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the mess we're in today did not begin on wall street long before the financial collapse the dismantling of government regulation was well underway this has been the greatest wealth transfer in the history at least of the american kind if not mankind. this is. in a real life development dwarf in the most elaborate conspiracy fiction all of these consequences are the end result of a brilliantly executed. every day human lives the common dreams of people everywhere were never a factor all that mattered was. profit who did it how were they able to pull it off

right before our eyes this is the story of the biggest fights in american history. say my grandmother was born into the world of boom and bust boom and bust as it had been from seven hundred ninety four until the great depression once upon a time we knew in this country we had a great depression and we had a stock market crash in one thousand twenty nine followed by several years of twenty five percent unemployment of corporations declaring bankruptcy of people in the streets on bread lines. oh a narrow. gun safe. in the depths of the great depression president

roosevelt's new deal put millions back to work provided unemployment insurance created social security and made it easier for workers to join unions and bargain collectively. what f.d.r. in the government and the balls to do was enact legislation that really took command of the last three environment and said you know what you can't speculate with other people's money. coming out of the great depression just three laws fundamentally altered the course of america's history the first one f.d.i.c insurance make it safe to put money in banks the second one glass steagall try to separate the risk taking on wall street from your local community bank and the third one ses the regulations provide some cops to watch the robbers out of that what we got was fifty years of economic case no financial

panics no meltdowns and during that fifty years we built a strong and prosperous middle class in america after world war two the new deal evolved into a great deal with the american people growing prosperity and social justice seemed to be everyone's destiny as the u.s. economy exploded into the greatest economic machine in history. the new deal was stablish that ordinary people had the right to protect themselves against corporate abuse the early seventy's expanded those safeguards with the creation of agencies like the occupational safety and health administration whose mission was to protect workers the environmental protection agency was created human health and the environment. regulation is nothing more than the imposition of a set of rules to prevent the free market from behaving in

a way which is contrary to the common good. a decision was reached by corporate america that working with unions working with government to improve the standard of living for all people was not the right thing to do in one thousand nine hundred seventy one corporate leaders began to orchestrate the details battle plan to eliminate any government policies that might stand between them and profits the plan was laid out in an influential memo called a act of american free enterprise system. lewis powell was a well respected citizen of richmond virginia he was a corporate lawyer a partner in a prestigious corporate law firm and friends with an executive at the chamber of commerce named eugene sidner and sydney asked his friend if he would draft

a position statement that he could submit to the chamber of commerce that would then sort of form the framework for how to make the organization more able to confront what they thought was a growing threat to business interests polls memo laid out a strategy to radically alter public perceptions ensuring that big business interests would dominate public policy advocated a vast herd of liberal elements in society he saw how corporate money could own the media and talk louder than organized labor and consumer protection groups but for power a future supreme court justice the real endgame was business control of law politics to make their point the chamber of commerce created very clever advertising to influence public opinion. what can be done. to repair the strength of the nation's economy and re store individual freedom the u.s.

chamber of commerce and the recently formed elite business roundtable an exclusive club of c.e.o.'s joined forces to lobby congress and push their agenda with major campaign contributions their goal to buy congressional votes to implement a corporate make over of america you had massive lobbying beginning in seventy six seventy seven seventy eight for cutting taxes on rich people trickle down economics cut capital gains taxes cut dividend taxes cut income taxes and the economy will flourish some of the democrats start drinking the kool-aid along with the republicans. in the. next big business set its sights on the biggest threat to their bottom line the wages and benefits of the american workforce especially union members starting in

the one nine hundred thirty s. at one targeting power or wages working conditions and benefits but instead of negotiation big business want to control. blue is the poll memo business men should use their financial muscle to shape the politics of the country nor should there be reluctance to penalize politically those who oppose it why nine hundred seventy eight business outspent organized labor three to one to defeat a bill that would have made it easier for workers to join unions this was a critical turning point setting in motion the decline of organized labor as a major political force and the voice of working americans. douglas frazier president of the united auto workers said in a magazine interview. at the time i believe leaders of the business community with few exceptions have chosen to wage a one sided class war today our country

a war against working people be unemployed or the minorities the very young and the very old and even many in the middle class of our society. one of the geniuses of the right united states because they funded these twelve big washington organizations heritage cato the competitive enterprise institute organizations that range from quite principle. to complete shills the competitive enterprise institute. for the causes of their donors heirs to six of the largest family fortunes in the united states is their private foundations the fund organizations that would promote unregulated markets one notable one would be the role of joseph coors at the heritage foundation who constantly cited the powell memo as one of the reasons that he was inspired to create a conservative pro-business think tank called heritage well heritage is

a conservative think tank and if you read the back of our business cards it says noting in america where freedom opportunity prosperity and civil society flourish and that's heritage is goals. working in unison the six families use their private foundations to shape business schools and manipulate the media most of all they wanted to restructure government to serve their own interests they're not think tanks these are not academic research organizations these are ideological marketing organisations they're no different then the people who persuaded young men when i was a young man that we should put brylcreem in our hair even in the great depression when twenty five percent of americans were out of work you have these apologists for free market fundamentalism argue against increased government spending increased regulation strengthening the hands of unions stronger safety net the same thing is happening today the motive was to be

a logical putting millions and millions of dollars into funding great when ideas factors but then those ideas needed to get pushed out into the media and where the kind of narratives that republicans have used and conservatives have used have come out of forty years and tens of billions of dollars worth of efforts by conservative think tanks to try to develop just the right kind of words to use the republicans were the ones that pushed through president bush's tax policy in two thousand and one that lowered the death tax to the broad question of how it was that the right managed to get people who shouldn't have voted for them to vote for them is is obviously the million dollar question but when it came to something like the state tax look at the way the law was originally written no one was affected by the state tax except the extremely rich but of course the way they talked about it was brilliant and it's the most i'm sure that's a real they've already paid taxes on this money but they've made it with a capital gains taxes along the way and here we are at gallup and we're going to

give them again when you say death tax what you say when it now they're texting you're for dying for god's sake say tax thing when i make the money they taxed me was spending now they're going to tax me for die enough that i've had enough. and what republicans understood was you test those other things until you find that kind of language that really resonates with people my plan will give businesses tax incentives that result in plant expansion greater output more jobs and we will regulations which freed up the cost of doing business strong creative leadership and restore america as the mightiest industrial nation on earth the time is now for reagan it all comes together in the election in one thousand eight. where the right had built up this powerful political financial and intellectual infrastructure and it all comes together under reagan fire ronald reagan do so so by the time reagan takes office there is an army of policy wonks who have a whole game plan that can be put into effect very very quickly to deregulate

everything that hasn't been deregulated undercard. the civilized world produces more foods that it needs. well people die of hunger in other countries. millions of victims every. where a meal is the most interesting. is flood or droughts to blame. them it was a bad year for the train. we couldn't find anything that didn't want to move but there was great hunger and some. reason to help comes too late and without good intentions. diplomacy and business honesty.

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america so ronald reagan as someone trustworthy as the host of television's general electric theater is charm kept us from noticing that he was there to sell appliances as president reagan's policies followed the palm memo script serving the big business interests that financed his campaign heritage produced something first for the reagan administration and what this was was a catalog of how heritage felt that government programs should be changed we formed eliminated started. to best meet conservative calls the newly elected president ended out the heritage foundation's mandate for leadership to every member of his cabinet for the next eight years this anti-government policy drove the reagan administration's make over of federal government from protecting the public good into working for the rich and powerful ronald reagan is my hero why

is he my hero he gave us. he gave us loyalty he gave us patriotism he brought back our position in the world he brought us out of darkness . and in the like he cut taxes for those at the top instead of balancing the budget he ran the biggest deficits in history. then he presided over the passage of a series of tax increases on ordinary people only he didn't call me at the washington press corps went along with the white house calling these revenue enhancements government is not the solution to our problem government is the problem was attacking government taxing the institutions of government and trying to make it as a system that doesn't work and in reality rich folks don't need governments they live in their own gated communities they have their own security

they swim in their own swimming pools they go to their own private schools rich people take care of themselves. paul idea of a free market is a myth to begin with the markets are structured based on laws and the real issue is who the structure benefits and there's just no question that when ronald reagan came in the target of reaganomics was the labor movement. one of his first acts was to destroy the air traffic controllers which was the signal to all american businesses that it was open season on the union as they are in violation of the law and if they do not report for work within forty eight hours they have forfeited their jobs and will be terminated they understand that it's not just about labor supporting the interests of members of labor unions.

but it has been the labor movement that has supported the interests of all workers you wouldn't have social security you wouldn't have unemployment compensation you wouldn't have medicare you wouldn't have all of these things which are not. just for labor union members as the bumper sticker says they are the people abroad sure that we could. he was able to pull off an ideological counter-revolution and by the time he was over most of the new deal and dismantled. while reagan was breaking unions and demolishing regulations he also convinced congress in one thousand nine hundred want to pass his economic recovery tax act cutting the top tax brackets by nearly a third but raising taxes on the middle class by dramatically increasing the social

security tax as recommended by alan greenspan to ronald reagan we shifted the burden of government so that today seventy some percent of americans pay a heavier share of their income in social security and medicare taxes then they do in income taxes and we pushed the burden down at the same time at the very very top we radically cut taxes so that the one thousand richest men women and children america face an effective total federal tax rate so security and income taxes about seventeen cents on the dollar and their average income is two hundred sixty three million dollars after decades of lobbying driven by corporate money the tax code is now full of loopholes and special deals that help big business avoid pain its fair share to avoid paying taxes u.s. corporations have stashed more than one point five trillion dollars in offshore

accounts. corporations only pay thirteen percent of the federal budgets revenues added to have trillion dollars corporations only pay thirteen percent so i just want to list some ten. the ten worst corporate tax avoidance exxon mobil largest oil company in the world made nineteen billion a profits in two thousand and nine. exon not only paid no federal income taxes and actually received one hundred fifty six million dollars rebate from the i.r.s. over the past five years while general electric bay twenty six billion in profits in the united states it received a four point one billion dollar refund from the i.r.s. so if you're working step in make a thirty forty thousand dollars yeah you're paying taxes but if you're chevron or you made ten billion of profits in two thousand die and you don't have to pay any

taxes you get a nineteen million dollar refund. the palmetto recommended constant surveillance of content in text books newspapers magazines radio and television insisting the big business use the media to convince americans that an end to business regulation would somehow benefit us all for thirty eight years the federal communications commission had enforced the fairness doctrine which mandated that all broadcasts over public airwaves offer a balance of viewpoints in one nine hundred eighty seven ronald reagan stopped in force of the fairness doctrine opening the floodgates for corporate money to talk directly to america through the media a few years ago studies were showing that. three hundred fifty top radio markets in the country you had something like ninety percent of right wing talk and less than ten percent of progressive talk media deregulation is

a big story i think it's fair to democracy most people don't have any idea what's going. after his one thousand nine hundred two election democratic president bill clinton continued to implement elements of both the palm memo and the heritage foundation's prescriptions for government by and for big business in one nine hundred ninety six clinton signed the first major overhaul of the. communications law in sixty two years people have to understand that now there are just a handful of corporations that every one of them has an agenda. saddam hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from africa our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production twenty years ago nobody who

was in journalism thought anything of saying to a politician to his face senator stop lying to the los angeles times general you know that's not true i know that's not true. today if you said something white that you'd be fired. you would be fired we don't ask tough questions and we have these orchestrated white house press conferences and obama is actually worse then his predecessor george bush on this issue all right so with that let me say who's on the west or sort of checked out. the president but you don't get the information that you need and you pretty much on your own the same thing that's happened in business has happened in broadcasting it's just completely profit driven. us still get now out of the steel business and they're getting out of this community and are saying good bye we had and there's no more left we squeeze the

great we're going on to greener pastures we've seen the acceleration of the hollowing out of america as the most important and powerful industrial society on earth since one thousand nine hundred seventy three approximately forty million good pain american jobs with benefits have been shipped overseas or dismantled by corporations boosting their own profits at working americans expense. there is this notion. that this was only a republican. villainy when in fact much of what happened happened during the eight years of bill clinton we seek a new and more open global trading system not for its own sake but for our own sake . i supported nafta then i supported nafta now i still support nafta now for the same reason for the same reasons the main one is i like most economists

generically favor trade liberalization because trade leads to gains on both sides as jorge castaneda who was later the finance minister of mexico once said he said nafta was arrangement between the rich and powerful of all three countries leaving ordinary people out what that really means in simple language is that corporations are able to move anywhere in the world they want to to seek cheap labor and exploit people and use that as leverage against workers here in the united states of america if you look at the statistics since nafta in all three countries wages of workers have been stagnant the productivity of workers has skyrocketed and workers in all three countries have gone into debt in order to maintain their living standards we also saw a mess of movement toward unfettered free trade and the theory of that was that

if. you create trade agreements with china where people are paid forty fifty cents an hour and you shut down plants of america and you move to china and you move to mexico in some way that we haven't quite figured out yet this is going to be good for the american worker for twenty years the american public believes we can simultaneously outsource all of our jobs and simultaneously maintain our quality of life alone we thought we could do that guess what. no such thing we can have our cake and eat it too we are in the us a reading on manufacturing capability all in the name of lower prices all in the name of free trade all in the name of the market always in the us best market doesn't know as offshoring of employment has been with us for a very long time but has mostly been restricted to manufacturing the new wrinkle is offshoring of services the number and range and variety of jobs that could in

principle be done a broad say over the internet it's enormous. if you look at it in terms of sure business there the right decisions you go to the lowest labor cost in terms of. what once would seem like world patriotism. they're not. it will be paid for and for a number of reasons one of them that's going to be large maybe over the course of the next generation thirty forty million jobs it's important to note this is not either about only low skill jobs or only high skilled jobs they're all over if what you do is write computer code routine computer code you moves nothing in quality if you move the job from indiana to india paul craig roberts a co-founder of reaganomics feels that big business has gone too far all these

ladders are being dismantled. where were the jobs for university graduates they are now beginning to face the same the limitless that blue collar workers face when they lost their twenty dollar infraction jobs with their good benefits and so we have an economy that is starting to impoverish its workforce. cut. to.

the first saw. the.

wealthy british style sign it's time to tighten the. markets find scandal find out what's really happening to the global economy for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines to name two kinds of reports on our team. well. react to situation i have read the reports. for. the state department to comment on your part to say. thank you. when you question prepared for a change when you should be ready for. freedom of speech and.

the freedom to watch. breaking news. three people killed in several. months of desperation. the hunger strike. as. european countries. plane with president claiming the us.