welcome to all of you let's start out with the best government money can buy it seems like we officially have it sholay able son has now come out and said he will pour at least one hundred million dollars into defeating president obama he's worth twenty five billion dollars so you know he probably would even notice a hundred million dollars there's a new report out that america's health insurance plans a hip the lobbying group for the health insurance industry who has. funneled more than one hundred million dollars to the chamber of commerce into this giant pool of cash and then we have the spectacle yesterday in the senate a block of senators basically throwing softballs of jamie dimon including chuck schumer the democrat bob corker and mike craig other republicans all three of whom lose j.p. morgan chase is their number one campaign donor so do we have are we officially living in a dollar all of our key and why aren't you know there are democrats yelling about this i haven't heard republicans yelling about it why not heather well i think that

you can have both sides the aisle crying out that you know there's there's foul play you know every election before us we start thinking well who's being you know the status person but the reality is that there are billionaires who fund obama's campaign and they're billionaires who want to fund romney's campaign the super pac thing is just made everything a little bit more. hard to process you know the money that's being funneled but it's obama and romney problem hundred incidents well my question and in fact i mentioned chuck schumer i mean is this any way erica to to run a democracy but i mean i think and i think here billionaires tended to be a little bit more generous than ours up until this point that may be part of the problem but i mean it chuck schumer is an interesting case and he represents new york which includes the financial industry so i can understand why you know he's getting money from the financial industry and why he represents them but i think going back to where the money really were really out of control on it as campaigns and elections and i still think i agree with that there that were. kind of figuring

out what this really means on a larger scale and we haven't seen anything like this and and trying to figure out how do we stop it without what we have seen it we've seen it in guatemala honduras and fifty's i mean you know we used to call a banana republics where the you know there's thirty six wealthy families that run mexico basically since i think the great simplify this is going i think that you should be able to donate however much you want to campaign with transparency i mean you want the government to root to demand transparency i don't think transparency helps because it's fundamentally says that some people's vote is worth more than other people's business in a fundamental dynamic here where if i'm a billionaire and i contribute one hundred million dollars to republicans i'll probably make that back in tax cuts if i'm a billionaire and i contribute one hundred billion dollars to democrats hundred million dollars is gone and my taxes are going to go up i think i think ultimately the premise of your question is wrong because you don't make anything back you just have less taken from you by virtue of tax cuts the effect is that this is all the

effect is the same but the i think the semantics are sort of i mean the how it how you refer to it is important i mean this is money earned by this individual and it's not something that he's earning from the government by way of a tax cut it's just less that's being taken from a lot of you know we could talk about tax credits but little mention jamie down here's a good example somebody goes before a bunch of guys and i think it's worthwhile and great that we can point out that so many of them are recipients of morgan stanley dollars i think that both sides want transparency and it's reasonable to look and say ok how was this lawmaker involved in this issue and to what extent is he compromised by the way he deals with it and i think that's i think that's universally true across the board is a common criticism from both sides if you like a father a cop out there to say that transparency is going to somehow fix it that it as long as we can see it but no crime happened i mean that only that the only thing that the problem is that we didn't know it was happening i think it's almost worse now that we can see that there's a large amount of influence that certain people are trying to peddle is going to go you'll soon though he was forthcoming about donating to super pac he did not receive praise. i know he didn't how to say it i mean that's

a whole thing about super pacs is that you can remain pretty anonymous and donate so he was running for a certain you would have been right in the rug and said i'm going to space you want to do you want to credit what i'm saying is you don't have to be transparent right now the super pacs even you know make it even easier for you to do so and i think that there with the transparency i think we're going to get less of the larger but so is this any way to run a democracy but some of your point your point is that just because you're successful doesn't mean you should have a greater say by virtue of your dollars i think that's incorrect i think that was defined success and i think that somebody who raises their kids well is may well be a more important person to the health and safety of the planet and to our society than sholay was fifteen that's entirely possible that's entirely possible but as an individual that has the means in order to engage in this conversation we all know that dollars have relevance into just our culture i mean just the way advertising for say is that every person has a vote every vote is equal so actually i would say that you know somebody with

money shouldn't have any more influence and i guess to pretend you do it that way you know you have one vote just like everybody else that's exactly what i thought i had but you can vote with ten million dollars that you want however many ads to be on the air and only what you want to know and i both want a difference in the way things are being run now or as before is that candidates don't have the same amount of accountability for what goes up and what's being said and the kind of the campaign as they used to we see in complete increase i mean i don't even know how much in terms of the negative advertising because these super pacs don't have to be responsible for anybody voting for them that would it not be incorrect to say that you know pharmaceutical company runs an ad for a new drug that they're rolling out that they're buying sales. they're investing money and they're making and they're getting sales and if so how is that different . because i can go out and buy thirty cars if i want to as one individual i can't go out and vote more than once and if i do i'm going to get in trouble so it's on the senate thirty vans to drive people to the polls versus the guy that. can't have

just fundamental advantage and if we're going to say that money is an advantage and we're really i mean the people are exacting or how you get your way the people who are driving people to the polls are progressives that's a that's a like that's that's going to be organizing others around no no. no that is the most literal example of that by tom you talk about health care the truth is it just came out that obamacare was planned hand in hand with the pharmaceutical industry and i say it's a process wasn't corrupt that's my whole point this whole process from from beginning to end has been corrupted by money and that therefore my original question are we living in an oligarchy instead of a democracy it's increasingly looking like it to me and my concern but let's move along the newspaper el of you i guess would be pronounced the mexican newspaper says that carlos slim the the fellow who basically owns the cell phone industry of mexico the richest man one of the richest men in the world the richest man in mexico has called for all the develop nations in the world to raise the retirement age to seventy and this is in the context of people like billionaire pete peterson

here in the united states advocating basically the same thing turned on social security. paul ryan talking like this and meanwhile over in france just one on a platform of reducing the retirement age from sixty three down to sixty where it was up until three years and it's france and for in france is doing quite well right now thank you very much and in fact when they originally dropped the retirement age what they saw was that more young people came into the work into the workplace and unemployment went down shouldn't we be lowering retirement age should we lower social security eligibility age to sixty and get a whole you know get five ten million people out of the labor force make room for young people coming up not not i don't think so because social security is not supposed to sustain you completely and my father as a over sixty five year old man had to find a new job he could and he couldn't afford to retire and he's you know very able bodied person i understand that and i really think i think that though if you if you drop the so sick. eligible in medicare eligible billeted ages to sixty probably

only a third to a half of people over sixty would take advantage of it or could even as you correctly point out but that's going to that's going to open up millions and millions of jobs ok because then i could argue that also health wise there's a difference between sixty five and seventeen there's a lot that can change in those years and that putting the burden on every single person to have to be working and functioning at the high of a level they were at forty in those years i think is is completely unfair even though people are living longer and life expectancy has been extended they haven't extended youth and extra ten years and people in the bottom half are not actually living longer and some of the top fifty percent of americans i would reducing it to i mean reducing the sixty five or sixty even wouldn't i don't help that population that much either i mean we're talking about i think what we need to think about too is the security needs to be revamped and one of the ways to revamp it is to increase the retirement age so that we can actually sustain it if we have a career right when you drop it down to sixty if bill gates was paying the same percentage of his income or mitt romney the same percentage of his income in that

you do if we could we could drop the retirement age to sixty and so secure be solvent for the next seventy five that's for you that's just about right now a long time and we really do need to go back and look at it because it is it is the great thing about social security is that it's the one of the few things that everybody pays into and everybody gets benefits from i should bill gates get social security sure i mean i think you're absolutely you know i don't hear you and i don't need to drive on roads that our taxes go to mean we're all citizens and we should all benefit from our government absolutely he should be able to i think you can benefit the government also gladly i think gladly say i don't need so security i don't need i don't need to have been ok with that when i was fishing for him but should he be paying more percentage of his income probably absolutely is but this is not just a question over whether or not people get access to social security younger age whether they're able bodied how long they can live this in many regards is a question of especially in the united states whether or not we can maintain the solvency of the system that's why when you say. paul i mean paul ryan. and you say

well he wants to immediately change the retirement well that's not true he wants to change retirement age over a progressive period of time it's the issue is to try and bring social security to solvency and you'll never hear republicans say they're going to get jobs because we also see the unemployment rate of people who are over fifty five is incredibly high humidity people who are getting laid off at sixty two they've got three more and there's eight already going on there already and i recently heard a story of let's let me just renewed his conversation all social security is not a retirement program it's insurance against poverty in old age social security cut poverty in old age by half the other thing is the social security fully a third of social security is an insurance program for people in their teens their twenty's their thirty's their forty's if they get injured and are incapacitated for the rest of their life they break their neck or their back become a quadriplegic they will be taken care of it's an insurance policy for everybody but it's been so mismanaged the money doesn't even stay in the account it's like the united states i think is invested in treat us treasuries where would you have the money to start about you know the money's been pulled out by the government over the years into varying places they constantly been. at the american people

disagree on the most popular programs because everybody's got a point because you see that insurance program populi it was very popular already contest in this country would just fall off a cliff that's called democracy but that's not that's exactly what i know it's that i know that's why it's telling our that's true that it's called a market and that's why we are a democratic republic and we're going to if you're going to want to don't have majority rules or no that's i mean we have an electoral college we haven't whipped up until we've had seventy men we actually had senators chosen by states i mean this country you want to go back to i'm not sure i do but i don't i don't really think it's about that i don't really care. that kerry has not been a success i could say that he's been wildly popular i completely i really don't feel the rate of poverty for our first senior citizens was so astronomically high i think people this is about people who have to live with their children i mean everyone who wants to get rid of social security welcome your parents back into your home you want to live in your parents best to rely just like i did that's a good point because that we do see so security completed. like these days you're

talking about being an insurance program who says that who i'd say to me well being i'm going back to fine but the semantics today are so security is the equivalent of retirement there's no there's not open no no i don't think you don't see described as oh you know it's a safety net it's no it's not people but i think that that's going to take care of if i was going so i'm going with a double if we have to in america that we're a poverty rate that's not treated that way point and i think the problem is that we've lost pensions and we've lost you know we've lost the ability in terms of well for people to save the amount of money that they do need to retire so people have not had their i don't solve those obviously tonight but i disagree that it's right or wrong they're going to do what any of the burden. is to the.

children play war in the old. in june nine hundred forty one these walls were the first barrier for the nazi troops on their way to moscow. sunders breasts were dying one by one under siege the son. was. in the last shelter an unnamed soldier left a few simple words. but i'm not surrendering.

to. police.

on the back of a picture rubble joining me are heather saramago conservative strategist an associate of blue skin solutions and blogger at heather ceremoniously imo dot com. democratic strategist and vince collin a senior online editor at the daily caller let's get back to it let's talk about that stuff the george washington could. help and pot rhode island just became the seventeenth state in the nation to decriminalize. possession of the small amount of marijuana independent governor lincoln chase chafee signed legislation the law it's not one hundred fifty dollars fine with a small instead of a felony or even a mr meters not even a misdemeanor anymore illinois massachusetts missouri new york hampshire ohio pennsylvania all have these things coming up on their ballots too in some cases even regulate it like alcohol basically just make it a recreational drug or a medical drug. isn't this just common sense to end nixon's field drug

war since. i think i kind of one of these one of those places where i again i have hazy opinions but i will say like you know on one hand i certainly understand why you would want to decriminalize pot because i think a lot of people make the mistake make the mistake growing up of using it and they shouldn't have to live with that forever i mean i think that if people make a mistake if i did cetera but at the same time you go to a country like the netherlands and you realize this is not what i want for my country so i don't know it's a kind of a model why why not have there nobody has ever died from marijuana fifty five thousand people a year in the united states die just from cirrhosis. well i think one thing we haven't really studied the effects of marijuana use i think it's interesting though to note that we're talking about medical marijuana mostly these bills i don't think there is any that talks about this actually a couple recreational but it will regulate it but you know the whole thing of medical marijuana is that there are other ways you can get the medical benefits of the plant rather than smoking because smoking it seems to outweigh the benefits

that you would get from any of the medicine all factored in all of those yet both work but they're coming out i don't see ways because i think it's very interesting that our society said so much in my lifetime of reducing smoking you know and now and that's a legal you're going to have a pot and i know but i mean we're not these are people who want to smoke it that's the whole point they don't want to do it any other way they want to smoke it in gronings. terms if medically it helps a lot of people and just because some drugs are available doesn't mean they work for. entire population and people should have access to something that is medically beneficial has been proven to be that way i think terms of the kind of criminal justice system we have done ourselves a giant disfavor in terms of. billions and billions of lost revenue that's gone into criminalizing something that is you know essentially as you said not really a high crime or violent crime at all and then we put people into a system in which they get you there as a criminal and either become you know then associate with criminals and jail and

learn to become you know kind of stuck in that lifestyle or they are then subject to physical abuse or sexual abuse in prison so for such a small thing it just seems ridiculous but more so we're losing opportunity for revenue and i'm going to tax it tax and get that money back if our economy is doing so poorly and we're going for new revenue streams and more you will realize that it really libertarian argument. but i will say what the one thing just to remember is that out of all the states that are pursuing this on the flip and the federal government is pursuing it more than ever in terms of in terms of going after criminals be abominations disregarding california they're going in. nabbing these papa spencerian so there's all sorts i mean the federal government well you know it's really a tone change for the president because the president did say before he was elected that he wanted to move in the direction of decriminalization and in fact has gone to polar opposite and i will say this just kind of i said before you know my my brother is an officer l.a.p.d. and he has to deal with marijuana cases all the time and he would argue to me that alcohol abuse is

a far greater issue i'm sure for marijuana possession time you know there's crimes it was repeating it happens and all these other things going to exist and they just go. oh no i mean well you know ok new studies big. new study from the institute for economics and pieces that the world is actually getting more peaceful. but the united states not so much we are number eighty eight in the world out of one hundred fifty countries and they were the most peaceful countries iceland the criteria of the use was. prison populations political instability participation of wars and military expenditures should we be proud that we're eighty eight in the world in terms of peacefulness rather. i thought was interesting that political instability was one of them i would like to know what the end state would think of you know our thing rancorous about you know our elections but still peaceful but i don't know if they would think that but i don't think he is that bad considering that we are in a war right now we're not in a civil war we've had two wars and still the eighty eight i thought was kind of

surprising i'm surprised we weren't there but i mean i think it goes back to that the whole idea that that wars were good for business that in terms of the defense industry that you know we were able to kind of really economic activity you know through war as follows that really peace is much better for business that's a lot easier to trade with somebody than it is to fight them in the kind of pick up the pieces that seem to say suggest that we're in war to increase business which is not the case but vince apropos of what erica just said military spending is the least efficient form of economic stimulus you build a bomb you drop it on somebody the money is gone for ever build a school and it produces you know social good for fifty years why is that the republicans are always asking for more military spending at least in the last thirty years this is a radical departure from well military spending is i don't live there or heard the argument that military spending was for economic stimulus. i haven't heard that made that when i don't think that's a reasonable argument to be made it was made during the reagan the idea is that military spending ease effective for our national security i guess that helps the

solvency of the economy that we have a secure country but it doesn't surprise me that we've said eighty eight on the list like that is because we're the only country that's actually doing the job of wielding the military in the world and many countries ask us to be having what she can actually on that are in charge forget the choices guns are but are just a lot of people are choosing butter i mean i think that's kind of part of it it looks i mean it's something to what i mean it's a false dichotomy that we're not building schools to i mean tom to mind is totally we need all we need to know that there's serve our. ok i get it even colonies thank you all for being here with me and i think. harry truman famously said if you want a friend in washington buy a dog used to be true back in one thousand seven hundred public and president teddy

roosevelt got the tillman act pushed through congress which made it a felony crime for a corporation to give money or any other form of assistance to any member of congress supreme court of course in a series of decisions over the last thirty years culminating in citizens united has taken down the tillman act and all of its cousins like mccain feingold now here in washington if you want a friend you don't have to buy a dog you can buy yourself a senator case in point jamie dimon c.e.o. of j.p. morgan chase yesterday he was called to testify before the senate banking committee in the clip you're about to see brilliantly compiled by t.p.m. you'll see and hear how one of our nation's most notorious banks toure's was treated by some of his friends why are they his friends well republican jim de mint has raised over twenty two million dollars in recent years and according to open secrets dot org its third largest donor is securities and investment industry the banks toure's republican david vitter raised over eleven million dollars in open secret org says securities investments this is fifth largest industry donor

publican roger weicker as head or wicker has raised over nine million dollars in security investment seventh largest donor republican jerry moran is holding almost ten million dollars and commercial banks ranked number five according to open secrets dot org for him and the top contributor to republican senator craig though this election cycle jamie dimon is j.p. morgan chase he's on the banking committee and the top contributor to republican senator corker was on the banking committee number one don't. j.p. morgan's jamie diamond j.p. morgan chase so take a look at what kind of lap dogs i see friends. bank stars can buy in washington these days. 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 institution jim is this it's a blip on the radar schrank i really appreciate you voluntarily coming in to talk with us it is important we talk about things happening in the industry it'll i

think advise and help us and as we look forward and hopefully it'll contribute to the best practice scenario in the industry in appreciate your interests is on a continuous quality improvement it's comforting to know that even with a two million dollars two billion dollars loss in a trade last year your company still i think had a nineteen million dollar profit you made the statement the answer isn't more regulation it's smarter stronger regulation and i absolutely strongly agree with that did you volunteer to to be part of that conversation i we me and lots of the folks that will do whatever you want will even get apartments down here. mr banks there are a lot of us kiss your and or us welcome to town for a while and you can kiss or go. so bad on the other hand there are the senators who took no or virtually no money from j.p.

morgan chase include democrats bob menendez and jeff merkley what sort of questions did they ask take a look. at numerous executives of your firm testify that your personal direction they were to invest in higher yielding assets rather than traditional government backed securities. and yet when those bets go bad instead of taking responsibility for you blame it on the unit that you set up and you take personal responsibility since they were following the the game plan that you personally laid out when you reduce a hedge or hedge a hedge isn't that really gambling. i don't believe so no so. this transaction that you said morphed would it didn't would it morph into russian roulette so to recap a used to be if you want a friend in washington you should buy a dog now thanks to our supreme court if you are a friend of washington you could buy yourself a senator or a congressman bennie

a president our democracy is quickly becoming a cartoon of a self pastiche if we don't pass a constitutional amendment repealing this doctrine created entirely in exclusively by the supreme court a doctor in the money isn't property it's speech if we don't repeal that then this is just going to get worse and worse and worse for example right now republican port authority is reporting that republican senator james inhofe who's taken over one point three million dollars from the dirty fossil fuel industries just since one thousand nine hundred nine is leading the charge with twenty nine other bought off colleagues who've taken over twenty four million dollars from the industry to loosen the rules on how much mercury these companies can dump into our air more profits for industry more millions for republican senators more autism and neurological damage for the rest of us. we genuinely now have the best senators

money can buy go to move to amend or sign up to take our democracy back from the five right wing crazies in black robes we're doing everything they can to corrupt it over the supreme court that's moved to amend or. that's it for the big picture tonight for more information on the stories we've covered visit our web sites at marvin's dot com free speech dot org and. also check out our two you tube channels there are links that thom hartmann dot com also at tom hartman dot com check out all the different ways you can send us your feedback and don't forget democracy begins with you suggested get over to move to amend or get out there get active occupy stuff and tag your it.

and head back to the polls for the second round of the presidential vote as the ruling generals take over as lawmakers of the parliament by mubarak era judges. on one to develop the european crisis scholars island goes neighborhoods number of cities the construction bubble bursts in spectacular style. as you say rising violence in syria is putting on that kind of risk he speaks to a christian nun in the country who says but it's a staging move this to make them look like government killings. and one day left them to him to greek election which could decide if the country stays in the usa assesses the feeling amongst voters and the choices they're faced with.

this is r.t. international news twenty four hours a day welcome. now thousands of angry gyptian say their country's democracy is going nowhere even as the nation heads to the polls for a runoff presidential vote the muslim brotherhoods mohamed morsi it faces ousted mubarak's last prime minister mention feek but whoever wins will take over without the islamist dominated parliament which has been dissolved by the supreme court. judges ruled that the seat parliamentary elections were on the ruling military council has now assumed and all making authority even the president's powers have yet to be determined by a constitution which is still in the pipeline based human rights activists no news media name on the ballot is a viable option. there's a very very big chance that mass protests arise in the.