oh. the. on john r. in washington d.c. and here is what's coming up tonight on the big picture former gingrich campaign backer and billionaire casino logos sheldon adelson is pledging unlimited donations to mitt romney's campaign is the american democracy dead when billionaires can funnel endless money into politics and take away the voice of the people also the world's richest man a man who doesn't have to worry about working or added jobs thinks you should work until you're seventy one hardworking americans deserve to have a retirement years without billionaires telling them what they can and can't do and the first hundred fifty five days of this year one hundred fifty four united states soldiers committed suicide the highest suicide rate in the last ten years what

should our government be doing to better help our soldiers our current soldiers and our veterans overcome the horrors of war. you need to know that it was a dog and pony show on capitol hill yesterday as the senate banking committee called on j.p. morgan chase c.e.o. jamie diamond to testify on his bank's massive three billion dollar loss last month rather than asking tough questions about how something like this could happen just how reliable our banking system is and whether or not this proves the new financial regulations are needed most senators on the committee decided it was a great venue to kiss diamonds ring here are a few examples you're obviously renowned rightfully so i think is me one of the most you know one of the best c.e.o.'s in the country for financial institutions you miss this it's a blip on the radar schrank i really appreciate you voluntarily coming in to talk

with us some it is important we talk about things happening in the industry it'll i think advise was help us and them. as we look forward and hopefully it'll contribute to best practice scenario in the industry and i appreciate your input on a continuous quality improvement it's comforting to know that even with a two million dollars two billion dollar loss in a trade last year your company still i think had a night team billion dollar profit you made the statement the answer isn't more regulation it's smarter stronger regulation and i absolutely strongly agree with did you volunteer to to be part of that. we me and lots of the folks who will do whatever you want where you can get apartments down here so here we have the most notorious banks there in the country coming to testify in front of we the people's senate amidst a populist backlash against wall street in our streets and yet that's all our

elected representatives can muster up just pleasantries compliments and adoration of the herring would have would have gone on any longer there may have been some fondling and french kissing what you didn't see at this hearing was everything that's going on behind the scenes specifically just our money how much money jamie dimon and his bank have given to the members of that very same senate banking committee and once you know those numbers that everything that happened as dog and pony show makes a lot more sense to break it all valid for us is that jalopy reporter a united republican or public report said welcome back great to be here so. the money behind the please sir may i have another what what what's the situation why are these senators making kissy face with jamie dimon cherie so i imagine you've got some trouble you had to go for a court you had to explain yourself and they were investigating you but you were able to pay off the judge and jury i mean what kind of crazy world would that be unfortunately that's the reality of the u.s. congress and just the federal government as

a whole right now with the amount of money being thrown around it's really interesting you know senator craig senator corker both of these senators actually their top donor in this current election cycle was j.p. morgan chase if they were to grill jamie diamond in really go after him for the two billion trading loss then there's a huge possibly money could be pulled away from them i mean once you're paying someone that much money they're obviously not going to grill you the number two democrat in the senate senator schumer also had a similar performance with diamond and j.p. morgan chase is the fourth largest career donor or is it his large span of career in the u.s. congress so all these people are essentially charged with holding accountable the very same people who enabled them to be there in the congress it's almost like they don't work for the voters to vote for them but for the people who have to raise the amount of money it takes to run a campaign for the u.s. senate so it seems that it's bipartisan although you know i watched a good chunk of yesterday's hearings and an end and in particular jeff merkley ripped of the sky i mean just ripped him and i want open secrets and menendez has

taken a total of two thousand dollars from them and merkley nothing as far as i can tell so it seems like there's a kind of a one on one association it's remarkable i'd say the toughest senators on diamond where merkley i think in oregon and also menendez from new jersey and if you look neither of them has taken any money from j.p. morgan this cycle and they've taken very little in the past share brown was also very very similar situation john tester was the same way and then of them had taken any money this cycle or they've taken very little money in the past so there's a there really is almost a one to one correlation if you're if you're for the largest career donor if your top donor in this. j.p. morgan you tend to be really nice to the c.e.o. j.p. morgan no matter what happens the american people are there any regulations standards rules ethics policies anything that should have forced senators. and you know. what we go to court. to recuse themselves know there isn't actually any any sort of regulation as far as

bringing people that has the buy here campaign donors that now if they were retiring and they were negotiating for a job with j.p. morgan or something i think there are some at the rules that they could have to recuse themselves always that they're taking votes really to j.p. morgan chase but you know even those rules are very very difficult to enforce so unfortunately the senate seems to be an ethics free zone and when it really should be standing up to these banks and their continued reckless behavior on this very well said. you guys are doing brilliant work over there are public record keep it up thank you very much now moving on from the buyout of the senate banking committee to the buyout of the united states presidency meet casino mogul sheldon adelson the billionaire who's trying to buy the election for his man gordon gekko i mean mitt romney has already contributed a whopping ten million bucks to mitt romney's bank super pac slush fund and now forbes magazine is quoting a source within the adelson camp he says the billionaire plans to spend a limitless amount of money to help romney during the election since no price is

too high to stop president obama's socialism a source then floated the possibility that aid spending could spend as much as one hundred million dollars to tilt the election in favor of romney forbes is one of the fifteen richest people on the planet with an estimated net worth of nearly twenty five billion dollars meaning he could bankroll an entire billion dollar presidential campaign and hardly notice. so is this the death of democracy as we know it might have been tony joins me now he's an attorney and host of ring of fire radio with bobby kennedy mike welcome back to the program. i'm great what was your take following up on the conversation we just had was that johnny of the fondling of jamie diamond in the senate yesterday. well i had the story been told what we would have found out is that the document has been lying to us he told us in april that there was no problem with his london desk there he said he's looked into it it was really a tempest in a teapot it was some rogue who had done wrong but what we really found out is that

he not only lied to us about that but if you remember jamie diamond lied to us about the fact that he was smarter than the rest of the guys in the room he didn't he didn't get involved in mortgage derivatives and c.d.o. and synthetics that was a lie in of itself those questions were never asked of the minister the families so and then and now we have sheldon aid on one guy pledging one hundred million dollars isn't this from this point of view more an investment than a campaign contribution well it is we'll never know where the money goes tom the other citizens or citizens united you know he says while never know where the money goes understand adelson is very close friends with call rove he's been dealing with call rove for a long time it we're going to see most of that money move through his pac here's a man who's motivated completely in the area of union busting it's next to israel it's the number two preference he has for politics so what we're going to see is

we're going to see a lot of money move through we're going to see mitt you know we're never going to is never going to be traced back to adelson we know he's given thirty five million at this point but when you're worth twenty five billion dollars really if you put in a pencil to it that's almost pocket change in yes it is buying elections this supreme court knew it was going to happen roberts understood squarely what was going to happen with citizens united and now it's. point itself out it did it is and as more new reports are coming out suggesting that right wing super pacs are going to spend just the super pacs a billion dollars this year president obama's reelection chances on in trade have fallen from over seventy percent just about a month ago to now fifty two percent how worried should the president and progressive democrats be if we take if we take what we learned from wisconsin and you had an incredible grassroots organization put together motivated people money

still bought that election the thing about it is we know this we've this is been studied ad nauseum negative campaigning works seventy percent chance that you're going to remember a negative ad that you've seen when you go to that the polling booth this is the kind of money that adelson is talking about they can buy a lot of negative campaigning the average low information voters there simply never looked behind this they've they have they have focused this ad nauseum they know that money buys campaigns this supreme court knew that when they passed citizens united so what should americans do who want to push back against this this avalanche of cash that's coming tom unfortunately what the way i'm looking at this entire thing is we focus so much on elections really what politics has become is more movements in order to change this country it's more it's driven more by movements the occupy movement for example we focus election by election and

understand we think that that election cycle is going to change the way america is today it while it's what we ought to focus on is the movement if the movement is strong enough it takes care of the individual elections that is grassroots but we do know this movements can trump money in a big way if they're if they're well done and if they're sustained i think the movement the concept of the movement has become much more important. in the concept of the cyclical election where in your opinion is the best place for americans to hook into movements i think it had i think it was built for us right now occupy is an incredible organization they continue to grow they continue to do to do the things that they're supposed to be doing and that is to create to create take our take our attention away from what's going to happen in this in a tauriel election what's going to happen in this congressional election and say what's going to happen if we don't change the way that we run elections in other words they're focused on the bigger picture the money should go to people like

occupy your attention should go to people like occupy that's the only thing that's going to change that's going to change as a groundswell change in this country is the movement not the election cycle brilliantly mike papen tonio thanks so much for being with us tonight and you're welcome to the brave new world of american politics where only billionaires are well. coming up the world's richest man says you should keep working until you're seventy because that's what struggling economies need really why are millionaires and billionaires the ones telling working people when they can retire.

a client of american power continue. things in our country. might actually be time for a revolution. and it turns out that a programmer drink at starbucks says it's surprising in 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 thought you knew you don't know i'm sorry welcome to the big picture. here which i. love and they alone are still you know get the real headlines with

none of them are the problem with the mainstream media today is that they're completely disconnected from the viewers and what actually matters to those viewers and so that's why young people just don't watch t.v. anymore if they want news they go online and read it but we're trying to take those stories that people actually care about and transfer them back to t.v. . thanks. to the capital account i'm laurin my sister.

in screwed news the world's richest man mexican cell phone tycoon carlos slim doesn't have to worry about his own retirement but he wants the rest of the world to worry about their speaking in the newspaper el universal slim call on developing nations around the world or developed nations around the world to raise their respective retirement ages to seventy slim said that because people are living longer today therefore they should be working longer to slim echoes what a lot of very wealthy people here in the united states are arguing for raising the eligibility age for social security from sixty five to seventy that includes multi-millionaires like congressman paul ryan and billionaires like lobbyist pete peterson but what these oligarchy don't understand is that they're the only ones living longer the rest of america's workers aren't according to the economic policy institute only the top fifty percent wealthiest americans have seen their life

expectancy go up dramatically from seventy nine years to more than eighty five years the rest of us can plan on only living around seventy nine years so americans only deserve nine years in retirement now and why are billionaires the ones telling working people when they can retire here to answer that is conservative commentator and pro-business advocate david ceiling david welcome back. thanks for having me tom it's a real pleasure so david why do you hate senior citizens. i got to tell you i do hate getting i knew one day i would get that from you. are going to be the issue is absolutely a conversation we have to have the fact of the matter is right now in the united states we've got according to the government something like thirty six trillion dollars of unfunded liabilities to medicaid and we've got eight trillion and this is just what they own up to to the social security and we're just stilling

hemorrhaging money in various entitlement programs and like you said people are living a lot longer seventy nine eighty four eighty five years old they're really going the distance they should be productive tom just like i hope you and i are productive in those senior year it should be optional i mean do you really want a brick layer who is seven it is all tional tom you can retire whenever you want to but you have to. get out and will if you save your money and maybe a would start our elected officials would be good stewards of your and stop throwing it away your point that social security will be. will be facing a deficit you're right it's be twenty two years from now but at that point there will be so security will only be able to pay out seventy percent of what they're paying right now however if we simply raise the cap i mean social security is the only tax that only low income people pay high income people do not pay the social

security tax if they ruin sags anywhere senator no it no gates style do exact same percentage as they will as. his secretary there would be no problem so scary you know that david no no no no your perfect world you would take all of the wealthy successful people's money and property and distribute it i would just have them pay the same social scene. here are the facts of the bricklayers and they would squander it immediately within two years all of that wealth so you're not swayed but you're not disputing my stance as their so-called wealth you're disputing that i was doing what you were saying what we need to do as i said at the risk of being redundant is to insist that our elected officials be good stewards of our money or return to generally accepted accounting principles and stop all this nonsense of borrowing this money you know you can damn it i'm

totally with you one reagan tripled the national debt x. it was a lie when when reagan triple the national debt and modified social security when george herbert walker bush then they added in a couple trillion and when george. day but with regard to the retirement age since that's what we're talking about why not just drop in a sixty because then you would have probably about half the workforce between sixty and sixty five retire and that would open up all kinds of jobs for younger people it would solve the unemployment problem you'd have young people paying taxes into the system it would pay for itself france is about just too but i am sure there is a couple of years ago while for them no no it does not work well and one third of your viewing audience are sitting on the couch living perhaps and their parents soem they're thinking alright i've got another what twenty five years before i can retire they never even got going let's not get rid of productive people who have already been tried and proven and enjoy working so we can have some guy who doesn't

even want to work get off his lazy duff and go in there and clog the system so your millennial twenty somethings who are at a problem with social security. know but what i am saying is let's back off on some of these onerous regulations let's be more business friendly let's reduce this crushing taxation and well as that's what i'm saying david let's do away with the regulation how do you think more jobs. you know what let's and you and i both know particularly now that we can enjoy those big sugary drinks in new york we're all going to live so much longer shouldn't we be productive tom you know i'm all in favor of being but i do you do when i have a lab and i am with you of being productive i do however think those are where we should be learning from france david david feeling thank you david. with their deal of the economic elite made a deal with working americans that their basic needs would be met with

a social safety net but today the elites are shredding that deal and trying to bring feudalism back to america that's wrong people like pete peterson need to be called out on. now on to another group of americans who are being left behind our soldiers according to a new pentagon report our soldiers are dying at an alarming rate but not in afghanistan they're dying right here at home in the first one hundred fifty five days of this year one hundred fifty four soldiers committed suicide average nearly one soldier dying of suicide each day that's an eighteen percent increase from last year and the fastest pace in the decade of bush's two wars suicide deaths now occur fifty percent more often than combat deaths in afghanistan and the situation isn't much better for our military veterans every eighty minutes in america a u.s. veteran attempts suicide studies suggest multiple tours of duty p.t.s.d. and misuse of prescription medicine could be behind the surge in military suicides both among veterans and active duty personnel another possible explanation is

financial hardship from the bush depression just like working class american soldiers too are having their homes foreclosed on by romney's banks through friends even while they're abroad risking their lives for their country or trying to get on an economic footing after leaving the military and tragically in congress republicans and democrats can't even come together anymore to help our veterans. so how do we expect these brave men and women to cope after war and find a place in the nation that's economically leaving more and more people behind joining me now is a man who has some wisdom and insights that we should all this and to rearm shute is a former south african p.o.w. and founder of the power of choice foundation is the author of new book set yourself free rianne welcome i'm i pronouncing your name right thank you thank you very much and thank you for joining us tell us about it tell us your story and how you work through some of these challenges joe not just want to make it clear from the start i'm not a psychologist i'm not a psychiatrist i have no degree i'm

a soldier that for as a special forces soldier for eighteen years in the military in south africa and i was a political prisoner. for thirteen years and one of africa's was prisons and my personal experience is what i write about in the book. i know what it's like coming back to a society off to war what it feels like to try and. back into society and when to be used to suffer from p.t.s.d. i suffer from severely from p.t.s.d. and i have a message directly to the today. there's nothing wrong with you when you suffer from p.t.s.d. nobody goes to war and comes back normal. it's not a stigma it's not a shame seek help for it. we all need help when you suffer from p.t.s.d. shouldn't we be also acknowledging that war is

a bizarre state that war is is arguably a mental illness that most most species don't go to war they don't they don't try to to exterminate other other species they'll have battles and things but i mean this this concept of war is something actually you know. one of the one of jefferson's observations bag you know two hundred thirty plus years ago was that the native americans the earthquake confederacy had been hundreds of years without a war because they used lacrosse they played games to see to resolve conflicts i agree with you fully you know if you take it most of the soldiers going to war today they don't go they because they have a political viewpoint when they hate anybody they go there because that's what the government tells them to do and then we come back from war and we suffer severely i know what it's like to have night means not be able to sleep. depression i know

what that's about and that's what i dress in my book you see it yourself free because i believe the government said to help us societies they to help us but i think ultimately what i speak about in my book is that we have to realize that ultimately the choice is ours we must realize there's something wrong with us coming back from war and we need to seek help and we have the choice. to choose. to seek help and to make that change it's almost like contaminated by war and then you have to figure out how to decontaminate use of termini you keep circling and you know what there are people out here that wants to help us i'm involved with the american bits that he's actually trying that they create jobs valverde it's they're not waiting for the government to help them they're not waiting for some political party two of these are vets coming back they suffer from p.t.s.d. themselves and they realize that listen we cannot wait for the government to do this we need to stand up and do it ourselves the problem is coming back from war

you don't realize you've changed and you confused the loved ones you coming back to don't receive the same person back that they seem to war in that confuses them and in my book i address that i address i say you know what it's a choice it's a choice when you come back to hold on to that hatred but anger that's what we come back from war with that's who we are and we need to realize that and we've got to realize that this isn't the choice is mine if i stay in this space i am still that war is forgiveness the most powerful force i think so i think so john and a lot of people say to me it's impossible to forgive and that but you know what in my book address that it's not just vets coming back from more right in america today you have millions of people suffering from an economic meltdown that's going through losing their houses losing everything they own their whole lives and that's a trauma and everybody out there that's suffering today in my book i tell them i

say you know what it's a choice is sometimes we cannot control what happens to us we cannot control the circumstances but we can control how we respond and react to those circumstances and make choices we can choose to sit down i'm a victim this is going on well meaning kill me we know you're bad things happen to me but i'm not going to let it destroy me i'm going to use this. one of the first things i had to do in that prison i had to decide am i going to be angry and bitter and go through this prison destroy me when i'm going to make a decision to take this as a listen you know for the first for you for five years the only thing i keep them to myself is why i don't know it was so angry you know why is this government and all these people not helping me and it's wonderful the result that we all were at the time to thank you so much for being with us i appreciate it. check out the book it's called set yourself free as for our current members of the military it's time to end these wars and give our soldiers some much needed peace of mind but it's

part of american power continues. things are so bad. might actually be time for a revolution. and it turns out that a procurer drug or starbucks has a surprising. all of. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then something else here sees some other part of it and realized everything. welcome is a big. mystery when you. look in the alone

a fellow you know get the real headlines with none of them or see the problem with the mainstream media today is that they're completely disconnected from the viewers and what actually matters to those viewers and so that's why young people just don't watch t.v. anymore if they want news they go online and read it but we're trying to take those stories that people actually care about and transfer them back to t.v. .