welcome back to the big picture i'm tom hartman coming up in this half hour taxes in america are at a thirty year low all thanks to president obama being in the white house does that mean republicans should be thanking him instead of trying to seven taj's presidency and destroy the economy also with an economy in freefall you'd think the united states wouldn't sign on to another insane free trade deal that would do more damage right. what is the trans-pacific partnership and why is our government letting foreign corporations run the us and thanks in large part to billionaires our democracy and political system have become corrupt isn't it time we stop the path of destruction and outlawed billionaires in america and the world.

in the best of the rest the news don't tell the tea party about taxes in america are at a thirty year low thanks to president obama looking at the latest numbers from the congressional budget office which were from two thousand and nine the average federal tax rate for all households in the nation was just seventeen point four percent it should be noted the core billionaire mitt romney pays less than that average the low seventeen point four percent rate is well below the thirty year average of twenty one percent and well below what was paid under george w. bush in two thousand and three which was nineteen percent nineteen point four percent to be exact so the question is why are republicans who hate paying taxes lining up to salute and support president obama whose cut their taxes again and again so much so that they're now at a thirty year low that's asked that question to david ceilidh conservative commentator and pro-business advocate david welcome back thanks for having me thomas always it's a pleasure so why do you hate tax cuts david. ok first and foremost

the average taxpaying american is overpaying present like but i want to tell you how skewed these numbers are. excuse me the i beg your pardon that's quite are these numbers are yes these numbers are so skewed because you have more people than ever who are not paying any taxes like take for example you may have an individual in your viewing audience right now i mean why is somebody who has a general at heart well no not that somebody who runs my exxon mobil. ok some guy who managed to hold onto a job mitt romney and didn't go out on disability or what have your or pitch a tent on wall street and he's working and every week he sees those taxes being taken out of his check and he thinks himself a taxpayer but at the end of the year he gets back more money than he ever paid in because of these schenn arist refundable tax credits that successful people just

aren't entitled to so let's the fine taxpayer by an individual who pays in more than he gets back so these charlatans are cooking the books they're skewing the numbers and in a word for this administration to hold itself out and say we've lowered taxes is just preposterous the charlatans you're referring to for the record of the congressional budget office. supported by republicans just recently is as democrats the bureau of labor another. nonpartisan organization says that both the job creation and g.d.p. growth are lowest at the current thirty five percent tax rate and highest at an eighty percent top tax rate in fact if you look at the statistics for the last hundred years those times the g.d.p. has grown fastest and job creation growing fastest have been the times when the top tax rate was above fifty percent and those years that had grown most slowly have been when the top tax rate is below fifty percent you know they have an expression

for that in texas and say they say that dog won't hunt but it's true again those numbers for the for the you know zero zero for the economy in the fifty's sixty's seventy's and early eighty's even the rate the so-called reagan recovery in eighty four the top tax rate was fifty percent eighty four. fiscal responsibility and it is strict adherence to generally accepted accounting principles whereas now you have spendthrift politicians a spendthrift administration of various strains that we know are breaking the bank and we look the other way because that's unpopular that's how i would explain it you know the average person likes to believe they're getting a bang for their buck when they pay their taxes unfortunately that's not the case as in one thousand nine hundred one ronald reagan famously stopped in force in the sherman antitrust act and we saw those mergers and acquisitions mania michael milken these m.n.a. artists all the stuff it's no president has gone back to with the way america was

before eighty one and as a consequence of this we the new america foundation published this report today entrepreneurs per capita have dropped fifty three percent self employed people down twenty percent isn't this a consequence of too much money at the top crowding out the ability of small business people to compete absolutely not but what will happen if this administration goes ahead and jacks up the tax rate is you are going to say and gets rid of these very important credits towards large corporations and such you're going to see less research and development less opportunities for the average person you know we need to look to the government to create jobs what we need to do is have the government get out of the why not let the government break i'm going to raise giant monopolies do. well you know we're sort of moderate is it anyway going to have. that's very true but again the roosevelt administration faced entirely

different challenges that we face today and you know by comparison i think you would be appalled if he was in the office today you may not be considering him this champion i don't know there's a lot to say about teddy roosevelt but david seelig thanks so much for being with us today. thank you tom an elf it isn't a fetus and over the next four months until the election republicans will say the president has raised taxes it's clearly not true but these numbers do prove that with taxes at a thirty year low the very wealthy among us can easily afford to pay their fair share. in screw news for the past two years the u.s. government has been negotiating with eight pacific nations on a new so-called trade deal the transpacific partnership but despite the link the negotiations the t p p has been largely ignored by the mainstream media and even

congress was unaware of america's position on the deal that was until last month when a fifty two page document on t p p was leaked to the watchdog group public citizen and the proverbial floodgates opened the information on t p p leak to public citizen is startling and should concern all americans regardless of party affiliation joining me now to discuss more on the transpacific partnership and just how damaging it could be to america is dr brian mench president of the utah physicians for healthy environment member of the union of concerned scientists and a contributor to truthout and common dreams documented welcome thanks for having me tom thanks for joining us how is the trans-pacific partnership affect the political authority and legal protection of foreign corporations in the united states will this partnership is as it's currently drawn up is actually stunning in the advantages that it gives foreign corporations over domestic corporations it allows

them basically a parallel judicial system that enables them to bypass are currently will frame work and take whatever ever disputes they have with the government work with citizens' groups. and get whatever they they want through a tribunal system consisting of basically foreign judges judge judges who actually would rotate between serving as advocates for these corporations and as judges during other disputes so it's basically a system where some of these corporations could have their very own attorneys deciding to spew about whether or not these corporations are violating the public trust are you though describing right now the chapter eleven process and nafta i mean is this is this that which i think is pretty horrible and you know if you do away with it and there's also a tribunal system in the world trade organization in the journal of human tariffs

and trends isn't there a precedent for this or is this uniquely horrible in a new way well there certainly are these kinds of provisions in nafta and in fact if you go back to trade agreements as far back as the one nine hundred fifty s. there are some provisions like this but i'm not a trade attorney but trade attorneys that have examined this and then released those documents to the public that you described at the beginning of this segment have concluded that this takes nafta to a whole nother level and so whatever you thought might have been wrong with nafta and its ability to basically eviscerate the middle class eviscerate american jobs enable corporations to come into the united states and basically help themselves to our resources this is all ratcheted up to a completely new level and ross perot was right on this who's writing this and why is it that members of congress who you know we'll directly elect i mean this is the

closest to our representatives why is it that they were excluded from drafting in crafting that the tea people. well that has been revealed by a few a few reports the agreements have been negotiated are being drafted or been drafted for two years under extreme secrecy but now that these documents have been leaked it's very plain to see why that secrecy was maintained because the provisions are so extreme so radical in terms of their basically abolishing a lot of the rights that u.s. citizens have to protect themselves from the agreed just behavior of corporations multinational corporations that had this information been out there in the public sphere right from the beginning of these negotiations i don't think they would have gotten this far in the public had way too much blowback i am with you i'm sorry we're we just have a little less than a minute left very quickly is it possible i've heard asserted and in several

quarters that it's possible this transpacific partnership could be put into place without an act of congress is is that true and if so would it be it would be an executive branch decision this would be the president's ages well i think that's there's some uncertainty about that but certainly we fear that this could be enabled it could be basically become law without any real public input even in congressional input so i think that's a real possibility and citizens need to know about this so that they can start mobilizing some very solid and determined resistance to this there's nothing like that i've ever seen that our government might do such a thing that really undermines the rights of u.s. citizens yeah i think this is something people on both sides of the aisle should be horrified about dr munch thank you mention me thank you so much for being with us and then thanks for having me the u.s. government has to put the interests the american people first and stop sign on to these so-called free trade deals that basically only look out for transnational

corporations. coming up thanks to billionaires the american economy is in pieces our democracy is a joke and the financial industry in this country has never seen so much corruption and greed and always suffered enough at the hands of billionaires is no time we sent them packing stopped them from doing more harm to america when i'm talking about in tonight's daily to. did those stories in here. for going global and now it's cooling why are.

you. choose your place take your stuff. to. make your statement. spread the word. you point it's true. there hasn't been anything good on t.v. . it is to get the maximum political impact. before the source material is what helps keep journalism honest we. we want to present. something else.

more news today violence has once again flared up. these are the images from seeing from the streets of canada after. a giant corporations rule the day. just. as the good the bad of the very very. ugly the good war a rickets el paso is a new super pac that's been launched to support candidates as well as marriage equality ballot initiatives in this election cycle super pac founded in led by laura records daughter of billionaire anti obama funder joe ricketts as

a goal of raising one million dollars just for this year's elections super pac will support candidates like congresswoman tammy baldwin is hoping to become the first openly gay senator ever elected group has already secured funding from high profile supporters including actress jane lynch and tennis star billie jean king in an era when most super pacs have destroyed our democracy with a flood of corporate cash maybe alpaca and do some good the bad south carolina governor nikki haley republican haley vetoed legislation that would have provided nearly half a million dollars to aid it in aid to domestic violence and sexual assault prevention programs defending her veto he told a local newspaper that rape and sexual assault prevention programs distract from other programs and the sexual assault victims are only a small portion of south carolina's chronically ill of a beaut. but the facts say otherwise since one nine hundred eighty two south

carolina has had a rate of sexual violence higher than the national average ranks seventh in the country for the number of women killed by men thanks to governor haley's veto sexual assault victims in south carolina have been cast aside in that state and will and will not be getting the help they need and the help. and the very very ugly guns save the life the n.r.a. supported pro-gun rights group organizers summer shooting camps for kids and last month the group exploited loopholes in the chicago gun buyback program and managed to take six thousand dollars in taxpayer money to buy ammunition and guns for children as young as nine years old to use the group traded in a bunch of old weapons to the chicago program in order to buy new ones for their summer camp guns for life also exploited the program in two thousand and seven using another thousand dollars in taxpayer money to buy more guns so guns for life is taking advantage of a program created to make our streets safer and instead promoting gun use among the

youngest and most vulnerable of americans and that is very very. i believe it's time we reconsider the role billionaires play in our economy and in our society in fact i say it's time we outlaw billionaires by placing a one hundred percent tax on any wealth over nine hundred ninety nine million nine hundred ninety nine thousand nine hundred ninety nine dollars trust me we'll all be much better off in a world free of billionaires look around the whole planet is in crisis europe is on the brink of collapse the united states economy is out freak climate change induced weather is becoming more and more common our streets are big. breeding grounds for social instability and all the while there is this very small cadre of very very

wealthy individuals billionaires who are sucking up more and more of the wealth that used to belong to working people just look at these numbers post world war two all income levels in america grew together the lowest income level the twenty percent poorest americans actually grew at a faster rate than the top twenty percent of the wealthiest americans during this time billionaires were few and far between in america as wealth was more evenly distributed but since reagan and since a new mentality was instilled in our culture that greed is good and super rich shouldn't be questioned arac as to sacrifice any more for their nation and income for the top has increased rapidly while income has actually fallen for the bottom americans since one nine hundred eighty the top one percent have sucked up eighty percent of all the new wealth created in our country and in two thousand and ten the richest one percent of americans received ninety three percent of all the new

income earned of that year there are now over four hundred billionaires in america in fact today the richest four hundred americans all of whom are billionaires own more wealth than the bottom one hundred fifty million americans combined in fact the richest six members of the sam walton family heirs the wal-mart of fortune again all billionaires own more wealth than the bottom thirty percent of americans combined according to a recent study from the federal reserve median net worth for middle class families dropped by nearly forty percent from two thousand and seven to twenty two that's equal to wiping out eight eighteen years of savings for the average middle class family and much of that money went to the richest four hundred americans all billionaires who collectively own one point three trillion dollars where the wealth . the issue here isn't punishing the wealthy the issue is acknowledging that billionaires uniquely have sucked up so much wealth out of our economy but the rest of us are drowning what's worse is the rest of us are working harder and harder

productivity has steadily increased post world war two and it used to be that income gains increased right alongside it around the time of ronald reagan productivity and wages began to diverge while productivity increased wages stagnated that's because all the extra profits made by increased productivity were not given back to the workers like they had been all the way back to the george washington ministration but instead since reagan have been pocketed by c.e.o.'s and corporate executives in other words we're all working harder but unfortunately by no will of our own we've been forced to give up these fruits of our labor to the elites to the billionaires as wealth has exploded and continues to increase year after year and what have working people been given out of this deal with the billionaires we've been given political corruption as billionaires like sheldon aid and the koch brothers now proudly by politicians and legislation to benefit their

own selfish interests like tax cuts for wealthy people deregulation of polluting oil corporations free trade for job outsourcers we've been given we've been giving gigantic transnational corporations we've been steered by billionaires they can crush the competition of small businesses and kill the american entrepreneurial spirit according to a new study released today by the new america foundation the number of entrepreneurs per capita in the united states has dropped by fifty three percent since one nine hundred seventy seven. and since one thousand nine hundred eighty one the number of americans who are self employed has dropped by more than twenty percent americans who used to be able to start their own businesses are increasingly being forced to join the ranks of the working poor crowded out of the market by the billionaires corporate domination we've been given financial instability as billionaires having more money than they can spend in a dozen lifetimes go to wall street to gamble as author larry beinhart discovered whenever tax rates at the very top drop below fifty percent the super rich have

a lot of hot money to play with and there are always subsequent economic crashes it happened in the twenty's it happened in the eighty's with the s. and l. crisis that happened just a few years ago with the housing bubble bursting not only that the billionaires have even denied us and themselves happiness as a twenty ten study by the proceedings of the national academy of sciences found emotional well being rises with income but there is no further progress beyond an annual income of seventy five thousand dollars low income exacerbates the emotional pain associated with such misfortunes as divorce ill health and being alone we conclude that high income buys life satisfaction but not happiness in other words once your basic essentials are met which can be achieved with seventy five thousand dollars a year or even just a basic middle income any extra money doesn't make you any happier but above all else are subservience to the billionaires has given us a perverse form of capitalism corporate capitalism which subjugates all the needs

of our society the clean air food water security health care education retirement and energy to the demands of quarterly profits to the demands of a few billionaires who sit in corporate boardrooms and figure out what extra bit of profit they can squeeze out of their workers out of their fracking wells out of the gulf of mexico out of bombs being dropped on afghanistan out of health care premiums and out of pensions and retirement. as pulitzer prize winning journalist chris hedges routinely points out corporate capitalism laissez faire capitalism if left unchecked will kill us and the way to put a check out today is to cut off the spigot fondling what was once middle class wealth to the billionaires we can't say we weren't warned of the dangers that might come with the rise of the billionaires are most influential founding father thomas jefferson wrote exhaustedly about the dangers of an aristocracy or what the billionaires would have been called back in his day as he wrote to george

washington in seven hundred eighty six day maybe at some distance beyond the reach of our lives perhaps yet it will certainly come when a single fiber left of this institution will produce and hereditary aristocracy which will change the form of government from the best to the worst in the world i shall think little also of our government's longevity unless this germ of destruction be taken out and as he wrote to john adams in eight hundred thirteen rehashing a debate the two would add over the senate which at that time was handpicked by wealthy state legislators the artificial aristocracy is a must civitas ingredient in government and provision should be made to prevent its ascendancy i think that to give them power in order to prevent them from doing mischief is arming them for it and increasing instead of remedy in the evil. we were warned by president grover cleveland the only democrat elected during the robber baron era who in his eighteen eighty eight state of the union address said

as reviews of the achievements of aggregated capital we discover the existence of trusts combinations and monopolies of the citizens struggling far in the rear or is trampled to death beneath an iron evil corporations which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people are fast becoming the people's masters and we were warned by franklin roosevelt in the aftermath of the great depression when in one nine hundred thirty six he called out the economic royalists who today would be billionaires saying a small group had concentrated into their own hands and almost complete control over other people's property other people's money other people's labor other people's lives for too many of us life was no longer free liberty no longer real men could no longer follow the pursuit of happiness these economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of america what they really

complain of is that we seek to take away their power and our allegiance to american institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power we as a nation listened to roosevelt's warning and got behind him when he put a ninety four percent top income tax rate on the billionaires or their equivalent in the dollars of that day republican president dwight eisenhower kept that tax rate at ninety one percent during his administration and even richard nixon embraced a seventy percent tax rate on the billionaires today at thirty five percent and we know where that's got us. our nation does not thrive on the goodwill of billionaires we thrive on the hard work of average americans who wake up every day go to work care for their families raise their children to believe that america is a wee society a place where we all work together not a place where we wait for scraps to fall off the billionaires dynasty billionaires

are not job creators they're not smarter than the rest of us and they're not harder workers of the rest of us they are hoarders plain and simple if they had to convert their wealth into actual cash they would be able to move around their lavish mansions we need to bring back common sense taxes on wealth including an absolute tax above one billion dollars that once and for all prevents the ascendency a predatory billionaires in america time to join the no billionaires campaign that's it for the big picture and i don't forget democracy begins with you get out get out get out there get active your see the.

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