welcome back to the big picture i'm tom hartman coming up in this half hour florida governor jeb bush recently attacked the crazies in the republican party going after those legislators who support multimillionaire lobbyist grover norquist tax pledge that bush's comments signal a change coming in the republican party one that could mean the end of the tea party and you've heard me say night after night that if america is going to get back on the right track it's going to take serious tax reform and reasonable taxes on people like mitt romney who pays less on his millions than cop a cops pay on their normal salaries well believe it or not there's one tax that i just can't stand i'll tell you why and it's believed. in the best of the rest of the news of the bush tax cuts set to expire on december

thirty first republicans and democrats are drawing up their game plans first there is senator jeff merkley who is telling his fellow democrats in congress not to budge letting the bush tax cuts expire at the end of the year for the wealthiest two percent of americans in an interview with t.p.m. senator merkley said i've encouraged my team to realize that we have lotsa leverage on this this is not a situation where you go to the table and you're desperate to get a deal but senator merkley understands is the democrats have the upper hand of the looming tax fight at the end of the year if they just let all the bush tax cuts expire as they're scheduled to do on december thirty first and then immediately introduce legislation to extend the tax cuts just for the middle class and their republicans to vote against it realizing they may be cornered multimillionaire lobbyist an anti-tax master grover norquist warner republicans that if they let the bush tax cuts expire that he will call it a violation. there is no tax increases pledge so at the end of the year republicans

will have a choice they can honor their oath to the constitution or they can honor their oath to lobbyist grover norquist but this tax showdown at the end of the year may not be just about taxes could have a lot to do with the future of the republican party and whether or not the no compromise hard right wing of the republican party may be losing its influence as more established republican speak out against it take for example what former florida governor jeb bush said this week at a speech in new york ronald reagan would have based on his record of finding accommodation finding some degree of common ground as would my dad they would have had a hard time if you really if you define the republican party as having an orthodoxy that doesn't allow for disagreement doesn't allow for finding some common ground and here is joe scarborough this morning defending jeb bush in talking about his vision of the future of the republican party. if i'm going on in trade i'm out trying to figure out whether the future of the republican party belongs to grover

norquist so i know in life except bush is the world. i think it's. a pretty tough job where you can go online and act like a jackass and say what you want to say you now admit he's calling jeb bush o'reilly now. just shut the hell up. scarborough's comments echo a trend in the republican party first reported by the washington post last month that got dozens of republican congressional candidates across the nation are refusing to sign grover norquist anti-tax pledge so are we seeing a fundamental shift in the republican party on the silences the tea party in the future and moves toward the center and how might this tax cut debate at the end of the year be a precursor to this shift in the party if that's what's actually going on joining me now is richard follower rest of strategist and anya mark you'll mark you conservative commentator and president of team investment and welcome to both of you. richard is senator merkley right do democrats really have the upper hand in

this showdown and just have to wait until the end of the year we definitely have the upper hand here tom when you board a boil down to the when you get down to the root of the problem republicans are really going to have to make a decision they're going to have to get on the record and vote against middle class tax cuts of the democrats it will merkley says happens if you let the bush tax cuts expire completely and after they expire then you pass middle class tax in the new congress. should the republicans support a tax cut for the middle class if it doesn't include a tax cut for people like mitt romney who millions and millions of dollars of income only pay fifteen percent income tax. you know here's the problem all in all we don't have a leader right now so what's coming on is a person like jeb bush to say hey i know what i what my father did i know what works and i'm going to make this work again so i don't think it's their concern that they are conceding at all they're finding a solution because what's happening right now between both parties is everybody wants to be right instead of finding the solution and jeb bush is finding

a solution so do you do you think the job was setting himself up for a twenty sixteen presidential run with a little you know he's going against orthodoxy and against romney. i don't know if he's against romney he's actually voting for romney and he's come out in support of romney but i absolutely think that he is setting himself up in one way or another to take a position of leadership which would be great we need someone that can understand there may be something on both sides that would work and somebody who can come in and be a leader instead of just passing laws because they feel like they are right and that's the only way to get things done so richard of jeb bush's position yourself for twenty sixteen that presumes that romney didn't get elected and isn't running for reelection doesn't it that's exactly what a person is and i think tanya said it best the republican party is looking for a leader and clearly. mitt romney is not that leader that's basically down to the

present united states if you were to be elected to be the leader of the republican party and republicans on the right because the left of mitt romney are both rejecting him overwhelmingly we don't want you at all and that's the present has a really really if you're one of the areas now which is exactly what you're seeing here doing here is exactly what it is i absolutely think that mitt romney can do a better job with the economy than obama because he's going to of ours a little now that he is he would be the leader of our country. pardi. i think he will be the leader of our country period end and i absolutely don't think obama will be back and i don't think obama will get back in at all and i do think that jeb bush is positioning himself it may not be for two thousand and sixteen but he is positioning himself we cannot have another four years of obama our country will be in absolute terms. isn't it once romney gets the nomination in tampa doesn't he then become the official head of the republican party he is the

republican leader yes absolutely so so it isn't i mean you know today and romney's on with grover norquist you know pledge to me the multimillionaire k. street lobbyists instead of the constitution thing. today. actually there's been a number of senators lindsey graham i believe it was today came out and you know it was no slouch i mean he's been around for quite a while and very powerful man of a party basically said the same thing jeb bush said it is romney looking to revolt before he even gets to his coronation. no because they will absolutely stand behind mitt romney just so that obama does not get any get but when we talk about norquist we need to understand what he created in one thousand nine hundred five that's what we're missing it was two parts the first part was that they would never raise taxes but more importantly and this is the part that nobody is reading the second part and i'm going to read it verbatim says and they would only close the tax loops if

the additional revenue was used to pay for tax cuts so everyone wants to call his interpretation that he was changing his mind on what he was doing that's not it i think he was clarifying what he created in one thousand nine hundred five when norquist come on to me i got to tell you i think you are going to tell you really point out what the what the problem with the republican party is after you know mitt romney becomes the quote unquote nominee people don't necessarily agree with him you that you won't admit that he's the leader of the party that your whole argument is you know no your whole argument to the whole romney campaign is based off of not obama they have no policy they have no agenda well here's here's the problem and richard i'd like your take on it then i'd like to get tom his take on it mitt romney has been on both sides of pretty much every major issue you know he he brought us obamacare it was called romney care he. left massachusetts in

a horrible death. i need to go through the whole list i mean. for the last five years as i've done every single year and watched the people walking around with flippers and you know the dolphin and one. he's how can you have a guy running for president being the leader of the party who has never had a consistent a moral or economic position well that's i mean this race is not between president obama and mitt romney and mitt romney's ever changing mind and that's the problem of the republicans face going into november mitt romney has to really come down and figure out what. positions are on the issues he's for it before he's against it and then when he's not against it he's now for it this is hold this is their strategy and they told you what their strategy was he's an edge a sketch it's going to shake them up they can disappear and he's going home with a whole new platform and a whole new strategy and i think what democrats have to do going into november is just continue to show who the real mitt romney is the real mitt romney is somebody

had forty seven the food the main message is forty seventh in job growth in this country the mill real mitt romney is somebody who basically extorted poor people middle class and middle class folks under bain capital that's a real mitt romney the republicans don't want him they don't think he's a leader of the party they'd rather have jeb bush as you clearly stated so i mean it just shows who what the room around me is. characterized as. the bottom line is we don't want obama period end of subject here's obama and he said he would cut the deficit he said he would unite americans he said he would make america safer he said that he would reduce unemployment god let's not talk about that he said he would secure our borders he has done none of those things we are just using me here and we need it now. and it's absolutely we had twenty seven months of concern over consecutive job growth or created four point three million jobs we've had more has been more people deported under president obama grow is nothing. ever going to job growth and job growth democratic job growth is job growth that is not because you

want to read numbers how do i know you know that doesn't graduate is our job growth only when they do it it's no good we know there is not as you just middle class. go there talks about that if george bush had passed a tax cut the president passed and stimulus package you got a wave that around and you guys would carry it around like a big white elephant but when president obama passed on like he did i do not mean that you know what obama is obama is fact he's a fabulous orator he gets people behind him because he knows how to speak and then he does know if you're going underground you're going to if you're going to hold that position are you not also going to take responsive have to take responsibility for the outcome of the january twentieth two thousand and nine meeting that richard draper has written about now in his new book in which fourteen republicans met and decided that they were going to break they were going to structure any effort by obama to repair the economy and then blame the bad economy on him. well we're dealing with two parties that will not come to any type of middle ground because we

don't have another end of subject so i'm not sure we don't have a leader he was going over i mean i was doing one thing the democrats do you do not have a leader or do you were president has tried to negotiate john boehner is the president to go she writes about how little and they all at the negotiating table you know really one of the country's horrible leaders because republicans have refused to make change they really has the american jobs and we have to wrap this up thank you you've done a great job or he's as someone who can pull things together and thank you like it wasn't. richard thank you also for joy richard follower. thank you very much and stay tuned this will be the fight in america over the next several months. going on for years i've been saying that america needs serious tax reform that makes millionaires like mitt romney pay their fair share to support our nation's economy there's one tax that really ticks me off tell you what it is and how states should change it and that i take.

wealthy british scientists on some time because. markets why not. gamble why not what's really happening to the global economy with mike stronger or a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to cause a report on our.

our first. called into our viewer rant wind she had this take on the stake in the state of american politics after the citizens united decision. i was listening to your show today regarding the robert draper book and. it's just so hopeless because of the citizens united money that can be dumped and this kind of thinking how do we get out from this i know voting is the thing but that didn't work in california r.j. van also came in two weeks before come fifty grand fifty million and kind the tide seems pretty hopeless thanks for your good help tom by. well i would give you two

names meg whitman and carly fiorina and meg whitman is a billionaire carly fiorina here in a multimillionaire they ran for governor and senator from california respectively using their own millions while only outspent their opponents and they both lost now it may be that they're the exception that proves the rule i mean there's no disputing the fact that the supreme court has basically turn america into a banana republic when it comes to politics and you know whoever's got the most money and whoever's willing to be the most corrupt and frankly tell a biggest lies sometimes will win but i still have a lot of hope that america will wake up and that grassroots movement movements will have a significant effect on the coming elections that come out of the night comes from glenn in ohio he had this reaction to our recent special edition of conversations of great minds with. money. i listened to your. interview shocking i want

to know. why can't we put these dead politicians on trial just because they're dead doesn't mean that the world should know their. crimes capital crimes think about it maybe mention. well there is a trial of sorts it's called the verdict of history and the verdict of history right now on richard nixon is getting pretty bleak i find it interesting that after lamar wrote this brilliant book on watergate and pointed out that one of the big myths is that you know woodward and bernstein had figured it all out quite quite quacked that woodward and bernstein yesterday came out and so i was far worse than we are than we knew they got it i mean you know everybody is starting to get it about richard nixon and his being mobbed up and is is associations with big money

is taking bribes is is setting the template for the next forty or fifty years of republican politics everybody is starting to figure that out in the more we see that temple played out hopefully the more people will go oh yeah richard nixon used to do that kind of stuff our final comment the night comes from bobby a listener to my radio show and hopefully a new viewer of the big picture bobby had this question about a segment on my radio show last week i was listening to a rebroadcast on sunday six twenty k. p. o. j. you picked my attention saying something about a clip from george w. bush that would quote blow your mind when we come back problem you didn't come back they went to ring of fire at midnight please tell me what the dang chimps so curious thanks bobbie well here you go bob it was george w. bush talking about how he'd use the clinton surplus though and this course was before he decided to squander it with two unpaid wars a massive unpaid for tax cut for people like mitt romney this is from the for his first state of the union address in the spring of two thousand and one. many of you

have talked about the need to pay down our national debt i listened and i agree. we owe it to our children and grandchildren that now. and i hope you will join me to pay down two trillion dollars in debt during the next ten years. at the end of those ten years we'll have paid down all the debt 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 see this is the republican formula and it goes back to jude what is close to santa clause theory which is yell and scream about debt when there's a democrat in office and as soon as republicans are in office spend money like a drunken sailor and in no aspersions on drug and sailors and put it all on the national credit card when reagan came into office the first six months or so he was talking about how you know not to save money we're going to cut back on the expenses we're going to block it and then you know he went and ran up more debt

than every president from george washington jimmy carter combined. he tripled our national debt george w. bush came into office and said what you just saw in his first three months and then he went nuts he said all well hey let's cut taxes on millionaires and billionaires let's drop mitt romney's tax rate from twenty five percent down to fifteen percent let's let's have a couple of wars and put them on the credit card not even bother to put them on the federal budget let's have a medicare drug program and make it illegal for the government to negotiate for cheaper prices and of course he broke the bank he ran up five trillion dollars in debt and set the stage for a disaster economic disaster so that's just that's what republicans do mitt romney gets elected you can expect the same thing that's it for your take my take tonight if you want to hear your comments on this segment the big picture listen up we want to know your to send us your comments by visiting the tom hartman facebook page via twitter at tom underscore her or in the chat room on the message boards or through the blog at thom hartmann dot com you can also leave

a message on our rant line by three six fifty three zero six agree disagree sound off it's all welcome but remember that your comments may be used on the air. that would be the good the bad in the very very daily is silly ugly but good germany last month solar power systems in germany produced and percent of total electricity consumption in that country on may twenty fifth and twenty sixth germany met one third of its peak energy demand is solar power alone right now there are more than one million solar power systems installed all across germany and solar system production is one of the fastest growing industries in the country but germany isn't just interested in solar power country uses other forms of renewable energy as well and in two thousand and eleven twenty percent of electricity in germany came from we knew about energy technologies it's about time

politicians in washington sort of follow the german model and move to america. way from a reliance on dirty and dangerous fossil. the bad athens city officials economy isn't the only thing falling apart in greece so is their health care system going to the aid group medicine song from frontiers doctors without borders for agrees cases of hiv and aids in athens have gone up over one thousand percent since two thousand and ten the head of the group blames the increase on athens city officials who allegedly have pursued a dangerous public health strategy that does little to fight the causes of aids and hiv and punishes those who are most at risk of developing the group also blames the increase in h i v patients on the suspension of a needle exchange program for i.v. drug users in athens the staggering figures are a reminder that aids is still a global epidemic and we need to be doing more not less to fight and the very very

ugly tony perkins perkins head of the conservative family research council attacked the month of june for being gay pride month take a listen. the month of june is gay pride month now i have not yet seen where they have declared. adultery. not seen where they have declared the drunkenness pride month. here's the issue of course mr perkins doesn't want to celebrate gay pride month he wants to deny gays equal rights and write them off as castaways in our society and that is very very. there's an election today in north dakota and what's on the ballot isn't what you would expect it's an amendment to the north dakota constitution to end all together

the property tax in that state. i've to tell you if i lived in north dakota i'd probably vote for it at the same time and on the other side of the atlantic there's that interesting news out of ireland this week kind of the opposite the irish are considering starting a property tax a tax on land is something brand new for the irish although it has a long history here in the united states a few years back i was invited to ireland to give a speech and on the way back to the airport a very chatty cab driver asked me if startlingly simple question how is it he asked the americans aren't allowed to own land as to what he was talking about at that time louise i owned a home in atlanta the mortgage was nearly paid off he said it's really simple here in ireland i own my home and the government can never take it away from me but in america you just rent your land from the government and if you don't pay your property taxes the government will take your land away and sell the right to pay rent taxes on it to somebody else at that time there was no property tax in ireland just as there isn't right now if you lost your job you kept your home if you were

wiped out by illness or accident or any other sort of disaster you kept your home the government could never take it away from you it was that way when our nation was founded as well property taxes were used in part to fund the american revolution but they were on all the property you own your horses cows corn even on slaves in the south and on the value of your house but usually not at all on your land in eighteen eighteen two generations after the american revolution illinois became the very first state to levy and equalize standardized property tax on land across the entire state by one thousand nine hundred thirty three states have done the same as of today every state in the union basically owns your land and rents it to you that rent being called property tax and if you don't pay your rent you lose what you thought was your land a home a lot worth one hundred thousand bucks can be seized an auction off for being fifty dollars behind in property taxes. when thomas jefferson was president his old

friend the marquis de lafayette asked him to translate a book on economics by a french economist named. jefferson translated it into english and something manuscript to lafayette although he begged lafayette to keep it a secret that he done so because as a sitting president he didn't want to be seen as interfering in economic and political debates of europe but jefferson translated the book because it confirmed a lot of his own previous thinking first of all he thought that poor people shouldn't pay any taxes and that the rich should pay a lot of taxes in eighteen seventeen to be eighty four a letter to james madison he wrote taxes should be proportioned to what made annually be spared by the individual a year later and seven hundred eighty five yet it is thoughts on taxes on property which included real estate in another letter to madison he wrote another means of silently lessening the any quality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical

progression as they rise if the ban on property taxes in north dakota fails that is that almost certainly will jefferson suggestion would be a great compromise one that's followed right now by many of the nations of the world only have people pay property taxes when they have a relatively high income and or a net worth when they're pulling out so much cash from a society that they can afford to give some back to the country that made them rich bottomline it's wrong that in america you can lose your home particularly a modest home simply because you lost your job or your health or your spouse the tragic reality is that those three things account for most of the people who lose their homes and while it's not always property taxes the push people over the edge to give up their homes it happens that way too often we should suspend property taxes nationwide and anyone who's been unemployed or been financially wiped out and we should put an income threshold above which taxation begins and be low which no property tax. is paid let the homeowner with

a modest home spend spend their entire life not paying property taxes while people like mitt romney who is so rich he hire a lobbyist to argue for a city zoning variation on his beachfront california mansion so you could build an elevator for his wife's second cadillac but people like that pay a graduated progressive property tax we do with income taxes why should property taxes be any different that's it for the big picture tonight don't forget get out there get active tag you're it. hasn't been a thing yet on t.v. . it is to get the maximum political impact. before the source material is what helps keep journalism on the we.

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