i believe it's eighty four months of a prison sentence and what you see in this bush justice department is selective prosecution and i think one measure of the health of a democracy is how justice is a portion and when one group of people is chosen and only they are prosecuted then and as i did my research i noticed that the mayor of honolulu was indicted. miami of cleveland and these are stories that if you live here in new york you might struggle and not think much of about when you see them and if they're even covered in the new york times but i can put together a string of twelve mayors of major american cities and what did they have been a common they were all indicted and they were all democrats and i got to over three hundred politicians were indicted this way and seven hundred eight of

them were democrats and there's just no doubt whatsoever that suggests that democrats are eight as as corrupt as a republican in fact in your book you mention how karl rove. came over to a table that don siegelman was sitting at this was before the prosecution and you know just went out of his way to sit down and shake his hand and say something to siegelman and. i don't recall the exact phrasing used in your book but it was something like he wanted to get close to his prey is he really predatory a man. i think there's something very weird about him he's on some level he is becht accurately disciplined he is very very smart there's no question about it he can assimilate vast amounts of data and spit it out in ways that form a real strategy he is a great strategist but he loves to go in for the kill and i think he tends to

there's certain times when he can't resist it i had a very interesting episode on monday at the act it was time he was in tampa politico had a breakfast at which karl rove was the guest of honor and the speaker. excuse me. and i rose to get to ask question and he lit into he knew who i was he lit into me he said there goes i'm going to to launch his book watch and monitor what i'm going to a younger and he started saying that i had accused him of murder and all sorts of things and in many ways you're misrepresenting my book you know it's it's not at all surprising in fact i the one time i met karl rove was you know eight or nine months ago i was over at fox news to be a guest on and he and i ran into each other as we were both going into the you know into the the main office there and and it was one of those comic kind of things

were where each of you reach for the door and you run into each other instead of the door and he just and i didn't realize as karl rove until after it was over as he was walking away i mean it took me a minute to recognize him because here's this kind of a short pudgy nondescript seemed like you know just an average guy i mean you know and and and yeah but this is a man who has had a massive influence over the history of the united states and our politics and continues to and arguably as one of the most powerful men in the world at this moment how did he start well you know that it's interesting and if you look at the super pacs today and if anything i i frankly think you probably you may have understated the amount of money he but he to gether for this election but i'm going back to the one nine hundred eighty s. and in texas you could see the roots of this strategy he. had been in college republicans which was the ground which is famously forge

a normas number really. brutal strategy lee atwater came out of that and lee atwater did the willie horton campaign he ran george h.w. bush's campaign and he was the campaign manager for call rove the head of college republicans and that's sort of how karl got his start but but he in texas even as late as the eighty's he was not a major figure and that's partly because. the texas republican party was sort of nothing there were powerful conservative democrats in texas in those days john connelly lloyd benson and so forth and so the big corporate donors the big business people in texas said well why should we give the republicans we're getting what we want from the democrats and rove found a way around that and he did it by starting political action committees he

got on the payroll of philip march and he went to philip morris and the various other big big corporations and he said look you guys face billions and billions of dollars in tort reform lawsuits and damage suits and so forth i can save you that money if you donate a few million to campaign for my candidate we will take over the texas supreme court and he did it was almost entirely liberal democrats and it became entirely eight to one. and. the people in the governor's say yeah it's really a remarkable story more conversations with great minds with craig unger right after this break.

i'm laura mr and. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so 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 tom hartman welcome to the big picture.

here is mitt romney trying to figure out when they got thing that you remember is paul. far left doesn't want the usa to defeat terrorism. their terrorist cells neighborhood. the old liberal and the christian. folk are going to hold. up his public service because you know the corporate media distracts us from what you and i should care about because they're profit driven industry that sells the facial stick garbage he calls it breaking news i'm having martin and we're. to break the back.

of the back to conversations of the great minds i'm speaking with investigative journalist a new york times best selling author craig unger his new book boss rove inside karl rove secret kingdom of power is due out september fourth let's get back to it craig i'm curious where what role billionaire ripper murdoch in the fox news. machine played in the rehabilitation of karl rove well as issues rove and roland if you go back. back to the nixon era roger ailes who of course is a chairman of fox news when he was in the nixon administration he put together a proposal for something called g.o.p. t.v. well now they've got it and if you look at the current campaign at one point there were five contenders for the republican nomination who were paid analyst on fox news and of course a six person was call wrote. so as i was watching this i thought well wow karl rove

is wiring two hats he's both a commentator on the one hand the other he is the party boss and i begin to realize no he's not a commentator what you see here is really the behind the scenes fight in the republican party going on on live t.v. and when karl rove lashes out at sarah pail and he's saying look i'm the party boss i've got as it turns out ultimately about a billion dollars that i control and you're not getting any of it you're finished you are not going to be the candidate and if you look at the primaries one by one he would take shots at rick perry and herman cain and donald trump. newt gingrich and rick santorum and everyone really except mitt romney and it's interesting sarah palin seems to have been terminated from fox as the.

boss rove is doing i think in may well. i don't you know i asked him about his relationship to roger ailes he said that he you know conversations with ailes about it i'm not sure that's true yeah where or where does karl rove go from here what what's your sense of his future given either a romney victory or be a romney loss. well i think it's a win win situation for him and that's why he's this party boss with no via an unelected position no term limits romney's clearly a flawed candidate i think he does have a chance of winning and if he does rove will be hailed as the genius behind the man who put together this massive amount of money if you put together the billion dollars he has plus i think another eight hundred million or so in the romney campaign that's one point eight billion dollars it's going to be poured into the

battleground states to put them perspective john mccain had about three hundred seventy five million his campaign just four years ago and if romney loses. rove can blame it on the extremism of the tea party. we'll see who emerges in two thousand and sixteen it could be jeb bush were to reunite with the bush family and then of course i think you will still see the continue to sense of all ron craig we just we just have a minute or so here left is karl rove have a a. foundational philosophy or does he just go where the power is. i think it's more about power he is not an idiot i talked to roger stone the. prominent republican strategist and he said look karl rove is not a real conservative this is crony capitalism it's about getting money and giving rewards to those who put in the money and winning winning wynnie and if you look at

the big campaign donors wrote that to get started putting together in the one nine hundred eighty s. a lot of them are still within their perry in texas there's a billionaire no relation to rick perry harold simmons and so forth and they were among the founding donors of american crossroads today it's a remarkable story craig unger thank you so much for being with us tonight and for writing as a brilliant book i've read much of it boss rob i highly recommend it thank you sir thank you for having me to see this in other conversations the great lines go to our website at conversations with great minds dot com. the story of their romney is a story of two americas one that got bailed out we can aspire to the highest levels

of power and the other they got sold out and forced into bankruptcy desperation and suicide since he can't talk about his job as governor of massachusetts passing his own version of obamacare mitt romney has to talk about his private sector experience at bain capital fact he devoted a portion of his speech at the r n c to being. when i was thirty seven i helped start a small company my partners and i had been working for a company that was in the business of helping other businesses so some of us had this idea that if we really believed our vice was helping companies we should invest in companies we should bet on ourselves and our own advice so we started a new business called bank capital but what romney is leaving out is a tumultuous time in the late one nine hundred eighty s. and early one nine hundred ninety s. when romney's company nearly went bankrupt and in fact would have had it not been

bailed out by the united states government in other words he didn't build it as tim dickinson rolling stone uncovered bain capital's parent company bain and company ran into serious financial problems in the late one nine hundred eighty s. and mitt romney was tapped to try to save the company the company owed more than thirty million bucks to a bank that had been taken over by the f.b.i. see the federal deposit insurance corporation after failing again and again to get the company back on track romney decided to play hardball with bain's creditors basically forcing them to write down bain step romney gave everyone a take it or leave it deal take thirty cents on the dollar on every dollar of the beno owes or he would loot the company divert whatever remaining assets were there toward paying big executive bonuses then declare bankruptcy and then bain's creditors including our government the f.d.i.c would get nothing that hardball worked the f.d.i.c agreed to take just

a fraction of the money the bain owed them and forgive the rest of the debt huge bailout for bank since f.d.i.c is a government agency a debt right out right off amounted to a multi billion dollar bailout courtesy of you and me the taxpayer. bain and company survived bain and company went on bain capital went on to make a boatload of money taking over companies loading them with that while stripping them to the bone offshore in american jobs and pocketing huge profits romney went on to earn more than a third of a billion dollars in energy and bain and now he's running for president all thanks to that government bailout again he didn't build but while the one nine hundred eighty s. government bailout of bain secured the american dream for mitt romney the millions of americans who got screwed by wall street during the housing crisis never got bailed out and there's stories reveal a very different america here's the story of norman russo

who we battled with wells fargo for years to stay in the his home in this home in his home after he was conned into one of those exploding adjustable rate mortgages facing foreclosure and living out his life in an r.v. with his rife reso wasn't bailed out like mitt romney had been he instead shot himself there's the story of sergeant robert robert bales you may have heard of him he was the american soldier in afghanistan who snapped and went on a killing rampage gunning down seventeen afghan civilians turns out back at home bales' wife was losing a battle to keep the family home from the bank stirrers the day after the rampage the family home was forced to be sold for fifty one thousand dollars less than the bales had paid for it sergeant bales didn't get a bailout like mitt romney and he snapped it committed a massacre there's the story of vincent garcia who had bought her home runs excuse

me garcia would bought her home in one thousand nine hundred six and one awards for her perfectly landscape lawn she too was conned into refinancing your mortgage with an adjustable rate loan she fell behind on the payments and could have used a bailout like that romney but she never got. the night before she was to be a victim by the bank she put on some music laid on her bed and fired a twenty two caliber bullet through her head there's a story of michael moore a former wall street banker and a rich guy like mitt romney but marin too got caught up in the housing mess and he bought a three and a half million dollar mansion he couldn't afford when the housing market went bust a used to bail out but he didn't get one like mitt romney since he couldn't pay as mortgage anymore and desperation he burned his house down to make a look like an accidental fire and get the insurance money pay it off you do a sloppy job he was busted convicted of arson is the verdict against him was read marin took a cyanide tablet and committed suicide right in the courtroom another victim of the

foreclosure crisis another american who could be used to bail out like mitt romney god it's hard to calculate just how many americans have suffered suicide by foreclosure like some of the people i just mentioned there's a website called greenspan's body count that tries to keep track of how many americans have committed suicide because of financial hardship because they couldn't get a bailout like mitt romney got currently the death toll stands at two hundred twenty eight of the real number is likely much much higher this is what happens in america when the rich and well connected get bailed out while the rest of us get sold out we're going to hear mitt romney over and over and over again brag about his business achievements and why he built a business on his own it's not true i mean first he was given millions and now of

the fee he was born with millions and then when he strewed up in the company was nearly bankrupt he was given a lifeline a bailout and thanks to that bailout he's running for president today no one does anything alone alone in america we're all in this together. and when we do force people to do it alone we leave them behind to face economic disasters on their own without a lifeline and catastrophe often follows just look at what happened to norman rousseau or sergeant bales of a tons of. if only they could have gotten bailed out like mitt romney did and maybe they'd still be here their families and their friends still alive trying to live the american dream that's the way it is tonight friday august thirty first two thousand and twelve missed any of tonight's show you can now watch it in h.d. on hulu at hulu dot com slash the big picture for more information on the stories

we've covered visit our website to tom hartman dot com free speech dot org and our to dot com also check out our two you tube channels there are links with thom hartmann dot com this entire show is also available as a free video podcast on i tunes you can visit tom arbonne dot com to download the audio podcast of her daily three to six radio show and we have a free tom hartman i phone and i pad app at the app store said his feedback on twitter tom underscore arbonne and facebook tom underscore our man on our blogs message boards a telephone comment line at thom hartmann dot com and now as we're watching the republicans try to produce a content free election that is based in the big lies strategy that came out of europe in the one nine hundred thirty s. . it's more important than ever. that we all get out there and participate don't forget the mocker see begins with you get out there get active occupy something tag you're it.

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i mean for the animal planet to be. dry wall construction and all those. gone well mitt romney soaked up the spotlight at last night's r. and c. convention meanwhile just a few short miles away one of the poorest towns in florida goes unnoticed we'll show you a side of tampa all those media cameras over looks. and there's no question wiki leaks founder julian assange has a message and he's willing to go to great lengths to spread it this time speaking out to a venezuelan television station about his extradition limbo and update ahead. of the latest case of subjective journalism turns out the new york times sought approval from the cia in order to write a critical piece about president obama r.t. asks if there's such a thing as objective journalism these days. it's

friday august thirty first eight pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz wall and you're watching r t but we saw the media descend on tampa with full force for the republican national convention and for the most part what we saw of tampa was a picturesque city in the sunshine state but that's not the full picture they reality is that almost twenty percent of the population in tampa lives below the poverty line that's significantly higher than the thirteen point eight percent national average and according to the national alliance to end homelessness tampa is the city with the highest rate of homelessness in the country many of the homeless in tampa have described more pressure and hostility from police during the r. and c. are the correspondent christine ventured into the heart of tampa beyond the convention center glitz. nancy and lee marian have been running

this manufactured homes community for about seven years now so we moved down from and then michigan. it just seemed like the economy got worse up there before down here and when it did they say they recognize the signs immediately cost of living going up to people losing jobs. we saw that quite a bit up there before we left and then here we had a couple years before that that started as much and then we had several residents and things like that that went through that in a city made up primarily of communities that look like this the marion's in many ways have a front row seat to what's been unfolding we see more people downsizing from their big homes move in and manufactured home community to start over basically a cheaper affordable way to live and now they're basically getting out of their big expensive homes and just trying to stay afloat located less than fifteen miles from

downtown tampa phenomena south of florida has been the single biggest jump in people living at or below the poverty rate across the entire state of florida it is a snapshot of a growing trend nationwide and the poverty rate in rural and suburban areas growing exponentially it's in a class the brookings institution classifies as extreme poverty jumping from fifteen percent to forty percent between two thousand and two thousand and ten tom kingsley a senior fellow with the urban institute says the entire sun belt has been suffering the percentage of all mortgages that were seriously distressed that means that they were ninety days delinquent or more or in foreclosure in. austin texas was about six percent in miami it was twenty six percent just nothing here nothing a lifetime for a known assassin resident darryl minnow says. jobs here are scarce and for many

with no access to transportation this is a portrait of everyday life it's sad i mean there used to be animal clinics very to be. dry wall construction and all that stuff gone just i don't know why it's a trend expected to continue in cities across america if serious changes aren't made pushing the poor further and further out of cities and into rural areas with fewer services and opportunities but one for now that's keeping some communities like this one afloat in the notice as of florida christine for r.t.e. farm on what happens beyond the convention center glass i was joined by r t correspondent christine. if you talk about the media descending on downtown tampa of course we were part of the group of people who came in but you don't have to drive far to see such a different picture and we showed that

a little earlier in the week in our report of those who are sleeping in the parking lot in what they call romney ville but this is actual real life not a protest where we went for known assassin florida and it's really really interesting because of how fast it's changed now it was never sort of well to do area but the number of people unemployed the number of people living below the poverty rate has skyrocketed just in the last decade and those who i spoke to who have lived their entire lives said they're seeing it and they're feeling it and when you talk about cities like the notice as i mentioned this is just a snapshot of a larger trend going on nationwide of these cities not far from the main downtown hob but so many of these people have no way of getting there there's no transportation that part of the city doesn't have you know didn't get any funding from the state to get buses to go through so the problem is that even if you want

to job even if you're able to work but you can't afford to move out of your home there's nowhere for you to get there's no way for you to get to a lot of these places so just really interesting to take a look at this place as you saw the entire city basically made up of these mobile home parks there is a lake a little further we were able to find some of the residents were telling me that there were some expensive homes on the lake but that was really it their portrait of life was this small city that so many of them could not get out of you know and they were stuck there and you talked about in your report this interesting trend of the poor being pushed out of the urban hobbs' from the cities into rural areas to talk more about that yeah there's actually a name for it that some people call it the suburbanization of poverty and you know in some cases we think of these cities you know downtown seedy areas of cities and you know a people can work low income jobs but a lot of low income.