well i'm tom hartman in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture last day chris christie only mentioned mitt romney eight times in his entire speech but we see tonight's speakers doing the same thing by x. news contributor alan colmes tells us also along with climate change and education one of the things you won't hear republicans talking about this week is america's failed drug war isn't it time we finally brought it to an end and put the money funding it to better uses and paul ryan is getting ready to address the r n c tonight what he possibly say considering that he's trying to destroy the american middle class well as congressman chris van hollen.

you need to know this it's day two of the republican national convention and we'll see if tonight's speakers got the message that mitt romney is actually the guy running for president as that is keynote address to the or and seemed jersey governor chris christie seemed to be confused about why he was there given a speech that more resembled an unofficial launch of a twenty sixteen bid for the presidency than a rallying call for mitt romney in fact christie didn't even mention mitt romney's name until about sixteen minutes into his speech instead he talked about his parents his political philosophy his accomplishments as governor of new jersey paraphrased macchiavelli although a convenient lee left out the fact that his state has a nine point eight percent unemployment rate which is one of the worst in the nation so when if ever will this convention actually be about mitt romney or is

this the strategy of the republic. party don't blame that romney who let's face it doesn't exactly get the political juices flowing could that be that their actual strategy for more on this want to bring in alan colmes host of the alan colmes radio show fox news contributor and author of the book bank the liberals for saving america allan welcome. just great great to see you again i'm not seeing any enthusiasm for mitt romney at the hour and see what you make of this but you know when you ask any republican what are you what are you supporting mitt romney and why would you say for example to do gingrich all the things you said about him how can you support of the answer is always well there's a light he's better than barack obama the are running against barack obama then running for mitt romney and mitt romney has not yet presented a positive vision of what he would do for america it's all about how bad the other guy is even though he keeps whining every time he's so called attack i think the

republican party has to get itself ready for a loss and they also have to be able to reposition themselves after this election and you could have a big internet scene battle i think between the tea party faction the far right faction and the more moderate republicans for the future of this party especially if they lose this election because how do they define themselves if they can't move forward from here yet why hasn't that battle but going on for a couple of years now and isn't it largely the tea party faction being funded by ten or twenty cranky billionaires and and you know pseudo libertarians. it is and it seems like however this i think is the make or break election but then again if mitt romney wins is he beholden to the tea party who is mitt romney we know he's flip flopped on almost every position we know that he has no core we know that his only goal is to be present in states with without any supporting positions that we can really grasp onto so you know what what does he represent and what does

a party represent i think the party really isn't practically in crisis mode in terms of defining itself you know mainstream republicans some of them have just left or quit resign their positions from the house and senate they want to be part of what the party is today you know last night juan williams made the comment that ann romney was kind of a corporate wife and seemed to shock his fellow fox commentators it seemed to me it what surprised me about ann romney's speech was that here was an opportunity to tell a story that would humanize mitt romney and you know what stories are the ways that we convey things typically so she could have told the story about you know the time that one of the kids got sick with scarlet fever or broke his arm and you know mitt called an extra chauffeur to take them to the hospital or or something you know you could have a lot but you didn't tell a single story that humanized him what was your take on on her speech my take on it is if he if they need a wife to human eyes the candidate the candidates in trouble he's got

a human eyes themselves maybe everybody did believe bill clinton when bill clinton would bite his lower lip and say i feel your pain but people it was believed it was it was real it seemed real at the time and people wanted to believe it they did i mean that you got people it's about him being genuine that when you have her talking about how they go to cosco and by shirts by three out of the pack and they he loves his new cosco shirts and they love ironing them together no one believes that it's not that the the left of center is upset with him being rich it's being upset with someone who was trying to be something other than what they are and we don't know what they are be whoever you are but be something yeah well maybe they like watching the bottlers or in the shirt side of. it is what it is it's pretty strange your book is about how we should thank liberals for saving america we have just one minute left why. because i every accomplishment we've made almost every good dance meant in civil liberties civil rights even economically has really been

because of liberals and in spite of conservative opposition and also the supreme court has affirmed almost over time it doesn't happen with every every little turn but over time the supreme court has affirmed what legislators have done and by the way the other point to make is we're all liberal we live in america this is not a random iraq we live in a liberal country founded by liberal founders with a liberal constitution and a liberal separation agreement from the mother country called the declaration of independence and we're much more liberal than people leave it at mit so that's really what the book is and and it's for both sides of everybody left or right i think we'll get something out of it brilliantly said alan i hope and i hope it's fabulous the successful and and thank you my friend for coming on the program tonight thank you very much i really appreciate it. besides the fact that it took sixteen minutes for chris christie to even mention mitt romney's name there's even more proof that christie's speech must not have been vetted by the romney campaign check out what christie said last night about the g.i.

bill. dad grew up in poverty. and after returning from army service he worked at the briers ice cream play in the one nine hundred fifty s. now without a job in the g.i. bill he put himself through rutgers university. to become the first if you use family to earn a college degree that's big chris christie praised the g.i. bill for letting his father become the first member of his family to go to college because the g.i. bill is part of a massive government investment education it was signed by f.d.r. nine hundred forty four something that mitt romney and the rest of the republican party are absolutely opposed to which is really a shame because our nation desperately needs investments in education but instead the united states seems to be spending all of its money on incarceration. instead of education according to a recent pew research center report between one thousand nine hundred seven and two thousand and seven nationwide spending on prisons increased one hundred twenty

seven percent but nationwide spending on higher education only went up twenty one percent say to pennsylvania for example prison spending is double education spending thanks to the failed war on drugs in the last thirty years the incarceration rate in america has jumped from two hundred twenty people out of every hundred thousand to seven hundred forty three out of every hundred thousand that equates to two million more prisoners in america a quarter of whom are nonviolent drug offenders and for the first time in history both prison spending and student loan debt have each topped one trillion dollars. we haven't heard anything about the failed drug war yet the r n c and frankly i doubt we will but isn't it time we end it and divert that money wasted on it to sending more young americans to college marc harrold joins me now he's an attorney libertarian commentator and author of the book observations of white noise an acid test for the first amendment marc welcome back thank you good good to have you with

us thanks. usually you and i are fighting about some topic but i am guessing that this at least the notion of rolling back the drug war is something with which you agree oh absolutely the drug war has been out of control we look at the numbers and i think in one thousand nine hundred ten percent were drug abusers drug users people who possessed drugs about ten percent of the overall prison population you know now it's more like twenty five percent and what changed of course was just say no any time the government goes to war against its people and you declare a war on drugs a war on whatever you're going to have problems marijuana is one of the biggest problems people shouldn't be in jail for possessing marijuana i don't think people should be in jail for using marijuana it needs to be classified differently it's in there with ecstasy and heroin they need to decriminalize marijuana they need to change the one nine hundred seventy controlled substances act and they need to take a lot of steps we have too many people in prison we've basically declared war on people and people in this country we've criminalized a lot of things that shouldn't be criminalized and because we have so many laws

people break them and then as we've talked about because of alec because of the big business of private prisons and we've talked about this i'm usually for privatization but not for the military not for prisons because i have a law enforcement background when you really look at this there is big money in truth in sentencing laws there is big money in a lot three strikes laws they fill up the beds and there's big money in film those beds for private prisons and that and that's that line between the commons the stuff that we all collectively should be doing and outside the commons where the private the private enterprise operates. you would think that in the thirty's when we experience prohibition and you know john dillinger and all that stuff and then we ended prohibition that we would have learned a lesson out of that what what do you think are the forces that have maintained this this war on drugs all these years why why is this so persistent well the one of the big one is the present mergence the private prison industry there's

a lot of different things i think there's a social could there are social conservatives certain social conservatives many of whom are republicans will tell you they're for small government or for big government in law enforcement they believe that and i think that there's a morality play i think people actually think somehow it's just it's a drug and i think you it's can be harmful but whether it's good or bad it's a drug we all use drugs i've used caffeine all day long every one of us here is probably on a drug some of the drugs are probably worse than marijuana but the bottom line here is it's got into a thing where we've got in lock step that the law passed we have these five controlled substance schedules we've got locked into this and the money that follows the other reason is you know we can debate about whether there should be federal grants for law enforcement but if there are federal grants for law enforcement law enforcement agencies will follow the money and where a lot of the money is in drug enforcement if we re prioritizing the federal grants to local and state law enforcement or to do other things like combat child sex predators they would redistrict they would redistribute their allocation to get that money so this it's systemic it's gotten so ingrained what amazes me is just

like you said prohibition we didn't learn our lesson we went to far as amending our constitution and we could change that with the twenty first amendment but here we've got statutes like the one thousand nine hundred substances act almost everyone agrees the drug war is not working but we can't get these laws off the books it's not even an amendment is just a law we can repeal it it's crazy and the fact that we're spending twice as loud pennsylvania for example spending twice as much on prisons as schools says something very bad about our priorities doesn't cut it as a lot about our so i already said absolutely it says a lot about our priorities we continue to incarcerate people and of course the incarceration of people affects it's all tied in together about quality of life. but you know on this one you know we do agree this war on drugs any time the government declares war on the people it never works and it always the fallouts always large mark errol thank you dropping by see you. coming up paul ryan takes center stage at the r. and c. tonight so what exactly can we expect from him we'll ask congressman chris van hollen after the break.

here is mitt romney trying to figure out when they thing that you may call. a. far left doesn't want the usa to defeat terrorism. cells neighborhood. the old liberal and the christian. book publishing a lot. of the books because you know the corporate media distracts us from what you and i should care about because they're profit driven industry that sells a sensational stick garbage calls it breaking news i'm having martin and we're going to break this that.

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

tonight at the r. and c. we'll hear from vice presidential candidate paul ryan who already is overshadowing mitt romney since his name was added to the ticket a few weeks ago and it remains to be seen if paul ryan will talk about all these social security benefits he received as a teenager when his father died but the education he received from the public school system or his long and fruitful career drawing a paycheck from the government something tells me he'll be silent all that stuff because i could be silent on his radical budget that passed out of the house of representatives this year that ends medicare as we know it turns it into a voucher system so then what can paul ryan say and what exactly can he and mitt romney offer to working class americans congressman chris van hollen joins me now is the representative from maryland's eighth congressional district congressman welcome tom it's great to be with you great to have you with us paul ryan is set to take the stage today today or tonight are we going to hear him talk about all the

stuff i just mentioned social security benefits you received as public education is government job. i don't think you're going to hear anything about that and you're not going to hear about the fact that his budget plan the plan that he and romney put together the effect it would have on the american people whether you're a senior on medicare whether you're middle income taxpayer whether you're a student trying to go to college because at the heart of their plan they provide another round of windfall tax breaks for the very wealthy for people like mitt romney at the expense of the rest of america and i don't think you're going to be hearing that side of the story have you heard anything any rhetoric coming out of tampa coming out of the r. and c. anything that was on the platform anything that any of the politicians are saying they're working americans can grab on to is proof that the g.o.p. actually has an interest in helping the middle class. no and one of the things i found very striking about yesterday's republican convention was it was all personal

attacks on president obama a lot of demagoguery a lot of distortion we heard nothing about their plans and the reason is the only thing they've got to go on at the end of the day is this recycled version of trickle down economics and as you know and as the country knows we've tried that we tried it for eight years under george bush and at the end of those eight years we saw private sector jobs go down we saw the deficit go up and the big secret is that the romney ryan plan now is simply a souped up version of trickle down economics that's why they provide these big tax breaks to the very folks at the top on this on this mythical theory that somehow that's going to raise all boats when we know that didn't happen and it comes at a huge price for the rest of the country seniors will pay a lot more in medicare immediately in the form of higher co-pays and premiums but

over the longer term as they move to the radical voucher plan students will see their college assistance whether the form of power grants or tax credits for their families and you're also going to see middle income taxpayers have their taxes go up to finance tax cuts for the very wealthy for folks like mitt romney so it is a huge hit on the american people all in service to this failed theory of trickle down economics and to twenty six billionaires who are funding a lot of this stuff and and our have crew have created this whole huge mythical thing about the corporate free market it seems a is is there what what sort of rhetoric are you expecting tonight is the last thing and it seems like it was each person was just standing up and and auditioning himself and then they'd say oh and by the way you ought to vote for mitt romney it is going to be like that again tonight. i think what you're going to hear is just

continued assaults on the president's. agenda and you're going to see a lot of misrepresentations look is you know it's very important that people remember what a terrible hand the president was dell and when the economy was in total freefall and despite what republicans will tell you the reality is the president acted very quickly with not any help from republicans to stop the freefall to turn the corner we have now seen twenty nine consecutive months of positive private sector job growth now we should be doing more which is why the president submitted a jobs bill to congress back in september and that republicans in the house have refused to even schedule a vote on that congressman just a very they voted as you know thirty times to get rid of obamacare but not once on the new jobs plan it's amazing we have just thirty seconds just a quick question you've been working really hard to pass the disclose act how's that going. well unfortunately we're right in the same trouble which is a republicans who used to say they were in favor of transparency and accountability

have now double down on secrecy apparently they are benefiting from all these secret donors and what the disclose act says is very simple voters have a right to know who's funding all these campaign ads and the republicans have decided to be in favor of hiding the ball and not telling the voters whose financing these ads of course they know who's fighting financing those ads and those people have a very specific agenda as you probably heard a bunch of top romney fundraisers just had a a big shindig on a boat a big yacht here that actually as i understand it was out of the cayman islands and yes it was cayman islands five years on its friends have a lot of things going on in the cayman islands yeah there you go congressman chris van hollen thanks so much for being with us the nicer thank you it's on. in screwed news i want to share with you now

a very telling interview i had on tuesday with glenn hubbard a man who was the former chairman of george w. bush's council of economic advisors is the current dean of the columbia university graduate school of business and is a senior economic advisor to mitt romney it's a very high likelihood that if romney wins the presidency than glenn hubbard might become the next chairman of the federal reserve or even the secretary of treasury so i want to get to the bottom of is and romney's economic philosophy which seems to be rooted in reaganomics or supply side economics so i had him on the radio show yesterday and this was my first question take a look. at how is it that. after you know if you look if you look at the last sixty or seventy years of history we see that average wages tracked productivity almost. continuously until the reagan administration then wages flattened out and productivity continued to increase and all that money seemed to go to c.e.o.

pay instead of wages we've seen now the result of reaganomics trickle down economics whatever you want to call it supply side economics for thirty years it's been a disaster for the middle class how do you think you can continue to sell this to the american people. you know we have long term structural problems in america that aren't democrat problems or republican problems they're problems we have to deal with and we have seen wages for many people failed to keep pace with productivity compensation has kept pace with productivity so how could both of those things be true we've seen very sharply rising health care costs and we've seen problems in opportunity for many lower and middle income americans we really need to rethink our employment policy the united states we want to increase growth but it's got to be broadly shared so notice how hubbard agreed with my promise that growth is not being shared evenly all over there was no acknowledgement whatsoever about the failure of reaganomics instead hubbard attributes the problem to well the same

thing that all republicans say it is government's to big taxes do i regulations are too burdensome to look. getting growth is about changing our tax code getting the size of government right getting regulation that supports growth isn't about growing legion and. what you know you can't create demand in an environment that has this much policy uncertainty business executives i speak to are very concerned about hiring people are making investments with this level of policy uncertain but no no it's that respectfully no business executive i'm you know i'm one of them no business executive in his right mind would refuse to hire somebody if there was demand for his products. if you could make more money hiring more employees well that's true but let's unpack what you're seeing in an environment of policy uncertainty where you don't know what future taxes are the future size of government the future of regulation nobody's ever going to things well you know

with respect this is the greatest level of uncertainty for economists who measure this we've probably cost our economy since two thousand and seven more than two million jobs is from policy uncertainty and that's something we can fix now to howard also blames our economic problems on what paul krugman calls the uncertainty fairy policy uncertainty the idea that businesses are hiring because they're unsure what new regulations might be coming down from washington d.c. . frankly this is a phony argument on two fronts one as i point out no one ever knows what future tax rates regulations will be all of congress is up for reelection every two years so in a way there's always uncertainty to say uncertainty today is different than before it just doesn't make sense and to hubbard assumes that regulations kill jobs that's not true multiple studies have shown that regulations actually stimulate job growth after all of the new regulation forces a coal company to cut down on its emissions and that company has to hire people to

install scrubbers in their smokestacks both jobs are created it's not uncertainty it's lack of demand slowing down the economy as i point out the interview and the biggest source of demand is wages so i still want to get to the bottom of this free market economic world view shared by harvard and romney so i asked this follow up question. are there any countries that you can identify in the world that have successful economies and success and more importantly successful middle classes that have not done so by significant government involvement but rather have done so by the free market. well the united states historically i think meets that example of definitely rising economic growth being broadly shared their number of trends around the world that have made that tough the world over as you know but we can change policy in this country to help make that happen unfortunately on both sides

of the aisle there's not always support for them wasn't the united states building of the great middle class in the fifty's sixty's seventy's and early eighty's wasn't that the consequence of government policies though the g.i. bill g.i.c. support for home loans the eisenhower transportation bills eisenhower building schools and hospitals and he basically said we were one hundred twenty seven percent of g.d.p. and debt after world war two he basically stimulated us out of it and paid off that debt. isn't that an example of government policy creating a battle for us it's certainly dicky's the government has a strong role to play in creating an educated society and created infrastructure but america's growth any successful nations growth is about innovation in the private sector not about government ok and where where do you see if if mitt romney is elected president what what would be the paul what would be your first policy recommendations what would governor romney has said is that day one he

would introduce energy regulation that would create jobs in the energy sector to move from obama care to much more market oriented health care system tax reform and spending restraint all together which could create another twelve million jobs in this country in his first term and other words exactly what george w. bush did point is these romney guys really don't have any new solutions to fixing the economy they want to double down on the same failed reagan and bush and omics policies that crashed our economy in two thousand and seven we need true economic changes we saw during the last economic crisis in america in the one nine hundred thirty s. and sadly these guys don't have a clue about how to make it happen we'll be right back.

lauren lyster. just put a picture of me when i was like nine years old to tell the truth. to confess and i am a little get a friend said i love crab and hip hop music and. that it was kind of a yesterday. i'm very proud of the wall that is played.