welcome back to the big picture i'm sam sacks in for tom hartman and here's what's coming up in this half hour forget the economy medicare is all the rage right now on the campaign trail with mitt romney and paul ryan leading the charge why are they still talking about medicare considering the fact that they want to do away with it all together and thanks to absurd tax loopholes fourteen point four billion dollars a year in taxpayer money goes to pad the wallets of corporate c.e.o.'s what does this mean it means that corporations are having their way with washington and running the show and it means america may be witnessing the rise of fascism once again.

so you think if you're mitt romney and paul ryan and you're running a campaign to end medicare as we know it by turning it into a voucher program and pushing seniors off into the private health insurance market where they'll pay more than double what they currently pay then you'd sort of want to keep it a secret right well paul ryan still hasn't got that memo here he was today in new hampshire talking about medicare again. we've heard a little about medicare lately from the president. we want this debate we need this debate and we're going to win this debate about medicare. all right well let's have that debate right now joining me is neil mckay columnist at human events american community democratic strategist welcome to you both well could i say oh so so we hear republicans have been talking for decades about how medicare is full of waste and fraud it's unsustainable so the president cuts seven over seven hundred billion

dollars in waste and fraud out of medicare to extend the programs life for eight more years and now republicans are saying that he's stealing he's raiding the program they're being completely disingenuous aren't they this is what's so bizarre the president can say he's going to cut seven hundred million from the program but he gets away with it because nobody believes him. paul ryan he gets in trouble because everyone believes that he would really do it so it's all right he said he'll really do it i mean we're all i want to do is take away a guaranteed benefit replace that without shares with barack obama has done and has passed is now the law of the land as a way to make medicare more efficient as to reduce the waits fraud and abuse and also kind of shift monies that were not necessarily funding kind of you know medicare advantage and then moving back into kind of the basic back to basics they defined can contribute to combine the can defined contributions plan is not necessarily a poll right there that's been around for a long while you know paul ryan is young so i mean i think it's great to have all

ryan is that he's so dreamy and he doesn't even know i'm alive. and i'm going to be the biggest problem with it is that in order to sell millions of seniors that they don't have guaranteed health insurance they would have guaranteed contributions and then they could if they want to better plan something like a i've got insurance why would i want to give that up i mean here's here's the reality is that what we get is unsustainable but it's not actually you're going to hit this bubble where they have the baby boomers that are all coming on and the realities of the population demographics is going to shrink then in fact and throughout the entire life of the medicare program as long you kind of had this you know this balance of people paying in and hang out but the reality is that as we're moving away from nursing care nursing care and hospital and hospital stays are the most expensive what happens with affordable care act is that we're rewarding home care we're trying to put people back in their homes and that really where you see this all cost comes from the hospital stays in a sustainable democratic president would be wouldn't be cutting hundreds of million

dollars in the program to get the kind of shifting money and it's making our mission if you want to market to the next thing money i mean why can't we save money ok let's talk a let's get past this to build i mean there are issues about sustainability and you can over perception is a huge reason why this is an issue right now was i think this is so disingenuous what republicans are doing. brings a small boy on and he says well you know she's going to have. whatever i don't know if. people don't hate me my mom likes me and that's kind of that we're going to that's admitting that he was problem with the with seniors right now and with everyone that's afraid it is a lot of their you know with this mother he's trying to hide the fact that republicans have been trying for decades to destroy medicare and now he's saying we're here over there and he's trying to destroy it we're just trying to has been trying to destroy her since it was crude in the one nine hundred sixty s. and i actually bring up a thing with the paul ryan plan that they and even bigger and concern is that what going to happen in medicaid the block grants to states are going to end up reducing

benefits and pulling people off the rolls are going to roll back the medicare expansion of medicaid expansion from the affordable care act and so you're actually going to see i don't know you know children but i think expansion of all that kind of stuff poor children who are you know we can't say go out and get a job to a five year old who has you know broken arm i mean there's something we that something in our society we have to find out we have to go on and on very seriously that this plan not only is going to be costing seniors more is going to be reducing benefits taking something that people are guaranteed and privatizing it but it's also going to be going it's going to be impacting a whole another program going all the design is how would it be costing seniors more if paul ryan's the latest iteration of the paul ryan plan retains medicare you know the option of keeping the coverage that you have because the problem is that what bush said at first look around about you it's not going to increase with the rate of inflation so that in ten years is going to be six thousand dollars more per person you have a lot of staying with what you have now ok so you know all this it be sold it is

already have a medicare and it will it will bankrupt the program this debate is not who is going to save medicare this debate is over whether or not medicare should exist is an issue of it or do you want to really examine this is. thirty three percent of americans consider medicare extremely important to them seventy two percent of americans trust obama to handle medicare more than percent forty. trust romney i just want the terms of the debate settled these guys don't want to protect medicare they want to get rid of it like they've been trying to for decades you have ten seconds go and i think at this stage of the republican party the republicans want to fix the system and make it sustainable and that there may have been talk about eliminating it but in the real world that's not going to happen ok we'll hand it over to the private health insurance for them in the the ryan i described the ryan plan absolutely dismantles health care as we know it and medicare has a six percent approval rating with enrollees congress has ten percent approval rating are you going in the senate all right well but the democrats are already thank you and you both republicans may win the debate as long as billions of

dollars in campaign contributions work to paper over mitt romney's lies about medicare but the bigger question is this why is mitt romney so cool with lying to begin with oh here's tom steak. dr justin frank the psychiatrist who wrote bush on the couch and obama on the couch and has now turned his psychoanalytic power powers on mitt romney in a piece for time magazine titled the root of mitt romney's comfort with lying. just in frank laid this out he said it's not just his flip flops on issues to abortion to stem cell research the assault weapons ban global climate change civil unions and obamacare as dr frank points out romney recently lied about a book by noam scheiber saying that the book said that obama knew that obamacare would slow down the economy in fact the book says no such thing the author of went on national television to rebut romney and say that romney was lying about it but a week later and then an ad in that again and again romney kept repeating this very

same lie would totally straight face seeming like he actually believes that although he knows it's a lie how can you do that well dr frank the psychiatrist suggests that romney is so comfortable with wine he's been doing it pretty consistently throughout his entire political career and there's every reason to believe that that skin. helped make him a quarter billion dollars at the vulture equity firm bain capital that he's so comfortable with line because he's a true believer in this case in mormonism and this sort of logic often suggests that mormonism has built into it a number of things that are inherently contradictory for example god says to take multiple wives but mormons don't do that or the black people were cursed by god but after the seventies they were going to the church and because romney is willing to believe that god or the church are right on contradictory things something that's a boss of all he's been conditioned by his religious faith to be comfortable with what you and i would call lies and what problem with that theory is that there are

a lot of good mormons i know some personally who believe the stories in the book of mormon fall of the church and are not regular liars in their daily lives in fact you can make the same argument for pretty much any of the major religions god told jews muslims and christians that they should kill their children if they disrespect their parents but none actually do that today and that dissonance doesn't turn religious people into pathological liars. so with all due respect to dr frank i'd suggest that the answer to why romney chronically lies it's much simpler to explain he's a sociopath so as you pass don't have to be serial killers in fact most aren't sociopaths are people who lack the ability to understand or empathetically feel the pain or other experiences of other living things sociopath for example where they have no problem tying his dog to the roof of his car for a ten hour ride because the sociopath never had the experience of empathizing with a dog a sociopath for example have no problem with shutting down

a well functioning profitable steel mill throwing hundreds of people into poverty depression and even divorce and suicide because a sociopath thinks he's the only real human in the world the only one who really has feelings at the core of what being a sociopath means and high functioning sociopaths as in smart and well educated sociopaths make up as much as ten percent of the major participants on wall street and may well make up the majority of c.e.o.'s of major firms being associate as forbes magazine did a piece and being a sociopath would be a job requirement to be the c.e.o. for example of a tobacco company that's the only product sold in america that when used as directed produces death so instead of being surprised that romney lies easily repeatedly and constantly and even tells lies about his lies changing his positions the way that you would i would change our shoes. we really probably should be more surprised that more former c.e.o.'s and sociopaths haven't shown up in presidential

politics which i suppose brings us to george w. bush of a chronic liar remember. the former c.e.o. hopefully one day soon the american people will wake up to the fact that having sociopaths transition from the world of business to governing our country is probably a very very bad light. to pop or not to pop earlier this month we told you about dave collins a self described lunar a person that has an obsession with balloons he sleeps with them keeps them more munder assured them even thinks of them as children. in suburban literal twenty seven year old dave is infatuated with pollutes the best way to protect to somebody 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 you. well here's another lunar for you l. l. is a denver based dominatrix who gets sexually aroused by collins as worst fear the popping of balloons take a look. forty six year old performance hottest l p's and. i do get excited about the pot this morning poppy balloons in public a blow to pop is where you inflate a balloon. with your mouth until it pops up. and it feels wonderful you know i feel strong when i'm blowing it up i know i'm putting my life force into that belief and i'm excited by it so that you're just

waiting you know is a good time to pop out. so well for member here is a big pop just for you sorry day for. wealthy british style it's time to rise. market why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike's cause or for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to kaiser report. on. morning news today violence is once again flared up the

film these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. china operations are old today. management has its. own watches you every saying. and waiting for you to stumble. i saw a man with a video camera so i moved over and he phoned me. you know we realized they were following everyone from early in the morning. the only chance to get rid of him. is to reveal him. need to have an operation on our teeth.

just. now it's time for tonight's the good the bad and the very very pious though genesis lee ugly the good university of colorado last year the colorado supreme court overturned the university's policy banning firearms saying it violated state law that allows gun owners with proper permits to carry weapons in all areas of the state while in an effort to work around that absurd ruling and prevent violence on campus the university is creating separate off campus housing for students who just can't live without their guns the university will also prohibit concealed carry students from sorry the universe who also prohibit concealed carry students from bringing their weapons to cultural events like football games and theater shows

mass shooting after mass shooting a sensible debate about gun control is always the railed by the same argument well what about the rights of gun owners in america enough about that it's time to start asking what about the rights of non gun owners people who want to go to school without worrying whether or not their classmate is armed to the teeth good on the university of colorado for speaking to that issue. of the bad the virginia citizens defense league i'm trying to prevent gun violence to trying to promote it the virginia citizens defense league held a protest at a public library in virginia late last week protesting against the library's wording of virginia's concealed carry policy the protesters took issue with a posted sign that said quote carrying concealed weapons is prohibited except as permitted by law and quote while virginia's law does actually permit guns in public libraries so according to the organizer of the protest the library signs wording is a form of discrimination that is tantamount to the jim crow laws that discriminated

against african-americans of course seriously another protester said that public areas like libraries should not be firearm free because people need protection when the little old librarian comes after them for overdue book fees whatever and now the very very ugly no big surprise here congressman todd akin akin was interviewed on local television in missouri this week and asked about whether he supported abortion and instances of rape take a listen to is dropping response about the case of rape should it be legal or not it seems to me first of all for what i understand from doctors that's really rare if it's a legitimate rape. the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down now i'm no doctor but i would say can doesn't have a clue what he's talking about and to make matters worse said jim who believes the female body shuts down during those blocking pregnancy sits on the house science

committee you really can't make this stuff up and what exactly is a legitimate rape anyways that when a woman says no but she really means yes is that really what you can suggesting as right now akin is remaining in the senate race where he actually has a lead on democratic senator claire mccaskill if they can get away with saying those completely insane things about rape and then win a senate seat and that is indeed very very ugly. so the institute for policy studies just published a new report showing that tax loopholes used to boost c.e.o. bonus pay cost taxpayers fourteen point four billion dollars a year in other words thanks to absurd loopholes in our tax code corporations are

getting huge tax breaks when they cut their c.e.o.'s fat paychecks i know it doesn't make any sense to me either and that's one reason why c.e.o. and executive pay has skyrocketed skyrocketed since the two thousand and eight crash yet working people's wages are still in the tank now fourteen point four billion dollars a year the amount of revenue our government loses thanks to these ridiculous corporate tax loopholes is a lot of money that same amount of money could instead be used to i don't know hire two hundred eleven elementary school teachers or say give pell grants to two point five million college students. of course republicans around the country are busy laying off those very same school teachers in cutting those very same pell grants in order to pay for those very same tax breaks for the rich and for corporations and i don't want to delve too deeply into hyperbole here but when our government stops looking out for the best interests of our society when it stops hiring

teachers and stop helping young people go to college when something is terribly wrong especially when instead of helping educate the population government is working to make corporations and their c.e.o.'s richer and richer and richer there's a term for government of for and by corporations it's called fascism and our nation has a long history of resisting the forces of fascism ever since mussolini breathed life into the idea and italy several generations ago unfortunately today the forces the forces excuse me fascism are on the march again and it's important to listen to one voice in american history who gave us a dire warning about how to defeat those forces that warning is the subject of tonight's daily take and they deny the turmoil of the 1930's fascism swept across europe taking hold in germany italy and spain and eventually throwing the

planet into a world war fascism is a word that means the merging of government and corporate interests with a tinge of nationalism and typically racism to keep the population in line and indicted against a perceived enemy as mostly any was dissolving italy's parliament nine hundred thirty eight and setting up his come out a day fasi dade. county the chamber of fascist corporations italian philosopher giovanni gentile argued that fascism should do more appropriately be called corporatism since his hands government off to corporations. in one nine hundred forty four the vice president of the united states of that time henry wallace wrote an op ed in the new york times about the dangers of fascism and threats that fascists posed to the united states he wrote fascism is a worldwide disease its greatest threat to the united states will come after the

war within the united states itself another fascist danger is represented by those who pay and lip service to democracy in the common welfare in their insatiable greed for money and the power which money gives do not hesitate sarap tish's lee to a vade the laws designed to safeguard the public from monopolistic extortion even though vice president wallace was warning us about fascism at that point in time he believed that the american system of government was strong enough to avoid ever becoming fascistic to avoid becoming a corporatist state at that time it was pretty much on heard of the c.e.o. would run for political office and wallace's view politicians knew that their obligation was to represent we the people and protect us from the corporate cartels as wallace continued in his article for the new york times happily it can be said that as yet fascism has not captured a predominant place in the outlook of any american section class or religion it may

be encountered on wall street main street or tobacco road some even suspect that they can detect incipient traces of it along the potomac but if we put our trust in the common sense of common men and with malice toward none and charity for all go forward on the great adventure of making political economic and social democracy a practical reality we shall not fail. a year later the fascists in europe were defeated and the fascists in america then the political wilderness as roosevelt's new deal revolution really took hold but today four generations later the fascists are back and we need to revisit that poignant warning that vice president wallace had for us in one thousand nine hundred four when he wrote for the new york times american fascism will not be really dangerous until there is a purposeful coalition among the carts palettes the deliberate poisoners of public

information and those who stand for the k.k.k. type of demagoguery this fascist coalition of corporate cartels and entire television network devoted to disinform ation and right wing demagoguery is stronger today in america than ever before we now have an open corporatist corporations are people my friend mitt romney running for the highest office in the land romney fits wallace's description of a fascist perfectly is a man who pays lip service to democracy in the common welfare but in his insatiable greed evades laws that protect the common welfare by stealing pensions from and then laying off thousands of american workers closing american factories just to make hundreds of millions of dollars as head of the pirate equity firm bain capital and other corporatists fascists from banks to his to oil barons to corporate fronts like the u.s. chamber of commerce pledging to spend over a billion dollars to make sure that their front man is elected in november wallace

in his new york times op ed defines the american fascists this way. they claim to be super patriots but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the constitution they demand free enterprise but of the spokesman for monopoly and vested interests their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously they may keep the common man in eternal subjection and the corporate cartel now has the help of those who was called the quote deliberate poisoners of public information and quote the corporate media outlets on cable news led by fox so-called news along with the corporatist agents in the right wing blogosphere right wing talk radio as wallace wrote the american fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact their newspapers

and propaganda carefully cultivate every fisher of disunity every crack in the common front against fascism they use every opportunity to him democracy and this strategy the vice president wallace identified in one nine hundred forty four continues with today's purveyors of hate who regularly appear on those same corporatists media outlets they include the islamophobia the religious zealots who rail against gays and the economic elites who are trying to pit working americans against each other the private worker against the public workers the union worker against the nonunion workers the male worker against the female. so nearly seventy years after wallace is warning we now know that it can happen here that we too could be taken over by fascism and to some extent already have been and considering

what fascism did to the world the last time it took power we should all be very concerned about the next few years in america and the very real challenges we face as we try to reclaim our democracy and our economy the high stakes struggle for american democracy against the forces of fascism begins today. and that is the big picture for tonight monday august twentieth two thousand and twelve if you missed any of tonight's show you can now watch it in h.d. on hulu at hulu dot com slash the big picture more information on any of the stories we covered this is our web site to tom harmon dot com for his speech at oregon r.t. dot com also check out our two you tube channel is there a link said tom hartman dot com also a tom foreman dot com check out all the different ways you can send us your feedback and don't forget as tom always says democracy begins with you get out there get active occupy something tag you're it we'll see tomorrow.

or you. don't tell me. what's. going on.

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