welcome back to the big picture i'm tom hartman coming up in this half hour while republican efforts to steal the election from mitt romney may have failed efforts to keep millions of americans from having a voice in the election certainly succeeded we'll talk to investigative journalist greg palast and find out just how many americans were denied one of their most basic rights and more and more state governments are throwing their support behind for profit charter schools that spells doom for the middle class in america is that as a daily take i'll tell you why maintaining our public schools is crucial for the survival of the u.s. . to the best of the rest of the news something strange happened in palm beach county florida on election day as columnist nancy smith points out in the sunshine state

news is reason to believe the palm beach county may have lost suppressed or even outright destroyed more than fifty thousand votes on election day looking at past voter turnout averages in palm beach county there was a significant drop off in voters this year in two thousand and four voter turnout was seventy five percent two thousand and eight it was seventy two percent this year was drastically lower just sixty four percent meanwhile florida's statewide voter turnout was only down four points other words palm beach county's drop off in voters this year was double the statewide average drop off of voters all together had turnout mirrored past turnout rates in palm beach county would be about sixty seven thousand more votes somewhere it's known there were numerous problems in the county on election day including long lines equipment malfunctions and mis printed ballots because these issues have been responsible for the loss of tens of thousands of votes. perhaps but alternately when we're talking about laws votes

this election a story coming out of palm beach county just scratches the surface or to my next guest more than nine million voters were likely lost this year a vote succeeds me around the nation greg palast joins me now he's an investigative reporter for b.b.c. news on the guardian and author of numerous bestsellers including his latest billionaires and ballot bandits how to steal an election in nine easy steps greg welcome back glad to be with you tom so nine million people lost their right to vote last month seriously. no i suspect it's going to be a lot more when we're done with the count these are very preliminary numbers back in two thousand and eight my co-writer on rolling stone bobby kennedy and i were able to go through the elections assistance commission that's our federal government which keeps track not only of votes counted but votes not counted five point one million votes in two thousand and eight were not counted or voters turned

away from voting booth this year the trends are showing it's about up about fifty percent to nine point three million we have to get the final official tallies but there is an official tally of the non count and if you want to know how they break down for example you just heard palm beach but we were seeing to a great extent too if you look into palm beach is that the state of florida when about through a mass purge of voter rules if you remember many years ago katherine harris removed tens of thousands of black people calling them felons and they were their only crime was voting while black believe it or not that felon purge list is back with the same errors tens of thousands of people wrongly excluded people excluded as alien voters in the tens of thousands again so when they showed up to vote they were given provisional ballots which weren't counted we have about about a million and a half provisional ballots were cast in america and not counted six hundred

thousand provisional ballots in arizona alone and that's how this that's how it rolls and adds up to at least nice. the non count tally is still coming in so is the reason why people aren't out in the streets and really and you know yelling at their members of congress or whatever about it is the reason why there's not this blowback that you would expect if millions of people were just simply told hey your vote doesn't count is a big. because they were given these provisional ballots and most of them think they actually voted well there's three reason one we've been giving out millions of provisional ballots are like bouncing placebo ballots the tremendous amount maybe about a third don't get counted and like i say over half a million and just arizona we expect about six million cast this time about two million thrown in the garbage maybe a million and a half thrown in the garbage this time so people think that they voted but they

haven't and that's why you see these weird this new reduction in voting you saw all those lines last month for people wanting to get in to vote so how come the the turnout is shown as being massively lower than two thousand and eight the answer is that people are going into vote but they're either being turned away because of new voter id laws about a million and a half voters or they are getting ballots which don't count a lot of people we have about thirty million people mailed in their ballots about a million and a half of those about five percent at least are being thrown in the garbage. and that's one of the big secrets of. american elections we don't count all the votes and we're seeing republicans now double down on these efforts in a variety of ways voter voter id disenfranchisement also these this effort to say let's own let's count. electoral votes based on congressional districts rather than

statewide do you think it's possible that the republicans can make enough structural changes that they can hold on to power even when they lose the election isn't that essentially what just happened in the house of representatives well i was checking that i'm investigating that now in each of the close races especially in arizona where you have a lot of congressional races that were really close where the margin was less than the number of ballots thrown in the garbage by officials absentee ballots provisional ballots and what are called spoiled ballots for example you take ohio the secretary of state at the last minute required voters who were given hundreds of thousands of provisional ballots to fill out the the ballot forms themselves and if they put down for example driver's licenses their form of i.d. instead of vehicle operating permit they lost their vote this type of got to give mccurry is the new tool of the republican party in particular both parties use it but it's overwhelmingly the republicans and frankly one of the reasons we don't

have a lot of discussion is that most of the victims of this are voters of color black and hispanic and asian voters and and many of them don't realize that it's been done to them. yeah that's one of the biggest problems you thought of provisional ballot you think you voted you mailed in your ballot you think you voted hey it's ten pm do you know where your absentee ballot is do you know if it's been counted only oregon of all the states is the only one that will actually tell you if you have a mistake on your mail in ballot and you get a chance to correct it that's the only state that does that the others do it haphazardly so the idea is that they take in your ballots they encourage you to mail in your ballot and then they don't count it so the initial numbers were that the republicans actually got a half million fewer votes nationwide for the house of representatives then did the democrats i understand that the numbers now as you know more counts are coming in are pushing a million how is it that the republicans are holding the house and could they you

know game the system similarly with the electoral college in four years to to take the the presidency even if they lose the national popular vote we have yeah i mean first of all we have a midterm election coming up we have a million fewer african-americans registered in america now than four years ago a million fewer latinos now why is that a lot of that is because about two point four million registration forms were simply not accepted thrown out by officials mostly republican secretaries of state a whole bunch of katherine harris's let loose around the country who have a new authority under federal law to throw out your your registration form and not tell you that they did that you know on election day you show up and you're out a lock so in two years we're going to see the effect of this nine million votes i think it's going to rise the non count and you're really going to that's going to tremendous effect in the midterm it may have changed the house race this time it could well change the congress in two years and in four years the presidency

may be determined by the votes not counted not the votes counted as greg palast thanks so much for the great work you're doing great thanks tony. it's the good the bad in the very very ugly the good. balance republican strategist was on a.b.c.'s this week yesterday one of the topics was the supreme court's decision to take up same sex marriage and while now as previously defended traditional marriage she didn't this time they looked. the lines across forty eight percent approaching you know going about fifty forty percent now support gay marriage in the country right now because americans have common sense there are important constitutional biological theological ontological questions

relative to how most central american people live in the real world say the greater threat to civil order and heterosexuals who don't get married and are making babies that's an epidemic and crisis proportions that is irrefutable the more problematic for our culture it seems malena certain live in the real world as she put it and understands that there are much more pressing issues facing our society than that of preventing two people who love each other from getting married just because of their sexual orientation so the rest of republicans can certainly be in the real world to sooner rather than later the bad david gregory and yesterday's press pass segment of meet the press gregory interviewed former republican presidential candidate rick santorum in the interview santorum made this latently false claim. the big problem there is is radical islam and the president's refusal to really address that issue i mean the president you went here's a president went out and ran a women's issue and we have egypt imposing sharia law and you know here we're

spread shari'a law means women have to have head coverings have no rights and you don't hear the president say a word about surely you haven't heard him condemn shari'a radical is. obviously this statement couldn't be farther from the truth president obama has condemned radical islam on numerous occasions for some reason david gregory refused to challenge santorum is claiming we were happy to journalistic integrity and the very very ugly senator bob corker the republican from tennessee appearing on fox so-called news sunday yesterday corker acknowledged the democrats have won the debate on raising taxes for the wealthiest two percent of americans republican even admitted he would likely vote for a tax increase great right or wrong worker then echoed the sentiments of many republicans arguing that republicans should hold the debt ceiling a hostage in order to force president obama to make cuts in social security insurance and medicare insurance karalee senator corker is unaware of what happened

last time the republicans held the debt ceiling hostage our economy tanked the fact that he and his republican colleagues in congress are willing to let that happen again is very very. coming up america's middle class is shrinking more and more each day thanks in part to the collapse of this nation's public education system what can be done to maintain the quality of education at our nation's public schools and to protect their label as america's great social equalizer i'll tell you in tonight's deleted.

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and economic news across the pond policymakers in the u.k. continue to ignore reality is by watching austerity ravage the british economy and force that nation into a double dip recession the conservative government there announced last week that

it plans to extend the austerity regime for an extra year to twenty eighteen as we've seen in other nations that have embraced austerity like greece and spain cutting and cutting spending in particular only makes the economy worse by sucking money out of working people's pockets and sucking even more revenue out of the government making deficits worse in fact thanks to austerity the u.k. is projected to have the worst deficit to g.d.p. ratio in the entire west even after all the spending cuts so why do conservatives in the u.k. continue to embrace austerity because austerity isn't actually supposed to work it's supposed to cripple working people and force an economic crisis so that the wealthy oligarchy who push it can swoop in bust up the unions and privatized the commons this is disaster capitalism at work and we have to stop it in its tracks here at home. so sometimes you know what you know and sometimes you know what you don't know and sometimes as the firesign theater says everything you know is wrong

. and i don't think you know if you really are you know right. to say that you're right. you go always wrong. if you've ever seen a movie or watched a t.v. show that had a strip club scene in it you'd be hard pressed not to think that the only types of men that frequent them are wall street bankers looking to unload a wallet full of dollar bills but in reality all sorts of men frequent strip clubs and for very different reasons so if you think that you can see a doctor in a pastor together to strip club then it really you know is wrong joining me now is jennifer ward contributing writer to kink lee and alter net jennifer welcome time by thanks for joining us i understand you're a former entertainer how long did you work at a strip club and what did you find most interesting about that environment. i worked for almost five years for different clothes. and i mean everything

down it is interesting it's really you know psychologists dream. for example i think. the most interesting thing is the way some in. tear dancers are you know you have these overweight middle aged bone you guys that come in and you know tear apart these. if they have a few stretchmarks or c. sections scar by tear apart you mean virtually harass them or physically assault them. burbling that's that's got to be pretty tough it's like it performing for a cycling audience. it is you have to have a thick skin and you know a lot of people think that you know you have to do is walking around and look pretty and you make all this money and that's that's not the case you know most the job is based on rejection well that's that's a tough one i understand it's not just business men who. require strip clubs that

you're right the doctors and ministers show up the us. and i think part of the reason that the clientele has his cannon gone down neal is the quality of the clubs have gone down you know in the past few years and then you know the economy's bad too. but yeah i've had pastors come in under the pretense that you know they're trying to say these girls and you know you know what they're there for the whole time they're trying to minister to you they're trying to feel a need to that's that's incredible do you think on line porn has had an influence and you saw the standards of the clubs that you know are dropping for them the prosperity the clubs i guess. it might but really you know there's there's no. way that you can quite that because you know if you're online

looking at porn you know you're not having the morning on one interaction you're not. having that human interaction you're right that there are three kinds of creepy guys who show up in strip clubs well there's there's the good the bad and the creepy. you know you have a lot of good guys that command that they just want to unload their problems on someone. and just talk and you know those are great but you know and then you have the bag as you know the pants on the ground the letters that come in and try to recruit girls to move to other states center the pretty chance that they're going to make more money and then those girls that have them back once they get there. and then you know there's there's a few creepy guys that come in and you don't meet too many of them but the ones that you do meet make up for the ones that you don't. they're pretty intense it's

remarkable jennifer thank you so much for being with us today thank you. quickly here public housing what picture jumps into your mind or public hospital all around us are public institutions are disintegrating and arguably the most important public institution of all our public education system is the next to be ghettoized. despite several progressive victories this election day there was one very significant a feat in georgia where voters approved of constitutional amendment one which changes georgia's constitution to give republicans in that state the power to create charter schools private schools as part of georgia georgia's public

education system the result will be crucial crucial taxpayer dollars being funneled away from free public schools and directed toward brand new sometimes for profit sometimes religious privately run charter schools even though studies show that costly private schools don't produce any better educational results than free public schools or at least charter schools versus public schools for profit schools have popped up all around the nation in recent years because of how valuable they are to corporate america in fact the historic chicago teachers union strike earlier this year was largely in response to that city's push to open up more charter schools to replace traditional public schools education is a recession proof industry it's always going to be in high demand that the corporate money changers know that if they can get their hands on this industry and reform it to replace decently paid teachers and faculty with mock teachers and then get taxpayers to foot the bill properly core quarterly profits and lavish bonuses

for see those can explode and if they're religiously motivated they can do a lot of evangelism even in so-called nonprofit charter schools management can make big bucks and that's exactly what george's constitutional amendment one accomplishes expect similar amendments to pop up in other state elections in the near future this is a major shot in the multi-generational war on the public education part of our commons ultimately as more states passed charter school moments like georgia and money is sucked out of public schools and public schools will meet the same fate as the rest of the ghettoized public institutions in america public education will become just like public housing which most americans think of as low and low income crime ridden neighborhoods are becoming public hospitals which most americans see as very often disease ridden institutions filled with impoverished people. because in both cases these institutions principally serve the poor there's little sympathy

for americans stuck in public housing or public hospitals so it's easy to bash the poor or ignore them little sympathy also translates into little funding which perpetuates the cycle of poverty and the disintegration of our public institutions . but up until the reagan reforms public education had by and large avoided the same ghettoizing face historically our public education system was a marvel for the rest of the world producing generations of scientists doctors and engineers from all races and socio economic classes but he came from a wealthy family or a poor family the american public education system didn't discriminate as much as possible it was a multi-racial multicultural and multiclass public institution that generally produced great results but a state governments embrace for profit charter schools and religious charter schools traditional public schools will be neglected and see their funding cut until eventually they too will suffer the same fate that ghettoized public housing

and public hospitals even prominent republicans are owning up to this after passage of georgia's constitutional amendment one leader adonis a former executive director of the georgia republican party wrote an op ed for the atlanta journal constitution warning that passage of the amendment was an endorsement for a drastically altering public education as most americans define where donna's foresees a future in which there is a new type of public school as a result of his move toward charter schools and charter religious schools he describes this new public school as quote one for those children whose parents were not motivated enough to move them into charter or private schools or for whom they were not available and. after all there me a lot there always a lot of the low income parents who simply can't afford to pay a little bit more for private education or to transport their kids to a distant school and or in whose low income neighborhood the charter

school didn't choose to locate itself and tragically there's no shortage of poor parents who are dysfunctional because of the poverty associated diseases of drug addiction and mental illness these kids of these parents will be forced into cash strapped forgotten public schools as are donna's concludes quote public schools will become to be viewed similarly to public housing and public hospitals as places for children whose parents for whatever reason can't find a better alternative this will mark the beginning of the end for not just the public education of america but also for the american middle class itself which is shrinking faster and faster every day public schools would be the new dumping ground for the poor and the working poor and just as public housing provides the bare minimum for its inhabitants and just as public hospitals provide the bare minimum for their patients the new public schools will provide a bare minimum of education for low income students the public education system

itself will no longer be america's great equalizer churning out successful students from all cultural and socio economic backgrounds instead it will shackle the poor keeping them from learning the essential that are necessary to find that great job for the twenty first century and move up the economic ladder into the middle class to achieve the american dream. america needs to paraphrase nancy reagan just say no to public funding of private charter schools. and that's the way it is tonight monday december tenth two thousand and twelve for more information or news stories we covered visit our website to tom hartman dot com for speech dot org dot com if you're just any tonight show you can now watch it in h.d. on hulu hulu dot com slash the big picture also check out our two you tube channels there are links at tom harpur dot com and our show is also available as a free video podcast on i tunes you visit to download the audio podcast of our

daily three to six radio show and we have a free and i phone an i pad app in the app store you could sort of speed back on twitter at tom underscore arbonne on facebook at tom underscore apartment our blogs message boards our telephone comment line all over the top. and don't forget democracy begins with you it ain't a spectator sport get out there did active occupy something tag you're it. if. years under siege. destruction without mercy. what could have been just ruins.

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