so you know the u.s. is among the top countries in the world in terms of state executions at least we can rest assured knowing that these people deserved to die or not see back in two thousand and twelve the f.b.i. open an investigation into thousands of convictions including forty five death row cases this after the washington post reported that flawed forensic evidence might have been responsible for hundreds of wrongful convictions well it turns out that the results of the investigation are far worse than even the washington post originally reported and in fact nearly every case reviewed by the f.b.i. include flawed forensic testimony why won't because agents positively identify defendants using a hair samples something that the bureau specifically prohibits because of its unreliability of the findings were so worrisome the f.b.i. halted entire investigation last year into the d.o.j. ordered it to reopen the probe just a side note to the f.b.i. since the word investigation is in your name you should probably know this isn't

how investigations of work you don't just stop them because you don't like where they're going but at the fact that forty five death row inmates may have been wrongfully convicted isn't disturbing enough consider that this story comes on the heels of an arizona death row inmate joseph would taking nearly two hours to die and yet another botched execution according to witnesses would spend one hundred seventeen minutes choking in gasping for air although the arizona department of corrections still maintains he didn't suffer. there's no doubt that members of our society including the would commit heinous and reprehensible crimes but at the end of the day do we really want to live in a country that kills and tortures potentially innocent human beings all the name of a draconian version of justice and its practice that.

it was a little very hard to take that. lightly you better act with that are right there are those. that. mcdonald's is known for many things for us and neon arches super creepy crown mascots expired meat sold in restaurants across china and of course crushing workers' rights see earlier this month the fast food workers committee filed

allegations with the national labor relations board and l b r against mickey d's for firing nine employees for trying to unionize according to workers the incidents took place in several locations across new york city over the last year and a half but terman nation is just the tip of the iceberg along with the nine fired employees the finally also claims that other workers were suspended or had their hours slashed for organizing so the national labor relations act of nine hundred thirty five which created the l.d.r. guarantees workers the right to organize mean that if these allegations prove true mcdonald's can be a ton of legal hot grease now since the initial filing mcdonald's is done everything possible to distance itself from the case claiming that it can't control the actions of its individual franchises and therefore should be absolved of any responsibility well turns out the and i'll be our wasn't too convinced that a major victory yesterday for the four million fast food workers across the u.s.

the organization ruled that mcdonald's as a whole can be held liable for what happens at individual franchises. seat like all major fast food brands the corporate structure of mcdonald's and set up so that the company does not directly own and operate franchise locations franchise owners are still subject to strict rules regarding everything from employee uniforms to menus as part of their ownership agreement catherine ruckelshaus an attorney for national employment law project even went as far as telling bloomberg that quote technological advances allow mcdonald's to watch over its franchisees operations like a hawk and ways that go well beyond simply protecting its brand a decision and this should leave no doubt the mcdonald's is an employer and put an end to it self-serving charade that it's not but it's really no wonder why mcdonald's is doing everything in its power to prevent workers from organizing because if the company's workers did they might just start demanding ridiculous things like decent working conditions adequate health care and

a living wage to the fight for fifteen dollars an hour minimum wage is gaining momentum all across the country and large parts by seattle's decision to raise the base wage to fifteen an hour over the course of the next seven years but despite this growing pressure fast food workers continue to be grossly grossly underpaid earning just over eighteen thousand dollars a year on average or eight dollars and ninety three cents an hour now some of you may be thinking that working in the fast food industry is just a summer job or a stepping stone but the reality is that two thirds of fast food workers are between twenty and fifty four years old according to center for economic and policy research and for those that think an individual let alone a family can live off this paltry amount of money just take a look at mcdonald's helpful for you budget advice according to the website the mcdonald's launched in partnership with a visa an individual working full time at the donald's earns eleven hundred dollars

a month so naturally they would have. have to get as second full time job to even have the beginnings of a legitimate salary the sample budget then goes on to dole out a miniscule twenty dollars a month for health care no money for food no money for heating although although the company was forced to change the heating figure to fifty dollars a month after a backlash against the absurdist numbers but thanks to the and l.b. yars decision workers now have a much greater chance of banding together in order to manned a living wage and finally hold the golden arches accountable because you know it's bad when even the evil geniuses in mcdonald's own corporate offices can't even figure out a way to make the companies pathetic salary structure work. it's

been over one hundred years since the adoption of the seventeenth amendment to the constitution as a solution to the threat money posed against the purity of american democracy and giving the public more direct control over the election their representatives at a century later that threat is more dire than ever the notion of corporate personhood money as speech and legalized bribery but the fight against corporate influence over politics is a battle as old as the republic itself tommy break down this history i am going by thom hartmann bestselling author and host of our tease the big picture amazing to have you back on tom so you're a ted talk on this was absolutely mind blowing i highly recommend it for anyone who wants to learn more about kind of how this all happened i want to start by breaking down what you found through thomas jefferson's writing that really triggered the american revolution well there had been this the gilded age in the mid seventy's hundreds the eighteenth century where the east india company just exploded i mean

the surpassed the dutch trading companies from a century earlier and and then there was this crash that happened around seventeen seventy that led right to the american revolution but the thing was when the crash happened the east india company was in such financial trouble that the king of england passed and so did sony through the tax act that the you know taxed t. and the the columnist the tax act. is widely thought to have raised the tax on to what it actually did is it lowered the tax on tea for the british east india company the biggest corporate tax cut or break in history or arguably certainly up to that point and so the collins said no because the east india company was going to undersell the local tea shop so it was like this wal-mart thing was going on and that started the american revolution american revolution was a revolt against a giant corporate tax cuts and saying something that you never hear and it's so

amazing is that you found that you kind of found these writings that no you know it's really has access while it's out i mean you know in one thousand and nine they collected all of jefferson's writings as the hundred year anniversary of his leaving the white house and it was published wants twenty volumes we bought an old house in vermont and there they were and i spent two years reading it's amazing what a great tree just specially for you and you broke down how the revolution ended the first gilded age how did individual states respond to the second gilded age during the industrial revolution the second gilded age happened after the american civil war and it you we saw the rise in large part because lincoln had thrown what in today's money would be probably hundreds of billions to a trillion dollars into five or six large railroad companies to get war materials around for the civil war and the consequence of this was that these guys got really really powerful and and then along with that you know the steel barons in the coal barons and the oil barons and everybody else and they were screwing workers it was

a terrible time they were killing people they were strike strike breaking and the beginning of the progressive and populist movements was happening but really during that era american politics was so corrupt that grover cleveland seven hundred eighty seven in his state of the union address said corporations which should be the carefully constrained servants of the people have become their masters the iron heel of the corporate buddhism the neck of the american people this was you know the president of the united states and. state of the union address it's in one thousand nine hundred seven so things are pretty bad things are pretty bad and led to a great crash in one thousand nine hundred eight which then led to you know after the killer was assassinated one thousand one hundred to teddy roosevelt's president and boom we're off to the races with trust busting and really really reforming the american the american government has so it's so fascinating to tell me that i mean

the old wisconsin a law that actually made it not only like you can't do this you can accept corporate money but you could go to jail right straight out to matt and also i mean you know the texas version of that is what they were prosecuted to the lay on or tom de lay under and under leavell i mean it's just so entrenched now i mean it's clear that right now we're living under what more closely resembles an oligarchies than a democracy you say that we've entered a third gilded age or not we're actually in a crisis of democracy now of course i mean. this was brought on years before the citizens united ruling as well you know well the citizens united ruling has has basically legalized you know bribery of politicians not only by billionaires but also by corporations and you know it follows on the foot on the back of him back in one thousand nine hundred six the thing that provoked grover cleveland was the santa clara county versus the pacific railroad decision which sort of actually a decision didn't say it but the clerk of the court said yeah corporations are people fast forward one nine hundred seventy six in the buckley vs fellatio case

was when the supreme court finally ordered finally. discovered in the first amendment that spend morning yeah spending money is somehow protected by the first of many you know never before decided so here we have legalized bribery in the united states and and you know it's time for us to have another revolution like teddy roosevelt did in the tillman act and take because it's going to get ugly if they don't tom and really we have to get out of this this this age that we're in and it is different than other ones as you said it's been building out for the last hundred years i mean what kind country of. we will be living and if we don't guard or garner the political will to restore democracy here about forty five seconds we will be in our knowledge i mean that's just flat out we we largely are right now. if these supreme court decisions are rolled back which have never been supported by any legislature or any president if they're not rolled back it's not going to be good for this country you're absolutely you're looking at something like italy in

the thirty's everyone. i mean the supreme court is just basically it's a monarchy. i mean we need to really break through it's amazing that we've never voted on probably the most egregious law that's been passed not even law it's just . it's just a put it about a bit but course the court unbelievable thank you so much tom harkin really appreciate it coming up you guys i'll talk about why one way or the organization is embracing whistleblowers stay tuned. i marinate in the financial world. act it's time to stop it is the dance only take you know demand for credit. and like there are jews. iran like syria has been. a constant. isn't justified if not pursuing the. raising the spectrum of person

never leave home. nuclear weapons. they want to see is being. used to it we would be stupid not to take a few. good lumber tour. was to build a new most sophisticated. fortunately doesn't sound anything mission to teach music creation why it should care about humans and. this is why you should care only.

dramas the. stories others to refuse to notice. faces change. to picture of today's news. from around the globe. today is national whistleblower appreciation day and with so much backlash against the brave individuals willing to expose government and corporate corruption it's never been more than the highlight the difficulties faced by whistleblowers which is exactly what making happen and projects centered are doing this week and

washington while attending the annual whistleblower summit they joined me earlier and i first asked them what they thought about the u.s. senate commemorating the bravery of whistleblowers on the exact same day chelsea manning was convicted for blowing the whistle on war crimes. so it's very interesting series of developments insofar as the government has a double standard surrounding whistleblowing we have a whistleblower protection act that's twenty five years old it is in the process of purportedly being strengthened particularly by senator patrick leahy who announced yesterday a new proposal that would help protect made data collection and so forth particularly addressing the problems of section two fifteen of the usa patriot act which is one of the most problematic particular for civil liberties groups and so that's very that's a positive development but we're also again here as you say for the whistleblower summit which highlights a lot of a lot of the problems that people have had over the years who have blown the whistle on corruption in government corruption in the corporate sector and of

course we know the obama administration in particular has been particularly harsh on whistleblowers and people that are trying to get the truth to the public so that's definitely a divided message it is a double standard forked tongue so to speak but we're here in town to support again the whistleblowers and people can learn more whistleblower summit dot com and we've been working with some other great organizations like the government accountability project and so on and they like to highlight a lot of the positive developments that are that are coming out of this week's proceedings and you know a lot of other media organizations kind of take the on by. because you could say perspective where they say you know they're treading this careful line where they don't want to go out and support or or blankly demonize them which is kind of you see a lot of the latter but why does part of center take a different route where you guys say you know one bracing whistleblowers well i think there's several steps to that answer but if you just start with the idea of government secrecy government secrecy is harmful to national interests it's harmful

to government accountability as mickey was just mentioning it's harmful to the public's right to know in a democracy about what's being done in our name so whistleblowers by contrast are combat in secrecy there they're speaking out against the silencing effect in a way that allows the public to know and hopefully in the case of governmental whistleblowers holds the government to account and similar things could be said in terms of corporate whistleblowers and corporate whistle blowing so this is i think quite naturally to just as a matter of course these are important stories that the corporate media by and large are doing a poor to nonexistent job of covering and that's exactly our mandate at project since it is to to draw attention to those stories in the independent press in the work of independent journalists to bring forward those stories and to and to give perspective that's not available in the corporate media this shows actually been

blankly demonized in all the content that i broach on the show because it happens to be hosted on this never do you think the extra focus scrutiny on our t.v. is warranted considering the utter abysmal failure and state of all media and broadcast well you know as someone both as director of project censored and someone that is a professor and teaches critical thinking and social science i think it's really important to focus on the arguments and the facts that are presented if we were going to sit back and attack a particular news organization. carte blanche that would mean that we're somehow saying that everything that happens on that network is exactly the same and about simply not true when we criticize the new york times and we criticize n.p.r. and we criticize fox news and so forth we also admit in our publications and we acknowledge when people at those organizations do good work whether it's james arise in the new york times who is under assault right for his first minute press rights and protecting sources you know but it is an acceptance we could say that

the new york times has had abysmal reporting on on issues of israel and so forth and leading up to the iraq war so i think it's interesting that your show in particular has been singled out because i find that it happens to be one of the more accurately sourced programs on on the network. and we could get into other critiques of this network just like we could with any but i think focus on the story focus on the facts and get the personalities out of the news and out of the stories because that that's a distraction in a diversion from the issues that really matter to the public and what i love about project something that's kind of going what you're just saying is the kind of label for conspiracy theorist when you don't want to dissect the actual facts and stories that you guys are really hitting upon and of course i was thrown in to the mix of the whole our team for as a conspiracy theory is that because i question official narratives i want to get your opinion on this mickey torie is weapons of mass destruction liar or straight up or propagandist david frum given a senior editor position at the atlantic claims that the photos of the gaza

massacre are a hoax ultimately of course he was forced to give a half assed apology yes i am a conspiracy theorist he's the one who stole the plot from the mainstream media yeah well we call it the corporate media right and that certainly belies their bias the corporate media is in bed with the military industrial complex and the state in the us and is very much a top down managed news type structure that supports us nato empire an expansion anything that questions or challenges that of course is cast aside any when the challenges and questions official narratives is. attacked and called names conspiracy theories is a favorite dating back to the sixty's when the cia originally hatched the term but there is a great again another double standard is that on the right it seems that conspiracy theories can run wild and get picked up by corporate media but you guys see it's our internet but you know you can do those kind of things but whenever there's an actual series of questions about serious topics it just gets cast aside and over at the new york times they'll just rewrite headlines if they don't want to talk about four dead children on the beach in gaza and so forth so i mean there is

a remarkable double standard and i think once again a way of cutting through that is through critical thinking and media literacy where you can ask questions look for transparent sources and come to your own conclusions and the job of the free press is to do that for the public absolutely that's why you guys are doing so well and speaking of gaza i want to play you guys an outrageous clip from wolf blitzer on c.n.n. . from what do you know what was the purpose of this. they want to thank. you. for me they want to go in attack kill israelis but also the stimulus that was that was one of the rationals the israelis have suggested was one of the purposes of these tunnels yes i mean and here you have him literally leading the interview we say now are these tunnels used to kidnap children and kill israelis i mean we know of course sure horrible things may happen in those tunnels but also they are used to smuggle food bring k.f.c. fast food and also smuggle people out into egypt because the borders are closed why

is agit prop against palestinians so prevalent across the corporate media well i mean i think we see this is you know this is a case in its own right but it's part of a larger pattern and what we see in the corporate media on a regular basis is well documented not only of projects and been in almost all the sociological studies of news and news production. the corporate news relies on a narrow range of official sources for its information for its perspective and that spectrum is as i say quite narrow so wolf blitzer standing in the tunnel with the. representative of the idea for whoever that is that's one version of what's happening there of course the key is it's one version and you know the problem i think there is that when we have a later section with wolf blitzer where he's standing in you know. on the beach or even in a hospital yard among the the shelling shelled rubble talking to the

victims no by and large not their unofficial they don't have a status and mickey and i were getting coffee in a big go before the summit yesterday morning and we caught a little bit of the c.n.n. coverage. headline for the c.n.n. coverage of the label for it is it's the it's the israel hamas conflict the palestinian people are literally written out of the very headline for the over the frame in which the story is being told when is c.n.n. going to announce wolf blitzer and his former connections to apac for example yet at n.b.c. and s n b c there is talk about taking reporters off of cases because they were actually reporting the slaughter that was taking place of children in gaza and somehow they were biased right for reporting reality and that's an incredible double standard that also ought to be pointed out certainly in the corporate media in the u.s. and i love what you said about framing and bias because i think when you look at media censorship the free meaning is taken out of that equation you say oh well i read about that the new york times i read about it or i saw it on c.n.n.

it doesn't mean that you're getting the full story in the context of this conflict is completely missing and i mean even in israel you have haaretz you have nine seventeen mag way more realistic about what's going on the ground reality that's going on the ground why are americans present in such a dumbed down simplistic narrative. compared to most of the. that's due to our societal evolution well telling from what andy just said it's systemic it's a systemic slant it isn't just on the issue of israel it's on a whole host of issues it's on what's happening in the ukraine it's on us nato issues it's on g.m.a. it's on a lot of this on climate change and there's great bias and slant the comes about through framing and the dumbing down problem is problematic because this is top down manage news that's designed to shape public opinion by narrowing the scope of perspective and of course the american public can't stand up to the fact that we're given over three billion dollars a year to israel because if we did. cause some changes there do you want to but if

the public i mean i think it's something to be very clear projects inside our stances not that the american public is somehow inherently. incapable of grasping these ideas or handling the truth the idea is that most of the american public is dependent on the media content of five or six major corporations depending on how you how you identify those entities and what they're fed is very poor so it would be like criticizing me for being a slow runner when you feed me a diet of nothing but junk food you know i don't not getting the nourishment i need in order to be the strong capable person that i am and i think that's the situation with the american public you guys are the definition of grassroots organization bottom up you and compass so many different colleges to get these stories generated every year and of course you're doing things on a daily basis as well where do you see the corporate media structure in ten years

and how can people get involved with such an amazing project that you guys are focused on part of what we try to do it project since it is say yes there is a lot more it can be overwhelming to process what is there but here are these validated independent news stories that have been researched and vetted and documented by faculty and students at our. who doesn't affiliate campuses colleges and universities across the country where projects and says work has been done and we want to point people do that and we want to lift up and get provide a platform for the general public to say here are stories if you're concerned about the ukraine here are stories that aren't going to get primetime coverage but are valid and important and worth your knowing about that's what we pride ourselves is doing is highlighting the good work of intrepid journalist and truth tellers all over that speak truth to power and know that speaking truth is power and again we're honored to be doing that for thirty eight years and will unfortunately have to keep doing that until more and more media supplant and just entirely replace

corporate media which is entirely irrelevant to the population at large complete on or have both of you on make you have. thank you so much about the people coming on thank you abbi. thanks so much for watching you guys be sure to follow me on twitter at abby martin and if you missed any of today's show be sure to check us out on you tube youtube dot com. breaking this set everyone have a good night we'll see you back here tomorrow.

good lover toure. was able to build a most sophisticated robot which fortunately. found anything tim's mission

to teach me the creation and why it should care about humans and. this is why you should care only on the. clean more zero casualties war this is the great fantasy of war mongering politicians. capturing people is this what do you do if the innocent telling them easy we were of the right to kill any person anywhere any time. they could do that but they can't turn muslim apes these things certain politicians get a new kind of power. which sad is very tempting.

ah. the u.n. agency for palestinian refugees accuse israel of using disproportionate force. the death toll is fourteen hundred people. one of america's most wanted people former n.s.a. contractor turned whistleblower edward snowden to extend his asylum in russia claiming he won't receive a fair trial in the u.s. . the regional capital of. ukraine is on the brink of a humanitarian disaster of a relentless bombing us women and children attempt to flee to safety we listen to some of their stories.