so we have a packed show for you guys today i'll be speaking to governor howard dean and economist richard wolffe about everything from health care to drones to regen nomic stick around and let's break with that. looking for a rubber sheet or anything like that. today i had the chance to speak to former governor of vermont howard dean on the very few politicians who actually opposed the iraq war in two thousand and three. and became a defining factor for his presidential run the following year and although this may have helped him become the initial front runner he didn't ultimately receive the nomination instead he went on to chair the democratic national committee and although he's been on the political sidelines for the last few years his views have not been governor dean has been vocal on everything from the healthcare debate to the use of drones that's exactly what we talked about earlier in an exclusive interview take a look. so who could forget and i'm sure you've heard this

a million times you probably don't hear it again but who could forget the signifying moment of the two thousand and four presidential campaign with the infamous and dean scream i wanted to play it and play the media's reaction to it. i think we're going to watch your back. i mean no one is like you still tied with john kerry with the train suggest you will soon fall behind only fifty seven percent of new hampshire democrats had a favorable impression of dean only nineteen percent an unfavorable impression but the day after iowa dean's favorable number here dropped to thirty nine percent he's on favorable number rose to thirty percent so there is the media saying here paul numbers drop significantly but it was only after they were playing this ad nauseum i thought you know it's this if it's fun i have a lot of fun with this but it wasn't the significant moment of the campaign seeing him out of the campaign was the fact that we empowered a million people take make the democratic party but my passion is a lapdog for george bush why do you think the media did this to you i think the

media just looks for good stories and this was this was an interesting story nobody wrote about this who was in the hall of the time because there was so much noise that it didn't seem reasonable what what when the cable stations got it what happened is the mike was plugged directly into the cable without any crowd noise so it was i suppose it's the television version of taking it out of context it's not why i lost i was because i was supposed to win iowa and i came in third and it is the legacy of the campaign which was the renovation of the democratic party was to stand up for something in the introduce introduction of high tech and to presidential campaigning so you don't think it ended with the fact that you were you know your auntie iraq war a little bit more radical than your democratic no i think the media had it in for me or this stablish. well i think the establishment may have but i think the media always has it in for the front runner. i mean that's what that's why this is that's why hillary had a hard time in two thousand and eight and while she will have a hard time she'll win i think she wants in two thousand and sixteen but i think

she'll have a hard time the media likes to play the game they like to play the game but they have a very thin skin so they don't like to be in the game and they like to poke people in the game and then when you turn on the media they get upset and i did that frequently because i think. the media in this country is. really part of the big problem i think we have three broken institutions in this country wall street the media and congress and you know be the media has a very thin scene because i found they couldn't take it they can't take it they can dish it out but they can't take it and i used to call in regularly out of the campaign they don't like it but do i think that this was a conspiracy of fox or something like that no i don't think so no i just what they do they play stuff that's good television and they also when when someone is doing not toeing the line i also have seen that they you know they paint them in a certain way they will do that but they do that everybody well let's let's move us out of the i don't know what we're trying to do their best let's talk about the media's focusing on today which is the n.s.a. revelations in light of leaks that you were president today governor dean would you be charging edwards out of the espionage act well i don't know all the ins and outs

of that i think. the president needed and began to do this but hasn't finished the job really needs to explain this the american people he needs to explain why this program is necessary and what it is and he was he was i think not served well by the guy who went before congress in the law about what this program does i actually think most people in this country would be ok with spying on the ordinary people if it protected us from tour or from a tourist from terrorism but the problem is this country was designed to be governed by ordinary people and you cannot keep things from people and mislead them about what's happening and that's what's happened so i i think it's important for us to have this conversation as the president said but i think we need to understand this program fairly and i think we're beginning to do that it's a good conversation to be having you've also said that i don't think edward snowden did all that much harm to us but i don't we're not going to know that until much

later you've also said that you would trust obama with the n.s.a. surveillance program more than you would bush or cheney why would bush and cheney designed it first of all. second of all because. they led us into a war that we never needed to be in and up ended american foreign policy probably the largest foreign policy blunder in the history united states in terms of what we're paying the price we're paying for this is we've now elevated iran to the most powerful country in the middle east middle east it was a terrible mistake it was just a gross blunder and so you know to get to trust the people who got us into this to get us out of it is probably a good idea but if a law is being broken does it matter who is at the helm of it and if the laws being broken by the government you know it's not clear to me the government's breaking the law that's the problem is the law itself which was passed under bush and cheney . finds a court doesn't work one side is present is like it functions more like a grand jury than a dozen a court that's wrong shouldn't be that way the need to be checks and balances on

the pfizer court there needs to be the opportunity for people who even if it can't be the obviously the targets of the investigations that ought to be. an advocacy group or and have even paid by the government a defender general as it were which most of the states have that would make the case that was why these people shouldn't be spied on. if you're going to have a secret court system which i understand the need for and when you're protecting us against terrorism it's got to be fair and right now far as of course not fair. i mean and you're right they have codified kind of this illegality i mean under bush admits it's you know you keep saying it's illegal the problem is it's not i'm going to to tional well that may be it may be unconstitutional if there are laws unjust and they have codified it to make it so there are a lot of laws that are on just look at all the voting rights acts that are being repealed in north carolina and texas i mean there's a lot of stuff that may be legal but it's clearly unjust and i think the voting stuff is unconstitutional as well but look if i think we're arguing about semantics

this needs to be reexamined we're now having a conversation about that we've seen a vote in the senate in the house where a lot of people on the progressive side and people on the conservative libertarian side agreed it needs to be. fixed more weight needs to be given to protection of the rights of the innocent. i don't think we want to give up any modicum of safety in this battle but government is government and government tends to do what government does under democratic and republican rule and we need to push back on government when they're doing things like this right i also don't agree with the fact that i think most americans would accept spying unconstitutional that warrantless spying there actually thought that it protected the terrorism there actually has been polls that show that most of them do agree with and a whole just came out in light of the n.s.a. leaks that said that more americans today care about civil liberties than they do terrorism for the first time since nine eleven look i mean i was around during nine eleven i was serving as governor that was pretty awful so i think you know what we don't want to do is reduce this debate to slogans about civil liberties or

terrorism or dangers or nine eleven this is a real danger presidents have to deal with this danger. so i'm not one of those people who you know wants to impeach everybody who doesn't agree with me i think that we need to reexamine this i think we need to fix the pfizer court which is slanted towards the government's position i think the president needs to explain why this program is important not for dismantling this program because i do both think it protects us from terrorism but i do not think this program should go on as it is today sure so open the debate open the dialogue get it out and then make some real changes and the biggest change of all is you cannot expect the government to be both the advocate and the defendant the same time sure well the n.s.a. surveillance is justified by fighting the war on terror which is what you're talking about now a real threat interestingly enough you've been one of the most vocal politicians advocating the mujahedeen al help the m e k a terrorist group in iran recently was on the state department's terror watch list why do you support this chris is not a terrorist group first of all as a responsible for car bombings in iran thirty years ago they were responsible for

some terrorist acts and they say that it wasn't even that it was an offshoot that was thirty years ago here's the history of this group there do raney and dissidents they went to iraq and fought on the iraq side against iran which of course the iranian. people in government resent we disarm them in two thousand and six the f.b.i. went over there and examined all three thirty three hundred other that were in iraq not one of them was proven to be a terrorist they had they were put on the list for political reasons the course essentially ordered them off the list and then they were not they are not terrorists and each one of those people that's now holed up in this prison actually a prison camp has a signed piece of paper by the commander of the united states armed forces in iraq that says that we will support them and to guarantee their safety when we disarm them so we owe these folks something we promised them in writing with when they disarmed at our request that we would make sure they were safe and we have not kept that promise but isn't that just kind of going along with one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter i mean why are you accepting tens of thousands of dollars from this group that does have tears i haven't i haven't taken any money

from this group for any reason for a long long time i continue to advocate for them because i believe that the united states government when it makes a promise to keep that promise and i don't do not believe the united states should stand idly by while thirty three thirty first of all fifty or sixty of these people have already been murdered in cold blood by the maliki government or by iranian secret services with the permission of the mouth maliki government these are people that we promised we would keep safe they saved american soldiers' lives during the iraq war i think we owe them something. ok what about the same logic in applying it to syria do you support arming the rebels there that's a very difficult question. there was a time when i would have the problem is we now see that there are a large number of jihad ists that have infiltrated the rebels so the rebel cause may be just but what we've seen in the past is that these jobless are very dangerous people that they as as as they tried in libya and with some success

murdering our american ambassador in libya have a very bad influence on outcomes so i think until the rebels can free themselves of the militants the hottest. it's we run the risk of doing what we did when we were fighting the russians by arming some of bin laden's people in afghanistan and so i think we just have to be really really careful in syria not to end up with a government that's worse than the one we have in the one we have in there right now is pretty damn awful. going to where you guys will have more with my interview with howard dean right at the break and we'll highlight an important anniversary for the gipper and our economy.

you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture. why do you consider it is to be and in now when the bill right up to any staff play it started preaching homosexuality to minors one that parents for example are against it and as you probably know these law has and all the while being supported around eighty percent and all discussion public strong disappointed when it comes from a certain country of course is his or her children right to use to freedom of speech to freedom of expression.

live their lives. the speed. q. e two per. kilo live. look a little bit longer misleader lists look at. hillary. clinton out. there at least.

look easy right the sea. search tricky to live and i think picture. on our reporter's twitter. instagram a little list. to be in the little on the list. looking for a secure future for she made me feel like the texts. cut . welcome back eyes a tear more from my one on one with prep former presidential candidate howard dean . the reasons i liked you so much is how fervently against that you rock for you

were i remember in two thousand and four i was like yes this guy's so awesome however since you've supported obama's drone warfare and counterterrorism operations in terms of special forces there's a new study that came out that i want to your opinion on that some drone. ten times deadlier than manned aircraft are you concerned when you see things like this or the fact that there's a ninety percent failure in catching these high level terrorist targets and also just the blowback of terrorizing the city and i actually think that's a silly statistic drones made maybe it's true maybe drones are ten times less accurate or whatever than manned aircraft but they're a whole lot better for the civilian population than putting two hundred fifty thousand american troops in the way it is that all that matters american life i do not know everything matters there are less iraqis will be killed and less yemenis will be killed using drones to target terrorists then by invading these countries which is what's happened in the past so we can use drone warfare to avoid ever entangling ourselves in one of these countries again i think that would be a big step forward i think there's a possibility that may happen so you're saying that there's only two options that

we have either on the ground armed troops who are invading sovereign nations or we're just flying drones above and raining down hellfire and i believe in the idea that we have to kill terrorists before they kill us there's no question that these people are targeting us and there's no question that they'll come up come at us on american soil again if they have the chance and they've tried several times so i think drones are effective i do i do i wish we didn't kill civilians with them yes do i think they are the population yes you know this is an unpleasant world sometimes when you have a dedicated people a group of people who are willing to try to kill as many innocent people of their own people as well as ours something has to be done about those people in this is a messy messy world and i'm willing i'm not willing i don't want to do stupid things like put two hundred fifty thousand troops on the ground which is proving to be grossly ineffective but i do think that if it when facing asymmetric warfare the the option is not to do nothing well i would argue that it is stupid to commit drones in countries where the yemeni government has said that they would happily

turn over some of these leaders that we're targeting on the ground and also considering how john bellinger the drone architect of obama has come out to a think tank here in d.c. and said that obama's actually escalating drone warfare and order to avoid the bad press that get now i mean is this really. where we're at i don't know why what's why would you say that i have no idea what i was saying well let's talk of really quickly about health care so that you are the most vocal about now specifically the independent payment advisory board but that obamacare what he's calling for its repeal i just don't think it works i'm in favor of obamacare i didn't like it when it was passed i thought it fell far short of the possibilities and it actually was not as far reaching as of some stuff we did twenty years ago and are a lot but there are some things in there that are good i think it needs to pass i think the republicans have been frightfully obstructionist and silly about it there are just the things like getting rid of preexisting conditions are going to make an enormous difference but there are some things in there that won't work the individual mandate wasn't necessary the academics thought it was. so we disagree on that regulation it's essentially doesn't really work to keep health care costs down

it hasn't worked federally it hasn't worked in the states so why would it work with this plan the way to get to regulate health care and exchange what we have now which is an illness based system for a wellness basis to get rid of fee for service medicine that as opposed to regulating a system that can't be regulated will essentially change the incentives and pay people for keeping people healthy instead of waiting till people get sick and that's how people make their money. and to be clear governor you do work from a can of long an algorithm which is a law firm that represents numerous health care interests and many critics and say you've taken his position on health care because you represent giant pharmaceutical companies what's your response my response is disappointment on the left you know the right is always engaging in these hominem attacks when somebody says something instead of engaging them on the substance they go after them and i take that i think that's the right as a propaganda organ you know driven organization with a goal of taking over the united states and running it as they see fit. the left

should be smarter than that and if you if you want to say ok he's on the take fine that shouldn't be the first argument the first argument should be well does i pad work or not i spent a night on twitter arguing with some economists and some reporters in. was really enlightening because we got away from this oh he's just in the pay of the pharmaceutical industries to well doesn't work or doesn't it and there are some arguments to be made on both sides that's the kind of discussion we should be having not whether because i write a column that people don't like suddenly i have to be on the take right let's argue the merit of. the facts lastly governor can you confirm if you are indeed thinking about running again in two thousand and yes but i think it's not likely that i will all right thank you so much for coming on thanks very much. this week marks the anniversary of the economic recovery tax act of one thousand nine hundred one president reagan signed the bill after months of debate over how

to deal with the country's deep recession it was the birth of reaganomics an economic philosophy dictating how the financial wellbeing of america depends on the top income earners paying as little tax is possible that there is suggest that with all this money free of government obligation it would trickle down to the rest of us and most simplest of terms are rising tide lifts all boats this notion cemented reagan's legacy as a sort of poster child for fiscal responsibility so what exactly has the impact been of applying this economic policy for the last thirty two years talk more in depth about where we stand today i'm joined by economist richard wolfe professor emeritus at the university of massachusetts and author of the book democracy at work a cure for capitalism hello richard. how are you great how are you richard after thirty two years of reaganomics can you sum up what the outcome has been for this country. well i don't need to sum it up we are living through the worst economic crisis since the great depression of the 1930's and the e r t a bill that you're

referring to for which mr reagan became famous was a major step in ending the new deal and ending that kind of economic system we produced as an aftermath of the great depression ending it and thereby opening the way to the kinds of growing gap between rich and poor that have landed us in this crisis today so i think it's important to remember it but it was a remembrance of a step that took us down a very bad road richard i'm still waiting it for waiting for it to trickle down to us. and always everybody else i mean every statistic every statistic that the economic system generates shows us that the gap between rich and poor has grown literally wider under interrupted lee since the early one nine hundred eighty s. which is when that bill was passed so there's no question that even if you like that

bill it didn't prevent the inequality from worsening and if you don't like it as i don't then you see it as having contributed most obviously in cutting the taxes on the rich that was the whole mark of that bill i think what we've learned is that the rich hoard their wealth they don't necessarily put it back in the economy not a trickle down to the rest of us and of course i have to mention that the decade following the policy the national debt almost tripled reagan's sold this economic plan advocating for smaller government yet at the same time he increased government and ever since government continued to expand while maintaining this economic policy what do you say to the argument that the theory itself isn't flawed but big government is what continues to be the problem here. well you know the theory is judged by the effects. it is shown to have when the e r t a bill that reagan was so proud of cut the tax rate on the richest americans from the seventy

percent it had been to fifty percent a stupendous drop not equaled for anybody else not the middle class not the lower class only for them and when he added to that in the same bill that the capital gains tax went from twenty eight percent to twenty percent he basically gave to the richest ten percent of the american people a stupefying gift and the implicit message which was often made explicit was this i have saved you a bundle you rich people so now please support me in the republican party in making sure that the mass of americans believe somehow this deal i did for you is good for everybody that's why it's correct what you said we're still waiting for the good results but the theory was the problem and the big government was a project that was put forward under the veneer of something that would help

everybody and speaking of this this whole issue and another thing that reagan kind of pushes for massive deregulation of the financial sector of all these sectors and i mean that's the main killer of reaganomics what's the response of people who argue that more of the regulations needed the market needs to be more free than it already is right now. well it's the behavior of people who when they pushed for something like deregulation and reagan was indeed a pusher of that and pushed it very far when that doesn't work when it produces the kind of crisis we have now they either have to admit that deregulation was a bad idea or they have to go the other way and say that the problem was you didn't deregulate enough and they're not going to have the honesty and they're not going to have the modesty of recognizing that they were wrong so yes they keep pushing for more and more deregulation let me give you an example coming out of the great depression when banks collapsed and drew us into a disaster we passed

a so-called glass steagall act in one thousand thirty three the banking act and that was supposed to control what banks did they went to work to undo that reagan supported that so we own did it ending up in one thousand nine hundred nine when ironically the deregulation pushed by reagan was signed by bill clinton the president at that time and literally eight years later in two thousand and seven having deregulated the banks the bryants took us over the edge and showed us that they didn't know how to make safe loans that they packaged loans in an irresponsible way that they raided them in an irresponsible way and we're still living with the effects any reasonable person would understand the deregulating banks was that big now a disaster for us twice in seventy five years producing the worst cataclysmic economic downturns we can imagine any reasonable judge would have to say we've got

to try something other than that i think that you know we're talking about the one percent of course you're talking about banks as well but i think that a lot of people it's out of their sphere of thought with corporations i mean the corporatocracy is really running the show you're so when you see corporations like boeing exxon apple one for a rise in pain nothing or little to nothing in taxes that actually we're subsidizing and i mean if they're getting taxpayer refunds and apollo is this just a problem with the tax code or is this something that's much more systemic here. i think it's a systemic problem i think you have a system that has is now spinning out of control it has given so much wealth to a tiny number that it literally invites them to try to shape politics and to try to shape the consciousness i mean for an example to over the last two weeks we've seen one billionaire in boston buy the boston globe and another billionaire from california by the washington post i mean this is craziness when the folks in the

top one percent already control our political system and are now literally going to control the information we get the ideas we can debate it's a system that is now automatically worsening the gap between rich and poor reagan is not the only one who brought that about of course not but he was an active participant in this self delusions that this was a royal road to economic well being which we now see it was literally the opposite . yes and despite the fact that wealth inequality is at its highest ever and continues to widen the government always concedes to giving tax breaks to the wealthiest and the same thing never go away why richard we have about a minute left because if you given the wealth the way we have to the top few they're not stupid those at the top understand better than anyone that their ability to stay there means control politics control information otherwise the mass

of people will end our privileges so that's what we're seeing they control politics we look on can't understand why the polls show we ought to be in charge but the money runs the show and make sure it stays that way until it doesn't anymore maintaining the narrative pushing the propaganda thank you so much for coming on breaking down the failed policy of reaganomics and what is done to this country richard wolffe economist at. i forget where you're at what's called the right university russet about it if they so much richard my pleasure. that's it today for the show you guys please come back and help us break the set all over again among. them i grew up near me airbase. i dreamed of becoming a pilot ever since i was a child lead they're going to approach the i grow them in oh

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