jail meanwhile republicans who get caught in sex scandals get off scot free and are a lot of by their colleagues what's really going on here and karl rove the mastermind behind the bush white house wants to pass the blame for america's economic mess away from george w. bush and barack obama and he's using twenty five million dollars to do it how is rove using half truths and psychological mind games to confuse the american public and how could we see straight through this. florida is at it again he minorities of the voting rolls state election officials say they're working to throw non-citizens off the voting rolls ahead of the two thousand and twelve election supervisors looking at preliminary lists have found numerous errors that could lead to legal citizens especially hispanics losing their

right to vote in the sunshine state similar effort in two thousand led to thousands of innocent african-american voters in florida getting turned away at the polls in that election republicans know the only way they can win elections is to keep americans from voting which explains the recent actions in florida in the numerous voter id laws being passed around the country this is the really the the way to run a healthy democracy stopping more and more people from voting i personally don't think so in fact i think we should be doing just the opposite bottom line is the american electoral system is broken and it needs to be fixed so that every americans vote counts and the voice of we the people is truly representative government so how do we do that joining me now to discuss voting reform in america is chris novoselic founder and bassist out of the groundbreaking alternative rock band nirvana and board chair of the organization fair vote and author of the book of growing and government lets fix this broken democracy chris welcome hi tom good to have you here with us. and you know i love your music although it's you very

much so what is fair vote and what's its mission welfare vote is the only organization in the united states advocating proportional representation the right to vote in the constitution national popular vote plan and election reforms that enfranchise voters that give voters more choices and give voters more voices so proportional representation this is all but i think either five or seven democracies in the world do it you want to explain what that is partial representation is the way to elect your representatives that's not in a single member district ok so there's a lot of misconceptions and myths about proportional representation in the united states so let's get those out of the way no proportional representation is not a parliamentarian system that's a system of government ok and there are american versions of proportional representation that are constitutionally protected that are different from say the

zero party list systems for example or an american version say cumulative voting of proportional representation is candidate based in these european systems are party based on american systems have higher thresholds you can have fifteen twenty twenty five percent threshold to get elected in a european system it could be as little as two percent well just to define terms proportional representation my understanding of it is that if your party or in the case of candidate if your if the candidate gets three percent of the vote they get three percent of the seats and in. parliament or not the united kingdom house of parliament but they have a system like ours they have single member districts with a plurality voting so basically that there's a threshold to get elected so if a candidate crosses say twenty five percent of the vote the net candidates elected ok and it allows for majority representation where illinois how the perp. portion

representation system for one hundred years so you had this dynamic where in some districts districts there were two republicans and one democrat and other districts there was one republican to democrat so it's called for representation and. what wouldn't proportional representation at national level particularly in presidential elections when they were part of them into the constitution no it wouldn't even see proportional representation would be for the united states house of representatives the united states constitution is silent on how representatives of so how do our elected it would basically we could have to decide on what kind of districts we'd want ok so in a state with that had nine seats that they send to congress we'd have three three member districts ok and then would there would be a twenty five percent threshold so if a candidate crossed that then they would win election and so there'd be a republican a democrat and then an or an independent or a third party spot a lower threshold and if you pay taxes and you're subject to the laws of the land

then you merits representation and i think we've both now another alternative is that instead of voting i really is a runoff voting is a preferential ballot it's like a lot of municipalities have a runoff where you have a first stage of election a primary one time and that's where all the candidates run against each other and then the top two vote getters go on to the general election so it takes two elections to do that so some voters if their favorite candidate was kicked off in the primary and they'd have to have a second choice in the general election while with instant runoff voting rank choice voting you do that on one ballot and that's how the. australian new australian does it with their house of representatives and also cities like san francisco and i minneapolis minnesota portland maine use it yeah the green party's got it over three hundred communities around the united states if i think that they do it for. there are internal elections as well ok and that's something that also

would not require a constitutional amendment any state could put that into place right and it depends on your state constitution but as far as the united states house is we have to decide what we want are we going to take it that these political insiders are gerrymandered every state ok so now we've gone through redistricting ok and so you have these insiders are colluding and they basically just hack up these states and they make these safe seat districts so if you ever wonder why is this election uncontested why is this election uncompetitive it's because the results are skewed before any ballot was even half right the distributor in the christian doing great work thank you keep it up as you. crist oversell are. now moving on from moving on from how we elect our politicians to how they wrought ruin or how they ruined their careers the jury in the john edwards case is now deliberating for three days without reaching

a verdict at hand is whether or not edwards is guilty of six felony counts of campaign finance violations stemming from his alleged million dollar secret payment to keep his pregnant mistress silence or at least news of its own if convicted edwards faces one and a half million dollars in fines and significantly as many as thirty years in prison and seems like a hefty price to pay for a politician who had an affair and tried to cover it up something that lots and lots of politicians are guilty of yet none has been threatened with thirty years in prison for doing member senator david vitter he committed the crime of frequenting prostitutes back in two thousand and four he was never charged with anything in fact he's still a senator he got a standing ovation from his republican colleagues in the senate when he confessed his crime so knowing that what's really going on with the edwards' trial here to offer his take is mike papen tonio attorney and host of ring of fire radio mike welcome. how are you crazy great to see it david vitter gets a standing ovation for sleeping with prostitutes and john edwards is threatened

with thirty years in prison for hiding an affair with that is going on here the ugly thing about this case this is a case that never should have gone to the jury to begin with the judge and the judge should have entered a judgment for acquittal on this from the from the very get go look the prosecution has gone forward without showing the most vital prove that we've never seen in this trial specifically that john edwards formulated plan he knowingly formulated this plan to to misuse designated campaign money to cover up the riley hunter story in fact the only time the only non non speculative the only guesswork testimony that has come into this trial the judge did not even permit for the jury to hear the guesswork has been the guesswork has been all speculation at this point but you had a witness his name was scott thomas scott thomas was there to testify after thirty seven years of working with the f.e.c. he was the commissioner of the f.e.c.

this judge never even allowed him to testify that this law is so confusing that in forty years it's never been used to prosecute anybody that's the first thing and second of all that it's so confusing that there's no way that had somebody even done their due diligence they could know whether or not this was an offense or not so john edwards finds himself in a situation where all of this is taken place the expert that should have been able to testify is precluded from testifying you have this judge that allows this highly these mountains of salacious information most of it irrelevant most of it inflammatory she has done a terrible job handling this case and you have to ask yourself this is this is not a complicated case this comes down to some very basic elements the elements or this i mean it in a nutshell first of all was the was the money campaign. money but was it supposed was it designated to be used for his personal use now that's the first question

that had to be asked that the expert in this testimony testified the jury never heard it because the judge did allowed the judge that this expert said it would it would be very difficult to make a determination that this was campaign money so the second issue that the jury has to decide is if it was campaign money did john edwards know that it was campaign money is the law and intent of the law so unclear that edwards could not have established a knowing intent to break the law and fourth and what's most important has the knowing intent on the part of john edwards has the prosecution shown that knowing intent to beyond a reasonable doubt i got to tell you when you compare this prosecution to the conduct that we see down there almost every day how about marco rubio in florida marco rubio if you want to if you will be specific he uses personal for personal money he takes campaign money aren't the money he buys himself trips around the

country airline trips he buys cars the car car repairs he repairs his house nobody asked any questions about that john boehner campaign money to take his family all over the state of florida took him to disneyworld took him down to south florida nobody asked a question like that nobody prosecutes him for that a lot of this unfortunately tom is it is president obama's fault president obama has been awful when it comes to to put it on the court capable jurists capable jurors that are able to take a case like this in forget about the politics of the case and understand is this a case that the jury should even consider she's going to look back on this case and if there is a conviction an appellate court must take this case away and we can only hope that the jury the jury is wiser than this judge ok like the brilliant summary mike bevan tony thanks so much. i think there's no question about it john edwards screwed up

but wouldn't be interesting if republicans from here on out were treated equally and suffer the same consequences as democrats. going up karl rove's corporate super pac is releasing a new campaign ad this week targeting president obama and it's using some new tricks to brainwash the american public our robot is billionaire buddies attacking the president this time and how can we separate fact from fiction i'll tell you in tonight's daily take. wealthy british style it's time to.

market why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike stronger for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to kaiser report. more news today violence is once again flared up. these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. giant corporations rule the day.

mission creep couldn't take three days for charges free arrangement free. three stooges free. download free brought us to video for your media projects free media done to our to tom. our first comments and i comes from an award who post on our tom arbonne dot com message boards he had this take on conservatives and their interpretation of the constitution he said i hear self-proclaimed conservative peers of mine singing the same old libertarian songs of ego ism and individual ism explain to me that the constitution says that they can do whatever we want they are in the mindset of using ngs to justify means and i wrong by saying this conservative interpretation

is the complete opposite of what our founding fathers intended the document to mean they skip over the first part that says we the people. well yeah you've nailed it you've actually absolutely got it the bottom line is that when we started and we won the founders started this country the idea was we don't need to be run by the british east india company anymore because basically the north america had been a colony of that corporation and we don't need to be answerable to other governments we can take care of ourselves literally take care of ourselves the first president to sign laws are signed legislation that appropriated money to pay for housing food and medicine for poor people in the united states was george washington. the next comment of the night comes from matt in auckland new zealand are second from that island nation mad had this comment on how the government doesn't really listen to the people it's supposed to represent it frustrates me how

a government whose role is to represent their population will never use the very best ideas that come out of that same population like for example james hansen's carbon tax idea instead they make often secretive decisions on the population's behalf and both the press and the populations themselves are left to retro engineer from the outcomes what those original decisions were like the iraq war etc and i see in the system all wrong and if i'm not then does this not frustrate you also thanks for your great work well no i think you're seeing it right what we have i was reading earlier in the program about how we are basically an oligarchy now not a democracy any longer and we're seeing that increasingly the people are that there's this interrelationship between big corporate interests particularly those in the military industrial complex in the case of war or the agriculture in industry or the fuel industry whatever it may be and politicians and increasingly their own in their very own politicians it's not just lobbying like you know we

would like this law what do you think in the politicians say well what are the people want all the people don't like the law is we want it now it's now it's all about the cash and this is all because the supreme court over the last hundred years more or less hundred thirty years has come up with this bizarre doctrine that no congress ever proposed even proposed much less passed and every not every but most presidents have spoken out against no president has ever supported and that is the bizarre doctrine that corporations are people and that money is not property it's speech they're just wrong. it's the good the bad of the very very mess. for russia slee ugly the good

clean star mozambique venture formed by the company's clean start a venture and nova ximenes is a biofuels operation in mozambique that seeks to support local farmers prevent deforestation and provide it when you're burning fuel for local residents and the environment support for biofuels as an alternative energy source isn't gaining ground in developed countries like the us companies like clean star and noble zines you targeting smaller countries small country like mozambique can embrace climate change and alternative energy so that states the bad iowa republican party republican party released its official party platform on monday that's filled with far reaching and tea party approved policy ideas for starters birth or ism is an official stance of the party now and the party argues that a candidate for president must provide proof for u.s. citizenship already also wants to eliminate basically every government department and believes that under the tenth amendment any state can disregard federal law if

they think the law is constitutional i thought we litigated that with civil war anyhow it's too bad the party platform doesn't talk about real issues like fixing our economy or protecting the environment and the very very ugly pastor charles wardlow the north carolina so-called pastor gave a sermon this weekend to his congregation discussing how he thinks america should deal with homosexuality. i figured a way out a way to get rid of all the laser usually clear of but it couldn't get a price they. build a great big large three hundred fifty or a hundred mo put all alleged bins in. over and drop some food do the same thing with the corners in the homosexuals and have it fits electrified like get out. and you know one in

a few years jail dial you know why they can't reproduce pastor worley these comments is incredible bigotry and his indorsement of nazi like actions are to say the very least very fear of. their times reporting today on a new campaign ad coming out this week from the republican super pac targeting president obama the ad is the centerpiece of a twenty five million dollar ad campaign in the run in ten swing states funded by karl rove's corporate super pac and produced by larry mccarthy the guy who did the willie horton ads that sunk michael dukakis in one thousand nine hundred eight the times explains how the ads work writing behind the story of the ads creation rests

one of the greatest challenges for republicans in this election how to develop a powerful line of attack against a president who remains well liked even by people who are considering voting against him. so to make this ad republican strategist took information from eighteen different focus groups across several key states from florida ohio to colorado and what they found is that attacks against president obama's integrity or character actually turned off voters because the president is still well liked by most americans as the president of karl rhodes crossroads g.p.s. super pac said voters are not interested in being told they made a horrible mistake the disappointment they're now experiencing has to be handled carefully so to handle it carefully the ad which is intitled basketball features an actress portraying a woman who voted for president obama four years ago and actually still likes him.

i always loved watching the kids play basketball i still do even though things have changed it's funny they can't find jobs to get their careers to do and i can't afford to retire and now i'm only living together again i supported president obama because he spoke so beautifully he promised change the things changed for the winners she basically speaks to the very same problems that many americans are having even though the economy has gotten better with more than four million jobs created in the private sector under president obama since the economic freefall was stopped in two thousand and nine there are still millions and millions of americans who've been left behind millions of americans who desperately needed the president to take bold action and were left on their own when the president was only able to get a modest stimulus through congress because of republican opposition course the ad doesn't mention the republicans have blocked more than fifty pieces of legislation that would have improved the economy over the past three years instead it makes the argument that the buck stops exclusively with the president he's the one to blame

for the ongoing struggle many americans are feeling. these hurting working class people who haven't been following politics carefully enough to really know that it was the republicans in congress who prevented the levels of economic recovery we needed who republicans are targeting with this new ad but despite the truth which is that president obama has disappointed a lot of americans by going bill clinton's that f.d.r. in two thousand and nine we all have to remember just how high the stakes are in this watch. hanging in the balance is the supreme court of which four justices are over seventy years old the next president will change the makeup of the high court and you can bet if it's mitt romney then we'll have even more right wingers on the bench who declare everything from food stamps to unemployment insurance to even medicare as unconstitutional at stake this election is the survival of the middle class which president obama perhaps hasn't done enough to protect but which mitt romney would completely bizarre rate rolling back protections for labor unions

support for college students and relief for homeowners at stake is our nation's standing in the world with president obama ending the war in iraq and beginning the withdrawal of troops from afghanistan and on the other side mitt romney beating the drum for a new war with iran if there is so much at stake in this election and while i'd be leading a parade of those disappointed for the president choosing to be bill clinton's that f.d.r. a genuinely fear that what might happen if mitt romney becomes president this ad that karl rove will be rolling out this week across the nation is a brilliant study in the use of psychology and half truths to win an election the day president obama was sworn in mitch mcconnell the republican senate leader declared that his first mission over the next four years would be to make obama into a one term president and mcconnell's done a brilliant job of helping to bring that to a possible reality by having republicans filibuster every single piece of good and useful legislation that would have put americans back to work and now karl rove

wants you to forget the role that he and george w. bush played in crashing the economy starting to illegal wars and throwing the government into the red with a massive tax cut for the rich rove wants us all to forget that the day george w. bush came into office the deficit was zero and the debt was beginning to decline the bush himself pointed out in his first state of the union address that by continuing clinton's policies he would pay off the entire national debt within ten years. many of you have talked about the need to pay down our national debt and i listened and i agree. we owe it to our children and grandchildren back now and i hope you will join me to pay down two trillion dollars in debt during the next ten years thanks at the end of those ten years we'll have paid down all the dent that is available to return that is more didn't repaid more quickly than has ever been

repaid by any nation at any time in history that was eleven years ago rove wants us all to forget that karl rove was the architect of the bush presidency the ran american to the ditch he instead wants average americans to blame president obama the obama hasn't yet completely fixed the republican great depression the george w. bush and karl rove left us karl rove is hoping it will all forget but i'm not forgetting and i hope you won't either. that's the big picture for tonight for more information on the stories we covered visit our websites thom hartmann dot com free speech dot org an hour to dot com also check out our two you tube channels there are links to tom harkin dot com its entire show is also available as a free video podcast on i tunes and you can visit our dot com to download the audio podcast of our daily three to six radio show and we have a free tom hartman i phone and i pad app in the app store which we've just updated made all kinds of spiffy for the brand new i pad whatever it's called contraption

looks really cool and you can set a speed back on twitter at tom underscore our one on facebook at some undersea underscore our on our blogs message boards and telephone comment line at tom hartman dot com and don't forget democracy begins when you show up it's not enough to just sit around and complain we've got to get out there we've got to get active occupy something show up participate or move to amend or p.d. america check out some of the great sites get out there get active tag your city.

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