i'm sam saxon for tom hartman in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture oil companies are raking in billions of dollars in some have even secured so this is some of the most profitable corporations to ever grace the planet what exactly are they doing to make all that money the answer predation greg palast joins me in just a moment. libertarian presidential candidate gary johnson is looking to make a splash in november sure a lot of americans are fed up with the two party do awful in america there's a libertarian really the right answer and from the east coast to the west coast the use of excessive force by police is on the rise with hundreds being hurt and injured for no reason what's happening to police forces in america and how can we

reel them back in and stop all the brutality. all right so we're going to begin tonight with some role play ok let's pretend for a moment that i'm not the guest host of this t.v. show you're watching ok instead i'm the king of big oil now i know it's hard to imagine but we have all these cans of oil here to help paint the picture now. what is a typical day in the life of big oil like first a quick out tip to the folks at climate progress for compiling the following numbers ok so a day in the life of big oil what's it like first say arrive on the job at nine am and the king of big oil i can arrive any time i want but to relate to the working class i show up at nine am one minute into my work day i've already paid my c.e.o.'s at the top three oil companies forty dollars each and every single minute

for the rest of the day the receive another forty dollars each i can afford that because just one minute into my day by no one am i've already made about two hundred thirty seven thousand dollars in profits and by lunchtime i already made more than forty nine million dollars in profits for the day and naturally i'll choose the most likely very expensive lunch indoors instead of outdoors that's because by twelve thirty in the afternoon just three and a half hours on the job i've already spewed more than one hundred in forty five million eight hundred thousand pounds of carbon greenhouse gases into the sky it's how i roll on the side i'm also spending sixteen thousand dollars every single hour lobbying congress to trash regulations that cut into my two hundred thirty seven thousand one hundred thousand dollars of profit iron every single minute

i'm also lobbying congress to preserve huge federal tax breaks that i receive as the king of big oil courtesy of you guys the taxpayers and by the end of my workday i will have received six point six million dollars in tax breaks all in one day again thanks to all of you out there. at five pm i'll call it quits for the day and i'll look over what i've accomplished and what i'll find is in just one day just one day i made three hundred forty two million dollars in profits in just one day i dumped one billion pounds of carbon pollution into our air and just one day i paid my c.e.o.'s sixty thousand dollars in salary more than double what the median salary for the average american is in a full year and that's just in one day but my c.e.o. is really earning that much money by lobbyists are though because in just one day i've paid lobbyists one hundred sixty seven thousand dollars to represent the

interests of big oil in congress you see it's it's been a very busy day for me punching massive holes in the ground burning toxic fossil fuels polluting the skies and being able to do it all for a really low price thanks to a huge tax break that i've paid lobbyists to carve out for me on capitol hill and guess what you the taxpayer who has given me all this land for a low price and made all this possible for me guess what you get out of it all four dollars a gallon gas a couple climate disasters cancer and rapid climate change it's threatening to destabilize the entire planet's according the us department of agriculture more than half of all the counties in the united states are now primary disaster areas stricken by one of the worst droughts in our nation's history to give relief the u.s.d.a. has opened up three point eight million acres of conservation land for ranchers to use for grazing its latest effort by the department to prevent a rapid increase in food prices that could kill our fragile economic recovery hurt

working americans and push the developed world into starvation and chaos. and this drought comes as this chart shows on the heels of reports out of greenland that ice is melting at an unprecedented rate it comes on the heels of reports that warming waters around the globe are killing off phytoplankton a bottom of the food chain organism that most sea life depends on eat it comes on the heels of an apocalyptic two thousand and eleven when we saw all mile long tornados freak storms never before seen flooding wildfires in droughts in one year we saw a record breaking ten weather catastrophes costing more than a billion dollars each more than seven hundred americans died from these storms ninety nine point nine percent of climate scientists are saying that this is a result of manmade climate change and even coke brother funded scientists like richard muller are waking up to this inconvenient truth but as the king of big oil

i'm resting come comfortably in my fortified mansion and looking into building a second or fifth mansion somewhere in the mountains to avoid rising sea levels this folks is predatory capitalism at its worst and if left unchecked our future is uncertain. greg palast joins me now he's an investigative journalist with the b.b.c. and author of numerous books including vultures picnic in pursuit of petroleum pigs power pirates in haifa finance carnivores his forthcoming book billionaires and valid bandits greg welcome to the show great to have you wanted to. be back with you so you heard my intro implicating big oil for excel or any climate change but just in case there's some box viewers out there who don't believe in this sort of stuff there's plenty of other things we can employ paid big oil on and you've documented all of the brilliant way from huge spills contaminating entire cities criminal neglect corruption anti-democratic practices simple question bad stuff to

yeah yeah you know you have to know that the one thing is that you can't use the oil companies of us over paying their executives that extent that the reason is that given what they have done think about this way in saudi arabia pull up oil for two dollars a barrel and they sell it to us for one hundred and ten dollars a barrel and the u.s. oil companies are riding on that cartel one of the ways they make their money the size of overcharging us through illegal monopoly which has a weird exemption in our law remember it is a monopoly and cartels monopoly just because some guys wearing a bathrobe and a towel on his head and we call him king he's just you know a dictator in a bathrobe he's still committing the the the crime of monopolising the market basically with a need a wink and a nod from our oil companies are not trying to undersell him but are riding that monopoly price now and vultures picnic in pursuit of trolling pigs and vultures

picnic i explain that one way to make that big bucks is bribery that's to be in b.p. and for example b.p. when you talk about pollution. i actually have in the book i have on. record in m i five m i six agent that's british intelligence was also b.p. executive as he said most were either you know every b.p. executive he says also m i six and several confirms it for us that he took a thirty million dollar check to the president of his era by zhang what i call the islamic republic of b.p. this just an example of how they operate and that was at the direction of lord brown he was it brought late that you're with him so he had a you know the old bag filled full of money another old bag full of gin to meet with the president at zero by john they they bribe them to get a hold of the resource of that nation is now one of the despite being just absent

floating literally floating in oil that nation is one of the poorest nations on the planet the only thing that they have done of note is all the euro song contest where three hundred million dollars of the b.p.'s bribe money was used to bring in ingle bird humperdinck but the big problem there is that they've turned a castle in sea into a toxic toilet why do we care because because what happens in the caspian sea is entering the air on our planet here and what they do there they had back in the year two thousand and eight there was a blowout identical to the blowout of the b.p. deepwater horizon two years later they had the identical blowout for the same reason crap cement supplied to them by halliburton the well blew out in the air by john they covered it up they lied about it and therefore it happened again in the gulf and eleven americans were incinerated so if you want to you know it's what

goes on over there the bribery over there the pollution over there the eatings and that was going to that was going to be my my question is how are they getting away with this i thought you just answered it straight up bribery and bribery from many directions let's not forget that the. the head of the the cochairman the campaign bush's reelection was the b.p. usa president and so while they were and don't forget they used bribery to hear the bureau of land management had given away the macondo well the one that blew up that was worth a fortune they are supposed to be paying the u.s. taxpayers a windfall some if the oil they were pulling from the gulf sold for more than forty dollars a barrel it went up to as high as one hundred forty dollars a barrel but somehow that windfall clause got taken off why because they set up literally p.p. was in bed with the bureau of land management when i say in bed i don't mean that

metaphorically b.p. executives are sleeping with b.l.m. well and i mean the outs get. cheap bribes the one thing i'll say about these series and that the people in the other in the cast because they want to get to one more question here we don't have much time ago to you know it's all body so yes a typical day in the life of a of a b.p. executive briberies beatings and blowouts once there and game here i mean this is a finite resources there and him to block renewables pump the last few trillions of dollars out of the out of the ground of oil out of the ground and then just wait for the crowd i mean what's the point here. i mean it whenever there's something scarce the scarcer an item is on wire it's air not remember there are don't forget the number one rule for oil the lower the supply the higher the price the idea that oil companies are looking for oil as it is in sync looking to lock up the oil supplies these are guys who make money on scarcity and make money on the sastre the

b.p. blowout actually earned b.p. money because it shut down of the flow of oil out of the gulf the price of oil rose straight through the ceiling and on a net he actually made it off the blowout in in the gulf because of the rise in the this this and these are guys who figured out how to turn this extra and murder and mayhem into a profit center yeah and i'll just call them psychopaths greg palast keeper of the truth telling thanks for coming on. coming up libertarian presidential candidate gary johnson may appear in the his first presidential debate stealing some the spotlight from president obama and mitt romney but who are the real winners and a successful gary johnson campaign here's a hint they have a lot of zeros in their bank account.

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so in just a few months the presidential race will heat up when president obama and mitt romney face off in the debates but there could be a party crasher this year i should say third party crasher last week the executive director of the commission on presidential debates hinted that libertarian presidential candidate gary johnson may soon meet the requirements to be included in the presidential debates this year starting at the first two requirements which is being of age and nationality to run for president and his name will appear on enough state ballots to give him a mathematical shot at actually winning but the third criteria will be a bit tougher jots is going to need to be polling at fifteen percent to be included currently is around five percent so he has a lot of work to do but let's assume he meets the threshold what happens when a libertarian enters the fray and he could pull fiscal conservative votes away from mitt romney and given his stance on the drug war foreign wars marriage equality and

civil liberties he could pull a lot of progressives away from president obama but when it comes to the big picture direction of america. is libertarian really the best way to go here to discuss that is connor kilpatrick managing editor at jacobin magazine and austin peterson libertarian and director of production for freedom works austin connor thanks a lot for coming on thank you for having us so with you you have an article up on alter net this week and you describe libertarians as the ruling elites last ditch effort to ensure a succession to the throne you want to recall not. yeah well i think that the ruling class the one percent accepts that they've basically lost the culture wars they step that most people especially young people are for gay marriage and and against the wars so this is a way to basically put a tepid you know progressive spin on a really far right radical economic program. do you agree with that also is this

a radical far right economic program military and first of all who are these elites and i mean libertarians like in general who are you speaking of specifically sir i mean like the elites libertarians to win i mean the libertarians are conspiring perhaps they're in the conspiring to take over the government so that they can leave you alone why so the gays can happily get married in that conservatives are going to happily stuff themselves the chicken sandwiches yeah that's the kind of conspiracy i want to get an answer but i got to ask you this because i read your your vile and despicable and hate filled article but i want to know if libertarians supported big corporations there why don't big corporations support libertarianism so why isn't the libertarian party dominating why is it that they always support the corporative rip corporatist republicans in the corporate demick corporatist democrats why is it that we we see obama giving billions in failed loans loans to failed cylindrica why is that we didn't answer go ahead. yes because the ruling class doesn't take libertarianism seriously i mean it's basically

a weapon to clear a lot of space to the right for both the republican party but you know it serves the democratic party pretty well too i mean when you could point out a bunch of kind of crazy foaming at the mouth tea partiers and it enables someone like barack obama to push a pretty extreme austerity agenda of his own because basically he's always going to look like he's to the left of that and the reasonable alternative so it's a weapon it's job i mean it's this scientology of political ideologies but without the pretty people i mean isn't isn't the tea party essentially espousing a lot of the same ideas that libertarians want to know partially there is lots of wealthy people funding the tea party maybe they don't want to fund the libertarian party because it is kind of an extremist party they'd rather just take over the republican party by this kind of astroturf right and it's a great thing to do i mean the socialist took over the democratic party throughout the nine hundred twenty s. and the progressive era reached their heights in the progressive socialist democrats got their an act agenda and acted throughout the new deal so why why

isn't that a legitimate strategy for libertarians and limited government activists to do the same thing to the public and party but i want to really introduce the point that the caller that he made that was actually a relevant point which was the beginning was article which was the last of the culture wars but he says that the elites lost the culture wars and what he what he really needs to say is that social conservatism lost the culture wars that people are no longer big bigoted against homosexuals and the people want to allow you know homosexuals to get married and do what they want they want to have more civil liberties so i think that in the end that sense that the culture wars in that sense have been lost and that free markets and civil liberties are the way that people are going forward but what what the author of this article doesn't like is that people are embracing economic liberty at the same time they're embracing civil liberties well i think we also probably do me a favor going to talk about just what kind of economic liberty she's talking about i mean most americans spend the probably about half of their waking hours in. in a workplace for an employer and while you're working for a corporation or working for a private employer libertarians they don't care at all about your freedom in fact

they embrace the most radical tyrannical programs and regimes. you know that's not what i would call freedom in any meaningful way i mean most americans experience you know coersion and quote unquote unfreedom in the workplace not the t.s.a. so you think the socialist democrats that support the murdering of american citizens by drones in pakistan are for the lease so you think you think that the is that the libertarians who are opposing these kinds of redistribution as welfare programs that feed into the welfare warfare state are the ones who are feeding into the lead and not barack obama and george w. bush and the reliefs that are destroying this country and robbing the wealth of the poor in this country and the people who want to raise the minimum wage they raise their unemployment right let's not filibuster go ahead yeah i want to see the welfare warfare state so according to you that would mean that the central the center of you know what we refer to as the warfare or at welfare state very good you know norway scandinavian countries i mean why aren't they building guantanamo

bay's in greenland i mean if welfare creates tyranny well those you know the scandinavians northern europeans that's most welfare happy country in the in the way i want i mean yeah i want to get back to your tyranny and we get back to this idea of defining liberties you talked about socialist democrats think you control the party back in the thirty's. roosevelt famously said necessitous men are not free men that freedom requires your basic necessities to be met if you you know this is stuff we talk about the show all the time if you if you don't have a job and you want a job you're not free if you're hungry don't have food you're not free if you're sick you don't have health care not free so what you can call a socialist or not but i think what roosevelt was trying to do is in the what you call the socialist democrats are trying to do is provide the basic essential is to have freedom do you consider that is the definition of freedom you would accept or not well ask yourself this i mean you know so many people are against immigration in this country but why do women to come to the united states to they come here. for the welfare programs i mean that's you were immigrants are coming than ever before and actually more people are leaving the light and that's

a bad sign we want to strong economy so that we can encourage immigration to the united states but wolf if you ask any immigrant that comes over here or some people who are coming across the border fleeing across the border because of the failed economy of mexico or people who want to come here from other countries in europe and in asia why do they come here they don't come here because they're getting universal health care if they wanted that they would go to britain or they would go to scandinavia or one of those countries that you say are much more free now they come to the united states because of the economic opportunities that do lead when the more freedom the united states is the last beacon of liberty on the and the earth and they do and people come here for those reasons is the united states the last beacon of liberty on the earth connor. well with the largest prison population in the world i'd say that's a pretty good indicator of the united states not being a beacon of freedom so no i disagree and i totally disagree with the war on drugs it's an absolutely failed policy and we should release all nonviolent drug offenders so let's let's say that if you're if you disagree with the war on drugs you're ron paul supporter what ron paul is basically is his policy on that is to

just kick it all down the state but most prisoners in this country who are in prison for drug related crimes they're not in federal prisons or in state prisons and ron paul doesn't want to touch that well i do not mess up don't necessarily have to force everything that ron paul supporters i like a little noam chomsky but that doesn't mean i agree with that is there he is there a historical president somewhere in the world for the libertarian worldview you're pushing for that where it's actually worked well that's a really good example really good question there have been a few examples of that i've got to get that i could get into but i want to work on some of the details ok but i'll give you a perfect example of a communist society and that was the united states when the pilgrims first came over here under governor william bradford the pilgrims experiencing about a communist talk about a libertarian well there was a libertarian side of between seven hundred seventy six and seventy six perhaps when we before we had the constitution read but take a look at any of the comments aside look at north korea look at russia all of these all of these countries fail wherever we have capitalism we see success and we see flourishing we're going to stop right there. austin connor thanks a lot for coming on reverie. recently tom did his take on the libertarian

movement and here he is explaining what role the koch brothers have in promoting it . 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 they're 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 simply tossed to 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 hostle the billionaires are feeding them is that. 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 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 or. after the break amended ten is see is dead after he was mysteriously shot in the head while handcuffed in the back of a police car. is the way to sensitive excessive violence by police in america and how of our nation's police forces become so militarized.

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more news today violence is once again flared up. these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. china corporations are on the day.