i am sam sachs in for tom hartman in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture. president obama will soon be holding his two hundredth fundraiser since taking over the white house the most by any president in their first term ever but how else can the president compete in post citizens united america is this really how we envision our democracy work it alternates adele stand joins me in just a moment. also according to a new report unions have been giving money to p.r. firms to help boost their image the only problem the same p.r. firms are helping to destroy the unions at the same time labor journalist my

delicacy here to get to the bottom of this story and you would think a nuclear disaster would make a government rethink using nuclear power right wrong why is the japanese government restarting nuclear power plants while thousands of japanese citizens are protesting the streets and the crippled fukushima plant spews radiation. and we begin tonight with bad news for those who want four more years of president obama in the last six presidential elections the candidate with the most money has won the white house. hasn't won the only exit i'm sorry in the last six presidential elections the candidate with the most money has won the white house all but one time the only exception is bill clinton in one thousand nine hundred two who was outspent by incumbent george h.w. bush yet still prevailed and never not once ever never as an incumbent president

been outspent by his challenger it's never happened before never before until this election here's what thanks to the supreme court citizens united decision which trashed all limits on how much money corporations in the super rich can spend in our elections traditional presidential campaigns are now obsolete it makes very little sense today for a candidate to rely on the traditional model of the campaign finance shereen together contributions that are limited to at most twenty five hundred dollars a person especially when the new game in town thinks of the supreme court is going to as many millionaires and billionaires to invest their fortunes in super pacs and five a one c four so-called charity groups to then run endless t.v. ads supporting you or attacking your opponent and since the one percent or i should say the point zero zero zero zero zero six three percent of the roughly one hundred ninety six people who accounted for nearly eighty percent of all the money raised

by super pacs last year have chosen their guy mitt romney and president obama is poised to become the first president in american history to be outspent and his re-election bid and says the president can't compete in the super pac game primarily because billionaires just can't stomach the idea of seeing their taxes go up you know a few percentage points he's having to stick with the old game traditional campaign fundraisers only he's going to have to raise somewhere north of a billion dollars since the likes of the koch brothers karl rove and sheldon adelson have already pledged at least that much to defeat it. that means a lot of campaign fundraisers. already the president zeroing in on holding his two hundredth fundraiser since taking office as you can see no candidate has come even close to that number in their first term and again no candidate has ever had to run for reelection in the citizens united era for more on this i want to bring in adel stan the washington bureau chief with alter net dot org but they'll welcome to the

show thanks for having me so the president's aware what he's facing i mean he's given speeches that i'm going to be the first person outspent first president outspent my reelection campaign he's mailed letters to donors saying look this is serious i'm going to be outspent but really is he aware of how much trouble is he in do you think he's in that much trouble you know there was. an item in the hill yesterday or today saying that they're a little nervous in chicago. because of this i mean if you look at the june numbers i mean and and using that traditional model that you're talking about not the super pac right so that's the he's being outspent in that model to. outraise the party if it's the party and the president's you know reelection committee or the candidate's election committee and then you know a victory fund you take this through three things together. raised seventy one million in june i mean that's

a huge number that arises and there are many real you can let me read some of his supporters raised with that one hundred six point one million the gap between them is more than george h.w. bush's didn't i mean raised in that same period the gap that's just the gap you know right so it's astonishing it is really and you know it's even worse on capitol hill really i think the numbers are if the house members spend forty hours a week fund raising which they can't really spend they do spend considerable time but they can't spend forty and assuming they spend forty hours a week he or she would need to raise three hundred sixty seven dollars every. to be able to know i used to work on the hill i knew how much these members beat fund raising so what i don't understand is why aren't they pushing for you know public finance laws or something well and nothing nothing that we're talking about can get fixed unless there is public financing we can't fix our we can't deal with how

implementing the new health care law unless we fix that system we can't really pass any kind of probe programatic change unless we fix that system it's it's kind of ironic but i mean if i'm a republican member of the house i know i have a huge advantage with the way the current campaign finance system is but i know that my life is absolute hell having to go and actually work and fundraise all this money it's like they're willing to just put up with terrible days just so that they can let their donors spend as much money as they want and i lecture i mean and the thing that's so fascinating about this when you look at the congressional level it allows minorities to have control because the minorities factions. that they may have a majority in the house you know you can be part of what the tea party caucus is really what controls the agenda why because they've got the money back you've got this tiny little caucus around jim de mint in the senate that is controlling the

agenda of the senate because of their backers do you think this is a citizens united decision so. it really takes a half million dollars or something to swing a congressional race. so you could have two weeks before the election someone like sheldon adelson or someone step in drop a half million dollars in election race and flip it like that do you think that we're going to see the effects of citizens united more on the congressional levels and even said senate races the than in the presidential election is going to be a lot harder to swing that election when you know we had such an enormous change structurally in the political fund raising scheme of things since citizens united because of also another supreme court case that was decided right around that time and the role of non-profits i mean we're not even talking about that so i think it's really i think the congressional level certainly and at the presidential last level it's going to be interesting because like in chicago in the new obama campaign they're saying well we're going to do you want fundraiser but now we're

going back into rallies and they're hoping that that's where they're going to actually make a difference those charity groups the five zero one c four as those with the biggest star will soon have to go to delta thanks a lot so much for they were having this and they'll stand alternate while president obama desperately tries to raise money stateside mitt romney is collecting big bucks from anonymous donors like banks involved in libel or in london but thomas a theory about who some of those anonymous donors might be take a look. we're just now finding out that at the end of last year anonymous donor gave karl rove's crossroads super pac a ten million dollars donation to run ads against president obama and thanks to the supreme court's citizens united decision the wild west nature of political spending now that that ten million dollars dollar will likely remain completely anonymous we probably won't know ever who it is ever during the two thousand and ten midterm elections there was another anonymous donor who also gave ten million dollars to rove so it might have been the same person for all we know one person dishing out

twenty million bucks to karl rove to help elect mitt romney and other republicans. that donor could be a person like charles koch it could be a corporation like goldman sachs it could be a special interest group like multimillionaire lobbyist grover norquist norquist americans for tax reform we just don't know but i'm hearing a lot of things around town today as to what karl rove's donor might be let's just say some people are saying things course in real journalism you actually quote sources or you make statements of fact that's what real news does but there's this really neat technique to insert an opinion and an is the most people don't realize is something no real news organization would ever do it's called the some people say technique here's an example. some people say that this land undermine what the u.s. troops are doing there some people say some people say john kerry has some similarities to in the earlier massachusetts politician some people say in light of what's happened with the oil for food program some people say supported by iran now called

news isn't really a news organization so they can get away with this and this show isn't a news show it's my opinion so let me tell you what some people are saying here in washington d.c. some people are saying that karl rove is ten million dollar anonymous donation came from iran mahmoud ahmadinejad a strongly as shia muslim who's president of one of the few shia run states in the middle east some people are saying that ahmadinejad's a huge admirer of karl rove and a big supporter of the republican party after all george w. bush decided to bomb sunni iraq not shia iran giving shia ahmadinejad a heck of a lot more influence in the middle east and taking out sunni saddam hussein iran's biggest enemy against whom they fought a multi year war that cost them both billions of dollars and killed over a million people so some people are saying that the ten million dollar gift to rove is payback from shia iran for all the great things rove and bush did for them

against the sunni muslims in addition some people are saying that the ten million dollar donation to karl rove has some strings attached that if romney wins or the republicans take the senate then all those sanctions president obama put on shia iran would immediately be lifted and we might even go after another sunni run country that iran doesn't like just like bush took out sunni run a rack and flipped it over to shia rule and some people are saying that all the aggressive bomb iran talk coming from mitt romney is just a show and the behind closed doors mitt and mahmoud are best friends here we have ten or even twenty million dollars anonymously handed over to karl rove to defeat president obama and the democrats this developer and beyond what some people are saying most likely will never know who gave that money or what strings are attached to it we want to. it's a hedge fund billionaire who's demanding the republicans keep the romney rule capital gains tax loophole wide open we all know if it's an oil baron who wants republicans to keep the taxpayer oil subsidies to his industry flowing we won't

know if it's a war profiteer who wants republicans to keep the never ending war on terror going and keep up the high demand for cruise missiles and we won't know if as some people are saying the donations are from rogue dictators who are making secret deals with the republican party like they did back in one thousand eight we just won't ever know and that's a critical flaw in our democracy created by five unelected hard right wing kings in black robes appointed by republicans to the supreme court it's time to put an end to this chaos in our elections and not let foreign or corporate millionaires and billionaires speak louder in our democracy than actual american citizens with a vote it's time to overturn citizens united and corporate personhood and say explicitly that corporations are not people and that money is property not speech go to move to amend or to get involved. and after the break with republicans continuing their all out war on unions democrats could soon be losing some of their top donors what would this mean for politics in america and why are unions getting

help from the same people trying to destroy them. pepper spray that just burns your eyes right right i mean it's like a derivative of actual pepper it's a food product essentially. this is much stronger than anything it's used by a lot as italy's is thousands of times i'm stronger than any kind of bird you have a butcher you know. our t. is the state run english speaking russian channel it's kind of like al jazeera.

russia today has an extremely confrontational stance when it comes to us. into that only military mechanisms to do the work to bring justice or accountability. i have every right to know what my government's doing you want to know why i pay taxes. i would characterize obama as a charismatic version of american exceptionalism. this

strategy the strategy on the right to destroy organized labor is well documented just as well documented is how effective that strategy is bit since nine hundred eighty union rates in america have plummeted and right alongside rapidly declining unions the middle class the share of national income has dropped to more than a third of the workforce in america belong to a union in the one nine hundred fifty s. but today it's around a tenth of the workforce and less than seven percent of private workers now belong to a union on top of that there are now twenty three states in america that have ducted right to work laws which makes it a lot harder for unions to operate. this is the consequence of

a well funded long running p.r. campaign by corporate america to smear organized labor in wisconsin you saw this p.r. campaign played out by pitting private sector non-unionized workers against public sector union workers public and governor scott walker called the strategy divide and conquer several other states led by republicans like new jersey indiana and michigan have employed the same strategy telling private workers who are making low wages that their state is going bankrupt because their government has to pay unionized public workers outrageous salaries and pensions you know the stuff that private workers used to be entitled to before their unions got decimated but with unions out of the way corporations can keep their workers wages low cut benefits and turn a blind eye to workplace safety conditions not only that unions are the top funder of the democratic party so if you get them out of the way then welcome to one party rule in america this is bad news not just for working people but for our nation

even worse news is union this may be playing a role in accelerating their own destruction according to a bombshell new investigation by in these times in republican support several unions have been funneling millions of dollars in a public relations firms to boost their image the only problem is those same p.r. firms are also representing clients that are busting up unions. michael joins me now is the author of this story is a labor journalist and staff writer for in these times mike welcome back to the show great to be on the show what the hell is going on here how are unions contributing really to their own demise by by by working with these p.r. groups but what's happening is you know you look at places like d.c. is that so many unions are so concerned with how do we get our message across how do we make it the best concern there so in this d.c. beltway game they go to the p.r. firms these big slick p.r. firms that represent corporate clients as well so what they've always done this is this something that's kind of new. i think you know the last you know i was reading

a story about firms doing this back in the ninety's that unions will give money to these same kind of firms i think these firms are slick and they're good and you know at the same time the funding people that are working for the other side so it's really kind of counterproductive it's aimed at you know as well as a waste of union resort of these s.k.t. knickerbocker that's one of these firms so in this is this isn't this headed up by someone who used to be in the white house anita dunn is a former white house communications director and is seen as somebody who's a gatekeeper to the white house lot of unions went to her paid millions of dollars for different services and they went to her because you know she's very well connected she's very influential in this town she is the year of the president and it turns out that the same time that they were taking money from unions millions of dollars they were also representing michelle rhee who's one of the most prominent anti teach you union proponents in this country so they were taking money from both

sides at the same time supporting s.p. five which is the was the bill in ohio to outlaw collective bargaining rights got repealed the vote repeal. wow so i mean ok here we are and i mentioned it briefly in the setup that unions have traditionally been the funders of the democratic party just because democratic party has traditionally been a political party look we're looking out for working people we now impose. citizens united we have corporations that can spend unlimited amounts of money so the right has boosted their fund raising while unions have declined so union dues are dropped so unions are operating with much smaller budgets is this a wise sort of investment to be reaching out to p.r. firms rather than i mean what else could they be doing with that money well i think certainly put it on the story you know there are p.r. firms that only represent the union side and do good work although overall you know a lot of unions like abyssinian the steelworkers have moved a lot of their operations and house a lot of these p.r.

firms you know the kind of rip offs keeps you know or we're going to give you all this great advice and you know they're giving twenty people great advice of the same time so they're not paying much attention and you know the unions aren't getting much bang for their buck in these kind of situation so a lot of this winds up happening. when you did this reporting when you went and talked to these p.r. firms and you asked them about this conflict of interest they seem to push back and say that there is no conflict of interest is that is that the case i mean or i mean isn't there evidence that shows that if unions are giving them money or at least if these p.r. firms have access to information that the unions that's private for the unions that somehow that information could wind up in the hands of the corporations that are trying to bust those unions yeah so so look at a good example we focused on the firm dewey square which is a very influential well connected d.c. firm and we looked at how you should be giving them a lot of money for a lot of different services and you know the spokesman said we don't support any

policies that are anti labor however in two thousand and nine they represented the health insurance lobby and they got caught forging fabricating letters to the editors signed on behalf of senior citizens who had no idea that they were signing up opposing key provisions of obamacare but the same time they represented organized labor who denounced this attack on do that dewey square was doing and so why are these groups stand existence i think i think part of it deals with. you know that the type of e-mail i got reported with the story steve rules and though very well known former political director of the a.f.l.-cio who are very well known and influential in this town emailed me trying to dissuade me a bit taking on dewey square saying these are very pro-labor people are they even to somebody like steve rosenthal was very influential even aware of all the anti worker stuff i mean this group dewey square was also representing a private equity council that was founded by being capital so you know how to put on the tory this enemy of labor unions were at

a time. they took the great reporting great story. now into a story about women here's a fact business businesses should know if you include women on your corporate boards your business will do better that's a good clue should drawn from a new credit suisse or research institute report that shows business is with women on their boards outperform businesses with only men on their boards looking at similar sized businesses companies with at least one woman on their board did better than companies with no females by twenty six percent in terms of share prices the conclusion is we need to fight for more gender equality in the workplace it's not just the moral thing to do it's good for business but if it doesn't just stop at business we also need more gender equality in our government there's tom state. united states now ranks seventy eight in the world in female representation in government wanted which ranks first in the world as women making up fifty three percent of its government and women have been instrumental in rebuilding and

healing that nation which lost a tenth of its population in just one hundred days of mail started mail executed genocide back in one thousand nine hundred four. in the united states we have just seventeen percent female representation in our government. other nations are not so backward sweden finland the netherlands norway iceland denmark sprain germany canada your the list actually goes on and on of nations that have more female representation in government and thus achieve better results than the united states when it comes to health care wealthy and equality poverty reduction educational outcomes overall life satisfaction you name it and of the top twenty countries that have the highest female representation in government seventeen of them broke ups centuries of patriarchy by using a quota system the sledgehammer of a quota system that requires

a certain percentage of women to become part of government. as a recent un report on women in politics found out of the fifty nine countries that held elections last year seventeen of them have legislated quote it is in those countries women gain twenty seven percent of parliamentary seats compared to sixteen percent in countries with quotas recent study out of the university of oregon found that nations with more women in government have even lower carbon dioxide emissions and another study out of the world bank found that the higher the levels of female participation in government the lower the levels of corruption are . funny thing is the first americans those people who were living in north america before the europeans showed up five hundred years ago we'd already figured this out . within the iroquois confederacy upon which our founding fathers largely modeled our democracy women enjoyed freedom and a lot of power the result was a federation

a nation that pretty much had no war they played a weeklong games of lacrosse to resolve conflicts and a nation that provided a very high quality of life for all its members you're quite women on land are largely responsible for shaping the communities social economic and spiritual direction and while the saddam's the tribal elders who travelled from nation to nation were normally men they were nominated and elected to office and held to account by women who in four of the five year coordinations were the only ones who could vote compared to their colonial counterparts your quote women enjoyed a far more freedom and power than in the american colonies and it's time they have more freedom and power today in our current government. now it's time for the good the bad and the very very low chaotically ugly the good

congressman richard hanna in their view with the syracuse post standard had a republican blast of this party he told the paper quote i have to say that i'm frustrated by how much we mean the republican party are willing to give deferential treatment to our extremists in this moment in history they went on to say we render ourselves incapable of governing when we all do what we all do is take severe sides let's see incapable of governing yeah i would say that about sums up the last two years in the house of representatives the bad senator mitch mcconnell mcconnell is making good on his promise to filibuster every judicial nominee of president obama yesterday he led the charge in filibustering the very uncontroversial or non-controversial nomination of robert bacharach nominated to the u.s. tenth circuit court of appeals in oklahoma say our courts are woefully understaffed yet rather than doing something about it mitch mcconnell is content on just being

a jackass and the very very ugly another jackass rep steve king most of the nation finds dog fighting disgusting but steve think thinks it's ok and defending his efforts to weaken animal cruelty laws king expressed his support for animal abuse and dog fighting telling his constituents that quote it's wrong to rape animals above human beings and quote and said that if we allow humans to fight i can boxing and dogs and other animals should be able to fight too well last time i checked we don't allow humans to fight to the death but i suppose king would support that too right you know next up proposes america's very own version of the hunger games and that is very very ugly. coming up. coming up despite thousands of japanese citizens protesting the continued use of nuclear power in the nation government officials are restarting some of their nuclear power plants but the fukushima plant still in ruins and on the brink of further disaster why is the

government putting japanese people at even more risk. in. iraq. why. are my. prime. counting on. us.

to take out the account i'm lauren lyster. we just put a picture of me when i was like nine years old i just you know like fruit. i confess and i am a total get of friends that i love driving hip hop music and for. that he was kind of a yesterday. i'm.