back to the big picture i'm tom arbonne coming up in this half hour if congress doesn't act soon america be facing a total economic meltdown at the turn of the year republicans and democrats work together to save our economy or are we just months away from falling off the fiscal cliff and violence and mayhem filled the air in anaheim last night and protests continued for the fourth straight night how many were injured in the clashes with police and are these protests a sign of larger things to come and the koch brothers leading the charge in the billionaire takeover of the american government but they're not alone in their efforts there's no time to say enough is enough and pry america free from the grass

of the millionaires and billionaires. in screwed news let me assure you that the world will not end on december twenty first of this year as many believe the mayans prophecy but two weeks later january second two thousand and thirteen the american economy as we know it could end that's what our nation approaches the first so-called fiscal cliff it's a combination of deep spending cuts and tax increases that are set to automatically go into effect at the start of next year unless congress acts that include six hundred billion dollars in domestic spending cuts six hundred billion dollars in the defense cuts the expiration of the bush tax cuts for everyone the expiration of the payroll tax cut for working americans at the expiration of extended unemployment benefits for jobless americans again all of these are set to happen at the beginning of next year if congress chooses to do nothing according to calculations in the congressional budget office going off that fiscal cliff is

guaranteed to throw the american economy into another deep recession knowing this both sides of the aisle are maneuvering to do something about it democrats are pretty. if you accepted the one point two trillion automatic spending cuts coming down the pike republicans are frantically trying to undo the defense cuts portion to please their war profiteer campaign contributors democrats are trying to extend the bush tax cuts but just for the bottom ninety eight percent of americans while letting them lapse for the top two percent back just today senate democrats passed legislation to do exactly that with not a single republican voting in support of the bill republicans want to extend all of the bush tax cuts especially for the romney super rich and as far as the payroll tax cut and extended unemployment benefits who knows what their fates are going to be one thing is clear though congress will have to find some sort of solution together to prevent going off that fiscal cliff but the question is do both sides even understand our current economic situation well enough to make the right decisions by next guest is doubtful robert kuttner joins me now he's the coeditor

of the american prospect senior fellow at demos and author of the book a presidency in peril the inside story of obama's promise wall street's power and the struggle to control our economic future robert welcome thank you so much for having a first of all did i overstate or understate anything in that set up. i would tweak it in one respect the fiscal cliff did not just happen most of the fiscal cliff is the result of the republicans playing chicken with the debt ceiling and because the republicans. would not agree to any kind of a budget deal that included any tax cuts the fallback was this automatic trigger that would produce automatic budget cuts that has created what ben bernanke either head of the federal reserve calls the fiscal cliff so this perils

of pauline drama has been created mainly by the republican refusal to do anything other than stonewall so i think that's part of the senate so a but genuinely if this this is the outcome of the process of the sequestration sequestration sequence ration process are obvious right yeah if this happens do you agree that we would be looking at another recession serious recession or maybe even a depression sure it's completely crazy i mean the last thing you want in a very fragile recovery of the sort that we have now is a contractionary fiscal policy meaning. one point two trillion dollars worth of spending cuts and i'm not sure one other quibble i guess i'm not sure the democrats have resigned themselves to to spending cuts the democrats are really going to going to fight the domestic spending cuts chikni social security and medicare as they ought to and as you indicated the other part of the fiscal cliff

is this accidental coincidence of events where the bush tax cuts expire on january second now here the democrats have the high ground and i tip my hat to senate leader harry reid because reid today really outplayed his republican counterpart mitch. mcconnell mcconnell in a very rare move agreed that there could be an opera down vote on the democratic version of what to do first is the republican version of what to do with the republican version of what to do is extend the tax cuts for everybody the democratic version as you indicated is extend them for. the bottom ninety eight percent which means only the top two percent pay the tax rates of the of the one nine hundred ninety s. a very effective successful decade and i think threatening it this way plays to the advantage of the democrats because the average voter says wow anybody making

over two hundred fifty k. they can afford to pay slightly higher taxes so that my social security and my medicare don't go down to church now this passed in the senate today the and it's going to the house there are republicans who are suggesting that because the constitution says all legislation has to region in the house that you know this isn't really a legal process fact of the matter is this is commonly done the house will take a bill that's already been passed you know without the right found so you know rename a post office after ronald reagan or something and they'll just take the add this to it and be essentially repackage it but it is possible if eric cantor and and john boehner one or the other might be more eric cantor holding the knife to the back of john boehner say no we're not going to play with this that we can see this game of chicken that you so brilliantly described you know that set this thing up extend all the way to in through and past the elections and christmas and right

into the new year what are your thoughts on that and how that might play out and what that might jus to our to our our our credit rating as a country i mean the last time this happened it hurt us. well let's start with the politics the republicans really outfox themselves pun intended this time because whether or not at all money bills have to originate in the house i mean if the if the house wanted to pass this bill it could pass this bill for a tax cut for the bottom ninety eight percent and then send it back to the senate so the parliamentary problem is not serious but the political reality is that the republicans control the house and they don't want to increase taxes on anybody so they're going to sit on this and that gives the democrats the opportunity to point out that the republicans are going to deny tax relief for ninety eight percent of

americans in order to preset to to protect billionaires and the democrats get to do that all the way to the election i think that's better politics than the republican position and i think the republicans are really squirming so and all those thirty seconds we have left here robert your thoughts on how this is going to how this is going to play out more effective well i think sooner or later they're going to have to come to a deal because the democrats. i mean i misspoke the republicans don't want six hundred billion dollars worth of cuts in the military and again tactically this plays to the benefit of the democrats if obama is just willing to hang tough on things and it's going to be very interesting to see this play out robert kuttner thanks for the enlightenment. sure thanks for having me pushing. now to some downright frightening news about climate change in tonight's green

report nasa scientists were left stunned after analyzing data showing the greenland ice sheet is melting at an unprecedented rate three independent satellites confirm that over four days a lot of ice melting greenland jumped from forty to ninety seven percent showed by this chart the image on the left is from july eighth the image on the right from july twelfth as one nasa scientists wrote a press release this was so extraordinary that it first i question the result this is real or was it due to a data error unfortunately it's very much real at thirty years of observations never as this much ice melted away from greenland so fast course oil industry funded scientists will tell you everything is just fine is just a really hot summer meanwhile they're the ones most likely looking for mountaintop real estate away from the soon to be rising oceans. i just.

did figure that out of the very very footage for a sleigh oddly the good anna hazare bush at the company's fairfield california plant nearly half of the electricity used is generated by bio gas wind and solar power onsite plant also has a process for recovering the steam that he's the boilers in the brew house and turns it back in energy only four percent of the plant's electricity comes from the over six thousand solar panels on the plants of land and a newly installed wind turbine will soon generate twenty percent of that plant's electricity for their climate in peril with global warming here to stay or corporations should be following in his or bush's footsteps and be doing their part to help save the environment and save a few bucks the bab big oil a new report out is out detailing just how wealthy the five big oil corporations are according to the report in two thousand and eleven

the oil giants earned two hundred sixty one thousand dollars per minute more than ninety six percent of american households make every year and last year c.e.o.'s of the big five received on average sixty thousand dollars per day in compensation more than the yearly salary of most of their blue collar employees let's not forget the hundred fifty million dollars four hundred thousand dollars a day they boil spent on lobbying in washington in two thousand and eleven bottom line big oil is corrupting our democracy destroying our environment and leaving blue collar workers in the dust all the top executives rachid rake in outrageous sums of money something needs to be done to stop that destruction and the very very ugly the family research council council a leaked strategy memo is detailing the anti-gay conservative hate groups future spending plans of the men. oh the f.r.c. plans to go on the off ends by advancing the christian worldview as america's only

hope as in all christians are homophobes. something this is long the group also plans to push language that appeals to the secular world and they have quote an aggressive plan to engage high school and college students to flood the public debate with fresh new pro-family activists basically the f.r.c. and to do whatever it takes to continue to promote their bigoted and hate filled message in american society and that is fairly fairly. coming out last night the streets of anaheim looked like a war zone with police officers unleashing an all out assault on members of the community what prompted police to use these projectiles on the crowds last night it was yet another show of excessive force over militarized police force.

oh

oh

. this was the scene in anaheim california last night shot by independent journalist tim pool where for the fourth straight day members of that community took to the streets to protest police violence that led to the death of an unarmed man over the weekend cops fired hundreds of so-called less lethal rounds of rubber bullets bean bags and pepper balls in the crowd. several demonstrators reports put the number of people in the streets last night at more than six hundred twenty four were arrested just like oakland last year the streets anaheim resemble a war zone with a constant barrage of these so-called less lethal projectiles coming from police lines fires in the streets and smashed out storefront windows even tim poole

himself was caught in the crossfire. ninety. three chief. police. joining me now is the man who was behind that camera journalist who was on the streets last night covering the mayhem jim pool the brain behind tim cast news stream tim welcome has ago and great to have you with us most of the mainstream news outlets led with reports that the crowds were turning violent and that prompted the police to respond is that what happened you were there. it's it's it's both sides you know i saw bottles and rocks thrown from the protesters but i also saw the police firing pepper balls to the crowd bean bags expanding out what i was told are expanding foam impact shots and before you know i got there around eight

twenty and before i saw anything the police had been charging several of the people and that's when the rock started flying so it's hard to know i wasn't there all day to see what happened. i understand you were shot at by the police you want to refund the yes so you know i was down there with amber lyon and she's shooting photos and we were taking photos of dumpsters that had they had been on fire in the fires were just put out as the fire truck leaves a lot of police is behind it and just opening fire on us and you know we're only with you know it's just me and her and there's a few other people walking across the street you hear someone yell you know after after that incident i tried coming out with my press pass that they fired at me again i was i was subsequently followed through side streets by several of the officers as they kept screaming at me and firing more rounds you know all in all it lasted about a half an hour until i was finally able to get into a safe safe place holding up my press pass to avoid getting getting shot at where

you hit. no no our fellow luckily i was not hit and neither was amber but we did we did meet a few of the locals who were hit one young woman was struck three times and her legs with what i believe for the beat the beanbags as the you know based on the size of her contusions it was pretty bad she wasn't walking she felt she was being carried by someone and there was another another one of my associates witnessed a man get shot in the back of the head with a beanbag and then he collapsed in the street and had to be hospitalized while the lot of riots in london last year were triggered by. an incident of police brutality arguably not that different from what we're seeing here in anaheim. i don't want to jump to conclusions but actually maybe i do you know it is your sense of the situation in anaheim that it's a powder keg of what i'm loving the ones yet it's getting worse we're going to head

back down in just a few minutes to anaheim we go to the first the first i wouldn't i would call these essentially protests because these are it's a gathering of members of the community it's not you know there is an organized portion where people are going down to city hall and to the police station but what i came to last night was just a gathering of people who lived in the area who were upset with the police brutality and the death of of the of those two people just this weekend so people people were gathering around you know at random intervals and that's why so many people ended up being involved when when they did now when you've got a large community like this that's upset over police brutality and. police brutality is only going to make it worse and so we're we're expecting it to get a lot worse tonight we're going to we're going to head down to to cover it is there are neck and economic factor in all this is is this a community that is experiencing severe economic stress right now. and you know it

i'm not i'm not entirely sure about this particular area it seems like it might be you know lower middle class or upper lower class as it were you know somewhere around there it's seemed to be mostly latino. in the area but what's interesting is these outside police forces are coming in and i think this is what's what's causing a lot of the tension out causing the escalation is that you have santa ana fountain valley and even the l.a. county sheriff being called in so they're not even police from this area you know and these community members are trying to deal with their own community incidents but they have outside forces essentially making it worse tim paul thanks so much for being with us today and probably take care and for your reporting we've now seen civil unrest touch several major cities across america from new york to oakland to now anaheim all signs that our system of vulture capitalism free trade reaganomics and republican austerity push our nation to the brink in my humble

opinion dangerous times may be. multi-generational political influence by a very narrow special interest group is pretty rare but we're seeing it played out right now in front of us a billionaire family the koch's have gone from influencing my father's generation to my generation to my kids' generation and very few americans realize daddy cook fred made his first millions palin around with joe stalin in the soviet union in the one nine hundred twenty s. and thirty's is the fascist rose to power in europe in the one nine hundred thirty s. he was an enthusiastic supporter of italian dictator benito mussolini guy who invented the word fascist which meant means extensional essentially the take over of democratic governments by big business interests mostly anyone so far as to

dissolve the italian parliament and replace elected politicians with representatives of each districts largest corporations. fred koch and mussolini both particularly hated the trade unionists and their sometimes allies the communists so after mussolini along with his ally hitler lost world war two against america and russia fried coke brought the anti-communist pro-business running government what some would call fascist torch to america big time helping start the john birch society two of their biggest efforts were pretty well known after the supreme court ruled nine hundred fifty four in the brown versus board of education case the segregation in american schools was unconstitutional the john birch society put a billboards all across america calling for the impeachment of the chief justice of the supreme court a war dead fred koch was very concerned about the integration of our schools in

fact he wrote quote a colored man looms large in the communist plan to take over america and quote we j.f.k. selection for ed koch's john birch society went off again this time against j.f.k. isn't rhetoric not that different from the secret muslim plots the tea party promotes about obama in one thousand nine hundred eighty three speech fred said that comment as would infiltrate the highest offices of government in the us until the president is a communist unknown to the rest of us and j.f.k. was scheduled to come to dallas that year the j.b.s. distributed flyers saying wanted for treason all around the town just two days before his arrival on the day on the day j.f.k. was assassinated large ads ran in the dallas newspapers attacking kennedy as being soft on castro among other things. that was my dad's generation dead a coke died and his sons charles and david took over the family business of promoting the business and billionaire takeover of our american government they're

doing it with a two pronged attack for people over forty they're funding the tea party through a variety of groups most notably americans for prosperity and freedom works and for people under forty their funding libertarian think tanks like the charles koch foundation which was renamed as the cato institute and the reason foundation were david koch is a trustee which happily embraces a new generation of young people with the idea that freedom means the freedom to buy politicians and the freedom to pollute for the young people of course the libertarians throw in the freedom to smoke dope and hire a hooker but those are really just bones being cynically tossed to young pot heads and young proteges of dick morris but the cokes have been inside the libertarian movement from its beginning thirty two years ago this year david koch was the libertarian party official candidate for vice president of the united states of america through a pretty incredible it's all true the main agenda of the coax john birch society was to enhance the power and control of our government by big business and

billionaires while fighting organized labor and people like me who were protesting the vietnam war the main agenda the koch's tea party is to get millionaires elected to congress and have them cut taxes and regulations for koch industries and other polluting corporations while fighting organized labor and people like me who are protesting the iraq war and the main agenda of the coax libertarians again funded and trained by the koch brothers is to keep intact the power of big money over our government cut taxes and regulations on billionaires and polluting industries while fighting organized labor and people like me who are protesting the corporate takeover of the united states of america. three generations of americans all duped by the same billionaire family three generations buy into the idea that what's best for industry and billionaires are best for america and that our government is our enemy rather than something that our nation's founders fought and died to create for all of we the people and increasingly it's not just the koch family the walton

family whose combined wealth is greater than forty percent of all americans funded a covert multi-year campaign to rename the estate taxes the death tax and lobbied so hard they got the estate tax eliminated entirely in two thousand and ten senator bernie sanders pointed out yesterday that so far we know of twenty six billionaires worth over one hundred forty six billion dollars in aggregate who have already invested or committed to invest over five hundred sixty one million dollars in this election cycle most of it to defeat democrats who want to raise their taxes the good thing is that young people are waking up and realizing that the libertarian hustle the billionaires are feeding them is just that a hustle just like tea partiers are waking up to their having been had by billionaires who want to privatized the social security hopefully soon america will regain its sanity and will go back to viewing those cranky billionaires the way my

dad's generation did as a republican president dwight eisenhower did when eisenhower referred to their ilk as small in number and stupid and not stupid anymore and if we really value american traditions we really must push back on this kind of power and influence in american politics for more information go to move to amend dot org. as the big picture for tonight for more information on the stories we covered visit our website to tom hartman dot com free speech dot org and our team dot com also check out our two youtube channel for links over top of dot com also thom hartmann dot com check out all the different ways you can send us your feedback participate our message boards you can write your own blog we've got a live twenty four seventh's chat room there was a call or rant line you can volunteer and don't forget the moxie begins when you show or get out there get active occupy something tag your pursuit of.

wealthy british style. that's not on my list. market why not come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike stronger for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to kaiser report. is he.