i'm sam saxon for tom hartman in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture. eight months after it started rumors are spreading that the occupy movement is dead but just days after big money one in the win wisconsin recall don't we need to occupy now more than ever and mitt romney is either a liar or he's suffering from amnesia why is latest comments suggest that republicans really don't understand how jobs are created and later look into the hacktivist collective known as anonymous.

we begin tonight with mark twain way back in one thousand nine hundred seven there are reports circulating that one of america's greatest writers was nearing death twain was in london at the time covering queen victoria's diamond jubilee you see back then they didn't have c.n.n. to devote all day all week coverage on such an event so twain on assignment with the new york journal made the trek overseas to cover what he would later describe as an event that reminded him of what the end of the days of might look like and while he was there a rumor started that twain had fallen deathly ill as the new york herald reported on june first eight hundred ninety seven quote twain is grievously ill and possibly done worse still we are told that his brilliant intellect is shattered and that he is sorely in need of money. the truth however was that twain was just fine it was actually his cousin who was sick and when a reporter was dispatched to tweens residence to confirm the reports if found it

amused twain who famously said quote the report of my death was an exaggeration twain would live on for another thirteen years at a more pros to his already impressive lifetime of work and his books and that quote in particular have persisted for more than a century now which brings us to today where there are reports swirling of another untimely demise that of the occupy movement as reuters reported on wednesday quote more than eight months after occupy wall street burst on the global stage the movement survival and continued relevance is far from assured while the movement signature triumph has been to draw worldwide attention to income inequality in america and elsewhere some more sympathetic say it as never the less failed a crucial test of social movements the ability to adapt and grow through changing tactics borders goes on to say that donations to the new york chapter of occupy

have quote slowed to a trickle public approval of the movement has plummeted and media attention has waned and in the mainstream media was never really interested in the movement from the get go which is the reports of occupies death ramp up the need for the movement is now greater than ever we are two days removed from a recall election wisconsin that was bought and paid for with tens of millions of dollars in outside corporate and billionaire cash to crush a grassroots movement started by working people more than a year ago this is the second major elections in citizens united and the second straight time that organized money defeated organized people in our democracy. that doesn't bode well for a pretty important election just five months away in election that people like karl rove and the koch brothers and the chamber of commerce have pledged to spend more than one billion dollars to defeat progressives and elect even more far right corporatist republicans and feeble corporatist democrats wealth inequality

continues to grow our economic recovery continues to slow all the while profits and executive pay on wall street surge in salaries for working people stagnant access to health insurance for tens of millions of americans is in the hands of the supreme court and thus in danger and a guy who made his living devouring companies and laying off thousands of workers to line his own pockets is climbing in the polls and has a real shot at being the next president of the united states now more than ever we need a voice in the streets speaking out against money in politics against corporate personhood and against the hijacking of our democracy and economy by transnational trans national corporations that are more focused on profits to be made in foreign markets than in the american worker the american middle class and the american environment things really have gotten as bad as we feared they would get so we have

to hope today that just like with mark twain the reports of the death of occupy are greatly exaggerated joining me now is jay a meyerson freelance journalist regular contributor to truthout and participant in occupy wall street j welcome back to the show. there so what's your what's your response to this latest medium out there that occupies that. well occupy i think it's wrong to consider occupy the movement i think it's right to consider occupy the occupy wall street and the other occupations around the country and around the world the first project in what will probably be a very long movement to do all of those wonderful things to you hope hope that we would do right so if you think back to the civil rights movement right the first project so to speak was the bus boycott in one nine hundred fifty five it took a decade before they got the civil rights act and the voting rights act it was the

civil rights movement though right it wasn't the month gum or a bus boycott movement in the same way that this would be a much larger movement than just occupy wall street early on david graber the anthropologist said that occupy wall street was the opening salvo in a wave of negotiations over the dissolution of the american empire which is a pretty grandiose thought but i think that probably a lot of people would agree this was the first project and there will be dips and there will be resurgence is but i think that the presence in the street is far from over so even if occupy so to speak is dead i don't think it's right to consider the movement dead just yet that's a fantastic point and i mean this is something that's. what we're up against was thirty years in the making you know the fact that it's going to suddenly be overturned in a month. is pretty wishful thinking yeah that's right and and it's and it's actually it's it in order to think of it as just a moment. you have to really lack global and historical perspective right as you

say i mean that the results of the new property relations in the world globalized capitalism right the economic effects and the environmental effects in the military effects of all of these in the human rights effect are are so dire and have have come to a head in so many different ways you know every graph looks exponential like it's just gone straight up this is not a. the system and the system will will will continue to trend towards crisis and danger and it will continue to inspire resistance around the globe i mean if if the eurozone falls apart the effect that that will have on the american economy will definitely stimulate. you know protest here if another big bank goes insolvent that will definitely stimulate protest here i mean things are not conditions aren't getting better the elites the ruling elites in the world can put band-aids on the situation but they cannot fix it without strong people power movement keeping them in check so i as i say i mean i think that you know there

were moments in the civil rights movement where nothing happened we like to think of it as this grand block right this this thing that happened or even a huge ever increasing crescendo that finally culminated in the you know the end of white supremacy in united states or whatever but that's not how it was right sometimes there were years were not much happened sometimes there were years were tons of stuff happened i think that we have to be a little more patient with ourselves and we have to as as a sort of news media try and see beyond just the immediate try to headline the blip the talking point and try and see this in the in the sort of the grand scheme of it actually important to keep up the great work there. thanks. today despite mumblings that this movement that began with occupies today said and will morph into something else most likely this is the movement's not even close to debt despite how hard corporate america has tried to finish it all but

assuming for a moment that the oligarchs succeed and then once again working people are silenced and the occupy movement withers away it only be the latest name crossed off corporate america's hit list i'm not here to condemn all of corporate america though i think we seriously should consider a reconsider our current economic model and begin moving away from corporate capitalism where a handful of c.e.o.'s and shareholders call the shots in toward cooperative capitalism where workers have more of a say in the business operations. but there are corporations out there that are killing people not being hyperbolic energy corporations that are polluting entire towns leaving the massive cancer outbreaks wall street corporations that are pushing people to the brink of suicide devouring their pensions homes and life savings and health insurance corporations that are sentencing people to death by denying them life saving medical care the question is what do we do about these

corporations well tom has an answer take a look. how do we deal with criminals in the united states the really bad i mean people who are just to reveal they've they've committed they've killed people we execute them they're too dangerous they're a menace to society so you know we're lock them up forever we get you know or off them so what should we do about corporations that are menaces to society you know in the old days they got executed to having their quotes called the corporate charter and there was their right to do business there basically being dissolved having their corporate charters revoked beginning in seventeen eighty four corporations in pennsylvania were required to carry revocation clauses in eight hundred fifteen massachusetts just as joe joseph story ruled a private corporation created by the legislature may lose its franchises by a misuse or or non-user of them this is the common law of the land and is a tacit condition and next to the creation of every such corporation. eighteen

twenty five the pennsylvania legislature passed a law declaring that they had the power to quote revoke alter or an old charter of corporations in the nineteenth century one thousand different states passed similar laws like rhode island's law which was passed in eight hundred fifty seven reads the charter of every corporation here after may be repealed at the will of the general assembly in ohio mississippi and pennsylvania banks said their charters revoked they got the corporate death sentence for behaving in quote a financially unsound way in new york in massachusetts corporations that ran turnpikes were given the corporate death penalty for not keeping the roads repaired and eight hundred thirty two pennsylvania gave the death penalty to ten corporations in one year revoking their charters for quote operating contrary to the public interest in eight hundred thirty three president andrew jackson threaten the second bank of the united states for corrupting politicians he actually campaigned for president on ending that banks life and largely because of his

efforts eventually did die oil corporations match manufacturers like kitchen match manufacturers whiskey trust sugar corporations all sentenced to death in several states even standard oil got put to death in new york state in one thousand nine hundred in one thousand nine hundred four although other parts of it survived in other states but today corporations are put to death any more even when they do fraud us of billions like the pharmaceutical industry or poison entire cities like energy chemical corporations do or deny care to us like health insurance companies do so they can inflate their c.e.o.'s obscene incomes or steal money from us like the banks on wall street we need to bring back the corporate death penalty and make sure the corporations are acting on behalf of the public interest again. after the break republicans love to have a selective memory and mitt romney is particularly great at it especially when it comes to attacking president obama on job creation.

there hasn't been anything good on t.v. . it is to get the maximum political impact. before source material is what helps keep journalism honest we. we want to present. something else.

so mitt romney said something really interesting in texas this week take a look there's some signs things are getting better albeit at a very slow rate the president wants to hang on to that twig that maybe he'd made things a little better but the truth is he did not make things better if they get better it's in spite of him not because of him. that's a convenient talking point romney went on to say quote with america in crisis with twenty three million people out of work or stopped looking for work he hasn't put forth a plan he being the president to get us working again now i know we're getting close to an election so he'll come out with one soon but three and a half years later we're waiting and quote really the president hasn't put out a jobs plan really i mean what is president obama thinking now putting forward a jobs plan i mean if i was him i would have written up a jobs plan convene congress present in the plan to them in

a nationally televised speech urging them to pass it oh wait. i am sending this congress a plan that you should pass right away. it's called the american jobs act the purpose of the american jobs act is simple to put more people back to work and more money in the pockets of those who are working it will create more jobs for construction workers more jobs for teachers more jobs for veterans and more jobs for long term unemployed. so he's lying or he suffered a head injury and is dealing with the gates of amnesia here to inform us which it is it is brian darling contribute to the daily mail and director of government studies at the heritage foundation welcome to the show thanks for having me on show thank you so i think romney is probably lying but i also think he's projecting because he knows that he and the republicans haven't put forward their own jobs plan that's at least different from what george w. bush did for eight years i think they want to see

a plan that works and president obama's plan that he put forth his original stimulus plan didn't do anything to turn around the economy it really didn't you can look at the job creation numbers and we were in such a bad situation we had so many job losses obviously you're going to bounce back but we still are over eight percent unemployment we still have people dropping out of the work force and it really didn't work so why would congress go into another stimulus plan because stimulus has worked every time our economy has gone into a recession every single time ronald reagan used a stimulus in the one nine hundred eighty s. when we went into recession he increased government spending increased government jobs and now when president obama wants to do the same sort of thing republicans are like oh no this is not the way to stimulate economy well are you disingenuous or you could argue that ronald reagan cut taxes he went forward with kemp roth fundamental tax reform bill clinton also cut taxes towards the end of his presidency obama's cut taxes he has cut taxes but he did everything so willingly

because you know when you look at the him extending the bush tax cuts it's not something he really wanted to but you can bone on that point he has the president's going to say that there's no way no how that he's going to waiver on the bush tax cuts were that wealthy or by the way i have to so you know taking that with a grain of salt and you know i don't want to ask you whether or not republicans are going to hold middle class tax cuts hostage to preserve wealthy people tax cuts we all know that they're going to do that should they do that though is that really a fight they should. they should they should tell middle class americans that their taxes are going to go up unless president obama preserves tax cuts for wealthy sure i think what's going to happen is republicans are going to make a game time decision saying if we allow them to be decoupled if you only extend tax cuts for the middle class and you're never going to get all the tax cuts you know that that's a fact of life that's going to happen so i don't think you'll see republicans back off from that demand if we can bring up chart one. this is exhibit a so it's right

here on the screen so our current tax rate of thirty five percent you see is that little red sliver this is tax rates and job creation that thirty five percent sliver is where we are currently in this is that's the tax rate that you think republicans should go to bat for and protect it's created the lowest amount of jobs in the history of our tax rates so why is this a good idea will you introduce me to the economists and i don't even think paul krugman would argue that ninety percent tax rates are good for the economy created tons of jobs you know when when when the individual tax rates are at ninety percent wealthy people have to put they don't take as much money out of their business because we're going to tax them so they invest more in their business it creates more jobs i mean that's what the evidence there shows this that show that we've had tax taxes change the way that we pay taxes over the year now there are all these exemptions or all these loopholes that people tend to use to get out of paying their taxes so i know you'd argue it's far less than you know thirty five percent

but when you look at it back then i mean we had we were different influences back then too you can't just look at the tax rates and say because we had over taxation very high taxation and we then how we can look at the tax rates currently and say that they haven't worked when it comes to job creation and they didn't for the last thirty years we've tried this new theory of supply side economics cut taxes for the wealthy people or the you know suppliers and quote and. they'll stop their shelves with goods they'll have all this money in the. that will create demand once people see a grocery store stocked with stuff will go out and you'll tempt him to buy that clearly hasn't worked and it shows that demand economies are driven demand by demand there when people have money in their pockets to spend they go out and spend it so what i don't get here is after thirty years of this failed economic policy. why do you still support is it is it is it is it voodoo economics where you just you know trying to disguise your plan to redistribute wealth to the top but it is my

philosophy i believe that people should have more of their own money corporations should have more of their own money in the left calls attributable on wall street with maybe do whatever they want to do with it the left calls of trickle down economics but what i call present what president obama is doing is trickle down obama nomics it's his idea that somehow government spending is just going to trickle down and help out all all the people the middle to lower class it's a very similar idea but conservatives think it will trickle down the corporate world and liberals think the government all lead a trickle down we'll just leave it there we have a two trillion dollar infrastructure deficit and some people would say that if we put people to work rebuilding the two trillion dollar deficit you have americans out there working the economy improves the time brian k. thanks for coming on and give them another election mitt romney thinks he can win the presidency by touting his accomplishments in the private equity industry but what romney doesn't get is governments aren't supposed to be run for a profit they're supposed to be run for the public good there's time to take. that

you know mitt romney used to be the governor of massachusetts probably not because mitt doesn't like talking about instead middle likes to talk about his time in the private sector as a businessman in fact romney thinks being a businessman qualifies him to be president more than having been a governor does. i spent my life in the private sector i have not been employed by washington i've been employed in the private sector like you have i want to use that experience to get america working again and saw the challenges of this great nation basically in its argument is that it will take a businessman in government to get us out of this recession and this is a message the seems to be resonating with typical frustrated low information voters who want to job who subscribe to the belief that businesses and consumers create jobs and bus think that a businessman in the white house would do a heck of a job creating jobs a new washington post a.b.c. news poll finds that romney is trying to see in the president fifty eight to thirty

two percent among white voters who are struggling financially the only problem is this whole more business and government idea has been tried before several times and every single time it ended with disastrous results take nine hundred twenty for example republican warren harding ran on a platform that was literally these were his words more business in government less government in business already lived up to his promise he oversaw one of the most corrupt presidential administrations in american history he rolled back regulations on wall street and protections for working people on main street and his treasury secretary andrew mellon cut the top tax rate for people like andrew mellon the multimillionaires and business owners from seventy three percent down to twenty five percent what followed was an enormous economic bubble that was mistaken for actual growth they even called it the coolidge prosperity in the mid one nine hundred twenty school which was the president right after hardy another republican

but nine years after harding was elected as hoover came an economic bubble burst with a republican crash of one thousand nine hundred eighty nine so more business in government led to a great depression and then in one nine hundred eighty ronald reagan came along. and he. he would have likely used hartings same exact platform of more business and government less government business had it not been badly tarnished instead reagan put in place basically the same exact policies as already rolling back labor protections even singlehandedly breaking up the air traffic controllers union known as patco he pushed deregulation like harding did he gave nearly an identical tax cut to the richest already did he cut top top tax rate from seventy four percent to twenty eight percent and just like hardy's policies led to an economic catastrophe within a decade or so did reagan when the newly deregulated savings and loan industry collapsed in the late one nine hundred eighty s.

once again more business in government bad idea yet it was tried once again in two thousand when george w. bush was elected president of the nation's first m.b.a. president within a decade of a businessman moving into the white house bush's tax cuts and deregulation once again crashed our economy putting us in the situation that we're in today and now after just four years of president obama mitt romney is running on the same platform that harding reagan and bush all ran on it all of them with that platform actually acted out their platform eventually crashed our economy it's simple running a government like a business flat out doesn't work never has never will and there's a pretty simple explanation why that is the declaration of independence spells it out thomas jefferson wrote we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable

rights that among these are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men. that's the purpose of government to secure our rights to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness that's government what's the purpose of a corporation to secure profits that's it corporations don't exist to secure the right to life if they did health insurance companies wouldn't be denying children preexisting conditions life saving medical care to maximize their profits corporations don't exist to secure the right to liberty they did private prison corporations like c.c.a. wouldn't be lobbying for harsher drug and immigration laws to throw more americans in jail to maximize profits and corporations don't exist to secure the right to pursue happiness or else they wouldn't screw their workers with low wages and crummy benefits we keep working people from every joining the middle class or even being able to enjoy a vacation once in a while for

a reasonable retirement simple fact is securing our rights to life liberty and happiness is not all that profitable and that's why we need government and that's why mitt romney who actually made a living destroying life liberty and happiness is the head of a pirate equity firm borrowing money to buy out businesses fire their workers and resell that company for a profit for himself and his buddies doesn't know one damn thing about what it really takes to run a national government let's hope voters wake up to this fact and don't ever again make the same mistake that was made in one nine hundred twenty nine hundred eighty in two thousand more business and government bad idea. coming up after the break an inside look into one of the most intriguing forces on the internet anonymous.

download the official anti up location to go on the phone on called touch from the storm. watch on t.v. life on the go. video on demand tease my old comes and already says feeds now in the palm of your. question on the dot com.

more news today violence is once again fled up. these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. giant corporations rule the day.