welcome back to the big picture i'm tom hartman coming up in this half hour while the u.s. government spends countless dollars each year trying to prevent nuclear war ignoring one of the biggest threats out there a threat that could do unthinkable damage to our nation it's one large government wake up and start protecting america from this massive national security risk and billionaires do nothing to help our economy despite what conservatives and fox

so-called news will try to tell you how can you join the campaign to say no to billionaires and spread their wealth around all americans. and about the us than is the president obama officially nominated former nebraska senator chuck hagel to be our nation's next defense secretary. to help meet the challenges of our time i'm proud to announce my choice for two key members of my national security chuck hagel for secretary of defense and john brennan for director of the central intelligence agency. cagle is a republican which has a lot of progress is confused as to why president obama would nominate someone from across the aisle to head up the pentagon i believe there's some sort of strategy here behind the president's choice clearly the pentagon's budget needs to be cut

bloated and wasteful but democrats who historically have been scared to death to looking soft on defense don't have the courage to do it which might be why the president has picked a republican to oversee the defense budget and hopefully down the road make some much needed cuts president is making the calculation that only republican can get away with cutting defense heads behavioral choice it's called the nixon to china effect only republican richard nixon could have gotten away with visiting communist china the democrat would have been roasted by republicans for doing the same thing that's what i think is happening here sure there's a lot of reasons to be uneasy about republican chuck hagel heading up the defense department might be the only way we can get those mushy defense cuts down the road say to you know that you're wrong but you will be here you're right. just make. sure. you know what is right. biological

warfare nuclear weapons cyber attacks these are just a few of the things that worry us government officials and keep them up at night there's one type of attack that most likely you've never heard about and yet has the potential to cause tens of millions of casualties so if you think a nuclear bomb or chemical attack is as bad as it gets when it comes to modern warfare everything you know is wrong joining me now is f. michael maloof former security policy analyst in the office of the secretary of defense and author of the book a nation forsaken e.m.p. the escalating threat of an american catastrophe michael welcome thank you just to define terms electromagnetic magnetic pulse you know it's a it's a mixed and intense burst of electromagnetic particles that come descending and they can absolutely destroy all of our electronics if they're unprotected. isn't. back in the eighty's the the northeastern power grid shut down one day and nobody knew why and it turned out later it was

a bunch of particles coming from the sun isn't all that a kind of a mini example of e.m.p. well we have many it could be from a solar burst right now going through one of our most intense periods eleven year cycle of the sun and nasa is raised all kinds of concerns about that especially if we were to get a direct hit they're estimating that the cost could be upwards of two trillion dollars. affect about one hundred sixty four million people take four to ten years to recover if we get a direct hit well that's and that's basically it comes out of a sun spot and so it's just it's like the sun is blowing it out somewhere in that three hundred sixty degrees if we happen to wander through that exactly if it comes from approximate the middle of the sun it could. result in a direct hit on earth some of these solar flares can be two to three times larger than the earth itself wow but what about the homemade e.m.p. . i remember reading a decade or more ago an article that suggested that had japan in the one nine

hundred forty s. been using advanced electronics like we're using now integrated circuits transistors things like that as extensively as they are now hiroshima and nagasaki wouldn't have just killed a lot of people they would have basically. wiped out every every memory system in the country they would have thrown the country back to the stone age and technologically is that true oh yeah because the these are. electronics today are not protected they're not hardened not red hardened from radiation so one of their bomb goes off it produces an electromagnetic pulse as well as the heat in the middle of probably the worst one and it can destroy it it's even more destructive than then the flares from around the sun are there are there nuclear weapons. you know we have we live in an era of strip. egypt nuclear weapons or nuclear weapons that can be fired on a small missile and you know into the center of a city have there been ones i know we've neutron is the neutron bomb

a variation there once a variation suddenly of a nuclear produce a an electromagnetic pulse now i don't know that a neutron bomb necessarily would produce that you have to have an explosion and normally that would happen at a high altitude and that that pulse would be so incredibly strong it will knock out all unprotected electronics so if and would this be done typically with a conventional nuclear weapon or ok and is it only a nuclear weapon it could do this or other other devices on that scale it is a nuclear weapon so. we've been all the way back to when i was little kid it was duck and cover you know i mean we we have been worried about radiation we've been worried about being burned to death but if a nuclear weapon went off in the upper atmosphere didn't destroy a city. the e.m.p. would do what if it went off over a major city and you wouldn't feel it probably wouldn't even hear a boom. there would be very minimal of radiation effects it's the pulse

that is generated by such a massive explosion high about one hundred fifty miles up in the in the atmosphere that. is the most destructive part of this kind of activity and what would you do it will fry your electronics you see united states is is a technology based society whether it's our internet or telecommunications we have very critical infrastructures are all dependent upon electronics the national grid system our health care our food and water distribution all of that could be basically nixed that we also have. automatic control systems which guide our our industry our commerce our pipelines those would be affected they're highly vulnerable they're all they're all electronically based and if they're not protected the consequences would be astronomical would be

a catastrophe i'm assuming the the way to protect it is some variation on a ferret a cage do you put in some sort of a metal shield around the thing that's that's one thing you can do with your your i phone and what have you but if you don't have means of hearing anything or are you taking a cell tower communicate they're going to matter they can't microelectronics can be hardened. rad hard in the military does it for some of its more sensitive systems they can withstand that we're doing it more today and are thirty five is our b two on our capital war. ships but not the civilian but this is a billion grid is not more morris berman writes some fairly dark. you know forward historical looking books and one of his more recent ones he suggested that we should some of us should just voluntarily become like the old monks of the of the fourteen hundreds and go off to monasteries and transcribe all the known

knowledge on a paper because the day may come when there's an e.m.p. and all our computers are fried thoughts on that well it's not a far fetched concept in younger and younger generation today they're unable to do their own calculations or they probably don't even read books they would be lost without their i phones and so it would be rather traumatic for them i think in my i could i could do without people in more rural areas can do without people in the developing countries would not be as affected it would basically throw us back to the one thousand nine hundred three yeah but when the electricity goes out the water goes this is a relation centuries ago are going we couldn't go without very very long it's remarkable if michael maloof thank you so much for being with us thanks for having me appreciate it. just.

it's the good the bad of the very very have roman i actually ugly the good alabama state representative patricia todd todd a democrat in alabama's first openly gay legislator has introduced a bill that would repeal the state's existing sex education law which requires teachers to teach that homosexuality is illegal and that abstinence from sexual intercourse outside a lawful marriage is the expected social standard the bill would strike requirements that teachers emphasize quote homosexuality is not a lifestyle acceptable to the general public and homosexual conduct is a criminal offense and quote time for the community to be embraced by society not vilified by let's hope it is todd's bill gets passed in alabama and that is just the beginning of a larger move. to bat michael savage on sunday the conservative radio host told fellow radio show host area aaron klein that quote we need a nationalist party in the united states of america savage went on to argue that

the tea party isn't strong enough and the quote a to restructure their party they need a charismatic leader which they don't have. and the interview savage also attacked the republican party calling it quote an appendage of a democrat machine. sorry michael but i don't think that an appendage of the democrat machine would hold critical legislation hostage time after time purging the livelihoods of millions of americans in the process and the very very ugly senator ted cruz despite not being on the job for a week yet senator cruz is already making it clear why he is a tea party favorite hearing on fox so-called news sunday cruz made it clear that he doesn't approve of compromise in washington who said quote i don't think what washington needs is more compromise i think what washington needs is more common sense and more principle. basically cruz wants to continue the pattern of republican obstructionism in the interview cruz also said he's against compromise

when it comes to gun control legislation as well there's also said that attempts to introduce new gun control measures are entirely unconstitutional senator cruz is in favor of holding the nation hostage to score political points and sees nothing wrong with letting thousands of americans die every year totally preventable gun but. that is fear fear. coming up how do you know what your message is getting across to the american people when fox so-called news starts attacking you over explained i was deleted.

the worst you're going to think. might out six of a day the radio guy and minutes from a cricket cough if i want to watch closely because you've never seen anything like this i'm telling. let me let me or one wouldn't let me ask you a question from. here on this network is what we have in the bank we have our knives out if. it is this right it was a bad thing mary gearin the phrase we're being i don't want me to talk about the surveillance.

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 everything you thought you knew. i'm tom harvey welcome to the big picture.

thank. you. crazy alert alcohol is addictive hey who knew well apparently five inmates of the idaho state correctional institution of the class are suing some of the nation's largest beer and wine companies for a billion dollars claiming that alcohol made them commit the crimes civil suit filed by the prisoners themselves without the help of an attorney alleges that they were not sufficiently warned about alcohol's addictive property. one of the president has been in and out of prison for thirty years old newspaper that quote at no time in my life prior by becoming an alcoholic was i ever informed that and always have a former in an addictive another inmate said quote if i was not an alcoholic the shooting would never have happened companies being targeted in the suit include

miller brewing company and isaac busch company gallas winery and pepsi call it. anything is possible. last week we unveiled the brand new no billionaires campaign take a look. and to start funneling the riches produced by the american economy to the real job creators working class people who are spending money and the best way to do that is to outlaw billionaires with one hundred percent wealth tax on all assets over a billion dollars we call it the no billionaires campaign and just might be our best hope to save the american middle class well. no billionaires campaign just received its biggest boost yet harsh criticism from fox so-called news the network own by

billionaire rupert murdoch last week murdoch employ a great event so stern and the weekly standard stephen hayes the magazine that got its start thanks to a generous grant from billionaire. feigned outrage over the campaign devoting six minutes of television to trashing the idea take a look. i usually try to be respectful of people have different views but there's no way to be respectful of that i mean it is a completely idiotic argument that has no basis in economic theory it doesn't make any sense on its face that we have four hundred twenty five billionaires in the united states with an average net worth of about four billion dollars each if you confiscated all of their wealth all of it in its entirety it would basically take care of the u.s. deficit for one year we didn't do nothing to solve our long term fiscal pride i think to begin with the billionaires campaign was never about and isn't about reducing the deficit we don't have a debt crisis in america we have

a demand crisis which is why we also have an unemployment crisis that you could argue it's chicken and egg between the average working people don't have enough money to spend so goods and services aren't in demand and therefore businesses aren't hiring any new employees to make it to make things because nobody can afford to buy them you know billionaires campaign addresses this demand crisis head on instead of trying to go after the phony debt crisis campaign meant to redistribute wealth from those at the very top who can't possibly spend all the billions they're hoarding to working people whose new disposable income when spent wills power the economy and generate wealth for everyone this is the point the billionaire nick an hour has tried to make. there can never be enough super rich people to power a great economy somebody like me makes hundreds or thousands of times as much as the median american but i don't buy hundreds or thousands of times as much stuff my

family owns three cars not three thousand i buy a few pairs of pants and sure two year like most american men occasionally we go out to eat with friends i can't buy enough of anything to make up for the fact that millions of unemployed and underemployed americans can't buy any new cars any clothes or enjoy any meals out though billionaires have millions of times more wealth than average americans they do not buy millions more groceries shoes or cars simply put the four hundred richest american billionaires don't have the purchasing power of hundreds of millions of working class americans with a solid middle class income that's why it's a lie to call billionaires job creators working people spending money is what creates jobs not rich people whether their billions are sitting in cayman island bank accounts or in the stock of microsoft pays in dad's house and then dismiss the campaign as not serious and radio schick i couldn't tell if he was like really

serious or just sort of you know you know she maybe because like radio she has a radio stick or something like that that i don't know how we tell but i mean you know i sort of thought like you know he's just saying stop this well perhaps that's wishful thinking on their part imagine if the american people did finally wake up and recognize billionaires for what they really are parasites on our economic body but this is a serious campaign and it's a campaign that was seriously pondered by our founding fathers thomas jefferson explicitly suggest that if individuals became so rich that their wealth could influence or challenge government then their wealth should be decreased upon their death. in a letter to joseph milligan on april sixth eight hundred sixteen he wrote if the overgrown wealth of an individual be deemed dangerous to the state the best corrective is the law of equal inheritance to all in equal degree also one hundred

sixteen jefferson wrote a letter to samuel kercheval explicitly laying out the dangers of an entrenched economic aristocracy as today's billionaire class has now become jefferson wrote those seeking profits where they given total freedom would not be the ones to trust to keep government pure and our rights secure indeed it has always been those seeking wealth who are the source of corruption in government no other depositories of power have ever yet been found which did not and in converting to their own profit the earnings of those committed to their charge and no grettir that wasn't jefferson's radio schick nor was it ben franklin's radio show dick in seven hundred eighty three when he wrote about how we the people have the right the obligation to confiscate excess wealth and property from others since most of that wealth was created by we the people in the first place franklin wrote in

a letter to robert morris where he started out complaining about people not wanting to pay their taxes he continued all property seems to me to be the creature of public convention all the property that is necessary to a man for the conservation of the individual the propagation of the species is his natural right which none can justly deprive him of but all property superb flows to such purposes is the property of the public who by their laws have created it and who may therefore by other laws dispose of it whenever the due welfare of the public shall demand such disposition. franklin then turns his attention to those like and suster in hayes who work for billionaires in the us are outraged by this idea he writes he does not like civil society on these terms let him retire and live a long savages he could have no right to the benefits of society who will not pay his club toward the support of it so in this emerging battle over the no

billionaires campaign the employees of billionaires rupert murdoch have staked out their position and it's on the opposite side of our most celebrated founding fathers but the two billionaire employees went on. it's not like they're sitting around eating chocolates and watching t.v. and doing nothing and just counting their money a lot of these billionaires are taking their billions and doing really fine things around the world have it within their net and here in the united states whether they're doing it for charity or whether they're reinvesting in their own company to developing new technologies employing more people and all of that i think he's doing some good but i mean bill gates actually you know as economists david cay johnston recently uncovered the billionaires of corporate america have made a calculated decision to not reinvest their money in american technology or in new workers currently american companies are sitting on more than five trillion dollars of cash five thousand billion hoarding it like mentally ill people hoard newspapers or cats and when they do decide to spend it more often than not they're spending it

overseas to hire foreign workers and open up foreign factories wall street journal in fact reported that over the last decade america's biggest corporations headed up by america's wealthiest billionaires have fired nearly three million americans of their workforce while hiring more than two million new workers overseas and what exactly are vance austrians and his response to those billionaires who are choosing to fire their workers or at least reduce their hours rather than comply with the new obamacare mandate to provide health insurance for those same workers. and one of the responses to the enormous gulf that's developed between worker productivity and workers' wages in america as a direct result of the billionaires greed corporate america has pocketed virtually all of the increased profits from their workers increased productivity the typical hourly wage for an american worker has increased just a dollar twenty three cents over the last thirty six years accounting for inflation

meanwhile the top one percent has seen their incomes increase by two hundred seventy five percent since reagan's election today workers' wages as a percentage of g.d.p. are at an all time low it corporate profits as a percentage of g.d.p. are at an all time high so this idea that our economy rests on the shoulders of benevolent billionaires is a total fabrication to the shock of iran and the employees of billionaire rupert murdoch if the billionaires one day finally shrugged as an atlas shrugged and left town like john galt nothing would happen actually open space for entrepreneurs to step into finally hayes try to justify the enormous wealth inequality between billionaires and working americans by saying this. and one of the great things about the country going back historically is the fact that people who find

themselves in the lowest income quintiles are more likely to be in an upper income quintile ten years down the road twenty years down the road than they are to be still in the lower income quintile but we don't hear those stories told nearly as looked stating in reality the rise of the billionaires and the wealth inequality they've brought over the last thirty years has destroyed this once what he called great thing about this country it's called economic and social mobility as the new york times reports at least five large studies in recent years have found the united states to be less mobile than comparable nations the pew research center found that two thirds of americans bought born in the top quintile stayed in at least the top two quintiles also more than two thirds of americans born in the bottom quintile stayed in at least the bottom two quintiles as researchers kate pickett and richard wilkinson have proven with their groundbreaking work at the equality trust in the u.k. there are direct correlations between high wealth inequality and low social

mobility which the united states now has thanks to the billionaires who fatten their own wallets at the expense of their workers their community and their nation so it's really no big surprise that commentators of fox so-called news are outraged by our no billionaires campaign after all their paychecks like everyone else's at fox news depend on toeing the line for their billionaire boston's billionaire bodies but it is interesting that corporate america's favorite news network hates the idea so much means we must be on the right track you can join the no billionaires campaign at no billionaires dot com. and that's the way it is tonight monday january seventh two thousand and thirteen for more information check out our website at tom hartman dot com free speech dot org. and hulu dot com slash big picture and don't forget democracy is not a spectator sport it will flyers participation you have to show up get out there

get active tag your it occupy something suitable. it's. wealthy british style science. sometimes that's right.

oh. markets why not succumb to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike's cause or for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to kaiser report on our.