The reason or the humongous amount of profit that that's. Called because they're there sponsored by Big Pharma and Big Pharma doesn't want to pay for programs to be on that will be in. Endangering their profits and which is understandable. But it's also understandable why how we can be free because we don't get paid that we are not paid by advertisers were paid. By you and so we can explore what we think needs needs to be explored and that is up to not a management meeting every week or month or year but by the programmers themselves working independently that is a structure that was decided back in the 1950 s. In highly argued argumentative groups of people to decide who decides what to go on the air which is always of the most popular subject of course. And it was decided and Alan Watts was part of the group saying that the programmer should be the one to decide about the program and not be not just be given a script or a list of what to do and what to say and what to cover and what to not cover that doesn't happen and so it makes us a little wild but that's Ok because we hit the target a lot and we have a lot of information that is important and not otherwise covered so you're one of the lucky few that gets to hear some of these programs and these people in the subjects and I'll be asked is a contribution so we have the wherewithal to do that and it's easy to make a contribution may not be so easy to come up with $25.00 or $50.00 but some of you can and in 2 hours we haven't had a single person yet so. You can be one of those single people to call us at 1898557358189855735 and make it $25.00 contribution for a year or $50.00 contribution for a year or you can join the sustainer zx and make it monthly contribution of 102-030-5100 dollars a month that comes in automatically from your credit card or bank account and helps us pay the bills when they arrive we get to pay them so. There's a Diane and I are advocates So if we have made a we make a contribution to the station to although I am Diane as a volunteer I am not I am I have been for years but I am a I'm a paid programmer there's a think 5 of us. And the rest are all volunteers including Ralph is a volunteer to k.p. Chris Hedges and Dave Emery and Tom Hartman we don't pay them anything at all we just carry their programs and. Some of them give us money too so we can stay on the air and their program is their major contribution and it's out out of a sense of idealism and hope that we can pull out or help pull out of the doldrums that our country is in. And make it better. And we keep plugging away so we hope to help you help us plug 818-985-5735 they want to 8985 k p f k and. Like to get a call or 2 of which we need only. A call or 281-890-5573 extension 595 k p f k. To wall. Off. The Be. Alerted. A. Whole. Ball rolling. Away Ok Well we have had almost the call but they change your mind here is a rough nadir with a very special guest 818-985-5735 . It's the Ralph Nader radio hour now. A. Welcome to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour My name is Steve Grove analogues my co-host David Feldman Hello David good morning and we also have the man of the hour Ralph Nader low Ralph Hello we've got the most brainy talk show host in America underway today Los news u.n.c. I'm Tom Hartman. And now Martin. Thank. You for the pleasure to be here with you all yes well I'm going to set the topics on the table we're going to talk to Tom Hartman fellow broadcast who most of you know is the host of The Tom Hartman program which is heard on all sorts of radio t.v. And digital outlets this man has a resume as long as my arm and I have a very long arm we could spend a whole show just listing his credits as a broadcaster an author and an entrepreneur but buried in his biography I also found that he has been rostered as a psychotherapist in Vermont for 5 years and he also holds a trainer certification and n.l.p. Was stance for Nero linguistic programming which explores the connection between our brains the language we use and our behavior patterns and as a country we're all experiencing a bit of psychological trauma under the administration of Donald Trump and today we're going to talk to Tom about how to handle that idea and with the bully behind the bully pulpit and will probably discuss how the Democratic presidential candidates should handle Trump on the debate stage you try to ignore humiliate punch him in the nose we're also update you on the latest machinations going on in the corporate underworld with our Corporate Crime Reporter Russell Mo Khyber wouldn't be a show without Russell but 1st let's get right to it let's talk to Tom Hartman about how to handle Donald Trump this is going to be great Tom Hartman is live a day at least from noon to 3. pm Eastern Standard Time on commercial radio stations all across America a nonprofit stations via the Pacifica network and on channel 127 of the Sirius x.m. Satellite Radio Network Talkers magazine ranks Mr Hartman as the number one progressive talk show host in America is also a 4 time Project Censored award winning New York Times best selling author of 24 books in print Welcome to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour Tom Hartman. It's great to be here thanks so much for inviting me Tom in prior interviews let's talk about your groundbreaking scholarship where you documented that infamous Supreme Court decision which actually wasn't a decision declaring erode a person for purposes of the 14th Amendment it was indicative or it was ascribed that rode up the opinion that stuck it in you cannot bankrupt and has Yeah you pretty much revolutionized corporate history with that finding and certainly got people into a how did these corporations get all the constitutional rights that we have a mean there are artificial and these are not human beings and now you're starting a series which we're going to talk about later in the show on the secret history behind this and that you know leave that as a blank just entice our listeners and right now I do want to have your take and I'm sure our listeners want to have your take on Donald Trump his reality shows strategy daily and how to handle him well to go back to what they taught me in psychotherapy school Ralph when confronted with a bully kick him in the nuts I really think that this is what the Democrats need to be doing they need to be going at Donald Trump with everything they have and just calling him a racist is nowhere near enough he's also a criminal he's also the and has been throughout his life he's a rapist and that's fairly well documented I mean these are words that really need to be attached to him particularly if he's going to do things like telling the 4 women you know the squad the so-called want to go back to the countries they came from and it was clearly was talking to all 4 of them and him and Lindsey Graham are going to call him communists always kind of crap I mean it's really time to bring the war into a space Well let's parse that for a moment he gets away with giving terrible nicknames to his political opponents any press including New York Times want to pose do to flee report the nicknames they don't ask for rebuttal by the tired person and pretty. Much it sticks in people's minds millions of people's minds it think of you know crooked Hillary lying Ted Cruz little Marco Rubio and it just goes on and on he's got one for Biden he calls Bernie Sanders crazy Bernie and I've provided a lot of nicknames I think it should be called Dangerous Donald or decadent Donald or crush Donal or cheating Donald And here's an example I think what you mean when you were in after those 4 women in the House of Representatives saying you go back to the country where you came from I tweeted something that went like this Trump onesies for women to go back to the country where they came from on that logic trump a corporate criminal and a government outlaw should go back to his ancestral Germany I hear that Chancellor Merkel is looking for a chauffeur that were to me Yes exactly and very well said Ralph. And I don't think frankly he would qualify to be her chauffeur tragically young so by the way he also said quote I don't have a racist bone in my body and quote he said it many times Donald Trump so I just tweeted Donald Trump constantly says quote I don't have a racist bone in my body and quote He's right it's all in his brain or it may be as bad as race. I don't know but if so what happens is and you made this point brilliantly the other day when I was talking to you said he's a world expert on reality shows and he gets up every morning or in the middle of the night and he says how am I going to dominate the news and this is something that is so overlooked and ignored and b c spent millions of dollars training Donald Trump to be a good reality show host it's probably the only thing that he's actually good at He's failed at the vast majority of his businesses even the businesses. That he has made money on the money that he's made is tiny compared to other people in his industries he basically has one thing that he's good at that's doing a reality show a reality show they teach you a couple of things number one and this is in it's reality shows this is true of all fiction the hero of the show is not as important as the bad guy Superman would be boring without Lex Luthor or Batman would be boring without the red alert all that kind of stuff Silence Of The Lambs you know Clarice you know an f.b.i. Agent it would've been a boring show without Hannibal Lector the bad guy is actually the most important character in fiction as well as in reality shows they cast somebody to be the evil person in every show and sometimes even the host but there's this this hierarchy of casting and he gets that and he realizes that he's only as good as the people he's fighting against can be characterized as being bad so Rule number one create the bad guys cast the bad guys or name the people that you're going against as bad guys in a way that everybody agrees is bad not it doesn't necessarily mean evil I mean the case of Jeb Bush was low energy jab but that is death for Republican or for somebody want to become president ited States so he's been trained to do that number one number 2 always set up the next show always he's the next show and do it in a way that keeps people going wrong you know really well I got to see this and so everything he does always has and guess what's coming after that a test or number 3 you want to do absolutely everything you can to be the center of attention essentially Now this is this comes naturally to him I think it in many ways it's it's how he's lived his life long before n.b.c. Caught him out a fine tune his skills and he's bringing all of these reality shows skills and there's a there's a few others that are in a more secondary tertiary is bringing all these reality shows skills that the consultants of the. Coaches n.b.c. So well taught him to the White House and he's running a reality show out of the White House and every single day it's like Ok take a look at the landscape of the media narratives the media landscape and if there's something out there that has grabbed the media landscape for example most recently Jeffrey Epstein story and now you know now that it came out that Bill Barr said oh I'm going to recuse myself from this because my law firm used to represent Epstein and then it came out that Epstein's got pictures Epstein's got you know security takes he's a you know you can see when into his house and we left his house and what they were doing and Alan Dershowitz comes out because I kept my underwear on when I got the massage and suddenly Bill Barr is like oh I'm going to under accuse myself and you know and we're I'm going to insert myself into this investigation but Donald Trump is looking at that gone. And you know what's it going to take how high do I have to jump with this particular basketball to drop into the book you know to get to grab a news cycle from something as outrageous as Jeopardy have sight Well you know let's let's tell him for women of color to go back to the country they came from and he's succeeded you know for 2 days out 3 days he's owned the news cycle and Jeffrey Epstein has been pushed off the front page and that's just one small example but he literally has been doing it every day since well frankly he's been doing it every day since he got the Republican nomination yet you know the whole idea is to put everybody on the defensive so they can effect the new cycle of cells with their issues an agenda you do that by defining them as a bad guy any Mox he much semester be says you can't do anything but replay what I'm saying because you get more ratings you get bigger audiences you could so more advertising make more profit so which by the way is true you have no choice I mean it's now let's say your advice in the presidential candidates on the Democratic ticket is 24 of them most of them have decided to ignore trump the focus on health care the. I mean wage immigration issues and so on some people think that's a mistake Thom Hartmann and some people are devising people like Bernie Sanders to go head on against Trump if only to distinguish himself from others who are carrying his agenda like Elizabeth Warren but also in order to goad Trump into making mistakes going over the cliff sometimes and getting into real trouble what would you advise I think if you go back and look at a number of successful campaigns both on the Republican and Democratic side particularly in the sixty's seventy's and eighty's and I'm sure you could identify some you know what Lyndon Johnson project Kennedy for example what you're describing Ralph is the traditional role of the vice presidential candidate and this is why I hope that whoever the presidential candidate is on the Democratic side picks as a vice presidential candidate somebody who really has an instinct for stick in the night then somebody who is willing to be outrageous somebody who's not afraid of controversy somebody who is willing to go on the attack constantly because that's what we're going to have to have happen and that allows the presidential candidate to essentially say Donald Trump he's doing whatever he's doing but that's Donald Trump but I really want to talk about how important it is that 30000 Americans died last year for lack of health care and we spent twice as much we spent 18 percent of our g.d.p. On health care when the rest of the countries of the world spend 9 percent you know I've got more important things to do than that than Donald Trump and I'm the vice presidential candidate goes out and it's just you know slashing and burning that's the way that it has at least in theory and actually in practice in many cases been done in the past and that would be my advice right now but but that's subject to change based on who the candidates are but in the meantime before the primaries you've got all these candidates ignoring Trump and Trump's dominating the news putting the I don't think that they should be ignoring him I think particular when you've got a large feel like if you look at the Republican primary I think 20. 16 this is a perfect example one of the advantages of a large field is that it provides you with an opportunity for every single person whenever they speak whatever they have to say to attack Trump just like in the Republican primaries every time anybody spoke they attacked Hillary Clinton knowing that she was going to be in all probability there by that point yes but primaries are gone as you know in any case you know assuming that she was going to take that on many so I think that the Democrats if they don't wrap a trump attack into most of their answers and frankly I would generalize this I would take it beyond Trump I would take it to the entire Republican Party because Trump is the logical outcome of Nixon's Southern strategy the trump of the cation of the Republican Party everybody's acting like it something that just fell out of the sky it didn't this is an entirely logical progression it needn't be Donald Trump and felt that somebody really outrageous so they need to wrap these 2 things together they need to tie the entire Republican Party to trump particularly as they get more and more uncomfortable with him. You know I just sort of common where the Republican challengers to trump listeners get in on Nader dot org And what I pointed out was you have these people who think Trump is a danger to Republicans they think Trump is going to sink the Republican Party for a long time the chaos the takeover the imagery is all bad for the Republicans the huge deficits that he's generating very bad for the Republicans so you have people like recently retired Senator Corker who's head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Senator Flake from Arizona you have people like Christine Todd Whitman who is a governor who Jersey an e.p.a. Administrator under Reagan who can't stand Trump and actually asked for his impeachment he's a Republican you have people like John k. Situ is the head of the House Budget Committee and then became governor for 8 years of Ohio he can't stand. Donald Trump and you have others as well in fact just recently Mark Sanford the former governor of South Carolina and member of the house until recently he's testing orders but he hasn't declared Bill Weld to his former Republican governor of Massachusetts and has actually declared against Trump but he hasn't got much news what do you think should happen and why you know I think they're intimidated by Truong I think they're afraid of being verbally lashed and stigmatized with nicknames going after their families the way Trump did against Cruz and Cruz is why I think the lack of challenge against a Republican incumbent Donald Trump who cannot break 44 percent in the polls has a low poll ratings high disapproval rating and he's now being challenged in the Republican primaries What's your take on that if you remember your days in elementary school the bully did 2 things number one was you know willing to be a bully but number 2 brought people to his side there would be people who is aligned themselves with a bully for fear the bully generally speaking but then they became bullies themselves you know and their sons shared self-interest there what has happened among the Republican billionaire and donor class is that at 1st they were all looking down their nose at Donald Trump now they are largely all firmly on his side because he has quite literally given them what they want He's given them you know a couple of trillion dollars in tax cuts and deregulation and all these things and so now I think it's not just that they're intimidated by Trump they're afraid of being called names they're afraid of the death threats that will come from me all right and stuff like that I think it's also that they're afraid that they'll lose their funding you know that which is political depth I think that that's what took out as much of the potential primary challenger that's what took out slaking Corker as much as anything else was that their funders were also intimidated or had a line. The souls of the bully so you know it's a more systemic problem than just Donald Trump I don't see number one I don't see anybody successfully challenging him I don't think there's going to be any Republican primary debates I think any anything that happens Bill Weld is a crackpot frankly and so is Mark Sanford I mean you know at least you know I mean formerly of the Appalachian Trail remember this is the guy who had the mistress in Argentina and all that stuff I mean these guys have no chance not 0 and that that convention would be a liability when you're up against Trump I mean he's trumped the monoliths thing so . I think you have the support of the donor class but the 2nd point I want to make real quick Rob You know I can't I'd love to get your take on it is I'm beginning to think that he's going to refuse to debate the Democratic nominee he's going to refuse to debate the Democratic nominee that's why I had to ask you twice Are you kidding that will make him a coward you can wire that no I think he knows that his brain doesn't work as well as most of these guys you know we'll have to see I may be very wrong about this but the sense that I'm getting is that he's feeling more and more to see just more and more insular more and more living in that Fox News bubble and therefore he doesn't need the rest of the media he doesn't need the major networks he doesn't need the published it would come from the debates and he doesn't want to give any Democratic candidate if he can successfully control the news cycle every single day which is done now for 2 and a half years there have been some in some weeks there has been one day where he has been on the front page of the newspapers where the top story in the news one day out of some weeks if he can continue to do that he doesn't need to debate and in fact the debates represent a liability potential threat to him because he could be wounded by the debate so I'm thinking that he's just going to flip the entire thing I'm keeping my if you know from from 64 until 180 there were no presidential debates it's right you know you're right just backing up a bit he has given the wealthy classes exactly. What they want I mean huge tax escapes and breaks the lack of enforcement of the Internal Revenue Code huge corporate welfare crony capitalism huge military contracts no enforcement against Wall Street crimes I mean what's here not to like right would trump the only thing is that they don't like his personal behavior in his final mile verbiage so he's very clever you know in some ways he's dumb as a rock a phrase he used against his former secretary of state Tillerson but in other ways he's actually a street smart genius isn't very much like Hitler and Mussolini were and you recall the 1st or not the 1st things that both of them did but the things that they did as they consolidated power and my concern is that Trump gets reelected that that's the end of the experiment of democracy in the United States which is probably all the conversation but one of the 1st things they did is they essentially deal with Jim I's the opposition parties this is before they outlawed them and the 1st step to deal with Jim eyes in the with the Democratic Party is to refuse to use its proper name as it was named by Thomas Jefferson was called the Democratic Republican Party until the 820 s. When they drop the Republican Party it's been called the Democratic Party forever and Joe McCarthy used to say always call it the Democrat party with an emphasis on rap and trumpets doing that literally every day to the point that you know guests on m s n b c are starting to refer to it as the Democrat Party so number one to deal with Jeremiah's the party you you don't even allow it to use its own name and then number 2 you don't allow it to have a president you know the Democrats come out with a campaign policies he doesn't respond to the policies he pretends they don't exist so if he refuses to debate them he has massively the legitimate them and then if you get to reelected he can just you know begin the process of the century outlined you know we're talking with Tom Hartman daily syndicated radio talk show host extraordinary tell my own ass who question me. The nobody's asked you under show let's face reality here Donald Trump didn't win the popular vote he came 3000000 votes short of Hillary Clinton so he was selected by the Electoral College but he did win a lot of votes tens of millions of votes and so let me ask you what is Donald Trump taught us about ourselves as a people. It's a really good question Ralph and I think that what has happened is that what was always implicit has become explants that you know Richard Nixon with the Southern strategy was sort of explicitly races but not so much and then when Reagan came along and as you know the only Atwater tape that David Corn found years ago you know where he said you know we used to be able to use the n. Word and then and then you know we got a little more sophisticated we started talking about bussing and then when Reagan by the time waiting came along we didn't even need to talk about Boston anymore we could simply say tax everybody understood that that benefited white people more than black people or in some cases even hurt black people and so people got what we were saying you know I think the Willie Horton ad might have been the exception but that's how desperate George Herbert Walker Bush was because he was such a weak candidate but what was implicit what was kind of quietly done what you know the whole reason for the phrase dog whistle was only dogs can hear them you know is that you know making racist statements that only racists can hear is that Donald Trump now is saying out loud and this is a really dangerous thing number one and it reflects the racism that is inherent in our society in our culture you know largely among white Americans but it occurs in other places as well but largely white racism but number 2 it also is breeding a new generation of races I mean you know basically when Nixon and Reagan when Reagan gave his 1st speech after he was nominated the Republican nominee in 1980 in Philadelphia Mississippi you know just down the road from where Schwimmer Goodman and Cheney were murdered the 3 civil rights workers that made the movie Mississippi Burning out of and I mean tires speech before 30000 white people was about states' rights it was a dog whistle the racists got it the Southerners got it but the media didn't even reported in that context I mean it was largely unreported and you know unknown to this day so the young people of America were not exposed to this racism in a way that could convert them essentially the. Evangelize them Trump has now turned it by making it expletive has begun this evangelical process and now the whole All right has jumped into this and they're recruiting Like There's No Tomorrow they're doing it on You Tube the doing on Twitter they're doing it on Facebook they're doing it on 4 chan they're doing it on a chair I mean they're just doing it and they're doing the streets they're putting billboards up posters white racism white supremacy has gone mainstream now as a consequence of this and that concerns me tremendously I am very very worried that the Turner Diaries scenario that Tim McVeigh thought he could bring into fruition bring into reality that Donald Trump is taking us closer to the possibility of something like an actual civil war in the United States but I think he's also taught us that we're doing a bad job as a people recruiting politicians we don't do our homework we don't know what their record is there are too many millions of voters who are 5 minute voters a is a person likable is he saying things you're saying that you don't want to say out loud does he hear your own prejudices Yeah he's my guy even know he is jeopardizing your jobs freezing your minimum wage jeopardizing your health care exposing your kids to all kinds of toxic pollutants in the air in the water and generally running your livelihood into the ground it doesn't seem to matter as long as a dog whistles as long as is General prescriptions promising a terrific health care system and we get rid of Obamacare I'm going to give you clean air pewter water I'll give you all kinds of industrial jobs I alone can fix it I mean why are people so much smarter when it comes to their sports teams but when it comes to their politicians it's as if they're calling now take me I'm yours I think there's a real simple answer. That question and it's a it's one of the most important questions that nobody is discussing if you watch sports television or listen to sports radio you will hear a discussion not just of which team is more likely to win which team is more likely to lose but also why this particular player knows this particular strategy he knows how to get around this kind of a block you know it's they go in down into the sport our political discussion in our corporate media is completely different from that it's all about who's up who's down what's the horse race you know Bernie's been complaining about this for 5 years very very loudly and he's absolutely right that the media will not talk about the issues they will only talk about the issues if they're forced to in the context of how do these issues help or hurt these candidates and even sports radio is more in depth massively more and than the kind of political coverage that you're getting on a most of the sea and c.n.n. And the big 3 networks and you know generally on radio and until that changes and I don't think and I think it's going to take something like either return the fairness doctrine or you know breaking up big media to make that change until that changes we're going to continue to have your 5 minute voters because they only have 5 minutes of information what's interesting is how much he's doing in his very base I mean when you really consider what he's taken away from them and what he's broken his promise and betrayed them on really down their entire spectrum of livelihood I mean the crumbling public services for example he promised you is going to have all kinds of infrastructure jobs I'm a builder he said I know what that means is and then in a thing even his proposal came down to a measly $20000000000.00 a year and you know how many few bridges that will pay for and then he's denying climate disruption so you've got all of these red states being flooded like Louisiana and here's a president who's make his saints a home. The hurricane intensity zone the tornado proof religion is a hoax the rising sea levels are a hoax and we're not going to think about it Americans and a lot of these people are living in red states have voted for him so there's something deeply masochistic operating here don't you think perhaps I'm inclined to think you know going back to my last you know riff is that again this is a symptom of the media the media is not pointing these things out they're not talking about these issues and so therefore Trump gets to dominate the discussion and the corporate media you have to interlocking boards of directors between the media and there's this amazing web site they rule dot th e y r u l e dot net and you can plug in any of the big corporations plug in corporation and corporation be and then push a button and it'll show you how many steps you have to go through to find the interlocking board of directors and in fact in my book on equal protection I went through 100 corporations and showed how all the top 100 corporations in America all have interlocking boards of directors and you can literally say Ok this person is on the t.n.t. Board also on the Wells Fargo board and this person's on the Wells Fargo board and also on the n.b.c. Board and this person on the n.b.c. Board and also on the Montana board this person you know and it literally go around the strength circle so the media is unwilling to point these things out because they're all making money on this stuff or else come let's have web site again it's called they rule th e y r u l e dot net well on your program you know you have 3 hours every day do you ever point out I'm sure you do that to people on the public airways or the landlords the radio and t.v. Stations of the tenancy don't pay anything for their license 247 they decide who gets on who doesn't they've got the f.c.c. In their pocket and they got the members of Congress intimidated they're really afraid of the local television stations for. Will you ever get a discussion among people about why don't they want to control more of what they actually own the people own the airway. It's a good discussion and we do have that from time to time on my show you know the biggest challenge that we have frankly right now is the 1996 Telecommunications Act that Bill Clinton signed that you know didn't entirely privatized the airwaves but largely did and now you've got the f.c.c. Coming out and saying that the deal that the United States made with cable companies back in the eighty's was if you want to run your cable through our public rights of way because cable is not over the air if you want to run your cable through a public rights of way you have to give back to the communities in the form of public access television stations and yet the fund C.-Span or the f.c.c. Last week came out with a pause rule ending that which is going to you know and cable access and nonprofit access is like the last bastion of any kind of liberal programming that the on television anywhere in the country and so you know they're getting ready to poll that I mean they're taking that away there's an all out assault on the media and then of course you know the fairness doctrine which Reagan ended in 87 said that if you want to maintain your license you're using our public airwaves and this is you know before cable was a big thing if you want to maintain your license you have to program in the public interest as a magic phrase I didn't say that if you carry Limbaugh you have to carry our you know far from it it's basically at the program of overgenerous and that was interpreted to mean news at the top of the l. When I was a teenager you know one of my 1st jobs or I was 16 was as a d.j. And I did that for 3 years and then I did news for 7 years in Lansing Michigan and when I was doing news if I got caught talking to the sales people I'd be fired there was this wall between talent and sales you could not you know it just was not allowed if you were in the news department and that got done away with an 87 I mean this is back in. From 67 to 78 but that got done away with an 87 by Reagan so between the loss of the fairness actually earning 7 and the talking occasions back in 96 and now the corruption of the f.c.c. You know by both Bush and Trump I'm very very concerned about the future of oh yeah you know I've written to the chairman of the sort of Communications Commission asked him how he'd appraises his commission enforcing the $134.00 Communications Act which required that the radio and t.v. Stations using our property had to pay attention to the public interest convenience a necessity which means public news programming local and so on never even responded send it again never responded talked about our radio never responded send it to members of Congress it wouldn't respond that's how bad it is people because the only people there are fraid of people is people like you listening to this program and you've just got organizers so in a very dynamic way and enjoy life being assertive citizens recovering the meaning of we the people in the preamble the Constitution before we get to your new series and this is going to really excite listeners The Secret History of the Supreme Court the United States Secret History of the 2nd Amendment and so on it has to do we have any comments from Steve then David I'm sure you do get Tom I've got a question it goes back to the Trump and the whole racism discussion you know what I hear coming from the right is how can you call trump a racist black unemployment is at an all time low how do you answer that I don't know if that's factually true but black unemployment that's the Klang How do you answer that well you know in the recovery from the Republican Great Crash that the Republican Great Recession of 20072008 the damage that Republican deregulation in the economy you know Obama did a pretty good job of putting us back on course but that said. It's an awful lot of what's been going on is sugar high stuff as I'm sure you know if that has worked to the benefit of black people that's great it's worked for the benefit of everybody in that planet as is relatively low according to the official says 2 statistics but black people white people you know everybody right across the board by and large unless you're making over a couple 100 grand a year you're not seeing much of the benefit of that labor force participation rates you know or I think the last number I saw was 67 percent you know unemployment if you are unable to find a job for more than a year say you live in a part of the country where industry has just left when they have to happen they went to Mexico or they've gone to China or whatever if you live in a part of the country like that where the just are no jobs you can be unemployed but if you're unemployed more than a year you're not counted as unemployed you're so you only show up in the labor force participation numbers so instead of having 7080 percent of the people who are you know eligible and willing to work working we have you know in the sixty's right now because we're just not counting people anymore you know there's these different measures of unemployment number one we have a false picture it's a false narrative that you know black unemployment is lower than it's ever been or any unemployment is lower than it's ever been and all you have to do is insert back in the labor force participation numbers and which gets you to I think it's called the 6 as opposed to a watery 2 well probably knows these numbers better than I do Tom even if they're employed they can't live on what they're making is a good frozen minimum wage that is completely separate from the unemployment rate in all its deficiencies as you pointed out black wealth is 110th the white Well 110th quite well in terms of their savings in it and the value of any housing they have and so it's a very deceptive thing you keep saying that Hispanic unemployment is that a record low black unemployment is record low Yeah wages are pretty low too and you've got. Indians if people are making less than workers made 968 adjusted for inflation he would come it's David Steve I would like to ask you a question I would assume I'm going to get crickets but I've asked liberals and lefties what do we do about white men they have the highest rate of opiate addiction they do feel disenfranchised and they become tempted by the tiki torches what do we do about white men they do feel alley unaided fewer number white males in colleges and than females strew you know that's one reason Tucker Carlson's book was so copulate Tom because he had a section of all kinds of statistics about white male debilitation I mean they're really you know mind of drug addiction they can't get adequate jobs at the jobs in industry day one Sattar gone it's the plight of the white male I think David is saying is it paid enough attention to and at some point it becomes an identity I agree there's maybe a couple of points that make around this a I don't have an easy bumper sticker for you and that's unfortunate we need to be thinking about how to message them in a strict code way that basically the white male has been raised with the privilege of being kind of at the top of the economic heap with the story the narrative that he is responsible for being the breadwinner and that's how his identity is defined and that's how it is social status is different. When you talk to a man typically the question is What do you do you know what do you do for a living not who are you you know what do you like or what are your hobbies or whatever and so we might men define themselves this way but Kate ticket and Richard Wilkinson have done some absolutely brilliant research they run a think tank of the United Kingdom and they published 3 books on this of the 1st school why inequality matters the 2nd was called The Spirit Level and they just came out with a 3rd one and I can't remember the title after I planted it has the word level letter also and what they found is that as inequality goes now this is not poverty this is inequality just inequality as the rich get richer the poor get poorer what happens in the middle is that levels of social dysfunction start to explode and it's a linear relationship to a certain point then it almost goes log and I'm talking about things like teenage pregnancy sexually transmitted disease suicide mental illness racism and things like that as a subset of that homicide suicide I think I mentioned drug abuse and drug addiction these are symptoms not specifically of poverty although the white male has been relatively speaking impoverished over the last 40 some odd years as a result of Reaganomics I mean wages have been absolutely flat after just exploding 'd for the previous you know 60 years so white males have not been able to fulfill those roles of thought in society which is the most commonly pointed to answer to your question but I think that if you look at the research that Wilkinson and Tekken have done and they're really worth digging into what you find is that sense of social alienation is another one trust literally interpersonal trust all of these negative indicators go up or in the case of trust you know it goes down massively purely as a function of inequality and by the way there's a good body in the anthropological. Literature of the same thing among animals among particular mammals and it gets very very visible with primates but even with you know dogs and cats if they detect a fundamental on fairness in their environment they react to it by becoming erotic essentially and angry and in many cases self destructive So I think that the rise of the billionaire class in the United States along with the rise of deep poverty although deep poverty has been with us for a long time but Prince where the rise of the billionaire class is probably the main thing that's driving this and it's the one thing that nobody ever talks about. Great great well this is no look let's get to the series if you're certain to put out your 1st book The Hidden History of the 2nd Amendment and let me quote something that I don't think most people know but that's why you're such a great historian in this is a quote as recently as the 1970 s. The n.r.a. That's a National Rifle Association and both political parties supported reasonable gun control measures and were willing to entertain even more comprehensive measures and quote to know our Brita Well it's actually true you know Ronald Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush were big advocates of gun control and the n.r.a. Was you know when I was a sportsman the association was all in on gun control in fact helped write some of the legislation that had do with the what's called a duck load if you're out duck hunting you can't have more than 3 shells in your rifle because it's unsportsmanlike to have more than 3 that's you know to take more than 3 shots of the flock of nice or door ducks for example and there's other examples too in the n.r.a. Helped write a lot of this legislation in state to state about you know what kind of equipment you could use when you go hunting when you could go hunting what were the rules for hunting to make it all sportsmen like all that went out the window in the mid seventy's when the n.r.a. Basically got taken over by the gun manufacturers and turned from being a sportsman organization devoted to its membership to being an essentially a lobbying front organization for the weapons industry and then well along with that they acquired massive political power because they you know they got an enormous wealth and and wealth you're the guy who taught us all this you know back in the day in the sixty's and seventy's that that wealth driving political power than corrupt systems whether it's systems that have to do with auto safety or whether it's systems that have to do with gun safety and then that that in turn corrupted the Republican Party and frankly the Democratic Party for quite a few years so you know that's the bad news the good news I think is that it the most powerful lobby in Washington. D.c. In 197998 was the tobacco lobby nobody crossed the tobacco lobby Mike Pence about the writing op eds about how the tobacco doesn't cause cancer when the lawsuits started happening in 97 and 98 and we started as a nation realizing that this industry had been not only lying to us for 60 years but was aggressively killing us to the tune of you know happily in America the year the horror just shattered their power and the tobacco lobby 520012002 had become just another lobbying Congress I think the same process is happening right now with the other which is one of the reasons why when I wrote it Mr guns in the 2nd Amendment I was thinking you know this is a man we made the decision to have years ago I started but it seemed to me like this was the trend line this is the direction and now in the last year we're seeing you know all this infighting in the collapse of everything which is very much what we saw the tobacco industry in the end of its heyday so you know I think that there's good stuff coming down the road here with the use of the guard going to see the penguins is considered totally invincible in Washington we always point out it takes a lot fewer people than most people think once or organize and focus on their members of Congress attorneys corporations around your next book coming out in October the hidden history of the Supreme Court and the betrayal of America what's that about. It's about how the Supreme Court starting with the Margaret decision and 1803 basically placed themselves above both Congress and the Prez Thomas Jefferson went nuts about this absolutely not said you know Marber decision stands and the Constitution has become a thing of wax the Marbridge decision said basically the Supreme Court said that we have the power to strike down legislation that's been passed by Congress and signed by the president and then in the later part of the a 19th century in the early 20th century they went beyond that and said we have the power to literally write new laws and the example that the right likes to use about that is Roe v Wade where in Roe v Wade and then later Planned Parenthood the Casey actually was the one where where it got real explicit you know they came up with this 3 trimester thing that's the job of the legislature and I miss mentioned Roe v Wade because everybody is familiar with it but there's dozens and dozens of examples of this. And interesting like during the Reagan administration Reagan had a guy in his Justice Department whose job was to figure out how to basically un do Brown versus Board of Education and Roe v Wade these 2 decisions that the Reaganite saw as you know terrible decisions and this guy came up with this extraordinary memo going back to the Marbury decision in 1803 and carrying it forward case by case by case and proposed what is sometimes referred to as court stripping which is that Congress under Article 3 Section 2 explicitly the Constitution explicitly says that the Supreme Court so operate under exceptions defined by Congress and under regulations defined by Congress and so this guy came up with this whole memo and this whole political strategy that they would have Congress when they seize control of Congress and the White House that they would pass legislation saying essentially that we Congress are going to regulate you the Supreme Court under Article 3 Section 2 to say that the Brown versus Board of Education decision we're striking that down and the legislation repassing to strike it down you may not review where we're going to negate judicial review with regard to this and the same thing with the greater Roe v Wade they never did it they never got that control but the guy who wrote that memo His name is John Roberts and right now he's the chief justice of the u.s. Supreme Court that's why you call it the hidden history you know I came across years ago Tom the early Pennsylvania constitution before 17 eighties before the constitutional convention and they refused to give their Supreme Court any authority to interpret their state constitution as it was you know the courts business we by referendum are going to interpret our Constitution Ironically the referendum and this is a huge debate at the Constitutional Convention judicial review should the Supreme Court have the barge district. And they largely all agreed no was the answer and in fact in Federalist it's been about a year now since I wrote that book so I'd have to go back and look but I think it's a federal us why don't you want to throw a number out but in the Federalist Papers I think it's 71 or 72 as I recall you know Hamilton talks about how the court is the least harmful the least likely to injure they don't have the power the person like Congress they don't have the power the military like the Executive they're basically powerless and you know he was trying to assuage the fears of people who thought that the Supreme Court might claim the power judicial review which is what happened in the bar Regis's and Jefferson couldn't fight it because he won the Marbury decisions. He was stuck. But it's a whole fascinating thing and it sounds a little bit wonky but I'm telling you it's not it's not on the job because McConnell that majority leader in the Senate Mitch McConnell from Kentucky his mission in life is to install in the federal courts the most rightwing corporatist he can find and it's already serious review because look now the Supreme Court which is I call the corporate Supreme Court it favors corporations against workers against voters against you know you name it it's a pro corporate court it isn't invalidating anything that might be called corporate excess of power and look at the result they ruled in Citizens United and 2010 that corporations have good unlimited money for or against local state and federal candidates unlimited money as long as they don't coordinate it with the candidates I mean Justice Stevens who we just lost bless his soul dumb post even just passed away age 99 called it about the most devastating anti-democratic decision ever made by the Supreme Court yes in his rebuttal in Citizens United is dissent Citizens United is must read stuff it's only now it runs across 4 pages and it's everybody in America should read it I mean it's shocking he talks about Tokyo Rose how you know under this decision of the United Tokyo Rose would have been able to contribute to that step in electoral campaigns and run campaigns in the United States it's amazing Tom Herman how many secret histories you're going to put out and give us a sense of what the titles are Sure well the 1st one was they had no history of the guns in the 2nd Amendment the 2nd one which will be out this fall which is available now you know to preorder from your local bookstores or online is The Hidden History of the screen quite the trail of America the 3rd one which will be out next spring which I. Finished writing about 3 months ago and is going through line editing right now that 3rd one is we're still debating the title I want the title The Hidden History of the Republican war on voting MacAllister doesn't want the word publican to be in the title but you know so we'll see where that how that ends up the 4th one which I'm writing right now is The Hidden History of the rise of monopoly in the death of free enterprise in America and we haven't yet come up with a title for it but that's my working title and these are very clearly written there are a 192 pages they're written to be read in understood they're not huge volumes who have esoteric social science jargon all the small books they're small books in there and in the end my goal in this and I I pitched this as a 10 book series by publisher and they've been buying them 2 books at a time and so we'll see I've got contracts now for 4 of them you know if they do well they will go to 6 so on I've written a short book that I could have called the Hidden History of how the rats reform the Congress time. People are ordering it 5 at a time because it makes them laugh themselves seriously enough to organize Congress watchdog groups back home and by the way you can get that by going to Nader dot org or just go to rats reform Congress start org where you are by the way get a free tutorial step by step on how you could collaborate with your fellow citizens actually organize to summon the your Senators and Representatives back home for these town meetings before we close Steve David any last come yet there's I have I have a lightning round 30 seconds both men have to answer these questions Tom Hartman how many books have you written I probably read 40 I think I have 26 or 27 in print right now Ralph Nader how many books have you written.