and enjoy your favorite. if you're away from your television just doesn't bust now with your mobile device you can watch on t.v. any time and you will. all go back to the big picture i'm tom hartman coming up in this half hour the u.s. justice department plans to file suit against an import for its role in the financial crisis the brought the american economy to its needs is this really about punishing the banks who caused one of the worst recessions in history and do you want to draw on using thermal imaging to keep track of you inside your own house like it or not this could become a reality of life in the united states i'll tell you how we fight back against this invasion of our privacy in tonight's deal we take.

in the best of the rest of the news banks alone didn't crash our economy a few years ago in fact some of the biggest fraudsters in the run up to the financial crisis in two thousand and seven and two thousand and eight for the credit rating agencies like s. and p. and moody's they gave prime ratings to junk mortgages it's been alleged that many of these ratings agencies actually took kickbacks from the banks to supply favorable ratings which ended up growing investors now the wall street journal is reporting that the u.s. justice department will file suit against s. and p. for its role in the crisis as imperious spotted by saying the d.o.j. lawsuit would be quote entirely without factual or legal merit you might remember it was s. and p. that downgraded the united states' credit re. again after the demo debt limit

fiasco back in two thousand and eleven so this might be less about actually hold the wall street suits accountable and more about revenge for embarrassing our nation. or did president obama get the message of the last election which is that the american people are sick of the crimes on wall street and actually want to see some three suits thrown in prison let's ask richard as he joins me now from los angeles for us richard welcome. good to be here as always first of all richard the theory that this might be payback to s. and p. seems to me a little. inconsistent with reality in that when s. and p. downgraded our our financial ratings they specifically blamed the republicans in congress so why would the obama white house want to go after them as revenge well it's also quite a bit later you know i mean i think that the payback theory didn't i some of the you know outrageous or ignores some of the outrageous evidence of misbehavior on

the part not just the standard and poor's but the other rating agencies as well so if it's paid back it's kind of slow reacting pay back and you know i don't i don't worry about that i mean i don't think it might even be that the payback theory which i'm seen promoted more on the right wing sites in the left wing sites is just basically a fancy way of saying of of helping create an amnesia about the fact that s. and p. originally blamed the basically the republicans in congress for the downgrade well and i think that that's part of it and i also think that as simply as been part of the washington group that's been pushing austerity economics and despite the evidence they they continue to argue that if the u.s. doesn't get its debt limit even lower than it has been that they're going to downgrade the u.s. so and that's since taking standard. poor's off the playing field weakens the

conservative argument for cutting government even more so i think there's a real political motivation to political motivations on their part to do that and one of them is to keep pushing deficit economics so is the s.n.p. unique among the credit rating agencies in being. what would you call a deficit hawks or austerity pushers or whatever no i don't think they're unique but they're the most visible they have what they call a sovereign unit that looks at the credit ratings of governments and the head of that unit has been acting like a stopper in for quite some time issuing dictates the u.s. government and other governments about how the people should manage their own budgets so i think they've been very visible in this regard i mean i think that but the other thing to remember and particularly with the payback theory is you know i'm one of the few people who did the analysis on this but when they downgraded the u.s. back in two thousand and eleven the stock market didn't care at all there was no

penalty for the united states government in that downgrade so i think that is you know they're not unique but there are two things different about them one is that they're very visible in talking about deficits and the government but number two is that thanks to the eleven subcommittee as senator carl levin in congress there's a great deal of documentation of the internal conversations and power points and memos and and group phone calls showing that standard and poor's was absolutely driven by trying to please banks and bankers and not by you know i have right here they did an internal poll of standard and poor analysts what did they see as their job and they listed four things and getting the data right was number four out of four in the first three were sales oriented so i think there's a uniquely rich vein of data on the nature of the misbehavior and corruption at standard and poor's that makes them the logical first. richard can

you recap for viewers what the you know what that what these crimes were or the the alleged crimes in a way exactly what you know what why the what's the problem well basically these credit agencies so-called they we call them credit rates and rating agencies they're private corporations or in the case of standard and poor's so mcgraw hill which is publicly traded there for profit companies that that get certification from the government and in order to credit to rate certain risks and certain investments and so on which is a very valuable thing to get from the government and that written into law in many cases that for example that certain investments have to be aaa investors like pension funds and you know working people's retirement depend on their ratings but they're paid by the banks that they're rating which is just an inbuilt conflict of

interest that's outrageous so the issue here is that standard standard and poor's was going around telling the government and telling the public and investors that it was doing all these wonderful things to monitor mortgage backed securities and other types of investments when in reality as it turns out the average rating was issued with only fifteen minutes of analytical work on each one of them and meanwhile they were memo upon memo being dragged out the dug out showing that they were changing these ratings because a banker complained for example the client is really on happy he wants you to take a look again and see if you can do something about that so i think the issue here fundamentally is fraud and the nature of the fraud is misrepresenting to the public and to the government that their own it's of their work and the honesty and of objectivity of their work that's the heart of this lawsuit and i think it's a very very strong one right now the raid. these are not you know alone or unique

in and playing a role in the crash of the american economy do you think that this is the the kickoff is this the beginning of the obama administration finally doing something about the banks toure's. well you know look it's a pleasant surprise i've been beating up on the justice department and the f.c.c. as much as anybody and it's pleasant to see them file a lawsuit that means something you know we'll see because if they win this lawsuit or if they settle it you know the frustrating thing with the obama administration in the big banks has been that the banks have settled hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars worth of outrageous fraud lawsuits then committed the same crimes again then settled again without any criminal indictments or prosecutions now this lawsuit although it's civil it's it's a suit and not an indictment name certain executives you know executive see an executive da and so on who made certain statements that are arguably fraudulent so

we'll see where this goes and we'll see if they follow up i'm not ready to say they've had a change of heart yet and they're certainly you know we still don't have an answer from the justice department about outgoing this in attorney general lanny breuer saying he wasn't going to indict banks that might pose a systemic risk so i don't know if there's been a change of heart but look you know it's a little glimpse of sunshine in a in a rainy pattern from the justice department and the government so let's see what happens absolutely and well see richard esko thanks so much for being with us tonight you back baxter to see. it's the good the bad of a very very part of a century asli ugly good. brenden. day oh my sin there occurred i ended. a linebacker on the super bowl winning baltimore ravens

sorry i'm not that much of a sportsman promise that if he won the super bowl he would use the fame that came with it to speak out for l g b t equality monday he did just that take away. everyone's been talking to gay people our entire lives whether we know it or not but we really believe that you're born gay and if i've had plenty of conversations with people that are gay and they say they're born gay no different than me been born in this beautiful home and coconut color that i people are born gay so why treat them any differently this time that we treat everybody fairly and not only are we trying to dictate who people should love we're also trying to dictate who people should be if a woman wants to wear a man's clothes or for a man where it wants to wear women's clothes or you feel like you're a woman on the inside and you're really a man who cares let's just let's just treat everybody equally let's move on let's evolve as a culture as a people well done but i couldn't have said it better myself the bad jamie diamond c.e.o. of wall street big bank j.p.

morgan chase in a speech in miami yesterday at the united states lacks the will to enact the stupid austerity economic policies that have devastated much of europe diamond said quote but also europe is they have the will of the politicians the politicians say there is no plan b. the euro lobby dissolved away is very complicated it will take many years the united states is the opposite we know exactly the way it's something called simpson bowles and a lot of different plans come out we don't yet have the will you know it's a far simpler problem. a little thanks to austerity europe is in shambles republicans in congress force the government to make huge budget cuts that are already wreaking havoc on our economy it's. time for the american people and the europeans for that matter to say no to austerity so that we don't become the next greece and very the very. really abdulla da. da da

today saudi clinic cleric excuse me told an islamic television station the baby girl should be veiled to avoid sexual harassment code said the girl should wear the veil from the age of two it went on to say that if a girl is sexually desired her parents should cover her face and force her to wear a veil to protect her from sexual deviance as you can imagine the comments of sparked outrage in saudi arabia and across the globe some of dowd's fellow saudi cleric clerics and publicly denounced the comments as well the fact is daoud would rather cover up a little baby girls than throw the sexual deviants who would go after them in jail and that is really really. after the break pretty soon drones will be swarming the skies all across america as they become the norm in investigating crimes and conducting surveillance but how can we draw a line on drones and keep them from invading our privacy by snooping on us here at

home. and i'd still. well you read here are you one hundred percent. sure it was this man snowball. don't miss it.

the news today violence is once again flared up. these are the images seen from the streets of canada. and welcome back here to more stories worth keeping an eye on first at the beginning is tonight's show we talk about gun violence what's causing over the next few months congress is going to look into a number of new policies universal background checks the limits on ammunition clips to assault weapons ban to try to slow down some of the bloodshed in america as i mentioned earlier addressing wealth inequality really should be on the table as well but no matter how modest the gun control proposals in congress will be the

n.r.a. has made it clear that they will completely oppose any and everything that has to do with regulating guns if there were. gun is even in the legislation the n.r.a. is against it and the n.r.a. hopes that it can keep up its heavyweight image here in washington d.c. and intimidate lawmakers into opposing any new gun control laws but the new reality is the n.r.a. isn't a heavyweight just look at how successful the n.r.a. was in the last election of all the millions of dollars the n.r.a. invested in politicians last november only point eight percent of it less than one percent went to winning candidates that's not actually exactly a winning percentage that should be feared in fact a new poll from public policy polling shows that an endorsement from the n.r.a. may be a kiss of death the survey asked voters across the nation whether an endorsement from the n.a.r. and n.r.a.

would make them more likely to support a candidate or less likely twenty six percent of voters said an n.r.a. endorsement makes them more likely to support of canada but a whopping thirty nine percent compared to that twenty six thirty nine percent said it would make them less likely to support a candidate and among independent voters forty one percent said they'd be less likely to support a candidate backed by the n.r.a. this is an organization that's jumped the shark only eight percent of our nation agrees with the n.r.a. position in opposing universal background checks it's their solution to sandy hook more guns in schools and when pressure was put on the organization to support gun controls the n.r.a. went after the president's kids in a political advertisement and if you go to the n.r.a. his website you find an enemy's list with over five hundred names on it. there's nothing intimidating about the n.r.a.

anymore it's a desperate organization that's losing its grip on reality so members of congress it's your choice you can do what the n.r.a. wants you to do and you can get their endorsement but you could do so at your own political risk. and then there's this story coming out of washington d.c. where teen pregnancy rates are actually plummeting the city's health commissioner told the new york daily news that over the last decade teen pregnancy rates have dropped by twenty seven percent this drop likely has something to do with new york being one of only twenty one states that allows minors access to contraceptive services also the public school system started a program two years ago to provide students in districts with high pregnancy rates with access to plan b. the morning after pill and the majority of parents in the new york city public school system approve of this expanded access to emergency contraceptives in other words rather than relying on abstinence education which

causes higher teen pregnancy rates in republican southern states new york is confronting real world problems with the real world solutions actual science that's good pals. crazy a word hair applaud love entering a tang once money america's favorite media clown donald trump is suing comedian and political pundit bill maher for failing to come through on a promise sort of a props last month maher went on jay leno show and made an interesting comparison between trump and another member of the animal kingdom to take over. and we did a new rule one week that. suppose that perhaps donald trump had been the stall on

this mother having sex with her a bigger boys. well i didn't just make this up the color of his hair. color i'm going to orange you're going to tell you it's the only two things in nature of the same color i'm really draw for five dollars. thank you that you can go to a charity of his charity. trump sent his birth certificate to maher to prove that he was not the offspring about harang today but according to the donald maher is refusing to pay up trump went on fox and friends this morning and told the talking heads that quote well i've provided information he didn't play so today i sued bill maher for five million dollars for charity for someone who supposedly shrewd when it comes to business. i don't need to brush up on his law a bit maher only said he would consider doling out the money the two certainly didn't sign any or agreed to any kind of contract so while trump filed yet another

frivolous lawsuit america is already overtaxed in the buz legal system we're left to wonder could the donald really be the missing link between man and i. imagine you're being stalked from the sky every time you go in or out of a building it's recording everybody you talk with every place you drive or take public transportation your sky stalker can see through your windows read your lips could even use an infrared camera and see if you've lit a cigarette or what type of cigarette or this shouldn't this be illegal. when a celebrity gets a stalker they get a restraining order. but if their stock or was the police using

a drone right now there are virtually no laws or regulations that would would or could protect them. or that could protect you. being concerned about such things is genuinely all american you could say that our privacy concerns started with george orwell who ironically was british with the publication of his book in one thousand nine hundred four but in reality the modern day american concern about governments snooping into our lives goes back before the american revolution when thomas jefferson lived in paris he communicated in code with his protege james madison about their federalist political enemies jefferson did it again when he became president nineteen zero one developing an even more elaborate code to communicate with his most trusted aide merryweather lewis out of fear the military officers in the american army were reading president jefferson's mail and that the military officers were thinking of pulling a military coup to overthrow his administration. the result was the jefferson on

louis's suggestion fired two thirds of all the commissioned officers and cut the size of the army by about eighty percent. fast forward to today police helicopters police trucks that can use infrared to see inside your house and g.p.s. units cops can attach to your car in every case there's a legitimate police use for these technologies as well as an incredible potential for abuse the fourth amendment part of the bill of rights that jefferson demanded madison put into the constitution as the price of getting virginia's ratification is one sentence long. it says the right of the people to be secure in their persons houses papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated and no warrants show issue but upon probable cause supported by oath or affirmation and particularly describing the place to be

searched and the persons or things to be see just now other words they can't spy on you on you personally unless they have enough proof to bring before a judge that you're up to something that's probably illegal in the case of the police helicopters the trucks the g.p.s. units the phone taps. the infrared cameras to some extent both state governments congress and even the supreme court particular in the case of the infrared cameras have brought their use in to at least a marginal compliance with the fourth amendment not so with drones at least not yet and that's one of the reasons why the city of charlottesville virginia a stone's throw from thomas jefferson's home you can see it standing there in monaco did a beautiful thing this week and passing a resolution calling for a ban for the moment on information derived from drones in their skies rutherford institute proposed the first draft of what ultimately became the resolution that

was promoted by the charlottesville center for peace and justice that included language that said whereas the federal government in the commonwealth of virginia thus far failed to provide reasonable legal restrictions on the use of drones within the united states and where a police department throughout the country have begun implementing drone technology absent any guidance or guidelines from lawmakers. there should be a two year moratorium on using information obtained from them or on weaponize it though that last part after the ellipse of says my summary of paragraph of legal ease as david swanson notes in his blog on the c.c.p. j. website without proper safeguards these drones some of which are deceptively small and capable of videotaping the facial expressions of people on the ground from hundreds of feet near well i'm sure in a new age of surveillance in american society that even those indoors in the

privacy of their own homes will be safe from these aerial spies which can be equipped with technology capable of appearing through walls and that doesn't even include the capability of those drones police drones to be a weapon equipped from bullets to nerve gas or their ability to be hacked or their data streams to be hijacked by malicious corporations or weird stalkers or foreign governments. you know nobody is saying there's or maybe there's a few but pretty much nobody is saying there's no legitimate place for drones and police work in america there are a lot cheaper than the helicopter for example that famously followed o.j. simpson's car at the most basic level they're really just an extension of already existing in an already used technology. and yet as with any technology think email for example or text messaging we need to make sure that it's used in a way that complies with the fourth amendment that respects our individual rights

to privacy. and that's why it's way beyond time for us all to have a national conversation about drones over u.s. skies with the help of the c.c. p.j. charlottesville has taken a great first step in starting that actual dialogue oregon for example started a similar debate with legislation introduced by both a democrat and a republican concerned about individual privacy rights so let's all work for solid legislative restrictions on police use of these drones so that they help legitimate police work while respecting the fourth amendment privacy rights of us. and that's the way it is tonight tuesday february fifth two thousand and thirteen for more information check out our websites of thom hartmann dot com free speech dot org are to dot com and through dot com slash the big picture and don't forget

democracy is not a spectator sport it's a participate voting age enough it begins with you get out there get active occupy something tag your seat of. choose your language. of choice because we know in the financial centers they sell some. choose to use the consensus to. choose the opinions that invigorating to. choose the stories that impact your life choose b. access to your office. oh

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laboratory to mccurdy was able to build the world's most sophisticated robots which will unfortunately doesn't give a darn about anything tim's mission to teach me the creation of life should care about humans and worry that this.