iroquois confederacy only women could vote at least in five of the six year quotations he and the other founders thought that must have been a mistake they didn't actually realize how important was the iroquois confederacy living for centuries in a state of peace that women were running the running the program iroquois women on land they were largely responsible for shaping the communities social economic and spiritual direction and while this softens the tribal elders who travelled from nation to nation were normally men they were nominated to office and held to account by the women compared to their colonial power counterparts iroquois women enjoyed far more freedoms and far more power but america today has lost its roots

and we now ranks seventy eighth in the world in female representation in government role wanda which ranks first in the world as women making fifty three percent of its cover and women have been instrumental in rebuilding and healing that nation which lost a tenth of its population in just one hundred days of genocide back in one thousand nine hundred forty. sweden finland the netherlands norway iceland denmark spain germany canada the u.k. and the list goes on and on of nations that have more female representation in government and the better results than the united states when it comes to health care wealth inequality poverty reduction and overall life satisfaction a recent study out of university oregon found that nations with more women in government even have lower carbon dioxide emissions another study out of the world bag found that the higher the levels of female participation in government the lower levels of corruption are so rather than trying to repeal the one thousand of

the men we should be looking into ways to give women even more power in our government and instead of dropping bombs on backward countries where women are forced into burkas and not allowed to learn to read we should be building schools and dropping pallets of books educating and politically empowering women both here in the united states and around the world is the key to stabilizing our population growth to produce in a more egalitarian world and to probity and to promoting peace and well most americans are horrified by a hateful preacher saying it was a mistake for women to get the vote and then whine about it on national t.v. by trying to rewrite his own words as only want to disenfranchise liberal women it's really a sad commentary on our times that any cable network would keep giving this guy a platform to spew his hate with no serious pushback. that's it for the big picture tonight for more information to see any segment of our show check out our web site at top arbonne dot com and don't forget democracy begins with you when you show up when you participate get up get out there get active tag your it occupies

a little suitable. wealthy british style. that's not on the title.

markets why not come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with max concert for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into kinds a report on r g. g. h.