wealthy british. time. markets. find out what's really happening to the global economy for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines to name two kinds of reports. from our studios in central moscow this is our team good to have you with us let's take a look at. the u.n. security council tries again to bridge the divide on how to solve the syrian conflict while having battles continue on the ground turkey has also floated the idea of creating buffer zones within syria an initiative that russia and china strongly oppose. meanwhile syria's delegates walked out of

a meeting of stay. it's not aligned to the u.s. taking place in tehran they were angered by egyptian leader mohamed morsi who called president assad's regime. last chancellor merkel is on her second visit to china. as it europe's debt crisis begins to draw together to global economic powers but the chinese say weaker states need to impose further cuts and reforms. we'll have another news update for you about half an hour's time but now we head back to the second part of the big picture with. well go back to the big picture on tom marvin coming up in this half hour billionaires are having a field day this election season throwing their fortunes in

a race is all over our nation thanks to citizens united obama is now poised to become the first incumbent president outspent by his opponent so maybe that explains why he's speaking up in favor of a constitutional amendment that our nation desperately needs also ignore what you hear from the right the united states does not have the best health care system in the world but can a startling new report we awaken the movement to bring a single payer universal healthcare system to the united states and later the republican tax master himself grover norquist recently gave a very telling interview to the financial times in tonight's daily take i'll tell you what he said and why we should all be worried about our nation if republicans win big in november. in the best of the rest of the news according to

a recent reuters poll three quarters of americans believe there is too much money in our politics and seventy six percent of americans believe all the money that has given the rich far more influence in government than average americans unfortunately for all those americans are on the verge of seen far more money spent in this coming election than any other election in our nation's history and we can thank the supreme court and its citizens united decision for that we can also thank the republican party which just this week approved its official twenty twelve platform which calls for even more unfettered corporate millionaire and billionaires spent. again in our elections however despite all of this movement overturned citizens united with a constitutional amendment just got a big boost from none other than the president of the united states during non line question answer form on reddit dot com president obama was asked to do something about the corrupting influence of money in politics post citizens united he

responded by calling for the disclose act to be passed to at least add transparency to all the spending and then he went further saying over the longer term i think we need to seriously consider mobilizing a constitutional amendment process to overturn citizens united assuming the supreme court doesn't revisit it even if the amendment process falls short it can shine a light on the super pac phenomenon and pay and help apply pressure for change so what effect if any will the president's support have on the movement to kick corporations and very very wealthy people out of our democracy for more of those might happen tonio joins me now he's an attorney and host of the ring of fire a radio program mike welcome back. are you i'm just great and i hope you're well too the president has spoken out against citizens united before but this is the first time he's endorsed a constitutional amendment do you think you might be feeling the heat now that he's about to be the first incumbent president who's been outspent. well he's certainly feeling the heat but he's

a constitutional law professor himself and he understands that the chance of passing a constitutional amendment is slim to none i mean you've got the way it happens is you can pass it through congress if you can get two thirds of congress congressional majority to say yeah we want to change the constitution or you can do it by constitutional convention where you have two thirds of the states in the united states say we want to change things that is not easy to do as a matter of fact none of the twenty seven the minutes to the constitution have taken place by way of a constitutional amendment so a constitutional convention excuse me so it's not against the wind but absolute i don't disagree i mean there's been to over twenty nine thousand proposed constitutional amendments in congress since the very first congress and we have a total of twenty eight or twenty nine that have passed but some of them i mean the the amendment to undo prohibition or more recently the one to eighteen year olds to vote that was proposed in congress in march and it was ratified by the states and

either august or september of the same year because there was a national in fact i think that that song eve of destruction you know you're old enough to kill but not to vote and so i really think that song was what drove that constitutional amendment and people are waking up and people are getting really pissed off isn't it possible that there could be a large enough movement that we could see something like that. well i think i think president obama may have been right about the it's certainly something that would raise everybody's concern i mean at some point you can put enough pressure on congress by putting pressure on the people by having the people so upset that they put pressure on congress that's the that's the most likely way for this for this to take place and when he said we can shine a light on the corruption that's taken place by way of political money the eight billion dollars in super pacs this going to go into this election i think what he was trying to say is look this is the best we can do is is is is move it by moving

the people but the framers of the constitution and you know this they create out of article five that document there was a serious disagreement about whether how we ought to go about a minute in the constitution you had one part of the framers that said it should be it should be a liberal fairly easy process we should make it something where we can we shouldn't have to live in a government that was written by it was framed by people who are now dead it's a living document and that but the other side of it is what you call the originalist in unfortunately in america right now the numbers show most people are afraid to do anything to the constitution certainly by way of constitutional convention so it is a very long shot if you really consider what i was and i personally would be totally opposed to a constitutional convention because that's like opening the whole thing up to tinker with in the middle of a time when when the when billionaires and corporations are allowed to spend piles

of money but i could see a single constitutional amendment possibly the one that moved to amend or go is proposing for example i'm actually a fan of that but but but maybe i'm just you know one of those hopeful ideals i'm curious your thoughts on what's going on at the r. and c. so far. well they are in ca at this point they're having it's almost every day they're having to put forward ideas that on their face we see that there's really no truth to it i've never seen anybody get a beating is badly is paul ryan is getting today for what he represented in his speech last night you know there was a time when traditional media was so afraid to do fact checking and so afraid to call people out i think they've almost been shamed into it in this convention that you there's only so far you can push the truth and at some point even mainstream media says we have to say something about it when you see the reaction that's occurred with paul ryan you get it you get a sense of the fact that the maybe may be mainstream media is going to the

idea that we have to ask tough questions of these of these politicians and that's absolutely with you my pappa tonia thanks so much for being with us tonight thank you. now from corporations taking over our government to corporations in charge of our health care system america is not a place to get sick according to a new research study published in health affairs the united states leads its european counterpart in part of counterparts in preventable deaths the result of the research examined people under seventy five years old who died from illnesses that could have been prevented with adequate and timely healthcare and found that these preventable deaths happened far more frequently in the united states than in the other three countries they studied the united kingdom germany and france or all those countries that have what republicans here would call socialized medicine so is the time to reconsider the for profit health care model we rely on here in

america and try something new here to answer that question is david silly conservative commentator and pro-business advocate david welcome back. thanks for having me on tom it's always a pleasure all thank you david why do you hate sick people. you know very well i don't hate sick people but the issue is right now we needn't dispatch our program that works what we need to do is put good controls on it but our program doesn't work. it most certainly does and i would remind your viewing audience that these various countries with the socialized medicine and such their system not only were not only does not work as well as ours they are absolutely lying about the statistics and the study that you just cited is the most biased canard out there you have to ask yourself what are they trying to accomplish or twenty nine in

the world were below slovenia and health outcomes david and if you look at if you look at these systems it with the with the single exception of address cancer and i would say that breast cancer is the conservative is always quote and i would say with the reason why we have better results for breast cancer here in the united states is not because of our health care system it's because of a large and massive nonprofit citizen organization things like the susan komen organization and others you know promoting breast cancer awareness and self exams that isn't happening that hasn't happened in european countries but with the single exception of breast cancer we lag far behind all these other countries. it sounds good but it's a lie thomas just not true that's why so many of these people coming to the united states for medical care don't and i'm not talking about the illegally shakes rate even the kings from you know the shakes and kings from saudi arabia don't come to the united states anymore they go to switzerland and germany which by the way i just you know i was just in the hospital a couple of times over the last few weeks i'm looking at all the equipment it's

made in germany it's made in switzerland it's made in japan i don't see a single piece of equipment made in the united states. well i'm with you on you know we really have to kickstart our manufacturing in the united states or alternatively when we bring these imports and have them partially assembled by americans so we can you know jump start so we're going to we're going to we're going to agree on this tariff that if you're a starving artist long. well ok i you know i you know we can't go i don't think we can go anywhere with an argument where i say this and you say that we just agree that there are you know dirt disagree on the numbers but but what about the philosophy of it i mean here we have a health care system where billions of dollars later with a b. i mean steven steven him lay the c.e.o. of united health care made over one point four billion dollars himself as c.e.o. his predecessor dollar bill mcguire made one point seven eight billion dollars as c.e.o. of a health insurance company he had over one hundred employees at united health care

who have made over one hundred million dollars or who are may excuse me who are making over a million dollars take their money and dispatch it yes absolutely stop giving them money as corporate c.e.o.'s and start using that money for preventive health care. what's wrong with that there's there's positively nothing wrong with preventative health care that's why we've got to be much more friendly to corporations that endeavors to do important research to help us to allow them to deduct those costs right off the top while they can already do that a as a real most of our most of our real medical research and as it is done by the universities and it's paid for by the national institutes of health as as you know the guidelines for big pharma are extraordinarily strict and they've never been made permanent so what happens on fortunately is these various lobbyists have to go to the hill and try to persuade them to extend these these tax credits and cuts and

it creates a lot of problems in the system the system that we have is very good but we do have to address a couple of problems most notably the illegal alien issue and a couple of other stuff ok david seelig we will do i will leave it with you with the last word thanks to most so much for being with us tonight. thank you it isn't it it is. after the break republicans are already scheming about what they'll do if they win big in november i'll tell you what their scheme it was and why we could be just three senate seats away from america turning into a corporatocracy or oligarchy.

download the official publication so folks choose your language stream quality and enjoy your favorites from alzheimer's t.v. is not required to watch on t.v. all you need is your mobile device to watch on t.v. any time. line. would be soo much brighter than if you knew about someone from phones to impressions. means for instance on t.v. don't come. wealthy british style the sun. is not on the.

market find scandal find out what's really happening to the global economy for a no holds barred look at the global headline financial. kinds of reports. and there's a warning to all you mediators out there and it's not because i have been a vegetarian since i was sixteen it's but you may be forced to completely change your diet in the near future. citing population trends that show that there will be two billion more people on the planet by two thousand and fifty and dwindling water resources a team of scientists with the stockholm international water institute warned that in the next forty years the world's population will be forced to radically change

their diet going out most completely vegetarian currently humans get about twenty percent of their protein intake from eating animals but scientists warn that over the next few decades that will be unsustainable as the stockholm water institute reports there will not be enough water available on current crop lands to produce food for the expected nine billion population in twenty fifty if we follow current trends and changes toward diets common in western nations instead humans will have to cut back on their animal protein consumption by five percent to twenty fifty currently a diet dependent on animal proteins requires five to ten times more water than a vegetarian diet and says a lot of humans love eating meat that means we need a lot of water to keep all those animals we eat alive or leaves you eat until we slaughter them one third of all the arable land around the world is devoted strictly to growing crops to feed animals not humans but animals and those crops require

a lot of water and will require more water when there's an extra two billion people on the planet expecting to eat more meat in fact as the report shows it will require more water than the planet is capable of producing this isn't just bad news several decades from now it's bad news to day to already there are nine hundred million people around the planet who hungry plus another two billion who are malnourished and we're seeing right now the devastating effects of water of the lack of water thanks to a historical drought in the united states this summer alone the prices of corn and wheat diet staples for both humans and animals and the animals that humans eat it shot up nearly fifty percent leading to a situation similar to two thousand and eight when food shortages forced hundreds of millions of people around the planet to the brick. starvation and spark civil unrest in twenty eight different countries so this is our future if we choose to accept it or we can try something else like reforming our diets eating a lot a little less meat each week right now and have

a better trade policies between food surplus nations and food deprived nations this planet is going to be very crowded so we can prepare for it or not i know he's hoping that we make the right decision. is just. it's the good the bad of the very very rebarbative really ugly good code pink today all opponents are talking about the rousing foreign policy speech connelly's or rice gave at the r n c one which she called for endless war in the middle east but no one is talking about her associations with known war criminals in the bush administration who dragged our nation into illegal wars and threw american values out the window when they decided to use torture well code pink is talking about it protesters stormed the r n c on wednesday staging

a die in on the sidewalk to signify all the bloodshed for bush and conti's war of aggression and they're also calling for the arrest of congolese or rice under war crimes charges good on them for making sure people don't forget the lasting damage that rice and other criminals from the bush administration have inflicted on our nation and the world. the bad ohio secretary of state john huston hostage is working tirelessly at ohio to cut short the number of hours voters in its state can cast their vote during early voting in other words he's doing his part to rig the election for mitt romney since a large chunk of early voters in ohio are minority voters who tend to vote for democrats to election officials in the state just found out how serious is and suppressing the vote this week us to fired thomas ritchie and dennis lieberman two election officials who attempted to extend voting hours during the weekend early voting no again has to be fired people for trying to allow more people to vote in

ohio and someone tell me at what point did it expanding democracy in america become a fireable offense. and the very very ugly gina rinehart the richest woman in the world brian r. who was born into a wealthy australian family of mining tycoons with a roughly thirty billion dollars protocol in an industry magazine blasting the poor who are jealous of her in the column or on our rights if you're jealous of those with more money don't just sit there and complain do something to make more money yourself spend less time drinking and smoking and socializing and more time working . because being a member of the lucky sperm club is really hard work just as paris felt and really it's not too smart to call out the workers and customers that your family's fortune depends on as jealous and lazy or has a rotten heart is working on a new column titled let them eat cake now that is fair if you fear.

let's assume right now that all the republican lies work and let's assume of the billions of dollars tens of billions it might end up who knows spent by the likes of the koch brothers sheldon eight zero sum karl rove let's assume with that works let's assume that the statewide voter i.d. suppression laws and restrictions on early voting and hurdles to voter registration all these things to stop democrats from going to the polls let's assume that they all work assuming all of those things work then come january twenty third teen mitt romney and paul ryan will be in the white house.

speaker john boehner will be bridged presiding over a republican majority in the house of representatives mitch mcconnell will be leading a republican majority in the senate will have one party republican rule in america again and unlike when democrats held majorities in congress and the white house for the first two years of president obama's presidency republicans will see to it that their agenda under mitt romney is not de railed by a filibuster by the democratic minority by president obama's was by the republican minorities constant filibuster republicans are already planning how they can silence the voice of the minority in the senate should they sweep the elections in november and this plan was laid out this week in the pages of the financial times newspaper and guess who spilled the beans none other than one of the most powerful voices in the republican party multimillionaire k. street lobbyist grover norquist as the financial times writes grover norquist the

anti-tax crusader who wields considerable influence among conservative lawmakers said republicans could use an arcane congressional mechanism to push through ninety eight percent of their agenda if mitt romney wins the white house including a controversial overhaul of medicare. so what is this arcane congressional mechanism that norquist speaks up it's called budget reconciliation and it means that anything pertaining to the federal budget spending and taxes can be passed with a simple majority in the senate just fifty one votes instead of the supermajority sixty votes the republicans have forced in the senate for the last three and a half years now the words of republicans can roll up their entire agenda in the form of a budget and the democratic minority won't be able to stop it that's exactly why paul ryan and the republicans didn't introduce their plans to end medicare as we know it turning it into a voucher program and leaving seniors at the mercy of the for profit health

insurance program as an individual piece of legislation they instead included it as part of their budget because as long as any medicare is included in a budget bill and not as a standalone piece of legislation that it only requires fifty one votes to pass the senate got it. so what other sort of stuff can be included in a budget bill that can slip by the senate without democrats having a say for want to complete repeal of obamacare giving the private health insurance industry the power once again to die all americans including children health insurance coverage for preexisting conditions through reconciliation this arcane process this this oh it's just about the money therefore you can't filibuster a process republicans can completely defund wall street reform they could neuter the financial regulators at the f.c.c. in the c.f. t.c. and let our banking system fall back into the hands of the hustlers and gamblers of wall street. through budget reconciliation this arcane process republicans can

decimate the medicaid program and the children's health insurance program leaving the working poor with no lifeline should they get sick through reconciliation republicans can virtually eliminate government agencies like the e.p.a. the u.s.d.a. and the f.d.a. that ensure the water we drink the air we breathe and the food we eat and the medicine we take are all safe. through reconciliation republicans can slash taxes on the rich even below the historic lows they're at down while also raising taxes on middle and working class americans and keep those taxes in place for the next ten years. they can slash taxes on corporations continue to give new tax subsidies to corporations like mitt romney's bain capital that sent thousands of american jobs overseas through reconciliation republicans can put even more burdens on american students who are already drowning under

a trillion dollars of student loan debt by slashing pell grant spending and making college a luxury that only the rich can afford basically as grover norquist promised republicans can accomplish ninety eight percent of their corporatist agenda through reconciliation through only fifty one votes in the senate the only thing standing between the united states as we know it and the united states is republicans and vision of which is a corporate feudal state where the middle class disappears going standing between the two is this election coming up in november republicans will likely hold the house the white house is a tossup right now and all republicans need in the senate is to pick up those three seats that's it just three seats and nothing will stand in their way anymore the financial times asked of paul ryan spokesman if this was the goal if this was what seemed planned in the inner circles of the party to use reconciliation and sneak all this stuff through the senate and the spokesman said i'm not going to be able

to ask the congressman about that today so basically no comment you know we may have plans to do everything in a sneaky way and run it through congress. in a way that can't be filibustered but more i'm going to talk about it like getting good coup in any oligarchy you don't want to advertise what you're going to do. but this is what's happening folks and we all should take notice tell everybody we know about it and get active in the selection. and that's the way it is tonight thursday august thirtieth two thousand and twelve if you missed any of tonight's show you can now watch it on eight in h.d. on hulu at hulu dot com slash big picture for more information on any of the stories we've covered visit our web sites at thom hartmann dot com free speech and r t dot com also check out our two you tube channels there are links to thom hartmann dot com also there you'll check out at our dot com check out all the different ways you.