right we are a solid alternative to the bullshit that we don't skew liberal or conservative and as you can see this bar graph we don't skew the facts either talking at lefties talking at righties oh there you go above it all to look at world is in the spotlight now every really no idea how to classify it as it actually took me way more time than i care to admit. a long time arbonne in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture donald trump's so-called tax reform plan is the exact opposite of draining the swamp i'll explain why internets

long overall with charles are enduring just a moment and have we made sustainability illegal last filmmaker laila conner's when she joins us to talk about her new documentary later on in the program. and. donald trump is never going to change even republicans are starting to realize this but are they actually going to do something about it or are they willing to accept an infinite amount of craziness just to give the oligarchy they serve another tax cut let's rumble. were they for that i had trouble or charles economist and president of the market institute and derek holley president of reaching america and member of project

twenty one guys thanks both of you for being with us and i think eric welcome to the program appreciate you having me on pleasure just one day after the usual media drones praised him for his presidential speech about afghanistan donald trump held a rally in phoenix arizona that was vintage trump and by vintage trump i mean full ally's racial dog whistles and self-indulgent whining about the media and also included this call to shut down the government over the border wall now the obstructionist democrats would like us not to do it but believe me we have to close down our government we're building the wall. so just a few hours before that absolutely bonkers phoenix rally the new york times published a story about how mitch mcconnell hasn't spoken to trump in weeks as privately expressed on certainty that mr trump will be able to salvage his administration after a series of summer crises obviously the institutional republican party is its wit's end with trump is there

a limit to the crazy for republicans or are they willing to accept the infinite about a crazy to get a few tax cuts for the billionaires who own them charles who. it's a lot of. what we see is a trump who is isolating himself in the white house in i am somebody who doesn't believe that the white house itself isolating him but we saw a president obama who refused to work with congress he refused to talk to republicans he refused to negotiate and we didn't get things through through congress it did it wasn't functional and now we're seeing a repeat of it on this fault is that where you see you know remain gone not even letting them have a judicial nominee on the supreme court cook if you want to if you want to work with congress there's a way to work with congress we've seen this with presidents from across the yard a lot of lichens who refuse to work with obama that's what the liberals always say president they have done look president kennedy's mcconnell said my first and most important job is to make obama one term president and say there was

a group of republicans nineteen seventeen republicans who got together and for the job of congress that's going to go. the way our value to the inauguration it's the way our founder set up the constitution was so that the branches would have to work together one branch couldn't run over the other you have to learn to work with the senate president kennedy wouldn't work with congress and couldn't get his bills passed lyndon b. johnson comes in the master of the senate comes in is able to pass bills right away because he understands how to work with them you know leadership also from it also isn't doing it with the normal amount of political capital that the democrats had as a result of the assassination of kennedy i mean it's a very stark way to say it but you know johnson's pitch for the civil rights act was for example do this in the memory of jack derek. well first of all i saw things differently last night in his speech to narrow zoner our authority did a great job in terms or are getting back on point in terms of letting the american people know what's really going on with the liberal media so i'm all about the

fight it's all about the fight because at the same time whereby is that where he was attacked in the media what about the attacks that are on him on a daily basis so i thought he did a great job in straight you know was really really going or because my wife and i are kids because we were on vacation last week so we didn't have access to all the media that we have here but at the same time and so the message i received was not what he delivered last night well that's good then then how do you deal with the schizophrenia i mean last night he gives this fire and brimstone it's about him or us right and in fact he even said they who is that they are trying to destroy our heritage and history and you know i think it's fairly clear who he was talk about it is there was he was this polarity today he comes out and gives a speech that he reads off the prompter this is today's prompter trump yesterday is on an prompter trump today he comes out and reads the thing about we all need to

love each other and be and there's only one america there's only one value and we're all you know it's how long can he continue doing this well as long as he can get to the poor crowds like he had last night i think he had he had that room was a half empty there he had four thousand people in station where you watch and you could look up and there are the pictures are all over the internet as well as now real madrid when they drew the krauthammer you have relative a group of growers pool he has four thousand people in a room little hold one hundred thousand people and there was at least there was some people outside on time this is the bad beat is there a. real moment there's this it was true of just aren't paying attention is the biggest of are you are are i do i do you know i surrender i do know is that i'm the biggest crowd ever i don't you know ok. yes moving. around the same time his wife went out of class and sed tirade on social media treasury secretary steve try to pull a fast one on the public and event with senator majority senate majority leader mitch

mcconnell's he said that while the trump administration will close the loophole for hedge funds on carried interest it would leave them open for other types of funds the do create jobs this is some first class b.s. from a new funds that create jobs that could technically define a pretty wide range of investment firms and this is a scam to help the banks right so much for draining the swamp we're going to take on the banks these guys are killers money that i was guys are killers i almost voted for him when he said that and then what does he do he puts manure should he's worth seven hundred million five hundred million bucks you know bank stir it is i love this issue because there is a me it exposes exactly the way that the left supports cronyism right because these aren't billionaires that are benefiting from carried interest these are teachers firemen and bureaucrats and if any carried interest because it's their retirement money that's in these funds that is what's going on of no no how the

chosen doesn't want the carried interest is for the c.e.o. of the fund not for the fund and no it's for the investors and that's how you keep cronyism away if you want cronyism away what do you do you would send of guys the people that are he's really is best not for the investors long term you have been agencies for the inventor no no no it carried interest is for is what the actual boy who started joking that if they were for people who don't know what the hell we're talking of let me just give what i think is really short example and if either you guys if i'm wrong tell me my understanding is that you know we've got the we have long term capital gains and short term capital gains the lowest interest rate historically was long term capital gains because we want to encourage people to hold stocks for a long time short term capital gains of use if you train somebody but both of them the theory was because this is people making money with money. it's more important than people making money with their hands or with their brain so we we tax them at a lower rate the tax or the capital gains rate right now is twenty percent plus three point eight percent for obamacare as i recall. it going to get jobs and well

just just to finish this and where the kid carried interest came from is that a bunch of banks toure's you know went to went to washington d.c. bought a bunch of politicians and said we want to on our paychecks forget the investments on our paychecks we want to pay that low twenty percent interest income tax rate rather than the thirty nine percent rate that our surgeons are paying or our dentists are paying and so they invented this word carried interest which is relatively meaningless and said sure ok you guys can call it carried and there's there's a there's over a dozen people on wall street who made more than a billion dollars last year in carried interest and they paid twenty percent income tax then he was wrong from the bottom up that's wrong with it will the tax break is given to money because we consider creation of jobs through investment more important than hurting rich people and that's why the tax me more important more important than tax and then with the grants why the taxes that the taxes are lower in the first place but when we talk about kerry then it's

a complete nonsense we talk about carried interest it's an incentive for the fund manager so the investors are actually the teachers firemen and bureaucrats the fund manager no it's in incentives so that they will pick the ones with the highest returns instead of their so and so so some guy making a billion dollars a year a billion dollars a year and there are these people and they pay out a twenty percent income tax rate and that's going to incite i'm not derek you don't believe this stuff there here's what i do know. someone from the house where he is and means committee yesterday and there have been no details released about the new tax square so what we're talking about are all assumptions and even chuck schumer you know we think it appears there's been no death nothing definite or definitive about the text where you saw. i think we're arguing an issue that we really don't know is going to happen now you're going to if you and i have i put together a letter earlier this year it is thirty three conservative groups that are opposed to. raise even raising their interest rates we know where this is going to

conservatism is a year firmly on the side of the billionaires no i don't fully know silence is why i'm only on the side of teachers firefighters and bureaucrats it's only our way to admit we're on the limit on these and i don't know any serious john there have been to go no details released about the play so these are all assumptions that we're making right now ok well so our last topic the national academy of sciences says it has been ordered by the interior department to suspend a multi-year study into the health risks posed by mountaintop removal coal mining study was requested by the governor of west virginia because so many people working and living near mountaintop removal coal operations in west virginia are getting sick and dying the excuse for killing a study from the trumpet ministration as always is budgetary concerns but given this administration's servile relationship with the fossil fuel industry this is pretty obviously a favor to the coal barons as any president more cynically manipulated the region more than donald trump has manipulated all appalachian i don't agree with that ok

we have it i have ok. when i first graduated college or moved back home to chesapeake virginia or worked for norfolk southern railroad as a brakeman out of the terminal our job and responsibility was the low coal ships that transported coal all around the world so i've always asked myself the question of our coal and natural resources good enough for other countries and why is it not good enough it's right here at home in addition to that my grandfather was a black coal mine and clint school for junior in the appalachian mountains so coal fossil fuels has been a way of life for my family for a very long time with the say it was going to halt the study just to preview the plans in terms of if they want to fund the project any further once again studies already funded the fire was funded on the they said it would have pulled. i mean to review everything because of budget cuts and i kind of didn't say we're not going to go back but there's no major cuts there and there hasn't been a new larger budget or it's like it has to be passed by october first of the government freezes up but there's been no budget passed you know we're going to

we've been operating in a deficit since march they're moving money around to get that this is this this this is just you know the national academy of science has been shot i know you want to continue spending money but let's say that this study comes out and says something opposite of what the what the left once we know what that means leftwich we know what that means right now we had a minimum wage study that came out up it up in. seattle that was not a cod it was rejected you know it was a study completely rejected when we had an oregon medicaid study that came out with scientific evidence rejected we have westlake superfund site in missouri evidence came out that showed it it wasn't a harm to the community rejected the letter inject you know a study who said the same thing that led to the desire to every time that it comes out and says something that they don't support so why are we going to spend money to do something that i mean let's let's put a halt to it and just wait rejects over and over and over i will i will leave you with the last word charles derek it's great having you both thank you very much for

coming up america doesn't have a pollution problem it has an oligarchy problem filmmaker like connors will explain why when she joins us after the break. i think the average viewer just after watching a couple of segments understands that we're telling stories that are critics can't tell and you know why because their advertisers won't let them. you know. order to create change you have to be honest you have to tell the truth parties able to do that every story is built on going after the back story to what's really happening out there to the american what's happening when a corporation makes

a pharmaceutical that chills people when a company in the environmental business ends up polluting a river that causes cancer and other illnesses they put all the health risk all the dangers out to the american public those are stories that we tell every week and you know what they're working. the american middle class has been railroaded by washington politics. big money corporate interests. a lot of boys that's how it is in the news culture in this country. that's where i come in. you don't get railroad you'll get the straight talk in the straight through.

all the worlds. and all the news companies merely players but what kind of partners are into american play r.t. america. r.t. america personally. in many ways the news landscape is just like the real news big news good actors actors and in the end you could never. see the park in all the world all the world's all the world's a stage and we are definitely a player. pipelines

mountaintop removal coal mining these are just a few of the threats facing our environment today and while we usually think of these threats as pollution problems more accurate description would probably be democracy problems that's the subject of the new documentary we the people two point zero we're living in a system that's not representative government at the local level. they don't want people to know what's going on. current system of law makes sustainability illegal the problem is not toxic we thought we had an oil and gas probably thought we had a fracking problem here we realize but now we have here is a democracy. joining me now is the director of we the people two point zero documentary filmmaker and producer laila connors well welcome to the program hi tom thanks for having me thanks it's great having you with us here tell us about we the people to point out what what fundamentally is this film about. well this film is

fundamentally about democracy in this country and the health of democracy and especially the right of people every day people left right and center it doesn't matter what political party or in their ability to express themselves in terms of how they want to live in their community so the film basically follows the first communities in this country who drove local home rule laws into place to protect themselves against pollution in the case of the first community with sludge it's now used in many different scenarios but the fundamental purpose of the film was to make people aware that sadly though we talk about being the best democracy in the world on the ground you will find several communities would disagree with that when they are faced with with a toxic dump or threat that harms their health safety and welfare their own able to

say no even if they follow the democratic process and try to vote in their local communities and their municipal levels they are unable to say no and corporations have basically more rights than people do to exercise their will over a certain community so that's what the film is about and it's really is an amazing amazing movie or play a clip right now from it will talk about the news. we're being told in our communities today in our local representatives have no authority to pass laws to protect our health safety and well these are the kinds of complaints we saw in the declaration of independence they're not. just idealistic things to the very kinds of complaints that we hear from communities today you know the comparison to a revolution is an interesting one have we done a fact being been colonized by corporations. affectively yes i think the more we

looked into it and what that has been price there in that clip some of the grievances that communities have are identical to the grievances the farmers had against the king of england and what it is is that they are unable to have a say in what goes on in their local communities so for example into moscow they had several fly ash pits over twenty fly ash pits and they had rates of cancer well above the national average and in fact i think they're one of the first cancer clusters in pennsylvania to be declared as such and when another fly ash pit or another toxic dump was coming in they said we've had enough and they found that when they went to vote against it which they did they were able to say no because the state had what you call preempted them and preemption is the way that a law works where higher law trumps lower law and corporations go into business with states and the federal government to pass laws to to actively do what it is

they need to do and they use corporate personhood and other tools to trump the right of people to pass laws to protect themselves and it happens over and over again and what's so exciting about the film and what this film is not really about the problem so much as it is about the solution because there is a solution and people are sovereign democracy people in democracies are sovereign and everyone that's watching the show has a right as a person to engage in lawmaking with their local community and you are allowed to say no to toxic harms coming in and so this movie basically explains how and the cell deaf community environmental legal defense fund is actively helping communities learn how to do this kind of lawmaking and it's been successful in stopping fracking projects large projects you name it been helpful in driving laws to protect farmers from g.m.o. farming. and again this is about expanding rights this is not about shutting down

right so this is all about expanding the rights of communities and people to protect themselves you gave the example of the community that was trying to protect itself from fly ash and for people who don't know what fly ash is it's the toxic waste left over from burning coal and coal fired power plants as i recall and it's radioactive it's full of heavy metal miley's toxic beds extremely extremely poisonous stuff. that that community how did that work out and do you have any other examples of laws or institutions that are structured in a way to benefit polluting corporations. well basically in the case of ohio and i think you have to shine earlier this week. for fracking and fossil fuel extraction and in the case of tissues community broadview heights they have you know over eighty to ninety wells in residential community and

they wanted to stop the rate of drilling in in their base in their backyards and there were cases in which because of proximity people would literally lose the ability to tell you know well to to stop from you know drilling next door to them and they were basically you know mandatory pooled into an operation that they actually didn't want and they were able through these laws to stop the drilling for several years what's fascinating about this this fight so to speak which is really pure democracy fight over democracy is several of these laws and get overturned at the state level and then the appeal so it's basically a battle in the courts to define what it means to be an american citizen what it means to be a corporation in america and in fact it's fine to be a corporation but it's not ok of corporations have more rights than people well corporations have to have adjusted rights that work in concert to support our health safety and welfare the welfare of all people and apropos of that how does corporate personhood factor into the issues you talk about in this film. well in

many cases they argue that they have the right to free speech i think there's recently trending on some social media that someone speaking out about tainted water is being sued by a fracking company because they can't talk about it saying and then you know the person is saying it's violating their rights to free speech or expression and it's not just corporate personhood it's several laws and it's some of these laws date back to the founding of this country you know tom lindsey who founded cell the ever run cell death basically says you know we have a latticework of laws that support corporate activity because that's what we wanted to do we wanted to as a country grow and exploit the natural resources before i spent an hour and twenty seventeen and we're reaching the limits of resources there is climate change is a lot of challenges again like corporate activities pushing up against local communities so we have to take a look at how we manage ourselves and how we can protect families children from

diseases from from from harm and there really is harm and there really are there are people in community suffering deeply from corporate activities that are should be stopped chemical companies that are not following their emissions laws you know and they gather an element to this is regulation you know a lot of people get stuck in the regulation battle when i love when ben price in the film says you know why don't we have water with no poisons in it why are we arguing for ok certain amount of poison how about no poison you know it could create idea in the clip that we played when we first came into the segment there was a discussion about making sustainability illegal or legal. how can we make sustainability legal what alternatives are there to the corporate state that we have now. well i think that corporations should work in concert with community more fairly i think that they should have a charters you know some people talk about going back to when. corporations had to

have their charters renewed people had to vote could vote on whether or not a corporation could exist at all. basically we've favored the corporate form over human beings and that really is what we need to take a look at i don't have all the answers i know that a lot of people looking into law and the constitution have thought about these things and what this film discusses and brings to the fore is that it's not working right now we've had forty years of environmental activism and things are worse in many cases not better and we really need to look at why and part of this part of the problem is that the will of the people in many many communities is not allowed to be expressed because it's being trumped by the wishes of the corporate few as we say and it sounds like i might be reactionary but actually if you look at the data it's really true this is really what's happening and you know

a lot of these communities are republican communities in fact the first people that did this work were republicans so it's not a left wing issue is not a right wing issue to people issue and if we want to have a strong country you know well into the future we need people to understand that they are sovereign they have rights as citizens and they should step up for themselves in their communities in a lawful way in within the law as constructed and also to look at how the law is constructed well and in the last minute that we have here how can people find or watch this movie i mean the soul the web site is as in community environmental legal defense fund dot org. i'm assuming that they've got some sort of a portal to it or tell me how. much a well week you can go to we the people to dot film we the people two point zero is a project of tree media she can also go to tree media dot com we have links to it

on i tunes it's on hulu it's on amazon. and you can buy d.v.d.'s you can also what we find interesting is you can have community screenings or house parties we have curriculum weren't speaking points where you can discuss what you can do in your community and if you are if you are a person in a community that's facing a corporate high when you feel there's nothing you can do there's actually something you can do so please take a look at the movie contact sell that if there is help there you don't lose hope it's there is a solution great stuff while a cotter's brilliant work thanks so much for being with us tonight thanks so much tom for your support as always thank you my pleasure and that's the way it is tonight and don't forget democracy is not a spectator sport get out there get active tag you're it.

good hopes of you so. you put themselves on the line. to get accepted or rejected. so when you want to express. some want. to going to be this is what before three of the people. interested always in the water. there should be. all the food we don't need.