and welcome back to the big picture i'm sam stacks in for tom hartman in washington d.c. coming up in this half hour thanks to new york city mayor michael bloomberg it's gotten a lot harder to find large sugary drinks in the big apple and now it's about to get a lot harder to find baby formula there too the mayor justified in locking down baby baby formula in city hospitals or is this a classic example of the nanny state overreaching and according do bigots across america in today's chick play appreciation day later in the show we'll get to the bottom of what this chick play uproar is really all about here's a hint it has something to do with a little known supreme court decision more than one hundred years ago we'll find

out more in tonight's daily to. libertarians and haters of so called big government have a new public enemy number one and that is new york city mayor michael bloomberg first mayor bloomberg put in place a city wide ban on the sale of sugary soft drinks in cups that are larger than sixteen ounces meaning if you're really really thirsty and you want to high fructose corn syrup beverage and you just have to buy two sixteen ounce drinks the mayor defended his decision by setting the increasing health care costs his city has to bear by new yorkers consuming unhealthy beverages in large quantities critics responded by saying this is the perfect example of the nanny state getting out of control well i hate to break it to you all but mayor bloomberg is why. again

on what he as well as the newsrooms will mcavoy might describe as a mission to civilize this time mayor bloomberg has his sights on baby formula as new york post reports beginning september third city hospitals in new york will be instructed to walk up their baby formula keep tabs on it and track it as though it's medication hospital staff will also be instructed to inform others who ask for baby formula and it's more beneficial to their newborns to breastfeed instead the city is taking the most proactive steps of any other city in the nation to encourage more mothers to breastfeed rather than formula feed said in numerous studies that show breast feeding is more beneficial to babies strengthening their immune and digestive systems as well as helping the mother recover from childbirth more quickly some hospital's already been participating in the baby formula lock down and according to reports of breastfeeding has increased in the city from thirty nine percent to sixty eight percent thanks to this program is this really an appropriate role for government my next guest is and thinks so marco joins me now

he's a libertarian commentator attorney and author of the book observations of white noise and acid test for the first amendment marc welcome to the show sam thanks for coming on to the so let's go to let's put aside for a moment that you guys are going to talk about breastfeeding and baby formula and get back to get down to what the role of government is a service here why do you have a problem with what the mayor is doing and i don't know that bloomberg a public enemy number one the libertarians he's certainly done some things that we don't agree with but it's only because choice is the number one priority in other words if he's the public enemy it's because choice is so important why is this a big deal i don't think anyone doesn't believe that breastfeeding may be better i don't know that hospital staff giving certain information to new mothers is a bad thing but this idea that you actually it seems it's going to stigmatize formula it's going to put mothers who choose this in a negative light and it's just not a proper role for government he's now spending his time this is new york city it is a flagship city in this country the cultural center of this country he has other things to do. new and this type of law the big sugar thing the public smoking ban

these are all things the government should just not be involved in this is basically this is the nanny state and this one looks almost a literal as opposed to figurative will nanny state. so it isn't really be opposite isn't the government getting out of the way ok so when a mother leaves the house what we're talking about city hospitals here so these are government hospitals so what do a woman leaves the hospital she's just given formula and she's given a can of formula. isn't the government encouraging you know a new mother to to use formula and isn't isn't stopping that practice getting out of the business of what a mother chooses to feed their newborn i mean after all you're going to want to plan so you're not in your lifetime supply you're not going to go back to the hospital and he's not been in grocery stores and pharmacies from carrying this try to stigmatise if they look again there's no problem with the information they may give you one can leave but you've already been sort of boxed in on making that

initial choice the mother has the choice i can't think of anything more intimate i mean this is one of those things when i first heard this i thought it was bloomberg under attack i thought this was the onion story i really did i couldn't believe that anyone would swing at this pitch in the dirt and go after such an intimate thing from others and people i was when i came on the show i thought was people going to say you don't know anything about this i don't know how is needed as a loon bird how is it so in how it's breastfeeding intimate yet but there is a brand new there is a brand new mother and she's making choices a lot time for a first mother she's making choices she has never made it to her in the hospital staff is giving her information but then at the same time they're locking the formula up and if she says i want to go with formula i want to get some sleep tonight because i you know i can't continue to do this i'm having trouble with it i want to give her the formula but wait a minute it's all locked up that's a judgment call a formula look you're talking about a personal choice that the mother takes i will talk about the information give you the information say this is better this is worse that mother has the right to make that choice and i think that's all if we're attacking bloomberg it's because he is constantly finding new this isn't you know the empire state anymore this is the imperial. state he loves this kind of stuff and he spends all his time doing it for

corn subsidies like you know giving subsidies the corn companies or big agribusinesses i don't know big subsidies are a problem themselves a corn subsidy for high fructose corn syrup is that where we're going our way and others are right here it was still not here's where i'm going with all right so these baby formula car days you know they love pushing their product on hospitals for the show these are city hospitals so if governments are buying these formula from the from these companies putting them in hospitals and encouraging hospitals to then give those to mothers isn't that in a way a subsidy for the baby formula companies well first of all as i understand it a lot of the formulas free and i can of course simulate it has to be it has to be debated by the government to prevent only a purchase of them here is whether it's available whether it's not available we're talking about some very i don't know the intricacies of every subsidy of every way that's inventories done in new york city hospitals all we're talking about here the criticism is that they're locking it up and they're basically stigmatizing it to

brand new mothers and saying you shouldn't do this we're going to make this choice for you earlier to make it harder for you to get the information is fine and they should give of course the best medical information but this is bloomberg coming out with a program and i understand the hospitals are voluntarily doing it but it's just a bad idea this is more and more it really is the nanny state i know we throw that around all the time but it's true this is breast feeding and all the government's going to get involved with i mean the new york city breast feeding program that's what we're talking about you say it out loud and it does it sounds like some out of the onion does this government have a role in promoting healthy lifestyles to go your opinion in a city hospital a publicly run hospital it has the doctor should give out information of course there can be collective information you go into a doctor waiting room and there's there's a sign there yeah they should give out good medical information and again there's no problem with touting the benefits of breastfeeding over formula again we're talking about is locking in a way stigmatizing it and make it seem as if it's some bad choice for a new mother this is all about choice that's all we're saying ok that's all i'm saying i'm i speaking for anybody else. all right all right i'll give it to you.

but i want your take on something there's an article up on alternate corner called patrick. that's making some rounds in the libertarian commuters now and he writes in it the libertarian libertarianism is quote a radical hard economic doctrine promoted by wealthy people are your thoughts on this i don't think that's true at all i mean a lot of libertarian say we're right of the right on economic stuff and left of the left liberal stuff i you know i go with what for instance gary johnson says i think most people in this country are socially tolerant and fiscally conservative do i think it's run by a lot of big money people i'll just point to how much money the libertarian party has and how much gary johnson's been able to raise and he's doing quite well but if anybody thinks there's big money behind the libertarian party and it's all a conspiracy from the far right which i don't think it's really far right i really don't the money is just not there the flow of money that comes to the libertarian party would not indicate that it's something that the far right controls or the big money controls well that's because i mean the libertarian party party is known as kind of an extremist party so what's so that used to be near an extreme already but

it's coming towards i think it's much more mainstream than it used to be of course al gore years older and you know supported by age now probably identify themselves as libertarians and progressives i mean i don't know if that's true or not but it seems like that talking to people. but at the same so of course the big donors don't want to be throwing all their money in a somewhat fringe party instead they're going to throw their money in groups like the tea party to try to take over the republican party and i believe that's what we're seeing here with the tea party and with i mean what we talk about here in the show this push for privatization and radical radical we have twenty seconds i'll give you the last word on that there are things that we've talked about this before there's things i agree with privatizing things i don't actually prisons police force military some of those things those are necessary rules that govern the post office that's something that the government should do but there's a lot things that government shouldn't do and those things they should stay out of all right agree to disagree arrogantly going to say to say thank you conversation thanks for coming on here we're going on now in a not so clever segue from breastfeeding to marriage equality. the proponents of

same sex marriage secured two major victories this week on tuesday a second circuit court judge ruled that the discriminatory defense of marriage act by the way it's the equal protection clause in the constitution and should be overturned judgment s. a bryant who is a bush appointee argued that quote no conceivable rational basis exists for the privilege in any quote judge bryant's ruling is just the latest in a string of recent court rulings overturning goma yet republicans continue to cling to discrimination speaker of the house john boehner is still using taxpayer dollars to defend doma in course and say it's time for the dinosaurs in the republican party to evolve and embrace marriage equality in the twenty first century which is exactly what the democratic party has done on monday the democratic party platform drafting committee officially added marriage equality to the democratic platform in addition to supporting same sex marriage democrats are also officially supporting the employment nondiscrimination act which forbids employers from discriminating

against workers based on their sexual orientation now there's one corporation that will likely have a problem with all of this and that's chick fil a more on that coming up later in the show. never heard of big balloon buddies well believe or not some people are afraid of balloons. he's trembling right now because the pot is deathly afraid of balloons. right. ok but now a little rock arkansas native collins he's not afraid of balloons he really really loves them. in suburban literal twenty

seven year old dave is infatuated with pollutants this way to protect the city for sure and you feel the balloon right there with you feel so. you feel so warm and you. in your heart just just reaches out to. cullen's also likes to sleep with his wounds and says that when you sleep with them you quote feel the good right there with here and it feels so warm and you feel so warm right well personally i think popping balloons is a lot more fun. mr

. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture.

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 if you buy a lot of sort of loses thousands of times we're stronger than any kind of the body of ever put. into it only a military mechanisms to do the work to bring justice or accountability. i have every right to know what my government should do if you want to know why i pay taxes. but i would characterize obama as a charismatic version of american exceptionalism.

just. now it's time for the good the bad in the very very blow up because lee ugly the good house minority leader nancy pelosi today flosi unveiled a new agenda from democrats to reverse the supreme court citizens united decision that agenda called dare for disclose amended reform intellect has been endorsed by the leaders within the democratic party closely argued quote we're going to have policies that support the great middle class which is the backbone of our democracy we have to change the politics and that's why we have issued this there. yes for the most part both parties have been sold out to corporations i'm not going argue with that but there may be at least some hope left within the democratic party fingers crossed the bad president obama yesterday to san francisco medical

marijuana businesses shut it down shop because their landlords had received threatening letters from the department of justice since last night november the department of justice has sent out six hundred of these letters across california threatening landlords who rent space to medical marijuana businesses back in two thousand and eight president obama campaigned on creating sensible drug policies and it turns out he's been the most anti-drug president in history doing nothing to stop america's failed war on drugs obama said that if he's elected to a second term he'll work on that major drug policy reform. really wouldn't count on it and the very very ugly reigning very very ugly champion congressman steve king yesterday we told you about king's sick love for animal torture well today it's his love for far right whacked out conspiracy theories during the same tele town hall meeting where he said he endorsed animal torture like dog fighting he was asked about the birth or claim that president obama is not an american citizen and here's his response. i looked into that before he was sworn

in for the presidency we went down into the. library of congress and we found the micro facial hair of two newspapers only two newspapers in hawaii h. of them had published the birth of barack obama i believe his birth date is august fourth this was published on aug eleventh i'm not mistaken but in any case it would have been awfully hard to fraudulently file the birth notice of barack obama being born in hawaii and get that into our public libraries and that micro fish that they keep of all the newspapers published that doesn't mean that there aren't some other explanations on how they might have announced by telegram from kenya. you have to hand it to these guys no matter what evidence you throw at them they have a response so to recap in a matter of minutes king was able to promote animal abuse and gave new fuel to the absurd birth or conspiracy i said last night i'll say it again tonight and i might say tomorrow night steve king is

a jackass and that's very very ugly. today is chick fil a appreciation day or at least that's what bigots around the country like john huckabee and sarah palin are calling it as they and their supporters flock to check play across america and chow down on chicken and waffle fries you might remember last week news broke that the cappy family which owns chick play is funding anti-gay hate groups that prompted the cities of boston and chicago to come out and basically tell the way that they and their hateful views towards gays and lesbians aren't welcome within the city limits that cause an uproar and then questions begin swirling over whether or not it's appropriate for the government to discriminate against business owners that fun political campaigns like the campaign

to defeat marriage equality as the cathy family is doing. but the investigative reporter for the nation magazine leaf on broaden the debate this week he revealed that it's not just the cathy family that's funny anti-gay hate groups chick fil a the corporation is as well and the over more than nineteen million dollars to the effort in two thousand and ten alone and while humans like the kathy family of course have run have a right to free speech and shouldn't be discriminated against a matter what is the same true of non humans or corporations as lief writes quote if a corporation uses its general treasury funds to finance political advocacy does that mean any politician that takes action against that corporation in response to that advocacy is violating the first amendment it's a question that comes down to whether or not you believe corporations have rights akin to human beings of course anyone who's familiar with the show knows that we do not think corporations are people and we do not think that corporations are

entitled to free speech rights as people are so what follows from that then is yes governments do have a right to discriminate against corporations like chick fil a since again they aren't people in aren't protected from discrimination under the constitution now that's not an easy pill to swallow and some one can think of and has already thought of numerous hypotheticals that are even harder to digest for example can a local government curb it any corporation that donates money to labor unions from doing business within the city again if corporations are not people and don't have rights then yes the government can do that as much as i hate to say so they are in an article i wrote today for alter net i lay out a number of solutions to this issue of discrimination against corporations that don't include giving them full personhood rights which is worth reading if you care about this debate. but ultimately this issue is very much unsettled because despite

many americans misgivings with the idea of corporate personhood despite the whole notion of corporations as people being completely absurd the supreme court in ruling after ruling after ruling has affirmed that yes corporations are indeed people and protected under the bill of rights it's the underpinnings of the supreme court's citizens united ruling would move most people are completely unaware of is why the supreme court accepted this argument that corporations are people in the first place it's actually a really interesting story of a scam perpetrated by railroad barons more than one hundred years ago and it's the subject of tonight's daily take you may think what's happening across this country like scott walker's efforts in wisconsin to strip rights from working people and give multibillion dollar tax breaks to corporations is something new it's not it actually was started more than one hundred years ago by the stroke of one man's pen his name was john chandler bancroft davis i tell

a story in the first chapter of my book on equal protection eight hundred eighty six bancroft was the court reporter for the united states supreme court and he was on the it was on the job while that court was hearing arguments in a case called santa clara county versus the southern pacific railroad although at the time the chief justice morris interim equate thought it was just about a simple boring tax issue that case would ultimately redefine america forever if it wasn't for that case scott walker wouldn't even be governor now because corporate money couldn't have helped him get elected. the case centered on whether or not the the corporation the southern pacific railroad owed santa clara money six years worth of unpaid property taxes again it just all really monday and stuff ultimately the court let stand a lower california court decision because they said it was the state of california is issue not a federal issue case closed not a constitutional debate you can read online in the web's the supreme court itself

nothing in there about corporations being able to elect governors but here's where everything went a little crazy. as one of the six defenses in the case the southern pacific railroad made an unusual argument they tried to argue that personhood rights under the fourteenth amendment passed just twenty years earlier after the civil war to grant slaves full citizenship and equal protection under the law that those rights should also apply to corporations why because corporations had always been called artificial persons under the law while humans had always been called natural persons and the fourteenth amendment only says to any person so the railroad said that to tax them differently in one county than another was the same as saying that a black person could be free in the north but a slave in the south. in this case chief justice wait explicitly told the lawyers for the southern pacific railroad that his court would not rule on the issue of

corporate personhood and they ought to move on with their arguments but a year later the chief justice was mortally ill with congestive heart failure after the case was decided and the case as i said was not did not decide the corporations have rights as persons and the court reporter j.c. bancroft davis was a very wealthy and powerful man some of the former governor of massachusetts former president of the new newburgh and new york railroad and apparently good buddies with all the other railroad billionaires keep in mind at that time these guys were the bill gates's of their day they were literally the richest men in the world. now one of the things that supreme court reporters do in addition to chronicle in the case is to write a cliff notes version of the case this short summary has no legal standing whatsoever it's just there to make it easier for lawyers to find in the future when they're looking for a case it's called a head note but bizarrely in this case mr davis the court clerk decided to take

a bit of poetic license and his ed note while the case did not decide that corporations are persons in fact of anything or rejected the notion for the fifth time in as many years bancroft in his cliff notes version in his the his head no he wrote quote the defendant corporations are persons within the intent of the clause in section one of the fourteenth amount of the gods of the united states which forbids a state to die to any person within us jurisdiction equal protection of the law and quote and with that simple headnotes something that isn't legally even binding bancroft in korea poor or not a judge i don't like that official slipped into the supreme court's record full constitutional rights personhood for corporations this despite the fact that the chief justice specifically said his court would not address the matter and despite the fact that every previous supreme court decision had explicitly denied those same rights to corporations and by the time bank john challenger has published that

ed note a year later for the world to see chief justice wait was dead but bankruptcy so you couldn't object but bankruptcy a single sentence in that had note that has no legal authority has enabled corporations to use personhood claims to constitutional rights to wage war against unions against the middle class and even against our politicians that they didn't they don't like for over one hundred twenty years coleman eighteen in the citizens united decision before the supreme court in two thousand. and with the help of republicans like scott walker all around the country these corporations are now claiming the absolute right to buy and sell politicians and to write laws the benefit them and screw you and me scott walker may be the face of this effort today but the first culprit was that rather obscure court reporter j.c. bancroft davis who with the stroke of his quill undid the intentions of our

founders and set the nation down the road to corporatocracy please help us spread the truth about what really happened in that fateful court case in one thousand nine hundred six and to put an end to corporate personhood and thus stop this ruthless takeover of our democracy and that's the big picture for tonight wednesday august first two thousand and twelve for more information the stories we covered visit our website said tom foreman dot com free speech at oregon or t. dot com also check out our two you tube channels and this entire show is also available as a free video podcast on i tunes and you can visit thom hartmann dot com to download the audio podcast of our daily three to six radio show we have a free tom hartman i phone and i pad out at the app store you can send us feedback on twitter at tom underscore hartmann on facebook at tom underscore hartmann on our blogs message boards and telephone comment line at thom hartmann dot com and don't forget as tom always says democracy begins with you when you get out there get

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to the right of. choose your place take your stand. needs to. make your statement. spread the word. please keep my bill strickland. in egypt leave. the.