i think. i would like to do if you did you know the price is the only industry specifically mentioned in the constitution and. that's because a free and open press is critical to our democracy which threaten all those it's. going. to make you know i'm sorry and on this show we were revealed the picture of what's actually going on and we go beyond identifying a problem. rational debate a real discussion critical issues facing america ready to join the movement then welcome the big picture. welcome back to the big picture i'm tom hartman coming up in this half hour the

sochi olympics have put russia in the spotlight of the american media once again but are we really getting an accurate picture of what's going on inside the biggest country in the world more on that in just a moment also if you believe it's on fox news than you probably think the business leaders are totally against the idea of raising the minimum wage is that really the case and the u.s. fracking industry has one man and one man alone to thank for its recent success i'll tell you who that man is in tonight's debate we take. in screw news if you paid any attention at all the american media's coverage of this year's winter olympics in sochi russia you might have noticed something very interesting very little of the early coverage had to do with the olympic games themselves instead it's been about internal russian politics so tell door knobs rumors about killing street dogs big terror threat. some coverage on the other hand

like a report on hacking threats has even been flat out false similar threats exist everywhere in the world including the united states at all it's common for the media to use the olympics as a chance to dig deeper into the culture of the host country there does seem to be something unusual about the coverage of this year's olympics everyone knows the president obama and russian president vladimir putin don't always see eye to eye but the media's coverage of the sochi games does raise some interesting questions i mean if the media can't get the story straight when it comes to the olympics what also they getting wrong when it comes to covering russia joining me now for more on this is stephen cohen coeditor of the nation magazine professor emeritus of russian studies and politics at n.y.u. and princeton and author of the book soviet fates and lost alternatives just now out in paperback stephen conte welcome to the program we got to do a quick correction are you going to give me a divorce court you know wife is the editor i'm not the code anything i'm a contributing editor ok contributing editor my apologies you know how cold it are

here you got it let's start out with a so she coverage what's your assessment of how the mainstream of american media has covered the game so far as any but accurate. well some things have been through course of her talking about american media coverage in the article that's in the nation now on its website would be out the magazine tomorrow i call it pornographic because the coverage even in the steam leading american newspapers seems to be virtually wishing for something bad to happen to spoil what they call putin's games and they have so demonized president vladimir putin in russia for so many years that when they talk about putin and then the terrorists they virtually equate the terrorists i read two articles in the washington post last week or a couple weeks ago i was unsure who i was supposed to be rooting for putin or the terrorists in his coat. and of. the malice that has hung has been embedded in

this coverage of the sort she again which is extremely and or and of course is very bad for american russian relations and and in many ways i mean you mention in your article how president putin gonna help president obama pull things out with regard to syria and iraq where i am ran or rather i mean. there are a lot of areas where we should be praising and congratulating rather than going off on these rampages i wrote let me let me put it more bluntly. american national security still runs through moscow we had time i could give you ten words. however putin in august when obama was trapped virtually into bombing syria which he didn't want to do was lost his party lost the congress lost public opinion who saved his presidency by persuading the head of syria to destroy his chemical

weapons and putin was in the shadows with his foreign minister when this opening to iran occurred so who has helped obama at least have the opportunity of a foreign policy legacy and how is he repaid obama doesn't go to sochi he tries to humiliate him but this didn't begin with obama since the end of the soviet union in the west led by the united states has moved its power first nato then missile defense then political and economic and cultural as we see in ukraine today ever closer to russia now it's on russia's borders and the american media has been a cheerleader for this demonizing putin ensuring every reckless act taken by the west and i say this is somebody who worked in the mainstream media for many years and who is very committed to american national security clip bush and obama are gutting our national security. by losing the war with the best part you have to do

it in terms of dealing with real threats not imaginary ones and by the way i've got to say this but you're big on your broadcast because you play central role here this is entirely a bipartisan show called progress in this and b c howard dean these people all contributed contribute to it show their we all know public opposition or discourse ago. i'm trying to figure out the why of the sun in one fairly simplistic conspiracy theory is that you know we no longer have a bogeyman the soviet union fell and george bush really was quite relieved when he got the bogeyman of al qaeda after nine eleven but now when you try to use it as an excuse for anything like hey let's double the military budget you get laughed at or or or you know you lose elections and so you know and the military industrial complex the business guys they don't want china to be the bogeyman because we do so

much business with them we can't have that happen so hey let's just bring back russia make them the bogeyman is is that too simplistic. i don't know i guess i'm not smart enough because when i persuade people that this is america winner take all march on moscow since the end of the soviet union is unwise and if people are persuaded they say to me will steal why does washington do it under democratic and republican presidents i asked a guy i know in cia fairly high up once who's against this policy and he says they do it because they can that power operates sometimes in washington if you can exercise it you do it and you don't ask if it's y. but clearly there are a lot of a lot of reasons the hangover of the cold war the demonization of putin some people think it's the desire for russia's vast national resources some people think it's actually being driven by poland lithuania and the new members of nato in the

european union but whatever it is its own wants leadership and it comes down to that however many factors go into today's new york times mischa's saakashvili the former president of. georgia the former soviet republic of georgia. basically just a vis aerated president putin and this is a guy who is living in the united states my understanding is that if had he stayed in georgia his number two guy basically is is in prison you know with no possibility of parole that he would be prosecuted. back in in two thousand and eight i was going off on this on the radio at some length karl rove had been subpoenaed to testify before congress in the don siegelman case and a few other matters he ignored the subpoena instead went to yalta and met with saakashvili and then shortly after saakashvili is invading south though such as

you've got you're basically provoking russia and then john mccain who's running for president just by coincidence is is running around saying we've got to do something we've got to you know that. and obama does not a handle if he doesn't have a national security experience elect me president. what's what and now and that and that and then mccain a few months ago went to ukraine and the problems in ukraine in a way what does mccain and heroes have to do here thoughts of this i'm bloody well i mean mccain did worse we had created a military outpost in the former soviet republic of georgia when saakashvili was president. one of the largest cia agencies in the world was there we'd arm this georgian fighting force and we were encouraged suckers really or we lost control of it there's a debate about that but on the eve as you say you may be the only person in the american me who's other ever uttered these words other than than myself it was saakashvili began that war when he attacked or setia provinces inside georgia but

under russian protection mccain went to tbilisi the capital of georgia and said we are all georgians ok flash forward to. december november december and this crisis in ukraine which i think is the worst international crisis unfolding in the world today and mccain goes there and he stands on a platform with the leaders of the protesters in the streets one of whom israel calls a queasy fascist and in any semi and again mccain does the same bank he says america is come to us we will protect you we are all ukrainians and he metaphorically he did it again it's reckless he's uninformed he doesn't know what he's doing i don't know which along with him but he wasn't alone the democratic senator from connecticut was with me and so were the officials of the european union and by the way time you know what happened the other day somebody out in this very high level state department official victoria nuland talking to the american ambassador in

ukraine and the media focuses on which she said you know commit a sexual act against the yearly. and there are probably guests who lifted what was important they were discussing a coup to the overthrow of the democratically elected president of ukraine in order to install on any russian government backed white house policy in crane today you would not know or from the american media and ukraine is i mean historically kind of the the border in fact i believe the word ukraine means border which is why i used to call the ukraine between russia and europe and and the eastern half is mostly ukrainian and more european in the eastern half is more russian and ethnically russian speaks russian the western half is ukrainian the current president didn't even learn how to speak ukrainian until he was over fifty years old is it possible that we have just a little less than a minute steven is it possible that what we're looking at new crane right now is

not that different from what we were looking at in syria on nine hundred fourteen. i think it's worse and larger than that. we may be watching. the unfolding of a new cold war divide between west and east europe. when we were younger particularly be that divide was in burma and now we're being drawn through crazy right through the heart of russia's historical civilization if this happens if this is a new cold world of all we will have instability forever and the real possibility of a hot war this is a very very very fateful development and it's being driven by reckless policies in washington and brussels and there is no opposition to it in the united states on the right or on the left with the possible exception of people like rand paul at can can it should article stephen because there's been caught up steve i'm sorry

we're out we're flat out of time stephen cohen thanks so much for being with us tonight. we'll be right back.

i marinate join me on. that impartial and financial reporting commentary for news and much much. only on the bus and only on.

in the best of the rest of the news earlier today president obama signed an executive order raising the minimum wage for all future federal contract workers to ten dollars ten cents an hour earmarks of the white house the president described the executive order as part of a broader effort on his part to use the powers of the n to get around an uncooperative congress about to sign this executive order when you hear me talking about. pen and my phone to make a difference for middle class americans and those working to get in the middle class this is exactly what i mean i'm going to do what i can congress should do what it needs to do i will not give up on this fight no matter how long it takes america deserves

a raise. president obama wants to raise the minimum wage for all american workers republican opposition in congress makes doing so near impossible that doesn't mean the fight for a living wage is over far from it and also today a group of leading business leaders and entrepreneurs met with senior administration officials and lawmakers on capitol hill to demand immediate action on the minimum wage bucking the conservative mean more idea that all smart business men oppose raising the minimum wage the group calls itself smart capitalists for american prosperity in the coming months will pressure both democrats and republicans to make sure that all americans no matter where they work can make a decent living. joining me now in the studio is one of the smart capitalists steve roth serial entrepreneur and co-founder of thunder lizard productions steve great to have you with this instance we have this great chart that i think tells the whole story from basically not that chart the other chart. well it's on the screen right now it's over that basically from the george washington administration until

the ronald reagan administration if you work harder a productivity went up even with things like the cotton gin in the industrial revolution as people became more productive their pay went up in the standard of living of americans increased and started in one nine hundred eighty pay flattened out productivity continued to increase what is the consequence of this what does this chart well yes productivity is just how much g.d.p. do we create per each hour that a worker works and if the minimum wage gone up at the same rate since the late seventy's or one thousand nine hundred eighty as productivity did the minimum wage from be like twenty three dollars an hour it would be really up the charts nobody's suggesting anything like that today that maybe they should be. but right now that we're making a strong push and this is a group of people who have gotten very rich being capitalists. that low minimum wage that the thirty years of upward redistribution and the really off the

charts concentrations of income and wealth that we see today are strangling the american economy and making us all poorer except maybe the very rich isn't doesn't this come down alternately to. repudiating the core tenet of reaganomics which is trickle down economics or supply side economics that if you give tax cuts to wealthy people if you have more money at the top of intially it will trickle down to the bottom as opposed to classical economics from adam smith till ronald reagan which was that it is demand that drives economies and by increasing the minimum wage or increasing demand because the minimum wage were. or spend one hundred percent of what they are earning or as you know somebody who's very wealthy invests a lot of it or maybe even sticks at the swiss bank account well that's even more true in a modern economy the us has eighty percent service to me and physical goods many of them are produced on demand so if you don't buy a massage if you don't buy an i phone it doesn't get produced that's a hit to g.d.p.

right there and nobody gets paid for it to be produced and those people don't have the money to buy phones and massages. so that's why we feel it was these extreme concentrations of wealth and income that money circulates in the financial economy it doesn't merely as much circulate through the real economy to buy i phones and massages to pay wages and yes you're exactly right so so if we were to to rethink reaganomics or which i would assert that we've been living you know that there was a genuine revolution in one thousand eight the reagan revolution and that obama acknowledged that exactly when they were and that revolution has not been repudiated that we have for thirty two years been living in an error very of reaganomics which is very different from the previous fifty years the era of new deal and makes is it time for repudiation of that or should we just focus

singularly on this minimum wage the minimum wage is one way to address the extreme . concentrations of wealth and income. distribution that we've seen all this time. i was perry's i've been very successful and fifty seventy percent of the tribute to being born in one nine hundred fifty eight in the united states of america the beneficiary of thirty years of those programs that brought us out of the great depression and the couple hundred capitalists on tripper nerds venture capital ambassadors who are part of. patriotic millionaires and smart they all agree with me they feel but we we got that from america and we really want to give it back and . help all of us walk up that hill toward the shining city the ronald reagan pointed to we all need to steven so well said thanks so much for being here

and thanks for the great work you're doing. to the winter olympics in sochi it was a wild crazy in a shocking day yesterday american snowboarder extraordinary shaun white was trying to become the first american man to win three winter will go into gold medals in a single about what was a heavy favorite going into the men's halfpipe competition. fell multiple times during his first run and failed to even land a spot on the medals podium instead switzerland's lurie. can. also known as i pod took home the gold after successfully competing his infamous yolo trick meanwhile in women's freestyle skiing american devin logan captured the civil silver medal in the women's ski slopestyle with canada's. capturing the gold and in a historical moment for the u.s. team aaron habla won bronze in women's singles luge it was the u.s. its first ever olympic allusion that after last night's events not accounting for

today's events norway is leading the medal count with eleven total medals including four gold three silver and four bronze u.s. is in fifth place with seven medals two gold one silver and four bronze in russia sitting in seventh place was seven total medals including one gold three silver and three it's. reliving a frakt upcountry thanks to dick cheney and there is pretty much nothing we can do about it over the past decade the extraction of natural gas through the. known as hydraulic fracturing or fracking as emerged as one of the fossil fuel industries biggest moneymakers in fact according to bloomberg fracking was the biggest reason american oil output hit a twenty five year high in two thousand and thirteen the boom in fracking is quite literally getting close to home recent wall street journal report looked at eleven

of the country's biggest energy producing states and found that at least fifteen point three million americans lived within a mile of a well that has been drilled just since two thousand this is more people than live in michigan or new york city report also found that in johnson county texas alone more than thirty nine hundred wells dot the country of the county excuse me and some ninety nine and a half percent of its fifteen thousand residents live within a mile of a well like many places across the u.s. johnson county is now basically one big drill site not surprisingly the fossil fuel industry is pushing fracking hard to gas is even a friend in president obama who touted natural gas as the bridge fuel in his most recent state of the union address and all the above energy strategy i announced a few years ago is working today america is closer to energy independence then we have been in decades.

one of the reasons why is natural gas. extract it safely it's the bridge fuel the power of brew all due respect to the president fracking is nazi numerous studies have shown that it contaminates drinking water threatens public health and in some cases even causes earthquakes if any industry in our country needs regulation is the fracking industry but thanks in large part to dick cheney it's exempt the whole industry of fracking is reason exempt from having to follow the most important environmental laws on the books let me explain. back in two thousand and five president vice president dick cheney was hard at work doing what he did best using his power as the second most powerful man in the country to protect his cronies in the oil business his former employer halliburton wanted to get more involved in the emerging american fracking industry but a face to potential major roadblock in the form of a nineteen seventy four walk called the safe water drinking act that act signed

into law by republican president gerald ford requires the environmental protection agency to keep toxic chemicals from getting into our water americans drinking water . cheney didn't care about public safety but he did care about how about bottom line after all he was a big halliburton stock holder when he became vice president and so he joined the lobbying efforts to get congress to carve out an exemption for fracking in the safe water drinking act thanks to that car about what's called the halliburton loophole the e.p.a. can't regulate fracking poisons even when they get into our water supply but cheney and his oil industry buddies didn't stop there in two thousand and five congress also gave the natural gas industry an exemption from having a write up reports on its activity under the national environmental policy act an expanded exemption from having to follow clean water act regulations on what kind

of chemicals that can dump in storm water runoff coupled with existing exemptions to a variety of pollution laws like the clean air act the resource conservation recovery act the superfund act in the emergency planning community right to know act the two thousand and five car about its gave the fracking industry seven total exemptions for important environmental regulations years later it's clear that dick cheney and halliburton got what they wanted free from having to follow even the most basic environmental regulations the crack of fracking industry is today bigger than ever and will likely to continue to grow well in the future while other countries like france and bulgaria with rich reserves of natural gas have banned fracking altogether. we here in the united states and on the exact opposite thanks to dick cheney's halliburton loophole anyone who lives near a fracking site is one of the oil and gas industries kinney pigs in a giant multi decade fracking public health experiment but we don't have to sit

back and take it all big gas pollutes our water our bodies and our environment we could take action now to close the halliburton loophole and all the rest of the fracking industries exemptions before more people's water supplies or lives handle or. call your local member of congress right now and tell them it's time to say goodbye to the bush years once and for all and close the halliburton a little. and that's the way it is tonight wednesday feb twelfth twenty fourteen and don't forget democracy is not a spectator sport it requires your participation it begins with you get out there get active tag you're it.

america is joining me. for teams that impartial and financial reporting commentary contributes and much much. only on bombast and. i know c.n.n. the m s n b c 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 close and for the truth and might think. it's because one whole attention and the mainstream media work side by side the joke is actually on we're going to be coming back. at our teen years we have a different brain but good because the news of the world just is not this funny i'm not laughing dammit i'm not god. i'm if. you guys talk to the jokes well handled it makes sense that i'm. well. science technology innovation all the least of melanin still

around russia we've got the future covered. coming up on our team going for the gold another day at the sochi winter games is wrapping up who is bringing home a medal we'll give you the latest results from sochi. and the u.s. senator brad hall susan the surveillance states the senator files a class action lawsuit against president obama and top security officials more in the fight to protect american civil liberties coming up. and a florida case over the fatal shooting of an unarmed teenager draws to a close both sides elaborate closing arguments in the trial of the man accused of firing several shots into a car over at loudon music an update on the trial.