think. the really. did you know the price is the only industry specifically mention in the constitution which says that's because a free and open press is critical to our democracy shrek. will. never go on i'm sorry and on this show we reveal the picture of what's actually going on we go beyond identifying the truth rational debate a real discussion critical issues facing america ready to join the movement then welcome the big. blow on tom hartman in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture. with wednesday's release of

the white houses task force report on mass surveillance the discussion about how to balance liberty and security has heated up once again more on that report what it means for the future of the surveillance state the n.s.a. whistleblower bill binney in just a moment also the right as a new ally in its fight against obamacare if clue klux klan against that blue klux klan if you're a wizard of the confederate white knights will join us in the studio later on in the show to explain why his group opposes obamacare and wants to impeach the president and john podesta is right the republican party is a crazy call to explain why and tell you what what's up in tonight's poll what's in the g.o.p.'s kool-aid and i didn't. need to know this after edward snowden blew the whistle on the national security

agency's mass spying program president obama asked a panel of experts to write up a report. on the n.s.a.'s activities and to recommend any changes in thought were needed to protect civil liberties the white house released that panel's report on wednesday the report makes over forty different recommendations on how the n.s.a. can keep its programs under control the most important of which deal with how the agency goes about collecting the phone records or mete data of americans and foreigners alike it urges the agency to shut down its database of phone records and metadata to allow meditated to remain under the control of third parties like phone companies to get court approval before it searches through metal among other things it also recommends that a privacy advocate be placed on the foreign intelligence surveillance court the feis accord court that okays the n.s.a.'s spying programs and urges the n.s.a. to stop creating tools to hack into encrypted software panel wrote the report was mostly made up of former intelligence officers people like richard clarke and for

people like clarke who essentially tell the n.s.a. to cool it is a sign of just how much things have changed since the guardian first published edward snowden's leaks more than six months ago at the same time though many people think that report that panel's report doesn't go far enough electronic frontier foundation which is involved in a lawsuit against the obama administration said in a statement that while the report shows that the president's task force is joining the global consensus that the n.s.a. has gone too far it left open the door for future mass surveillance and failed to address the constitutionality of the n.s.a.'s mass spying the statement also said that mass surveillance is still heinous even if private companies servers are holding the data instead of government data others meanwhile the fight to rein in the surveillance state was given a jump start earlier this week in d.c. district court judge richard leon said in a ruling that the n.s.a. has mass we have of phone records are probably unconstitutional judge leon who was

appointed by george w. bush of all people the last of the n.s.a. surveil. program in his ruling saying that he could not imagine a more indiscriminate an arbitrary invasion and this systemic and high tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes of querying it and analyzing it without judicial approval first judge leon's landmark ruling wouldn't have been possible at all without edward snowden's leaks as it were obvious before it should be now snowden has forced the powers that be to reckon with the reality of an out of control surveillance state but whether those powers like it or not the times of change they're now on the defensive joining me now for more on all this is n.s.a. whistleblower william binney. mr binney welcome to the program thank you thanks for joining us let's start out with the president's. report this to this group that he assembled the report that came out with your thoughts on the group and the report.

well of the group was seem to be insiders first of all but secondly it really doesn't do anything to to actually start them verify what n.s.a. is doing for congress or the courts because that's a major problem see the courts and congress all including the committees the intelligence committees have no way of really verifying what n.s.a. is actually doing they have to trust them totally so basically what we're operating off now is either what n.s.a. has said and mr clapper is come out right confess that he's lied to congress or what ed snowden released. well the documentation is hard to refute but that's the point. that that's something they they have to deal with because that's exactly what they're doing but for example if you take the the recent sixty minutes interview that general alexander did he talked about not being able to tell where

the phone call was coming from the two terrorists who came in prior to nine eleven in california when they called back to their head there their syllabi in yemen he said he couldn't tell where that was i mean that's obviously he didn't have his caller id on ok right because this is ridiculous i mean the entire network is run by machines that you have to tell the machine exactly where something goes to and where it's coming from that's our caller id works right ok so so there is no reason why except for incompetence that they didn't know where that phone call was coming from or otherwise i mean if the phone company can find that particular phone to make the bell ring it's not the phone company it's machines that are doing are the machines of the company then certainly the intelligence agency that's looking they're talking to the machines of the phone company should be able to do the same exactly we never had a problem being able to do that because when you were with the exactly so all of a sudden the n.s.a. has gotten incompetent no it's the way you set up your syllogism your argument to justify what you're doing so if you can't if you can't figure out where. coming

from in the u.s. and your daughter uses the phone company the phone same phones and terrorists use them then you need to collect them all and sort it out later that's a false argument because you should know immediately as it happens where they're coming from and where they're going to and be able to do that selection immediately right up front it's sounds like your main concern to complain about this is the real who watches the watchers exactly there isn't anybody watching them i mean the intelligence committees in the courts oversight is a joke always has been so what's the solution we had proposed to congress a solution and we sent it down to them about a month and a half ago we were in curt we've been and myself and one other one of the other whistleblowers we all got together and our intelligence right exactly and we said the congress and the courts have to have an organic technical group responsible to them only and i don't mean in congress i mean responsible to the whole congress not

the intelligence committees. because the intelligence committees aren't really telling the rest of congress the truth either. so the the the point is they need that technical group clear them give them clearances and assign them to positions inside n.s.a. and have them go out there and monitor everything on their networks everything in their databases and review any questions they have or any things are telling the congress or the courts they can go into that database and then verify that what they're being told is true for example if one wanted to know how many u.s. citizens are in the databases of venice say that group could go in and with a very simple set of code go in and say let me look in the phone best companies check the phones i look for any number in there that has starts with the one because that's area one the world the u.s. right and then you have your area codes for the u.s. and canada and the islands and you simply separate out and you can count how many times how many unique numbers are there how many times each number is in the base you would know all of that one of the. you mentioned that the the intelligence

committee is not even telling the truth the rest rest of congress one of the problems that it seems we have in this country is captured of congress by private interests who do so via big money i mean you've got the defense industry pouring money into members of congress and those members of congress say oh yeah we definitely need this fighter jet even when the military says no we don't want that particular fighter jet right but you know the manufacturers given the money is the fact that broadly seventy percent from the best anybody can tell of the n.s.a.'s budget going to private corporations who presumably are lobbying i mean no didn't work for booz allen hamilton right was already in our little group which at one point was on a par by the bin laden family of all things is the fact that there's all that private for profit money flowing around is that part of the problem absolutely because what they do is they lobby for contracts from the agencies and when they get the contracts their primary interest is now to get the following contracts not

to solve the problems because if you solve the problems you won't necessarily get another contract that's with their look that's the way they look at it sure so but once they build up around the agencies the bulk up to our higher people in put buildings up and so on that creates the bulk that they have to maintain so now their principal interest is maintaining what they have built up and then they continuing it and they also get a revolving door going right members of the agency this is a i refer to this as an incestuous relationship yeah so those members know that when they retire they have got a million dollar jobs added in for them at booz allen or whatever it may be so wouldn't getting money out of politics or or deep privatizing nationalizing all of our national security functions go a long way toward solving this problem. actually you still have a cultural problem in a safe and most of the other agencies to again they want to they the they have the same idea of creating a larger organization getting the larger budget growing they're at their focus. is

in more in growing in acquiring money than than than actually solving problems or at least that's the impression i got that's why i was going to leave there because of all the corruption and that's why i left with the notion one. and so what's the solution for the. one of the suggestions is to create a that i would have would be to create a saturn type plant in the intelligence community a whole new agency and start scrapping the old ones. the old deal ma'am or sir you mean they in other words rebuild the agency from the ground all right interesting should that be done with all the various agencies that are now under the the umbrella of homeland security i think that. there's certain things that could be brought together like technology developments could be centralized for the intelligence community and separate from those agencies so that they couldn't have all of vested interests pulling them away and you'd have a central point as long as you maintained the the atmosphere of creativity and

innovation and made sure that that was and you have to keep it you can't keep the same people there because they get corrupted over time so you have to keep rotating them and i would argue that we need people like hackers coming in people who have interests in making sure that privacy is maintained fascinating things like that many thanks so much for being with like you. coming up the federal reserve has just announced that it will begin drawing down its bond buying program assess january what does this mean for everyday americans and could it be the beginning of the next big economic crisis answer both of those questions as well as a breakout of other economic news the week right after the break. thank you. i've got a quote for you. that's pretty tough. stay where it's about story. let's

give this guy like what some. about time stead of working for the people most issues in the mainstream media were for each other bridegrooms vision. of the road. it was a. very hard to make out. once again to come on here the plane flight had never had sex with that her hair place. if it was what if

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in the best of the rest the news it's finally happening starting in january the federal reserve will begin drawing down its eighty five billion dollar a month bond buying program a program more commonly known as quantitative easing and what was likely his last press conference is federal reserve chief ben bernanke he announced the move on wednesday in exiting washington yesterday afternoon. as you know we've been purchasing eighty five billion dollars for months and longer term treasury and agency mortgage backed securities starting in january will be for chiefs purchasing seventy five billion dollars a securities a month reducing purchases of treasuries and mortgage backed securities by five billion dollars each. it's important to note though that even after this reduction we will be still expanding our holdings of long term securities at a rapid pace so what is all i mean joining me now from lawrence kansas to help break down the fed's move is dr stephanie celt economist an associate professor of economics at the university of missouri kansas city dr stephanie hilton welcome to

the program thank you great to be with you so let's begin with the basics what exactly is quantitative easing and has it worked like it's supposed to work. well quantitative easing is what is often now referred to as the sort of unconventional way that the fed has been conducting monetary policy now for many many many years so well quantitative easing is at the end of the day it's that the fed goes in and it buys financial assets and so as soon as they said in the clip there is printing he was explaining the fed's been purchasing eighty five billion dollars of money forty five billion dollars in treasury bonds and forty five and forty billion excuse me and mortgage backed securities and in exchange they've been crediting. bank accounts with what are what are called federal reserve money bank reserves so your question has had has it work well there's there's a huge disagreement on this there are lots of people many of them from within the

fed who have made a very strong argument that what the guy has done has in fact worked in the sense that the economy has not fallen back into recession in the fed would very much like to take credit for that and has argued pretty strongly in some fed research papers that in fact quantitative easing has played a pretty significant role in helping the economy. in some sort of a modest recovery phase but there are just as many people i think out there or at least an awful lot of people and a lot of research paper says well that are you exactly the opposite which is that q.e. has. not done much anything to benefit the real economy at what it's primarily done is cause distributional changes ships in income primarily increases in income to those who hold financial assets so it's been very good for people who hold the natural assets but it hasn't really done much to help the average american

so it's been a giant welfare program for the banks the banks years now that's you know and if eighty five billion dollars a year was to be spent wouldn't it make more sense to put it into the hands of people who spend that money and thus create demand in the economy something like you know whether it whether it's raising the minimum wage or doing something like the germans do with the kurds are by program where the federal government actually underwrites people working part time you know but just keep them keep that money flowing into the hands of people who spend it all because it drives demand. absolutely and remember this is an eighty five billion a year this is eighty five billion a month so we're talking about right or you these this is this is a big investment and i completely agree with you i can think of. one hundred in one way off the top of my head to better spend that kind of money to have a more direct more beneficial impact on on the economy as a whole so yeah absolutely so. whether you know me then for

a moment that a large part of the impact that this is having other than any small ripples from the banks being bailed out in and had you know having a little more money to play with that this is largely a placebo effect that you know the economy is doing better because of quantitative easing. what. what might happen you know what do you think about the people who are predicting that when q.e. ends we're going to another economic crisis where are our fundamentals right now with or without q.e. well the fundamentals are it's you know it's a great question it depends whether you view the glass as half full or half empty i mean any given day we get data may come out and some of it you know sometimes it's a mixed bag sometimes you get a day where the data look overwhelmingly pretty good other days you get you know pretty disappointing data make you some of that came out today and so you know i

think we're looking for trends in the economy and what we'd like to see are some strong indications that the recovery has really taken hold you know again i think they are the economy was recovering i think that it is pretty difficult to argue that this time last year the economy was not beginning to do pretty darn well and then of course we had the fiscal cliff and we follow that immediately with the sequester and so we gave to pretty good wallets to an economy that was really doing quite well and so we gave it a couple of fiscal punches and in spite of the fact that we had you know that fiscal drag as economists refer to it from higher taxes and lower government spending as a consequence of you know the fiscal cliff and the sequester when we've done all right and of course the fed wants to take credit for that i think it's much more likely quite frankly that. after three years of the automatic stabilisers

kicking in fiscal policy doing its thing a little bit of help from the american recovery and reinvestment act that americans were able to rebuild and repair to some extent and their balance sheets but things started to get better because of the fiscal response but the credit of course is primarily going to ben bernanke you know and to the. batteries there ok dr stephanie calton thanks so much for being with us and oh you're very welcome thanks for having me thank you. in other news brock obama is an illegal president at least that's what a maryland k.k.k. group thinks and they're trying to do something about it confederate white knights of maryland are meeting tomorrow in a government building in cecil county maryland to discuss plans to impeach president obama imperial wizard richard preston leader of the group told a local paper that iraq hussein obama is an illegal president and he's to be removed from office we also want obamacare shut down it's against citizens' rights

if he has already notified maryland state police about the meeting and what to expect at it joining me now to talk more about tomorrow's meeting and the motivation for is richard preston imperial wizard of the confederate white knights of maryland how you do it for the rest of them good to see you. i guess i don't here's first of all why why impeach obama what's with the pope for one thing frozen with iraq you see obama has never showed his citizenship papers and wonder who is asked who is all for anything else. glenn beck's web site the blaze now has information on it showing that he was an indonesian citizen from before grade school clean up through college. and shipped is not supposed to be allowed for president but one. would be in favor of ted cruz as president i could care less if carson was president as long as whoever is president isn't cruz was born in canada instead it's cuban i'm sorry yes i would i would have a problem with that if you post the whole thing is an american president should be an american. for

a president to be from any other country or raised in another country you don't know where his well that's no reason to lie yeah i know it's going that's what that's what the constitution says so you just. so what why the k.k.k. i don't get this back back one hundred years ago you know one hundred fifty years ago you had slavery and the k.k.k. was principally a police force and it was an instrument of maintaining were. up aeration and maintaining people who were who were slaves i mean there's no other way to say it was not as it seems like it's more of a quality show you know the biggest thing is over in the klan first started it really had nothing to do with maintaining the slavery it actually was founded to stop the reconstruction of the south because what was going on with you going to when it was reformulated after birth of a nation came because there i was ok with that right and that was right and that was in one thousand and three yeah it was actually on one hundred fifteen when joseph simmons redid it up and instead of male. when the clay and came back out at that given point it was actually more so about the immigration that was coming into

the country and that the government wasn't trying to regulate anything we had been legal racial segregation at that point yes we did don't anymore no we don't have any legal segregation but look at some of what's taking place in our country at this given time. the klan is no longer every every aspect of the claim has been born it is had a goal or. a meaning for what it was to do in the beginning it was about trying to stop the reconstruction of the south during job some this period when he came back out it was to make the government do something that it was not doing in the one nine hundred sixty s. the klan got a very bad name now if you go past the sixty's back in one thousand nine hundred eighty s. there were over four million americans back then there were actually claim members it was a lawyer it was a big deal across particular us although we have one united states president in our clan book states that was night in the white house the big thing is it was not

a bad we're going to say why today the clintons never died it's always been behind the scenes now i get that but it's you know it's like you know we sort of tongue in cheek i mean we we had this thing about you know why are guys obsessed with guns you know long going to shoot things and maybe some guys in small penises are obsessed with guns because you know hey it's compensation but i don't get what the what the i'm white thing and. everybody else has to be kept down or. it's not about keeping anybody it is about white pride. with. other people or less than. we're not saying that other people are less than us. what people said during the one nine hundred sixty s. is stuck in everybody's head things that happened in the sixty's are stuck in everybody's head so you're not you're not white supremacy. we do believe that we have the right as white people to stay white people if you really read the holy bible which they claim is

a very christian organization actually separate the race it's the holy bible does a whole lot of stuff right. right and we are christian organizations we always have been i don't mind. somebody asked me one day if the reason i was against barack obama is because of the color of his skin and my answer was i have no problem if america wants a black president i have no problem if america wants a hispanic president or an oriental president it doesn't matter to me if he's an american citizen and has the will for the american. kind of fear dr somebody to become a member of the what do you really it's not. we have a lot of people white people around this country white people have the majority the money in this country white people have the power in this country i mean what's why do you need to do the chest thumping thing it's not so much that just thirty got the same it that way ok is a huge part right now in this country. no american has it if you think about the

fact that when you don't have a whole lot more anybody. white people have a lot the point right now is being flooded by illegal immigrants that are not coming here to care about becoming american citizens there are all of us and most of us in america anyway are for. i'm so i'm kind of a i think background of culture it doesn't matter if it is charlie you know i got it was ok we're out of time i'm so public for us thanks for coming by ok i was short and i thought. i saw thank you imperial while it was there and richard preston coming up our phone lines are now open for your take my take live segment so you want a chance to ask me a question live here in the big picture give us a call to it tonight all four twenty one thirty four maybe i'll be talking with you after the break.

and. i would rather ask questions to people in positions of power instead of speaking on their behalf and that's why you can find my show larry king now right here on our t.v. question. i know c.n.n. m s n b c fox news have taken some not slightly but the fact is i admire their commitment to cover all sides of the story just in case one of them happens to be accurate. that was funny but it's closer to the truth and might think. it's because when full attention and the

mainstream media works side by side the joke is actually on you. and our team we have a different approach. because the news of the world just is not this funny i'm not laughing dammit i'm not how. do you get a sense of the jokes well handled and they said that that. i'm .

welcome your take my take a lot of our phone lines are now open so if you want to share an opinion make a comment or ask a question live on the air give us a call at two zero two nine zero four twenty one thirty four if you're outside the united states add a one for the number for international viewers and lorelle in adrian minnesota thanks for calling what's up. yeah tom i just watched your interview with the guy from the k.k.k. and i and i've seen you interview you know people who are climate change deniers people who are you know trickle down economics supporters and i'm a liberal progressive i support every position you take but but my problem and i'm having a hard time trying to wrap my head around this is just where do you think debates like this will take society given the fact that we're in such a period of people in this society your thought wrote this book the cracks twenty sixteen knowing that.