a longtime arbonne in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight the big picture. mitt romney released more of his tax information on friday but there's still a ton of his financial information shrouded in secrecy only forty three days left until the election what are the chances romney decides to come clean about his extraordinary wealth also earlier this month wal-mart announced to begin selling genetically modified foods made by monsanto but

a new study suggests those foods could contain cancer causing and organ damaging chemicals so what does this mean for monsanto and wal-mart and the separation of church and state ensures that if your pastor gives you a sermon he's not going to use that sermon to barrage you with political endorsements it's like a group of religious leaders are preparing to do just that raj people with religious indorsements the time we took away the tax exemptions of our religious institutions. you need to know that there's a certain tax rate that working americans like you and me pay and there's a certain tax rate that people like mitt romney pay those working americans pay federal income taxes even those who earn so little they don't pay taxes are still if they're locked changes subject to a top tax rate of thirty five percent for working people be they burger flippers or brain surgeons federal income taxes start around ten percent for those making

around seventeen thousand bucks a year and go all the way up to thirty five percent for those making around four hundred grand. for the mitt romney and paris hilton class they pay a different tax rate from the rate working people pay romney and paris hilton pay what's called the capital gains tax rate as the rate applied to those americans who don't earn a living making things with their hands or with their mom. means but instead make a little make a living making money with money or who just inherited a lot of money which makes money with the money and no matter how rich those americans are and how much money they made off their investments they'll pay a top tax rate of fifteen percent equivalent to what a school bus driver making thirty five thousand dollars a year would pay that's how mitt romney could make twenty million dollars and pages fourteen percent in taxes it's all thanks to the super special super duper capital gains tax rate that pretty much only applies to rich people like romney and paris hilton if you think it's unfair the super rich people like mitt romney and paris hilton pay their federal income taxes at

a special and much lower rate than working americans then you're not the only one here with sixty minutes scott pelley asking romney himself if it's fair that romney pays a lower rate than most working class americans to look. you made on your investments personally about twenty million dollars last year and you paid fourteen conceit in federal taxes that's the capital gains rate. is that fair to the guy who makes fifty thousand dollars you pay the higher rate you do it is a lower rate and one of the reasons why the capital gains tax rate is lower is because capital is already been taxed once at the corporate level as high as thirty five percent so you think it is fair i think it's it's a right way to encourage economic growth but to get people to invest to start businesses to put people to work so romney thinks is just fine and totally fair that he pays a lower tax rate than a bus driver back to goes a step farther and says it's better for everyone if the paris hilton class pays

a lower tax rate than the working class romney says him and paris hilton paying a lower tax rate is the best way to put americans back to work this is the same sort of scam of the extremely wealthy have been purpose perpetuating on working people for centuries it's the calvinistic idea that those who are rich got that way because they were chosen by god as the special ones amongst us and a compound that us all now romney is rich buddies are claiming that if we tax them at the same rate a surgeon pays at thirty five percent like everyone else and that the fifteen percent capital gains rate paid for by banks toure's like romney and heiresses like paris felt then he says the economy will suffer. but history and facts prove this point wrong you see the current capital gains tax rate of fifteen percent is at a historic low to go to this chart the some twenty percent capital gains tax rate has only been around in the last decade thanks to the bush tax cuts and if anyone

thinks the last ten years of economic policy been good for the economy and job creation and i have a used bush administration to sell them on the other hand back in the ninety's when capital gains taxes were nearly double what they are today the economy did boom just like the economy boomed in the fifty's sixty's and seventy's and an unprecedented rate fastest growth in the history the united states while the capital gains tax rate was above thirty percent and even as high as forty percent so mitt romney's claim that a low tax rate on the paris hilton class which he belongs to creates economic growth just isn't true facts don't add up in fact it's just the opposite. loci capital gains taxes lead to economic ruin wealth inequality and cause the middle class to vanish it's a scam and it's one of the reasons why elizabeth warren was right at the d.n.c. when she said the game is rigged against the little ones. people feel like the

system is rigged against them and here's the painful part. they're right and. the system is very. look around oil companies guzzle they own billions in profits billionaires pay a lower tax rates than their secretaries. and wall street c.e.o.'s the same ones who wrecked our economy and just royd millions of jobs still strut around congress no shame demanding favors and acting like we should thank them just anyone here have a problem with that. well i know somebody who had a problem with it wrong for free could reagan had a problem with nine hundred eighty six he raised the capital gains tax rate so it was the same as the rate paid by everybody else brain surgeons and banks paid the exact same income tax regular income capital gains and it wasn't because the government needed extra revenue as reagan was well on his way to accumulating more

debt than every president in history from george washington jimmy carter go by it was because reagan thought it was immoral for a millionaire to pay or a lower tax rate than a bus driver. we're going to close the under the protection of the loan some of the family will be willing to pay there's a good. in theory some of those who were understanding but in revenues they sometimes made it and most of them are millionaires to make nothing of a bus driver was being presented itself and that's the reason. that's not the way mitt romney thinks he's a proud member of the paris hilton and banks to class romney is more than happy to keep pushing this myth about capital gains taxes after all there are plenty of wall street bankers depending on him and even investing in him to keep their taxes low as warren buffett said it's class warfare going on in america all right it's his class the investor class that's winning and we all know which side mitt romney is but answering questions about capital gains is just the beginning of what mitt romney needs to answer when it comes to his own personal taxes or take

a shot at answering some of those questions is tax expert and conservative commentator david sellers seelig says me conservative commentator pro-business have a good a david. thanks for having me as always it's a pleasure thank you for joining us and david why you hate bus drivers. you know i've never met a bus driver that i've liked so i think to not be a male on bad. over the last ten years capital gains rates have been outrageously low reagan normalise them capital gains rates in eighty six for the same as regular income there was no loss of investment capital is the outrage is that we say people who make money with money or people that hair up money and make money with that money should pay a lower tax rate than everybody else well let's look at it very fairly first of all the changes that ronald reagan brought about were largely due to his own misjudgment in other words in one thousand nine hundred one in one thousand nine hundred two the reagan administration tinkered with the tax code which made it

really advantageous for people to invest in these so called tax shelters people were digging for oil with really no expectation of having while and they were able to write it off these expenses many of them were just on paper against real income so he introduced what was called the tax revision act of one thousand nine hundred eighty six to close the loopholes that he in fact caused and his administration caused now as for our capital gains rate the long term capital gains rate it really should be lower you have a lot of individuals who are dependent upon those dividends to pay their bills and such and remember the private investor is integrity component to our economy they are the rainmaker tom and they make a lot of opportunities for start ups and ongoing businesses even one of the warren buffett has been investing in the marketplace since for thirty forty years and i

know warren buffett any longer they're a dime while he was out and well they let me just finish what i said i might gold. my question he was investing back when the capital gains tax rate was forty percent which is higher than the regular income ordinary income rate is right now and he made the point that you know hey if i can make a million bucks and you know end up with six hundred thousand that's better than nothing of course i'm going to take the opportunity nobody stopped investing because of income taxes because of capital gain very true but you know you have to balance the risk and rewards a lot of people are finding that out themselves right now their expectations of whether what was in their ira was going to be so much and i don't mean to open up pandora's box but david if your argument is that people who are investing are taking risks shouldn't we have a special tax rate for police officers and firefighters they die at a much higher rate than investors do on a job under the impression that dentists have

a high suicide rate we don't want to compensate them we want to treat people fairly then let's stop by compensating people for risk well hear me out for a moment if any one of your viewing audience decided to invest in a particular stock or purchase bonds and have the wherewithal to discipline not to cash that out and spend that money frivolously and they hold it for more than a year they're entitled to that long term capital gain rate because these companies need the money the government needs the money david that is having rate is a progressive you say it's unfair that not even to the capital gains tax is a progressive so if somebody if you're talking about somebody who actually needs the money if you're talking about somebody who has total dividend income is their only income and their income is twenty thirty forty thousand dollars a year they're not paying you know they're not even paying fifteen percent right now they're paying three or four percent as you well know there in all concede that point that's very true so so why not say to somebody like mitt romney who makes

twenty million dollars hey buddy you at least pay as much as the brain surgeon down the street is we're going to pass off. praise more tom and you know what your problem actually is you probably forget about the tax rate for a moment but the way to sleep a is once or axis then your whole audience combined also means you know they are cash dollars the mile want to argue but it's. ok david a quick question we just have thirty seconds me when he first filed his taxes estimated his taxes as income is seven million dollars higher than what he just filed a lot of people are claiming he's just jigger in his tax numbers how do you miss estimate your taxes by seven million dollars i think mr romney needs to give us like countenance a swift kick in the butt to try and hire you ok david seelig thank you so much for being with us that. video saying. they would like thanks for joining and.

coming up as the battle over genetically modified food labeling heats up in california a stunning new report is revealing the dangerous health of folks these foods may have what happened to a group of rats that were fed monsanto corn and will the startling results of that study propel proposition thirty seven to victory in california come november. here is mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that we americans call a donor. i'm sorry i missed the guy here's an awful lot of what you said are you know what that is my carousel but i don't want to be wishing to feature is a liberal and the christian public you. can usually go to but.

you know the corporate media distracts us from what you and i should care about because they're profit driven industry that sells of sensationalistic garbage because it. i'm happy martin and we're going to break that. record. the first. 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 is ok. i'm tom hartman welcome to the big picture the big . the but.

the but. in screw news would you like some cancer or their corn according to a french study released last week rats that were fed a lifetime diet of monsanto's genetically engineered corn develop tumors and severe organ damage throughout their bodies this news comes just weeks before voters in california decide whether or not to include food labels on genetically modified products in that state a proposition that monsanto has spent millions of dollars trying to defeat and it was recently announced that for the first time monsanto's g.m.o.

food products will be sold directly at wal-mart stores without labels warning consumers that they are buying genetically modified foods so how much damage will the result of this new study do to monsanto and will it help prop thirty seven when in california november joining me now is mike ludwig investigative journalist for truthout mike welcome. i think seventy thanks for joining us what were the specifics of this study. well basically a french team but i am not likely to blot biologist. sara lee and he is going to go up against the biotech industry with its own independent research for a while now it's three groups of rats if they want to. genetically engineer monsanto or and if you add another group of rats to genetically engineered months i'm socor and that was doused with roundup herbicide which most of those crabs are genetically engineered to tolerate that we're farmers and spray there was an element of fields up in the crops in the coming week and then you also get their

grants just the herbicide and water and he told reporters like me that the herbicide was that wells that you could expect in a field supply united states now all three groups of these rats you know eating the core and herbicide a bowl were two to three times more likely to die earlier than that clover while so this is now this was this wasn't the bt corn this was the roundup ready corn or this is yeah this is a form of roundup ready called and kate six o three ok and. the roundup itself that that caused these problems as well well this is one of the first studies first of all it's the first long term study of most studies and it's only been up to three months and many of them are actually paid for by monsanto or other companies this is the first long term study went for two years and it's also the first study that show that not only round up could be linked to deep formations in the liver and the tumors but also the genetically engineered crops themselves seriously need told me and some other

journalists that he was concerned that the enzymes that are overexpressed these genetically engineered crops and i was actually can get into the cells of mammals and causes droppings. and in the experiment was the rats exposure to the genetically modified foods at levels similar to the exposure that that humans would expect specially in a sense. that was one thing that he was there any told the reporters sometimes to have to keep him for not exactly showing what the actual amount to the rather bad but what you said is that he tried to create levels around and levels of corn that would mimic the food supply countries like brazil or argentina and your crops. and. so what do you how do you think that this is going to affect the battle over prop first of all explain to us what prop thirty seven in california is and why it's not on the ballot in forty nine other states. very simply proposition thirty

seven when established waiting for groceries in california it was the product of internet the engineered g.m.o. ingredients you would have any way with. this pretty much let it stand which is it allows consumers choose when they want to eat this stuff opponents say it might cause fearless lawsuits although they haven't been able to really quantify exactly how that works i think in california there's there's been a large movement there against biotech industry against factory farming there also has a lot of as you probably know happens there and so they've had the momentum in the mind of this on the ballot and i think maybe other states you know other kind of cultural issues are taking the forefront or the just kind of consciousness about that in your crops so monsanto i understand has been putting millions of dollars into california to fight prop thirty seven rather right so it's seen about seven point two million dollars so far and they didn't join my husband dr mike bayer and science is the other big players at maker besides and genetically engineer steve so

they've all down to a least a million each into this campaign they're going to get a campaign that's funded by organic farmers and or tell groups that campaign has raised about you know a couple million dollars at most whereas the biotech company it's raised nearly thirty million dollars so it's not a david versus goliath battle there but the polls show that proposition thirty seven still remain a pretty popular. is is it possible you know i have i've read studies about in fact we reported on this program in the last couple of weeks about. insects becoming. basically immune to the airbus our plants become immune to the herbicides insects becoming immune to bt to the solar thermal. the the the genetically modified you know contains its own as i decide corn all i kind of thing as we see super weeds and super bugs evolve you know which is going to hurt monsanto first is it going to be. the inability of their products to to keep

up with evolution or is it going to be consumers saying hey wait a minute and if it's the latter what does that have to do with what's going on in europe right now. well it's a tough question to answer not tell you why first of all these environmental impacts are super weeds super but the organisms that have become immune to these herbicides because they're so infectious and because they're so overused those are absolutely documented those are real cannot do that scientifically so those environmental impacts are known and the industry is dealing with it and farmers dealing with it as we speak now these health impacts here with this french study these are a little more up in the air the subject of very intense information more we find out these projects dangerous to us that's a huge economic blow or potential economic lot of these companies that are fighting tooth and nail with their own science to keep that kind of information out so we know the environmental impacts are quite real however we have been eating this

stuff off going to have to know how it's affecting our bodies and the science is only starting to catch up and it's going to take you know you this i was going to hurt us to kind of drive it off the market it's only going to take more time these things coming on the market for ten years we don't know what it's like to eat an entire lifetime supply on subsequent as a human is no one's been able to do that yet we're kind of walking experiments like that like my where just just for the record what's the status of g.m.o. products in europe some of that there are there are more products that are legal here that in europe but in france in other countries there is mandatory labeling where it's not states there is not ok michael thank you so much for being with us tonight mike thank you. and other news americans have lost faith in our news media they way they see this exchange between bill o'reilly and ted koppel on fox so-called news last week. the millions of. you were very particular point of view so that's the way the country works that still free

marketplace i'm. perfectly content to leave it on the. it's a business and it's all proven years of business and once upon the. truth of truisms of course. what koppel is getting at is that too often today americans are fed infotainment rather the news they need to know infotainment sells well and translates into higher advertising revenues but it doesn't inform americans on the issues that we need to know about to make informed political decisions and now americans are starting to wake up to this according to a new gallup poll american distrust of the news media reached an all time high this year is sixty percent saying they have little or no trust in the corporate mass media to report the news fully accurately and fairly despite the fox so-called news being the most watched network on corporate cable news republicans led the poll in their distrust of the media with only twenty six percent of self identified

republican saying that they trust the mass media this is all because investigative journalism and news the public interest are dead today by and large hijacked by corporate interests there's only one industry specifically mentioned in the united states constitution as the press are fond founders knew that american democracy hinges on a free and vigorous press today we no longer have either it's time to bring back american democracy by bringing back news in the public interest. it's the good the bad of the very very by beige asli oddly the good kevin mcclatchy glad she was the former owner of the pittsburgh pirates major league baseball team and in an interview with the new york times published on saturday mcclatchy came out as gay he told paper that homophobic language during his days in baseball

convinced him that keeping his sexual orientation hidden was best clad she is one of the first sports team owners to come out as gay and it was day no active player in america's major sports leagues has ever come out as gay. l stars have recently come out in support of marriage equality there's still a strong stigma against gay people in sports at all levels from youth leagues to the pros hopefully mcclatchy is decision will come to come out will help stigmatize gays in sports and encourage others to do the same thing the bad minnesota state representative mary frances in a debate franson defended her support for a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman don't argue that such a measure would protect minnesota's children from normal behavior parents and told the crowd my concerns are that our children in our schools could be taught some liberal agenda ruse because of the marriage amendment because in the schools they may be taught that this is normal behavior i personally do not believe it is that

something i wish to protect our children from not sure where ms franzen is getting our information but there's absolutely no evidence suggesting that exposing kids to in for information on l g b t issues hurts them in any way in fact studies have shown the opposite including l g b t issues in school curricula helps to keep kids safe or by reducing bullying. and a very very ugly congressman and vice presidential candidate paul ryan during a campaign stop in orlando on saturday ryan fielded a question from the crowd about one of the far right favorite conspiracy theories the so-called obamacare death panels when asked to address the so-called death panels this is what ryan said. the death panels well. that's not the word i choose to use to describe it. it's actually. called so when medicare when i refer to this board of fifteen bureaucrats it's called the independent payment advisory board it sounds fairly innocuous. you heard

that right rather than tell the crowd that there's no such thing as death panels and by the way there's no such thing as death panels ryan basically said they do exist only under a complicated name and that name the i.p.a. b. . has nothing to do with death panels it's all about lowering the cost of health care not selectively killing off americans told you republicans can only win in november by lying or by suppressing the vote but continuing to suggest that president obama is going to choose who lives or who dies that why is very very. after the break a thousand religious leaders from across america have decided to say no to the separation of church and state and openly endorse political candidates and now their religious institutions are delving into politics and acting more and more like businesses because that time we started x. in them like businesses.

thank.

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