for a shelter room today. well and some are going to washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture. a new plan revealed today funded by one single billionaire i came up with one way conservatives are considering to topple president obama what exactly is that plan who's behind it and how could it affect president obama's campaign strategy leading up to november also as greeks withdraw their money from the banks and the spanish under a second recession republicans in congress are still applauding austerity let's see austerity and again when will world leaders finally realize austerity is not the way to rebuild an economy and republicans in congress are trying to take away the

rights of women and silence them while they do it what happened to a prominent u.s. representative yesterday what does that say about the rights war on women. you need to know this this week in nebraska there was a nail biter of a race for the republican u.s. senate nomination to go up against democrat and former senator bob kerrey everybody assumed that one of the two big name men running for a chance to take on kerry would easily beat the tea party woman dead fish or particularly since between the two of them the minute sewn up a door spins from koch brothers funded club for growth multimillionaire dick armey is freedom works and even kingmaker and multimillionaire senator jim de mint's senate conservatives fund it's what they didn't figure on was the power of the supreme court has given individual billionaires like the founder of t.d.

ameritrade joe ricketts to walk into a race at the last minute and drop enough speech excuse me cash. to buy tons of t.v. time and blow up favorite candidate and put his own favorite into the big run for the pivotal senate seat that is exactly what joe ricketts did with a pile of money at the last minute ricketts flooded the airwaves in nebraska and move dead fisher from being an obscure hard right candidate that nobody took seriously to be seen both of the more established hard right candidates that have been supported by other millionaires and billionaires and now the plan to drop last minute cash on a low blow was presented to billionaire joe ricketts as part of a similar strategy to destroy president obama's reelection chances documents leaked to a new york times reporter show a fancy expensive full color glossy presentation done by a hot shot advertising a p.r. firm titled the defeat of baraki hussein obama the ricketts plan to end his spending

for good what is a plan to swith both the president using clips of old jeremiah wright speeches in comments the plan itself says according to new york times the world is about to see jeremiah wright and understand his influence on barack obama for the first time in a big attention arresting way and that the front man for the new swift boat organization should be quote an extremely literate conservative african-american who can the times says argue that mr obama misled the nation by presenting himself as what the proposal calls a metro sexual black aide lincoln and of quote when in fact the rickets plan suggests obama may actually be an advocate an advocate of black liberation theology the fact that ninety nine percent of white people have no idea what black liberation theology is actually works to the benefit of the rickets plan because all three words like liberation theology when applied to a presidential candidate sounds scary that very large subset of frightened white

people who have kept the south republican ever since l.b.j. signed the civil rights act and the voting rights act. this troubling plan funded by one the single guy with romney level riches is troubling for two reasons the first is that because of the supreme court's citizens united decision it signals that were officially an oligarchy the proof one rich guy flipped an election in nebraska and now thinks he can do the same for the presidential election and he may well be right the second issue this raises is one of the politics of religion jack kennedy was a catholic but richard nixon and his advocates as corrupt as they were thought using religious fear bigotry against him was a bridge too far even though in the one nine hundred sixty s. and even today there were and are millions of fundamentalist protestants who don't consider catholicism or christian as christianity and who mistrust the pope big similarly democratic strategist of explicitly said that they're not going after

mitt romney's affiliation with the mormon church or the fact that his grandfather and great grandfather were polygamists who left this country to be able to have multiple wives down to mexico where his father was born so if joe ricketts goes against obama's religious background in a big way does that open up the door for independent groups who oppose romney to go after his mormonism and some of the beliefs and practices of that church that mainline american christians may find weird or objectionable even though this afternoon joe ricketts came out and said in response to an inquiry from the obama campaign that he is not going to pay for jeremiah wright ads my bet is that someone among the republicans will go glee probably karl rove who is going to spend three hundred million dollars this year attacking obama's character using reverend wright as rickets advisors proposed and that it will damage obama just like the swift boat attacks on john kerry's character probably lost in the two thousand and four election. and i'll bet that the democrats won't go ugly against romney's mormonism

both out of a concern that it's an unfair attack but also because the mormon church unlike a small fraternity of swift boat commanders the mormon church is a very very rich and powerful institution that has already shown he can flip it election result numerous states most visibly with proposition eight in california on the other hand there will be massive amounts of mormon money thrown into this election particularly given that many mormons believe that one of their own is destined by joseph smith's prophecies to become president of the united states and this is their big chance religion and big money two of the most toxic elements of american politics are certain to create a firestorm against president obama question is whether they'll also sin candidate romney in either the process or the blowback this battle against democracy being waged by the very richest people and institutions in america and karl rove is getting really interesting terrible for the nation terrible for democracy but it

really interesting joining me now for more on this story and what we can expect over the next six months until november is richard follower rest of strategist and host of the richard follower radio program richard welcome tom good to see you great to have you back with us one billionaire just bought a g.o.p. senate candidate nebraska can he possibly buy a presidency you know. tom i think what it really boils down to is the really got to take corporate dollars a millionaire money out of our elect all of our politics and that's really what it boils down to the fact that these guys are going to go this far for a win it just blows my mind i got to tell you well and mitt romney is as i have come out repudiated attacking obama this way. is there a downside to swift boating like this well you know i think there's a couple down sides the swift boating only do i think sometimes when you go too negative it could you know it could work it worked. opposite direction for you and

on top of that you know i think the other problem that what this boils down to is only after what happened with the trayvon situation and that we know all the racial issues that our country are i think that a fault line doing something like this can really catapult negatively for the republican party because they could be considered the party of racists even though better than they already. i mean. i'm serious tone don't most people who are sensitive to those issues i mean if racism has worked for the republican party and nixon southern strategy was explicitly racist the and in the in the one nine hundred eighty election i mean this was a generation after the civil rights act was signed the very first speech that ronald reagan gave after he was nominated to be present the united states by his party his first public speech as the official candidate his party was it was down in philadelphia mississippi the town where three civil rights workers were the seven thousand people three civil rights workers were murdered any talked about states' rights i think you'll get me wrong i think you're right tom but i think what it does do is the galvanizes progressives galvanize african-americans it

galvanises caucasian progressives to say we're going to take a stand and repudiate this type of rhetoric in our election i think what it does the good news for the good news for us here is them putting out this ad we believe people talk about the apathy that's going to happen in the democratic party if they want to keep democrat the democrats apathetic the nation put this ad out is that out in force democrats to go to the polls and vote for the president and in fact there's one theory that the reason the new york times got this story and publish it today the reason was leaks to them is that it was leaked by a republican who looked at this proposal and said this will be toxic to the republican party this will help obama comes out we shouldn't do it so let's blow it up right now because there's a bunch of republican strategists who thought it was just a great idea and now it has been blown up i don't want to happen what do you think you think it's possible that was the scenario i mean that could have been the scenario but at the end of the day i think the jury still out will have to see these ads go live and what happens in these ads do go live and where they go as well i mean that's going to be what media markets. are they really had what's his

name. rickets joe ricketts has come out and said he's not going to fund them so right now for the moment they're on hold right through i think finally they have some i guess some more ality the they've had this you know this they've woken up and like hillary clinton say that if the skies opened up and the more reality rained down from heaven and they finally realize that this is not how you win election you win election on the issues and the truth of the matter is it's all a smokescreen to the fact that mitt romney is horrible on the issues mitt romney wants eight more years of george w. bush policies he's you put out no clue where he's going to prompt the economy and on top of that he's the founder of obamacare so they have to put they have all this going against them and so they have to find a smokescreen in order for them to win does you know if. my assumption is if this kind of an ad comes out it'll probably be the very end of september or october rather just before the election so it'll be difficult to respond to and it sounds like the kind of thing that karl rove would do if he's going to do something i mean you know in four years ago they pulled bill ayers out of the last minute. but isn't

there a possibility that if this ad is run early enough or if this topic comes up early enough that that puts mitt romney's mormonism on the table and and you know the some of the the widely held notion in them in the mormon church that that. the president of the united states is you know that a mormon will become president when the constitution is hanging by a thread this is listen i think you're completely right i think mormonism is just as toxic as you know. as you know this you know the people who follow the africa african-american this cult african-american recent you that you mentioned previous i think it's just as toxic as that and so you put this ad out if you open up the floodgates for progressive to say we're going to run an ad against mitt romney because he's a mormon and we one thing that we all know is in the states that matter like virginia north carolina michigan all these battleground states ohio florida religion is important and the fact reminding republicans reminding independents

that mitt romney is a mormon could cost them this election we're not going to go down that path naturally because we want to run on the issues and the president has a lot to run on without criticizing romney's religion but in the day i think if they force the program if they force democrats hands democrats nothing to do you can show to a gunfight with a knife there you go richard thanks for joining us thanks to citizens united millionaires and billionaires like rove the coax and romney can now speak much louder than average voters biggest question the minds of many americans as we approach this november is quite simply the american democracy survive karl rove's on slaughter of corrupt core corporate foreign and billionaire cash time will tell . after the break is greeks run to the bank to pull out your o's in preparation for an economic meltdown republicans in the us are still pushing austerity economic policies what does austerity have left in store for the u.s. in europe and how do we stop this economy destroyer.

of american power continue. things in our country. might actually be time for a revolution. and it turns out that a procurer drinker starbucks has a surprising. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so. you think you understand it and then. some other part of it and realize that everything. is a big issue. here

when you. look into the loan itself they'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 in t.v. .

not the capital account because i'm learning mr. payen screwed news as greeks run to the bank to pull out your o's in preparation for a possible bankruptcy economic meltdown and exit from the euro a nation of spain is also starting to collapse under paul ryan's style trickle down austerity new economic numbers show spain fell back into a recession in the first quarter of this year with its economy shrinking by three tenths of one percent spain has the fourth biggest economy in the eurozone but tops the list when it comes to unemployment with a staggering twenty four point four percent of the nation's workforce out of a job even though austerity is clearly not working the spanish government remains committed to lowering deficit through severe budget cuts and elimination of pieces of the social safety net it's a greece is in freefall right now but spain will almost certainly be next meanwhile

in the united states young people are getting screwed a new study by the economic policy institute found that wages for young college graduates dropped five point four percent in the last ten years after rising nineteen percent under president clinton. currently nearly half of college graduates in america are unemployed or underemployed and they are all drowning in a trillion dollars of student loan debt studies have shown that college graduates entering the job market in a stronger economy will earn far more and wages over the course of their life than graduates entering the job market during poor economic times like right now unfortunately instead of directing economic stimulus toward the next generation of leaders innovators and entrepreneurs the student loan debt relief program jobs programs or lower education costs republicans here are pushing more austerity along with a three trillion dollar tax cut for the romney level super rich so where is the sort of austerity drive in europe in the united states what's the endgame and how do we

get out of this economic death spiral joining me now is professor william black associate professor of economics and law at the university of missouri kansas city school of law professor black welcome to our program thank you let's start in europe for several years now greece has pursued austerity things have gotten progressively worse and now it looks pretty much all but certain that greece is going to leave the eurozone might we see other austerity wracked nations like spain which is now in arguably in a depression and portugal go the same way as greece. yes the austerity provisions have thrown the entire euro zone back into recession and they have thrown the periphery into great depression levels of unemployment so that unemployment over twenty percent in places like greece and in spain and unemployment if you're under the age of twenty five is over fifty percent in

ireland the sick old joke is being told again what's the leading export of ireland the irish and what role has the media played in perpetuating austerity or presenting austerity as a necessary evil. well the european media has pretty much bit in a hook line and sinker and that includes even a number of the left wing papers over time in the united states you have this weird split at the new york times where paul krugman has been explaining for years why it's insane and then you have the new york times reporters that act like austerity is the only conceivable choice. we emphasized that tina there is no alternative it is mindless

and a false and b. and immensely destructive. and yeah far more people are reading the reporter's stories than paul krugman and they just present it like ok this has to happen and maybe greece is going to back out but then there's going to be a disaster because they didn't do what has to happen that's the tina right. right they present anti facts things that are completely false as if they were facts and they do it in such an implicit way that they know the reporters may not even recognize that they're doing it. and it represents just such economic illiteracy that it makes you want to pull out your hair as someone who teaches economics so this is stuff that we've known better for seventy five years and this is stuff that we've predicted in advance would produce the disaster did produce a disaster and the answer to the disaster on these folks part is well let's cause

an even bigger disaster and here's why the other element that cure some of your reports need to be tied together with this germany's real aim is not so much austerity but a dramatic reduction in working class wages it has all kinds of within germany for this it's already done it in germany and it wants to do it throughout europe and in particular in the periphery so right now the strategy in ireland is to slash working class wages to the point you can outcompete the portuguese but the portuguese strategy is to slash wages to the point you can out compete the greeks who are doing the same thing to try to outcompete the turks we call this at the university missouri kansas city the road to bangladesh strategy where the race to

the bottom if not austerity then what. well the first thing is that you should have a sovereign currency if you're in the periphery you should not be part of the euro unless the euro is made into a true sovereign currency in which case you'd have to have a european wide debt and you'd have to have european wide fiscal systems but spite all the language from france and germany for decades about ever closer union as soon it was as it was the periphery that was in trouble that was no those were those blankety blank shiftless lazy greeks and so the austerity is also tearing the european union apart socially and politically and you cannot force people into great depression levels and have

them simply take it so we finally getting the equivalent you know folks may have noticed that in latin america there are a whole string of leaders elected because they hate the washington consensus the neo liberal economic policy of austerity well guess what the berlin consensus brought the same thing to europe and people hated every bit as much so whichever party adopts austerity is promptly removed from office in the next election how do you that they were right or left wing party how do you respond to american conservatives or republicans who say see i told you so greece is in trouble spain is in trouble prior one did only. portugal because they have two aggressive a social safety net they were too generous to their employees they had too large a bloated a public sector too much government see we told you so. well i just repeat

back fortunately in writing what the cato institute said about ireland and iceland and places like that as recently as two thousand and seven where they praised them said that they should be the model for other nations tree shea then the head of the european central bank and the guy leading the program came to ireland and said it should be the model for all of europe that it was reducing deficits and you know when you're actually running surpluses and such it's only after things blew up that this big lie started that said that the problems of the periphery were due to excessive debt in the good times there is a little bit of truth to that in terms of greece but there is no truth as to the rest of the periphery in fact it's quite the opposite so what do most. what

caused it is massive losses on pick your country if you look at ireland spain you're talking about the two largest bubbles of any developed nations in the world as a ratio to g.d.p. the irish bubble was twice as big as the u.s. residential real estate bubble and spain was nearly as large as ireland there was massive accounting fraud in both countries massive fraud in iceland as well there was a huge bubble in england. porcher gold basically is simply in a situation where all of its trading partners is major trading partners have gone into depression as you said this is not a recession anymore in greece and in spain it's a full fledged depression professor bill black thank you so much for being with us

and. thank you take care thank you austerity is ripping apart europe and it'll happen here if we the people don't start organizing against it time to stimulate the economy not shrink it. now out of this environmentalist sir again calling on president obama to uphold his campaign promise to heal the planet earlier this week over a million signatures compiled by numerous environmental groups were delivered to the white house calling on president obama to stop shell oil's plans to drill in the arctic this summer a group cite the damage the drilling could do to wildlife populations like polar bears caribou and walrus is species that are already suffering as a result of climate change another complication to drilling in the arctic is the harsh weather which could make an oil spill virtually impossible to clean up according to the center for biological diversity more than eleven billion more tons of carbon pollution will be ejected into the atmosphere if the arctic drilling moves forward our fragile ecosystem can't handle that sort of pollution earlier

this year the president gave the oil barons what they wanted the keystone x.l. pipeline that's pressure him to side with the planet this time round. crazy alert the zombie invasion has begun last month we told you about marathon runners who race through the streets of laguna province in the philippines having to dodge a horde of zombies along the way well it looks like those pesky zombies have now made their way to europe city of prague in the czech republic held its fifth annual zombie walk with nearly eight hundred people showing up to take part in a marching army of the undead people from all over the czech republic flooded the streets of prague dressed in full zombie attire some participants covered their bodies in a fake blood mixed with flour lemon and salt all others wall warfare false teeth

fake eyes one woman took the motive a bit too far sticking a syringe through her tongue just to make eating brains and feasting on a living a bit hard the zombies march throughout the city as residents and tourists watched in amazement some tourists even posed for pictures of the zombie horde at the end of the day all the zombies took part in a group photo britain's i.t.v. reports the zombies were seen partying hard into the night local bars in related news sales of a lucky mary's were right off the charts all that long. yesterday representative eleanor holmes norton was prevented from testifying to the hearing on abortion appearing which directly affects the women in her district of washington d.c. republicans are now trying to steal the rights of women and silence them at the same time what's really going on here and when will it stop.

the kleine of american power continue. things in our country. might actually be time for a revolution. and it turns out that a procurer drink at starbucks has a surprising him radio. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else some other part of it and realized everything you saw you don't know i'm sorry welcome is a big issue. here

even when i was. up in the ilona 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 for 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 in t.v. .