and welcome back to the big picture i'm sam sachs in for tom hartman coming up in this half hour every day big oil pumps hundreds of thousands of tons of carbon into our atmosphere polluting our skies and destroying our environment big oil's actions have gone largely unchecked one democratic congressman wants to change that my next guest thinks that's a bad idea and what do you do if you're the n.r.a.

and you're afraid of stronger gun regulations well you start a conspiracy theory and twist the words of the constitution i don't know the n.r.a. is exploiting the colorado shooting massacre to whip up fear among gun nuts in america and tonight's daily take. at the top of the show we talked about how a global food crisis is being made worse by dwindling resources and rapid climate change and that we're going to talk about a solution honestly it's a small solution but it's a start democratic congressman jim mcdermott introduced legislation last week to place a tax on carbon emissions basically all those greenhouse gases that are being pumped into our skies by the energy industry congressman mcdermott's quote manage carbon price act of two thousand and twelve would require major producers of greenhouse gases like the coal oil and natural gas industries to purchase carbon credits from the treasury department depending on how much pollution they want to spew into the

air so for every ton of carbon pollution they have to buy a credit to cover it. according to the brookings institute carbon credits would run at a price of roughly fifteen dollars per tonne of carbon on average the big five oil companies step around five hundred thousand tons of carbon pollution into the air every single day so that comes out to seven point five million dollars each day that the big five oil companies will have to pay to keep polluting as much as they currently are polluting and that might sound like a pretty hefty daily expense but considering these guys make about three hundred forty two million dollars a day in profits it's really not that much money it's basically pocket change and the revenue generated from this carbon tax will then be put to paying down the deficit and giving energy subsidies to consumers to deal with slightly higher prices as the economy transitions from fossil fuels to renewables. according to

polling seventy five percent of americans support regulating carbon greenhouse gases as a pollutant and sixty percent support a carbon tax similar to what congressman mcdermott has introduced so isn't it about time for the government to step in and do something about climate change and pollution or should we just leave it to the free market and wait for the oil barons to begin making the transition on their own while the rest of us choke and burn austin peterson joins me now he's a libertarian and director of production for freedom works austin welcome back to the show thank you for having me so i'm assuming your position on this is we should just wait until the free market determines that it's more profitable to stop polluting well that's not correct that's not necessarily my position on this because your visit libertarians believe in private property rights nobody has the right to pollute someone else's property or to harm someone else's air or to dump something into somebodies river and not pay the price that you would support a law banning all pollution period what i would support is a law that would allow people to seek damages for

a recount of the stations for any pollutants that might inhibit their private property so for example if i were to live if i had a farm and chemical plant toward toward something that hit my farm and it hurt damaged my livestock i would be able to sue for that i would be able to have a recompensation for that but the problem with this bill is what it does is it is it just goes and it taxes an industry and then it takes that tax and puts it into what they call the trust fund well one of the last time the government ever put something in a trust fund and didn't spend it right so they said they're going to put social security into a trust fund but did they get did they spend did they spend it social security is actually doing just fine all you have to do is raise the cap on the social security tax and solvent for the next seventy five you don't you have to raise the retirement ages across the united states as well in order to make that we can argue that but let's get back to climate change you know there is there's a we need to talk about you know economic tree what is the most important thing that we can do right now to solve the problem let's assume that and that would solve the economic problem or the climate change well it is an economic problem.

well it really is i think if you unleash the green revolution in revamp the entire energy grid you would create millions of new jobs that would also get our economy back well you can do that but you're going to have to change the american culture you're not going to do this that government you'd have to have some sort of fascistic style government in order to have some sort of a top down approach to create a green revolution you're never going to do that you can't change hearts and minds that way but we're not proposing that the or not now we are not speaking for the congressman mcdermott but actually proposing a pretty reasonable solution to this and that is which is actually a pretty free market solution i would think and that is you will give benefit to companies in the free market that aren't polluting as much rather than companies that are polluting a lot who have to spend just a little extra money to get rid of that to do that pollution so you actually spurious that you're picking winners and losers so you're bailing out some into some industries and then you're excoriating others so who's to say i would say you're excoriating but isn't it doesn't government kind of have that role i mean we give tax breaks to married couples well you're absolutely totally wrong that is going to call for them to do that why should why should gay couples who get married

not have the same rights that straight couples get married and that's why they should absolutely but you're again you're paying we're talking about single people versus married people i mean the government does take steps to promote behavior that's better for the better for the society but you're just giving into the too big to fail mindset there because the government would say oh well bank of america is too important to the economy we need to bail them out right well this is basically what you're doing in the sense of i don't hear you i don't agree with bailing out the banks i'm not to represent the democratic party that supported the bailout but it's a picking winners over losers mentality that you're giving in to we're not picking winners or losers in eight hundred eighty eight grover cleveland he was the only democrat elected during the robber baron a president great president ok so then you'll agree with this when he said corporations should quote be the carefully restrained creatures of law in the servants of the people well it depends i mean is in place a carbon tax on corporations like oil operations are not a democracy you know and you cannot you cannot legislate corporations necessary.

without having some sort of unintended consequences the point is that what is it you really want to do like cut and dry want to stop climate change right if you believe that climate change is the issue then you have to ask yourself what is it that is going to stop climate change and some law by an american congressman is not going to stop climate change almost called global warming and i see it i don't want to sam is that it's not just about climate change it's also about the millions of new asthma cases everybody gets is about the billions of dollars if not trillions of dollars in our war machine to protect our oil interests abroad climate change for some insane reason is still under debate in america so i we're not even going to have the problem go the extra dollars and the people are the problem is when you all get climate scientists together and you ask them all like the there were four nobel laureates and several global climate scientists the world leaders were brought together in copenhagen and they reached what they called the copenhagen copenhagen consensus and what they did was they ranked a reduction of c o two emissions sixteen out of seventeen challenges of the most important things that the world faces today that we could combat the top forward

controlling hiv micronutrients for fighting malnutrition free trade to intimidate poverty and battling malaria so if climate scientists say that this is not even the most important thing that could fight right now why should we get behind this like a democratic congressman who doesn't even know how we could solve a problem when the real problems are coming from countries like india and china and other if there was a climate climate science climate change is not the reason main reason why i would support something to regulate pollution even though i think it's one of the biggest crisis facing us but like i said for some reason that's still under debate i'm talking about the millions of asthma cases whatever we'll get to that or talk about something on the libertarian platform or section two point six it says monopolies and corporations this is the libertarian pullup platform and says we defend the right of individuals to form corporations cooperatives and other types of companies based on voluntary association we seek to divest government of all functions that can be provided by non non-governmental organizations or private individuals we oppose government subsidies to business labor or any other special interest.

doesn't mention anything about how they're going to wake up and well what is the biggest monopoly we have right now government is a monopoly government is a monopoly on force so if you want to do that we have a democratic government sure it's gotten a bad rap now and it's been gutted by only have a democratic republic the rights to get rid of government the answer is to root out corruption within the go you want to get rid of monopolies so why do you want to have a monopoly on force if there is only if there's only one way to solve our problems then democracy is the only way to do it and we don't really have a democracy by the way we have a constitutional public at the exactly because democracy is a tyranny the majority and then the one thousand nine hundred people thought we were going to have global cooling right we were all going to die from global cooling and human like tyranny of the oligarchy corporation but i would actually like tyranny of the individual where i'm the i'm the master of my own house of my own private right to suspicious that all the billionaires are funding your movement no but i hope they continue to do so because we're not doing so good so far they say also peterson back to the oversized influence of big oil in our economy here's tom's take on what can be done about it. it has to do with how we as

a nation should handle our own natural resources argentina has a lot of oil. it's not owned by argentina though back during the reagan era argentina's ronald reagan was a guy by the name of carlos menem he's the president he privatized the nation's oil industry along with a whole bunch of other things including its post office i mean he really was like you know a modern day republican argentina's oil industry ended up being owned by a spanish company called repsol. now we have a new president argentina cristina fernandez de kirchner and as she pointed out recently we are that argentina we are the only country in the americas and nearly the world that doesn't control its own natural resources this is the recuperation of the sovereignty of argentina's natural resources so the argentines are trying to get their oil back now the spanish who own the oil argentinian oil company they've

gone crazy they're calling it hostile as if it was almost an act of war the new york banks by the name of boris he called it running close to chavez as a model oh ok if that but the fact is that in my opinion every country should own its own oil i mean are you going to say is he saying that like saudi arabia is like chavo say they own their own oil or sarah palin's alaska which takes money from their oil and distributes it to their citizens every year argentina's president kirschner is spot on she should nationalize our nation's oil instead of having a by her own oil back from a european from a company based in european country and frankly we should be doing the same here nationalize our oil so we don't have to buy it back from british b.p. or dutch oil shell every nation should own and develop their own natural resources their part of the common wealth and the revenue from them should fund social

programs like in norway where they pay for health care with their oil money things that help all the people there. i suppose tragically in a bizarre kind of fashion the good news is that the president of argentina is not nationalizing her nation's oil away from american companies because back when american companies owned the oil in iran iraq and venezuela and they nationalized their oil the cia helped overthrow all three democratically elected governors our governments although in venezuela the coup was very short lived it's time for the us government to stop doing the bidding of transnational oil companies including having you and me pay the full cost of military protection protection for the shipping lanes and fighting wars in foreign countries to help them get more oil we should consider nationalizing our own oil supplies for the benefit of the people instead of people like exxon mobil's lee raymond who got a four hundred million dollar retirement bonus the largest in history

a nation's resources should be for the nation not for the billionaires not for the big corporations like exxon mobil or the koch brothers oil companies. coming up with two mass shootings in the last month of the debate over gun rights has heated up across the country but how was the gun lobby trying to twist the words of our founding fathers and confuse americans over why the second amendment was put into the constitution in the first place.

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and now it's time for the good the bad in the very very seriously ugly good congresswoman barbara lee lee has introduced the state's medical marijuana property rights protection act yack would stop the department of justice from going after and threatening medical marijuana dispensary landlords threw acid poor for forfeiture and laws the jays thread have already caused the closure of four hundred

medical marijuana dispensaries in california alone it's time to stop punishing sick people who are using one of the most effective medicines on the planet and time to end nixon's drug war that places profit over morality well done congresswoman the bad fox news. yes rather than praise olympic gymnast gabby douglas the talking heads at fox decided to question her patriotism guest host allison camerata brought up how some folks had noticed a lack of famous flag styled outfits among america's athletes yes david webb replied with this. you know gabby had that great moment everybody was so excited and she's in hot pink and that's her prerogative and but there is a they also in gym this also adjust their uniforms within the boundaries sometimes but look here we go i'm proud to be an american what's wrong with showing pride

what we're seeing is this kind of soft anti-american feeling that americans can't show our exceptionalism. all right so expect the gang at fox news to ask for dobby's birth certificate tomorrow morning to have to say that night for that one and the very very ugly northeast pennsylvania spirit of seven hundred seventy six the party group in pennsylvania has circulated an e-mail in which he talks about president obama being beat up by america's founding fathers when he goes to heaven for being a quote radical socialist leader in the mail george washington slaps the president the face saying how dare you try to destroy the nation i helped can see and patrick henry punches him in the nose saying you want today and you're our liberties but you failed now sure an e-mail depicting the president getting beat up is tasteless at best threatening at worst but the fact of the tea party still doesn't understand what it means to be a radical socialist is just mind boggling obama is no more

a socialist than richard nixon who hopefully isn't getting beat up right now in heaven by the founding fathers that is very very ugly. with two massive shootings in two weeks the gun nuts of the n.r.a. have been quick to accuse anyone who wants to have a broader discussion about gun control of politicizing a tragedy but that's not true let's face it all tragedies in america are underpinned by politics from the u.s.s. cole to nine eleven from the massey mine disaster to b.p. oil spill from columbine to virginia tech to tucson to aurora to oak creek all american tragedies are responded to through politics or at least a political debate over why this happened and what can be done to prevent it in the

future there's nothing wrong with having a political discussion after a tragedy to make sure it doesn't happen again and again and again but there is something wrong with exploiting a tragedy in america to raise money and advance wild conspiracy theories to boost your membership which is exactly what the n.r.a. has done since the colorado shooting more than two weeks ago as business week reports just three days just three days after the movie theater massacre the enter a send a frantic letter to its members asking for donations and warning quote the future of your second amendment rights will be at stake and our freedom will be at stake the letter goes on to say that a real action of president obama will result in the confiscation of firearms and a ban on semiautomatic rifles and this is just the latest attempt by the n.r.a. to paint president obama as anti-gun despite the fact that he's received

a great of an f from the brady center on gun control and gun rights have expanded during his first term in office. when it comes to scaring americans to raise money then or a doesn't care about the facts and the man behind them and her a letter was n.r.a. executive vice president wayne la pierre who's previously been tape spouting off the same sort of gun conspiracies his n.r.a. letter now gives credence to in public the president will remind us he's put off calls from his own party to renew the old clinton gun ban he hasn't pushed for new gun control laws but it's big fat steak and lie just like all the other lies that have come out of this corrupt administration. it's all part it's all part of a massive obama conspiracy to deceive voters and hide his true intentions to

destroy the second amendment in our country ok again president obama received a grade of an f. from the brady campaign on gun control so he really does have a secret plan to take guns away from all americans and he's doing a really really bad job but the n.r.a. is strategy reflects a new agenda by the gun lobby to read designate the purpose of the second amendment in america to make americans ignorant of why the second amendment was put into the constitution by our founding fathers in the first place and that new agenda is the subject of tonight's daily take. i get it americans want to have their guns and i can understand a lot of the arguments in favor of gun ownership you could build a case that someone has a right to a gun to protect him or herself or their family you build a case of someone has a right to a gun to go hunting you build a case that someone has a right to a gun for competitive shooting like this shows senior executive producer louise

arbor so you could build a case that someone has a right to a gun if they're in the business of protecting the nation like the national guard or the reserves and in fact that last case was the real original reason the founding fathers wrote the second amendment it was to protect the nation. rewind back to the early days of america even after the british were beaten back in the revolutionary war there was still tremendous fear that america was vulnerable to attack it could be the spanish coming up from florida louisiana or the french or the british again coming down from canada or anybody coming across the oceans and most of our founding fathers also had an enormous fear of standing armies during times of peace internal problems after all thousands of years of history showed them the great nations that kept a standing army during times of peace were very often taken down by that very same army in a military coup thomas jefferson wrote extensively on this even threatening to blow

up the constitutional convention since since the constitution the early version didn't include a protection from standing armies as jefferson wrote to james madison in seven hundred eighty seven i do not like in the new federal constitution the omission of a bill of rights providing clearly protection against standing armies and as jefferson wrote an eight hundred fourteen the greeks and romans had no standing armies yet they defended themselves their says their system was to make every man a soldier and oblige him to repair to the standard of his country whenever that was reared it's made them invincible of the same remedy will make us so too and that's why they formulated the second amendment which would provide for a well armed militia that should be called on should the nation be under attack and well trained as well again the second amendment is there to protect our nation and in part to protect our nation from a standing army during times of peace in fact it was modeled on the constitution of

pennsylvania the state where the framers met in philadelphia and seven hundred eighty seven to write our constitution article thirteen of the pennsylvania constitution in practice at the time they said they were sitting in pennsylvania writing our constitution adopted in seven hundred seventy six as a pretty plainly. thirteen article thirteen that the people have a right to bear arms for the defense of themselves in the state and as standing armies in the time of peace are dangerous to liberty they ought not to be kept up and that the military should be kept under strict subordination to and governed by the civil power but recently specially since president obama took office that rationale has been flipped on its head and many particularly on the hard right believe that the second amendment is there to protect the people against our nation as though militias in south dakota armed with rifles and guns and shotguns are going to somehow beat back the us government armed with cruise missiles tanks and

drones they can't and this idea that the second amendment is a protection against tyranny from our own government is a lie alive it's increasingly used today to prove to paint president obama as a radical that wants to take away our freedoms and so we got to arm up but leave it to supreme court justice antonin scalia to give credence to this outrageous and dangerous belief if the second amendment was really there to protect the people from their own government and we need more than just handguns we would need heavy duty weapons like rocket launchers for example but the amendment does not apply to . arms that cannot be hand carried to keep and bear it doesn't apply to cannons but i suppose there are handheld rocket launchers that can bring down airplanes that will will have to be. and will have to be. yes that was justice antonin scalia suggesting that and heller rocket launchers might be constitutional under the

second amendment and what's is really an argument to justify this let's listen again. the amendment does not apply to. arms that cannot be hand carried x. to keep and bear it doesn't apply to cannons did you catch that school is making the argument this is the founding fathers specifically said the right to bear arms then any weapon that can be carried by someone's hands or their arms is good to go unclear if the same logic applies to remote control for a weapons load of drones since someone can bear a joystick or if it applies to nuclear weapons and someone can bear a triggering mechanism or even shoulder fired nuclear weapons tactical nuclear weapons that many believe will soon be able to be fired from one shoulder this is the sort of wacky logic that comes from scalia when he complains to his originalist argument of the constitution is the argument that the constitution is dead it's not living and breathing to adapt to a changing nation it should be interpreted so other words the founding fathers

wrote at the time so the debate over gun control school it doesn't care about new weapon technology that our founder founding fathers could have dreamed of or mass shootings that would have sickened of the founding fathers today he only carries about the word he only cares about the words in particular the word bear it seems silly especially since for all scalia knows the founding fathers may not have meant we have a right to bear arms as an own guns but rather simply a right to bear arms as in the arms of bears only usable as clubs there's an originalist argument for you. but jokes aside this is a serious debate literally a life and death of aids and for a supreme court justice like antonin scalia say this issue is settled because of one word used by our founding fathers the word bear is not just irresponsible and intellectually lazy it's dangerous saying americans have a right to a hand held rocket launchers that can take down airplanes does however serve

a purpose and scalia knows it and just add more legitimacy to those crackpots who believe the second amendment was written to protect the people from our government and thus we the people should be just as well armed as our government that is not what the founding fathers intended second amendment was there to protect our government from foreign invaders not from president obama was just trying to give health care to more americans if you think it's bad that we have a supreme court justice who doesn't understand that just think how many more wacko supreme court justices we may have it mitt romney wins the white house.