As promised, here are the transcripts of certain internal Federal Reserve meetings from 2007-2010, specifically, the meetings where their top officials planned their response to the gathering crisis (these are known as Federal Open Market Committee meetings, or FOMC).  Check out Ryan Grim's article on The Huffington Post: Fed Officials With Privileged Info Head to Wall Street.

What do you take out of this?  Download the full PDF and print, here or simply view below.

Thanks to The Huffington Post, we were able to compile this revolving door list of individuals that were in attendance at these meetings, who moved into the private sector.

As I told you on Friday, the Huffington Post and the Dylan Ratigan Show got some significant internal documents from the Federal Reserve.  We'll be releasing them at 4pm on my show, on the Huffington Post, and at DylanRatigan.com.  They gave us the transcripts of certain internal meetings from 2007-2010, the meetings where their top officials planned their response to the gathering crisis (these are known as Federal Open Market Committee meetings, or FOMC).  Willingly giving away documents isn't how the Fed typically operates, especially documents that might point to serious management problems within the central bank.  They are known as a tight-knit bank-friendly super-secret agency.

Is the Fed finally coming clean?

I thought, since the Fed wants to turn over a new leaf, why not ask for the transcripts of the meetings from 2007-2010?  There are no proprietary secrets there.  The Fed will release them in a few years anyway.  Let's just accelerate the timetable, and let everyone know what really went down at those meetings during the crisis of 2007 and 2008.  And we got them.  And we'll show you just what we got.

Still, in at least one way, it's not clear that the Fed has changed its stripes.  When Dudley argued that Fannie and Freddie should reduce debt owed by millions of homeowners, what he didn't say is that this would help the big banks by making the home equity lines of credit they own on that very same debt more valuable.  Taxpayers should transfer more capital to the big banks.   This proposal is, as Gretchen Morgenson said, a "bailout by another name."  And why wouldn't it be?  Banks are still the Fed's real client.  The board of directors of the New York Fed includes Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase, as well as two other bankers.

Cornell researchers took short, memorable lines from around 1,000 movies and compared them against other lines of a similar length spoken by the same character at about the same point in the film. (They define memorable lines as those listed as such on the Internet Movie Database website, IMDB.com.)

They then asked individuals who had not seen the films to guess which of the two lines was the memorable one. On average, people chose correctly about 75 percent of the time, confirming the idea that the memorable features are inherent in the lines themselves and not the result of some other factor, such as the length of the lines or their location in the film

Here is the link for the test http://memo.clr3.com/

The Nation's Ari Melber's "Daily Rant" focuses on Facebook's billion-dollar purchase of the photo sharing service Instagram, and the backlash to the business move as users are now opting to uninstall the mobile application.

Here at The Dylan Ratigan Show, there’s nothing we love more than talk with people who care about the same issues we do, and having a discussion and debate on fixing our economy and our country.  (You might have seen some of our previous stops at at Book People in Austin, Books and Books in Coral Gables, Florida,Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Lexington, The Book Loft in Columbus, and a whole bunch more on the 30 Million Jobs tour.)

Despite all our travels, we haven’t hit one state that’s right across the river from 30 Rock.  JERSEY!  On Wednesday, join us for what we’re sure will be a fantastic talk with Dylan.  Come say hi, take photos, get your book signed, and tell Dylan what’s on your mind!  Details are on Barnes and Noble’s website, and here:

DATE: Wednesday, April 4th at 7:30PM
LOCATION: Barnes and Noble — 765 Route 17 South, Paramus, NJ 07652 (Google Maps)
MORE INFO: BarnesandNoble.com or call 201-445-4589

Find directions here with our handy-dandy Google Map…

UPDATE: This event is being postponed.  We’ll let you know as soon as it it rescheduled — sometime over the next few weeks!  Our sincere apologies if you made plans to come tonight.

Finally, it’s here — our first New York City area book event! Here at The Dylan Ratigan Show, we feel like New Jersey often gets overlooked — so we’re headed across the Hudson River to Bookends!  Join Dylan and the whole gang at 7PM for a fun discussion on Greedy Bastards, renewing our economy, and how we can use the power of people and networks to find solutions to our biggest problems.

DATE: Monday, March 12th 2012

TIME: 7:00 PM 

LOCATION: Bookends Bookstore
211 E. Ridgewood Avenue
Ridgewood, NJ 07450 (Google Map)

View Larger Map

 For directions and more information, visit Bookends website at http://www.book-ends.com/. 

 Any questions about the event?  Email us at dylan@dylanratigan.com and put “BOOKENDS” as the subject.

There’s no question that we are living at a time of explosive change — perhaps the greatst since the turn of the 19th Century.  But with the level of potential energy and risk in the this country equally at odds, which one will win out — abundance or scarcity?  And how can we push our country towards a path to renewed wealth and a good standard of living for all, rather than just for those already at the top?

Peter Diamandis believes that because of forces already at work, the future will be better than we think.  He is an entrepreneur turned philanthropist, and the founder and CEO of the X-Prize Foundation, a non-profit encouraging and rewarding those who dare to make the impossible possible.  He is author of the new book Abundance: Why the Future is Better Than You Think.  Here’s his discussion with Dylan.

Want to learn more? You can download a free chapter of Peter’s book at his website here.

- Meg Robertson is a digital producer for DylanRatigan.com. You can find her on Twitter @MegRobertson.

From Loop 21:

Hitting the lottery once in a lifetime will never happen to most of us, but Brian Brockington just hit the criminal justice system jackpot, not once, not twice, but three times. DNA evidence has linked him to three sexual assaults but lucky old Brian will soon be released from prison without ever serving a single day for any of the assaults in question.

So is Brian Brockington just one of the “luckiest” men alive? Perhaps. But he had some help.  Continuing the lotto metaphor, you could say the powers that be screwed up and now all of us have to pay up, starting with the women DNA evidence links him to assaulting. Or in casino terms one might say the slot machines are indelibly broken and those in charge of the house haven’t dubbed repairing them a priority. As a result we’ll likely see a lot more Brian Brockington’s winning the criminal lotto in coming years. Allow me to explain.

As reported in The New York Daily News, “Brockington, 35, was arrested on rape charges in 2007 and his cousin Rodney Howard, 36, was arrested two years later after their DNA matched evidence from a 1993 gun-point attack on a 29-year-old woman. But because of a police backlog, the DNA evidence from the crime wasn’t processed for nearly a decade — and prosecutors filed charges a day after the crime’s 10-year statute of limitations expired, said Steven Reed, spokesman for the Bronx DA. The DA’s office realized their error only after the cousins were arrested — and prosecutors were forced to drop the rape charges.” Brockington was subsequently linked to two other sexual assaults.

The scary thing about the Brockington case (you know besides the fact that a serial rapist will likely soon be walking among us) is that the current system virtually insures that Brockington will not be the last rapist set free by what some are calling a “technicality” but increasingly looks like willful legal negligence. Not simply on the part of police and prosecutors, but on the part of legislators.

Read the rest of Keli Goff's article at Loop 21.

- Meg Robertson is a Digital Producer for The Dylan Ratigan Show.

After kicking off the college tour leg of our 30 Million Jobs campaign in Lexington, we made our way to the great city of Columbus, Ohio. Here’s what we did while we were there.

If you haven’t guessed, the whole team at The Dylan Ratigan Show can’t get enough of being on the road. Maybe it’s escaping New York for a few days that we like, but most of all, it’s getting to see cities we haven’t been to.  Meeting new people. Supporting some fantastic independent bookstores (like this one, andthis one), and having an opportunity to talk and debate real issues with folks we meet on the road.

To kick the day off, we did an early afternoon Greedy Bastards event at Book Loft of German Village.

Book Loft of German Village

If you’re ever in Columbus, you have to come check the surrounding German Village neighborhood out — it’s walkable and has lots of independent retail spots, with loads of beautiful historic beautiful homes and buildings to walk around and see.  The weather was nice(ish), so we held our Book Loft talk outside. (You can check out all the photos on our Facebook page.)

Dylan at Book Loft!

After the Book Loft talk wrapped up, we stopped by local coffeehouse Cup O’ Joe right next door to have a quick dose of caffeine — another business that is highly plugged in to its community.

Stopping by Cup O' Joe...

While we were there, we met up with some folks who were at the book event. It’s not like we are ever at a loss for words, so…

After Book Loft wrapped up and we got our needed caffeine, it was time to head over to The Ohio State University, just a short drive away. We taped our show at their new Ohio Union, which was completed three years ago. We even had the most famous of all Buckeyes stop by — the one and only Brutus. Dylan got to talk to Brutus about why a Buckeye is called a Buckeye. Here’s the video:

We had a blast at the Ohio Union and met some incredible smart, motivated and cool students while we were there. Here are some more photos of the show and some folks who came to visit us. The entire set isup on our Facebook page here.

Loving that Buckeye spirit!

O-H-I-O!!!

As we wrapped up, we also had a visit from OSU president Gordon Gee (@presidentgee). He had the time to have a quick chat with Dylan. Here’s the video:

After that, we found out that our flight to Chicago was cancelled due to weather.  With our fearless leader leading the way (Executive Producer Steve Friedman, of course), we hopped in a car and drove 356 miles from Columbus to Chicago. A little weather report calling for 5″ of snow isn’t going to stop us! (It didn’t end up snowing, by the way.)

We ended our day with one quick “breakfast for dinner” pit stop at the unofficial favorite road-trip restaurant of the DR crew, Bob Evans.   Sometimes, after a long day on the road, you just need a biscuit. (And some gravy. Lots of it.)

What’s Up Next: Today we’re in Chicago with two fantastic events. We’ll be at 57th Street Books at 11:30AM CT, and a show taping at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business at 3PM CT.Here’s the full schedule, with addresses and other info.

We fly back to New York tonight… much too quick of a trip to Chicago, but we WILL be back!

Here’s a list of everywhere we visited in Columbus, OH, with links to their websites. Say hi to all these great venues on Twitter!

Book Loft of German Village - 631 S. Third St. (at Sycamore Street), Columbus, OH 43206

Cup O’ Joe - 600 N High St (btw Russell St & Goodale St), Columbus, OH 43215 @cupojoecoffee

The Ohio State University “Ohio Union” - 1739 N High St. (at W 12th Ave.), Columbus, OH 43210@ohiounion

Bob Evans - 670 Brandt Pike (Rt 201), Dayton, OH 45424 @bobevansfarms

- by Meg Robertson, Digital Producer

Yesterday was the first stop on the 30 Million Jobs college tour, and we were lucky enough to be hosted by the University of Kentucky — specifically, the awesome folks at the College of Pharmacy.  There’s nothing we like more than getting out of New York for a few days, and this week, we’re asking people one question when we visit schools: “what’s your experiment?”

Now, when we come into town, we don’t only like to do the television show (although, that’s the main focus) — we also like to do meetups, book events, and visit some of the more fabled local institutions around town.  Here’s what we did around Lexington.

We kicked off the morning with a visit to one of Lexington’s oldest diners, and a place that lives and breathes the Wildcat spirit of UK - Tolly Ho. The menu alone is, well, worth coming there for.  One of us (not going to say who) may have indulged in some biscuits and gravy.  You can’t get that in NYC!

After that, we headed on over to Joseph-Beth Booksellers for an excellent discussion on creating a culture of innovation and the 30 Million Jobs we need to kick-start our economy.  (We were joined by local reporter Greg Skilling, whose writeup of our visit to Lexington is up at the Louisville Independent Examiner.)

To start, we had a fun breakfast with documentary filmmaker Peter Byck, who directed and producedCarbon Nation.  We talked a lot about energy, the environment, and how much people from opposite ends of the political spectrum actually agree on when it comes to ideas about a cleaner, greener America.  We’ll be featuring a clip of his documentary on the show today.

Here are some other photos from the book event! (Many courtesy Greg Skilling of the Louisville Independent Examiner.)

After that, it was off to do the television show – we started off with a pre-shoot outside with the one and only Wildcat.  Usually, he’s working for the #1 NCAA basketball team in the country, but he took some time out of his schedule to hang with us.

The show taping itself was a blast — we had a ton of students from UK stop by and watch us do the show. Here’s a nice photo slide show from the good folks at the UK College of Pharmacy:

We even gave away some copies of Greedy Bastards to these deserving UK’ers!  We were pumped that so many people came out for the taping… the energy was electric!

After the show taping, we headed over to Coffea Island, a really great independent coffee shop in Lexington. Modeled after the weekly Regulars meetup in Austin, we wanted to hold a small chat about creating jobs, fostering innovation and community partnerships. We had a really nice turnout, some great coffee and food, and made some new friends:

Many thanks to Bill and everyone at Coffea Island for making this happen last minute. (Here’s the owner, Bill!)

Here’s a full list of all the great places we visited.  Lots of gratitude to everyone we met for the Lexington hospitality — we won’t forget it and we hope to be back soon.

Tolly Ho - 606 S. Broadway, Lexington KY 

Joseph-Beth Booksellers - 161 Lexington Green Cir # B Lexington, KY

University of Kentucky – College of Pharmacy

Coffea Island - 385 Rose Street, Lexington KY

As the 30 Million Jobs tour rolls on, we’re thrilled that we’re visiting CHICAGO on Friday, February 24th.  We’re planning two fun events that are free and open to the public — a 11:30AM event at independent bookstore 57th Street Books, and a live show taping at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, from 3-4P CT.   We hope to see you there if you’re in the Chicago area!

57th Street Books Event
TIME: 11:30A – 12:30P CT
LOCATION: 1301 East 57th Street Chicago, IL 60637 (Google Map)
ABOUT: At one of the Chicago’s best independent book stores, Dylan will talk about his book Greedy Bastards and lead a discussion on fostering a new culture of innovation in America. This will followed by a Q&A/discussion and a book signing. NOTE: For more information or for directions to 57th Street Books, visit their website or call (773) 684-1300.

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO: LIVE SHOW TAPING
TIME: 3-4PM CT
LOCATION: University of Chicago Booth School of Business
5807 South Woodlawn Avenue Chicago, IL 60637 (Google Map)
ABOUT: Attend a live show taping of The Dylan Ratigan Show. Students are encouraged to come, but this taping is open to the public. NOTE: Dylan will likely not be available for a meet-and-greet after this particular taping due to our travel schedule.  If you’d like to say hi, please try to attend our book event.

On Thursday night, Dylan visited the new king of late-night, Jimmy Fallon, to show an American-made lightbulb (from FireFly LED Lighting, an Austin, TX-based company) that lasts for 30 years and is 90% efficient. Dylan used the lightbulb as one example of millions of new experiments and innovations that are going to be needed in order for this country to prosper.

Dylan asked Jimmy to summon America’s youth to seize the joy of experimentation so that we can keep up in a world that’s changing faster than ever.  You can watch the full segments here:

For more on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, visit their website, or follow Jimmy on Twitter@JimmyFallon.

Criminologist David Kennedy and author of “Dont’ Shoot: One Man, A Street Fellowship, and the End of Violence in Inner-City America,” former NAACP directorBen Chavis, and Russell Simmons, chairman of Rush Communications and founder of globalgrind.com, joins MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan in Austin, Texas to talk about the failed War on Drugs and how the underlying problems of the Texas prison system.

As Dylan explained on the show:

“This segment aimed at one idea. The war on drugs is a monumental failure by any measure. Drug consumption, cost, this failed experiment has turned into a breeding ground for a prison system that is based on racism. An african-american is ten times more likely to be incarcerated for the exact same drug crimes as a white American. In order to keep this drug war alive, we are paying an astronomical price,” said Dylan.

“The cost of incarcerating 150,000 prisoners is $3.3 billion in 2010. And yet prescription drugs, pills, marijuana, are more prevalent in our society than ever. It is time to start treating drugs for what they are — a massive public health crisis, and funnel those wasted billions of dollars toward real reeducation and using people in the human capital that we are destroying in our society to harness and release it in our goal to create 30 million jobs.”

Here’s a full transcript of their conversation:

DYLAN: You have a lot of endorsements around you that are emerging around your  methodology. Give us some insight into exactly what it is you have been doing so that we can better understand it.

DAVID KENNEDY: So I work in some of the most desperate neighborhoods in the country. They are largely very historically damaged African-American neighborhoods. They have all kinds of issues and problems we need to pay attention to. There are a couple of things that are not part of the usual historical fabric that we’ve been dealing with that are doing tremendous damage. These are neighborhoods where if you are a young black man, one in 200 of you in some of these communities are killed by gunshot every year. They are neighborhoods that are driving the core American reality, which is that if you’re a black man, one in three of you will go to prison.

DYLAN: So, tell us what you’re doing.

DAVID KENNEDY:  It’s not okay. Neither one of these things is all right. And what turns out to be true is that the community doesn’t think it’s okay. The guys on the corner don’t think it’s okay. Law enforcement doesn’t think it’s okay. Hardly anybody is driving the problem. It’s 10% of the 5% of the young men on the streets at the core of this violence. And those parties, the community, law enforcement, community service, all over the country they are getting together and sitting down face to face with the 10% of the 5%.  They are saying we know who you are and what you’re doing, we all care about you. None of us want you dead or locked up. There’s a couple things you’re doing that has to stop. And we want to engage with you so we don’t have to bury you and we don’t have to lock you up.

DYLAN: What have your results been?

DAVID KENNEDY:  You get the absolute elimination of street drug markets. You get 40-60% reductions in homicides in these neighborhoods. You get dramatic improvements in the lives of these guys that everybody is giving up on. It’s pretty remarkable.

DYLAN:  Russell, when you hear David and see the endorsement from a conservative West Texas oil man, you see the endorsement from one of the cofounders of the Tea Party Patriots, your thoughts about these ideas and the moment we find ourselves in where we can create, obviously, a potentially massive and very diverse coalition around a simple idea.

RUSSELL SIMMONS: Well, no question that these kinds of ideas are useful — I wouldn’t even say useful, they are critical. We have to change the way we think. My experience with the drug laws growing up, all my friends died and went to jail. And I saw the damage that drugs did.

But it wasn’t the drugs so much, it was the war on drugs. A lot of my friends were diseased. Some grew out of it. Some were in prison. Most grew out of it. Some were in prison. And the ones who went to prison diseased came home criminal. And the cycle of these people going in and out created criminal, prison culture in the streets. And it damaged whole communities.

So we took diseased people and we put them back into communities as criminals and changed community’s fabrics.  That’s an ongoing problem. That cycle of in and out of jail. We found that it’s not helpful in terms of eliminating crime. In fact, it’s the core of crime. The creation of crimes. That’s the problem we’re discussing.

So to have a solution like this that’s researched and ready to go and to ignore it, there’s only one reason for that. It’s because the prison industrial complex makes so much money incarcerating these people. So as long as they pay politicians to keep the laws on the books, I have had the experience of fighting these laws, I have had the experience of going to work with people who cared and finding out that even if the politicians cared, the ones who were in debt to the complex never voted or raised their voice to change the laws. We know this is a failed drug war. We know people are going to jail and not threatening to our community. We know that when they come home, they will be a threat to our communities. We have to make a change.

DYLAN: Listen. There’s a remarkable amount of logic. There’s an increasingly broad basis of support. You have a man sitting next to you who has been living his life solving these problems in a way that has been giving demostratable success. We see what the barriers are — the money in politics, the profitablity of the prison industrial system.  All of these aspects, Ben. What is it that we have to do next in order to give not only David more resources, but to truly elevate the necessary pressures to eliminate the stranglehold that the prison industrial complex has taken on our the way we govern country?

DR. BEN CHAVIS:  David is definitely on the right track. What Russell is referring to in terms of experience, we built a grass roots movement to finally reform and change the Rockefeller drug laws. We are here at the LBJ Library — LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act, signed the Voting Act because of the Civil Rights movement — a grassroots movement. That’s what Occupy the Dream is emerging. We’re getting the black church reengaged.  We’re going to challenge these issues. Take the research and the study that David has done, but you’ve gotta involve the participants.  You’ve got to involve people in the community.  We’re changing consciousness.

We have to get money out of politics. We’ve got to have the constitutional amendment. We have to deal with providing the 30 million jobs. We have to involve more than 30 million to people to create the 30 million jobs. We’re on board. We have to work hard. We have to deal with green energy. At the end of the day, that’s what I’m here in Texas for.  We’re going to meet tonight and we’re going to build this movement.  We’re going to turn this situation around from the bottom up.

DYLAN:  And if you were to look at — what is it that you need the most right now, David, to do more of this?

DAVID KENNEDY:  I need him. [points to Dr. Chavis]

DYLAN: Ha ha… I think you got him!

RUSSELL SIMMONS:  Let me interject. What Ben is saying is important about the black church. It’s the union between the black church and the unions and the black church and the Occupy Wall Street people going together for Occupy the Dream.

This is a historical thing in that there’s a collaboration that’s going to make the difference. And again, it’s not only the black church and the unions, it’s the Tea Parties. It’s the people on the right. This is not a conservative or a liberal or progressive issue. This is an American issue.

We’re talking about people who spend $15 million to get billions out of our system. $3.3 billion in Texas alone. Just for the little bit of lobbying money. For the politicians, they can’t help it. The money out of Washington is so critical. They are paying to keep those laws on the books. It’s a small amount they are paying. But the return on their investment is too large to turn our head on and we have to change this.

DYLAN:  And to that end, when you look at Tim Dunn, who is a west Texas oil man, a conservative in this country, you look at Mark Meckler, who is a conservative in this country and a founder of the Tea Party Patriots.  You don’t need a greater understanding that this is not a left or right issue than to understand the intensity of your support and the intensity of Russell’s support and the intensity of my support and all these individuals. David, you get the last word. The world is with you if only the government understood that.

DAVID KENNEDY:  No good American wants to live in America where we are locking up an entire people.  It’s not right. And the more people see that, the more that common sense emerges. It’s just wrong.

-  by Dylan Ratigan and Eliot Spitzer

Originally published by Huffington Post 2/10/2012 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dylan-ratigan/mortgage-settlement_b_1267710.html

This week officials from the Obama administration, the banking regulators, and state Attorney Generals announced a settlement of claims stemming from the financial crisis. The nominal amount put forward as the cost of the settlement is $26 billion, and in return the banks will be released from civil claims on origination of mortgages and the falsification of documents in the foreclosure process, or "robosigning". This caps off a month of political noise on the housing situation which started at the State of the Union, when the president announced a task force on financial fraud headed by officials from his administration as well as New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.

An investigation, and a multi-billion dollar settlement. That sounds like a lot, until you put it into perspective. Here are the numbers. Roughly half of homeowners with mortgages are underwater, which means they owe more than they own, to the tune of $1 trillion or so. And housing values are still declining so far in this "recovery", throwing more homes underwater. In terms of an investigation, the Savings and Loan crisis used roughly 1000 FBI investigators to uncover fraud -- this task force taking on a crisis forty times more severe will employ 10 FBI agents.

There's a reason this is so inadequate to the problem at hand. For the last three years, the policy has been to impose a political solution to a math problem. It hasn't worked. America simply has too much mortgage debt to pay back. Serious economic thinkers across the spectrum, from Democrat Alan Blinder to Republican Martin Feldstein to New York Fed President William Dudley, believe that there is only one solution -- writing down the enormous creaking mound of debt. This solution is currently off the table, because writing down these unsustainable debts could cost our fragile banks enormous sums of money and possibly lead to a restructuring of one or more of our major banks. Avoiding this clear policy choice has resulted in our economy falling into a Japan-style "zombie bank" torpor, with debts carried on the books at full value which everyone knows will not be paid back at par.

This crisis of American political economy in the form of excess mortgage debt is preventing a more powerful economic recovery. Three years after Ben Bernanke used the term "green shoots" to describe a recovering economy, job growth hasn't really revived in any meaningful way. In fact, this is by far the worst recovery we've had since the end of World War II. The best way to measure this is not through traditional unemployment indices (which can be gamed), but by asking the question of how many Americans are working as a percentage of the population. In 2007, this was 63 out of 100. Today, it's a full five percentage points lower. The ratio hasn't been this bad since the early 1980s recession, and remember, we're in a recovery. And the labor force participation rate is dropping, which is a long-term bigger crisis.

The housing market's vicious deflationary cycle demands serious policy action to match the scale of the challenge. Dropping housing values lead to foreclosures, which damage housing values, and so on and so forth. According to Zillow, roughly half of homeowners with a mortgage are effectively underwater, which means they owe more on their mortgage than their house is worth. So far, the alphabet soup laden set of programs (HAMP, HARP, Hope for Homeowners) put forward by the Bush and then Obama administration have been failures. And this is because, as the Congressional Oversight Panel noted as far back as March of 2009, the single best predictor of default risk is how much equity homeowners have in a home. Many Americans, though considered homeowners, are essentially "renters with debt" (as housing analyst Josh Rosner put it). And Amherst Securities Laurie Goodman noted that with our current housing trajectory, we can expect up to 10 million more defaulted mortgages over the next decade. These foreclosures impacts housing values, reduce consumer purchases, and costs municipalities money.

The proposals on the table to solve this problem aren't inspiring. The meager mortgage settlement deal cut via furious and dramatic negotiations is unlikely to be meaningful. This settlement is essentially a continuation of previous alphabet soup housing programs, because it would not force banks to fundamentally restructure the trillion dollar underwater mortgage problem. It will generate headlines, but it will fail to address the extent of the problem. State attorneys generals have accepted the settlement for a variety of reasons, one of the most frustrating being that they are substantially under-resourced and this deal moves cash their war. This is not how to make good policy. And the housing market will continue to suffer if our political leaders cannot acknowledge the depth of the problem.

Instead, we need some serious discussion from both the Republican candidates and the Obama administration about how to write down mortgage debt. Some proposals would reduce principal, while giving the banks an equity appreciation stake in the home. Others would deal with the problematic accounting standards which allow banks to overvalue second mortgages, and imply that one or more large banks needs to be restructured by the government. These are worth considering. We think it's important, regardless of how policy-makers reduce the debt, to force the banking system to appropriately value mortgage debt.

Anything less would simply continue the deflation and uncertainty in the housing market.

Ultimately, we need to look at our banking and housing system and engage in a ruthless yet compassionate evaluation of whether it is working to solve our national needs. Serious thinkers in both parties recognize that it isn't, and that we should find a way to write down this mortgage debt. Only then will we head down a pathway to a healthier banking system, and begin generating the roughly thirty million jobs that will bring America back to full employment. It's time that the major presidential candidates, and President Obama himself, be honest with the American public, and openly recognize this as well.

Brian Merchant of Treehugger

In order to create the 30 Million Jobs this country needs, we know we must match the problems we face with the money we have to the people that we have looking for work.  If you put those all together, guess what happens?  You get solutions, and you create jobs.

Two of the greatest challenges facing our country — no matter who is in the White House — is America’s lack of energy independence and our gross energy inefficiency.  We’ve been mulling over the issue for a while, and today we’re excited to unveil our new plan:the Defense Energy Project.  

We’ve got two simple goals with this: first, create a jobs program that helps veterans returning from wars (often over foreign oil) creating clean energy and energy efficiency and independence.

The second component of the Defense Energy Project is this: expose the true cost of hydrocarbons (including the cost of the wars that we fight) and the environmental toll energy production takes on our country.  This will help restore price integrity to our energy markets with the discussion of a plan called “fee and dividend.”

How would “fee and dividend” work?  In short, fossil fuel producing companies would pay a fee, which would be pooled into a national fund.  That fund would be directly distributed equally to every American — all 311 million of us.  We would effectively be taxing energy waste and rewarding with a dividend energy efficiency.

Joining us to discuss the plan is Dr. James Hansen from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Brian Merchant, contributing editor for Treehugger, and author of the article “Unearthing the True Cost of Fossil Fuels.”

Restoring Price Integrity in the Energy Market

“It is no secret we dump tens of billions of dollars directly into the pockets of big oil every year in the form of subsidies, tax breaks, direct from our pockets to theirs,” Brian Merchant explained on The Dylan Ratigan Show. “That is a small fraction of the cost.  Even though it amounts to billions of dollars and totaled as many as $500 billion over the last 50 years or so, the real costs are the indirect ones. The oil industry can’t operate without the u.s. military providing security presence.”

“$7.3 trillion just for aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf over the past couple decades,” Dylan pointed out. “That is not a cost a lot of people recognize — the American taxpayer footing the bill for but the oil company gets a huge deal. They get to use that as their own personal security detail. It’s a huge cost for American taxpayers,” explained Brian.

The Enormous Advantages of the Fossil Fuel Market

Dr. Hansen also pointed out some other costs to fossil fuels outside of the security and war costs.  ”Human health damage from air and water pollution from fossil fuels is huge.  It sits on hundreds of billions of dollars per year.  In addition, there is the cost of climate change, which is going to be borne mainly by our children and grandchildren,” he explained.

Dr. Hansen suggested that the costs taxpayers be reimbursed for all the costs of fossil fuels that are borne by the public.  He explained:

“The climate is already beginning to change. The way we should deal with this is by putting a price on the fossil fuel emissions by collecting a flat fee on oil, gas, coal, at the source, the domestic port of entry. That money should then be distributed uniformly to legal residents of the country.  I would give one share to each legal adult resident of the country and half a share to children up to two per family. If you did that, then more than 60% of the people would get more in their dividend than they’d pay in increased energy prices. Those people who pay special attention trying to minimize their fossil fuel use, using clean energies, energy efficiency, they would do very well.

 Brian believes restoring hydrocarbon price integrity in the markets would have a huge effect on the rate of transtition to more efficient fossil fuel use and alternative fuel use.  

“The advantages of the fossil fuel industry are enormous,” Brian explained.  ”They’re enormous and politicians complain about a little tiny subsidy for a solar company. They’re not seeing the whole picture. If there is even a modicum of price integrity restored to this scenario we would see American innovation unleashed. We would see clean tech solutions. We would see a whole new outpouring of funding into a new sector.  This would be a job creator… this would do kind of all of the things that need to happen in this sector so America can get a foot forward,” he said.

How Would “Fee and Dividend” Work?

With entrenched interests across the fossil fuel industry, how would we mitigate the most acute political resistance from the biggest payers? Dr. Hansen explained it this way:

If we put a fee that we collected at a rate of $15 a ton of carbon monoxide per year, and increasing $10 a ton each year, at the end of ten years, that would be $115 a ton.  The amount collected would be close to $600 billion a year.  If you distributed that among all legal residents, that would be between $2000 and $3000 yearly.  So, a family with two or more children would get between $6000 and $9000.  This would be deposited monthly to their bank account, or if they don’t have one, to a debit card.

This would reduce our fossil fuel dependence by 30% in ten years — an equivalent to more than 10 times the amount of oil that would be carried by the Keystone XL pipeline… and would make our industry more competitive. That’s what we need to do. In order for the economy to work most efficiently, you need to have the true costs for the fuels that are being used. You don’t want to subsidize them because all of those subsidies are coming out of the taxpayers’ pockets.

What do you think of the Defense Energy Project?  Email us at dylan@dylanratigan.com, and we’ll feature some of your responses over the coming days.  You can also find us on Twitterand Facebook.

You can watch the entire segment with Brian Merchant of Treehugger.com and Dr. James Hansen of the NASA Goddard Space Institute here:

- Meg Robertson is a digital producer for DylanRatigan.com.  You can find her on Twitter @megrobertson.

- by Brian Merchant

For decades now, fossil fuel company executives and D.C. politicians have worked together to ensure that coal and oil prices stay low enough to keep the American people hooked. In his new book Greedy Bastards, Dylan Ratigan explains how “vampire industries” like oil and coal have forged “an unholy alliance with government based not just on the money that they contribute to political campaigns and spend on lobbying, but on their ability to hypnotize us with false prices.”

Industry gets tax breaks, subsidies, military support in volatile regions, the right to use our air and water like a sewer, and assurance that the government will clean up its environmental messes. Politicians get campaign contributions, a steady flow of dirty energy, and a talking point to brandish about how they kept gas affordable.

But the American public just gets screwed.

We get stuck with a dirty, polluting energy regime; one that enriches a few one percenters while making the public sick and hobbling American innovation. As Ratigan puts it in his book, a handful of greedy bastards are fleecing Americans with a “Very Bad Deal”. Fossil fuels seem cheap and convenient now, but when we get hit with the true costs—of a spoiled environment, of missing out on vital future industries like clean energy, of a mounting public health burden, of possible war—we’ll see we were had.

The rigged market for fossil fuels
Just how rigged is the fossil fuels market? In a word, overwhelmingly.

Experts believe that oil companies alone receive $10-40 billion in handouts yearly. A conservative study from the Environmental Law Institute found that from 2002-2008, oil companies received $72 billion of taxpayer’s hard-earned cash. Another report from Management Information Systems, Inc found that between 1950 and 2010, $594 billion was spent directly subsidizing fossil fuels—and the lion’s share of that, almost two thirds, went to the oil industry. Coal, too, receives billions of dollars in annual federal handouts.

Clearly, government assistance distorts the price of fossil fuels, making them artificially cheaper. But those direct subsidies are nothing compared to the enormous costs the public indirectly pays for fossil fuels.

For one, our taxpayer dollars fund the cleanup of the industry’s accidents and disasters. In an interview, Dylan Ratigan told me that greedy bastards in the energy world are “masters” of transferring the long tail risk in their businesses to the public:

“They transfer that two tenths of a percent chance that the nuke melts down or the oil spill happens, or whatever the abomination is, to the state. The state takes that risk, and allows the limited regulation and all of the profits from the extraction of the energy resources to go to the energy companies, because they fund the politicians.”

Mining, transporting, and burning oil, gas, and coal also inflicts major damage to the environment and public health—and we pick up the tab. A 2009 report from the National Research Council showed that fossil fuels impose $120 billion of annual costs on the public every year. Air pollution takes a massive toll on public health—it causes respiratory problems, widespread illness and death, and leads to a huge number of missed work days. The prognosis from a Harvard study, the first to analyze the full life-cycle impact of coal, is even bleaker.

That report’s lead author, the late Dr. Paul Epstein, told me in an interview that “Between the land disturbance, the mountaintop removal, the processing … and the combustion, we estimate that this is costing the American public somewhere between a third to half a trillion dollars in health costs and deaths.”

Yes, that’s ‘trillion’ with a ‘T’. Every year.

In fact, coal is so economically disastrous that the mainstream journal American Economics Review found that the electricity generated from coal actually does more damage to the economy than the electricity is worth. Grist’s David Roberts notes that “Coal-fired power is a net value-subtracting industry. A parasite, you might say. A gigantic, blood-sucking parasite that’s enriching a few executives and shareholders at the public’s expense.”

Finally, taxpayer-funded military expeditions have played a crucial role in securing fossil fuel supplies and transport routes—a cost to the public registered not just in billions of dollars but in American lives.

According to Ratigan’s calculations, the price of gasoline is around $10 too cheap per gallon when all unaccounted-for costs are included. Other projections put the figure even larger. And there are a wide range of estimates of the “true” cost of coal: Depending on how you factor in the costs of climate change, it could be between a few additional cents per kWh to a whopping ¢26.89 extra per kilowatt hour—the high-end estimate from the Harvard study. By way of comparison, the average American paid ¢11.54 per kWh on their residential electric bills last year. In other words, if prices accurately reflected all of the actual costs of burning coal, coal-fired power plants would be dead in the water.

Using the example of oil, Ratigan writes that such distortion results in a situation where “the free market can’t help [us] decide if it’s worth switching from gas to another fuel, because the market isn’t free, it’s rigged.” Similarly, investors, homeowners, and utilities can’t decide whether it will pay off to invest in clean energy and efficiency when the price of burning coal, which still supplies nearly half the nation with electricity, is so cheap.

Which is why we’ve got to restore price integrity to commodities like oil and coal—we’ve got to prevent fossil fuel companies from dumping their costs on us, level the playing field for clean energy technologies, and give Americans the choice they deserve over what powers their lives. Which means we’ve got to increase the price of gasoline and coal-fired electricity.

Restoring price integrity: fee and dividend
Lower your pitchforks for a second, hold back with the tar and feathers. What if there was a way to make fossil fuels companies pay their fair share—while putting extra cash in American pockets?

It’s called ‘Fee and Dividend’. The plan is simple: charge oil, gas and coal companies a small, annually increasing fee on fossil fuels sales—then collect the fees and evenly distribute them amongst the American people. The idea has the support of not just environmentalists, but scientists, politicians, and free-market conservatives.

Jim DiPeso, the Republicans for Environmental Protection’s Vice President for Policy and Communications,sings its praises: “Transparent. Market-based. Does not enlarge government. Leaves energy decisions to individual choices … Sounds like a conservative climate plan.”

Dr. James Hansen

NASA’s Dr. James Hansen, one of the world’s top climate scientists, alsoadvocates this approach. Hansen describes it as a “flat, across-the-board rising fee on carbon emissions” that would be levied on fossil fuels at a domestic mine or port of entry. Hansen wrote to me to explain the impact fee and dividend would have:

“The price of fossil fuel energy will rise, but with today’s fossil fuel uses, over 60 percent of the people will get more in their dividend than they pay in increased energy prices. People who have several houses or fly around the world all the time will have costs that increase more than their dividend. People will tend to make consumer and lifestyle choices that minimize their carbon emissions—this will happen naturally via the prices that they see.”

That way, when fuel prices rise to reflect their true costs, the public will have a buffer—in fact, the majority of Americans will earn money from the policy. And they’ll earn even more if they use less fossil fuels. A public website could be created to track the fees collected on fossil fuels, and Americans could see exactly how much they stand to earn.

As DiPeso explains, “Those who wish to use carbon-based energy with abandon would be free to do so – knowing up front that they would pay the environmental and other costs of using lots of carbon-based energy rather than shift those costs onto their fellow citizens.”

It’s a win-win. Not just for individual Americans, but our economy at large: Nonpolluting industries will benefit from a leveled playing field, American innovation will be unleashed, and jobs will grow in the clean energy sector.

“The carbon fee should rise over time to a level that covers the full cost of fossil fuels to society—by the time it gets there we will have generated better energy technologies and improved energy efficiency,” Hansen says.

Now, it’s not a perfect solution—farmers and folks who live in rural areas would be hit harder than those in urban areas, who already rely less on fossil fuels. A fair way to help cover those costs—perhaps tax breaks for energy efficient machinery upgrades—must be worked out with citizens in fossil fuel-dependent regions and occupations.

From securing oil to securing our future

We also need to eliminate the massive fossil fuel subsides for coal, oil, and gas companies. This too has widespread bipartisan support. Obama calls to repeal oil subsidies just about every year, and Republicans, Independents, and Democrats alike support ending the handouts—but the unholy alliance between industry execs and the politicians they finance keeps them in place.

And, of course, we’d have to tackle what’s perhaps the biggest oil subsidy of all: U.S. military assistance to fossil fuel companies. This is a deeply entrenched system, and no single piece of legislation could likely disrupt the long-standing symbiosis between Big Oil and the military.

But we could start by launching a jobs program designed to help vets get work in the energy efficiency and clean energy sector. A group called Operation Free is already fighting a battle along those lines: Founded by veterans, it helps other vets organize to fight for clean energy policies that will lead to true energy independence, to ensure that their children won’t have to fight the same oil-tinged wars that they did.

In many European nations, where the oil industry doesn’t have as powerful a grip on politics, gasoline routinely costs two or three times as much. Governments levy gas taxes that better reflect the true cost of oil, which then spurs industry to develop cleaner, more efficient cars. This leads to less pollution, healthier communities, job transference to more productive industries, and a more competitive economy. We could do the same in the United States—in fact, we’ve got to.

Now, plenty of skeptics will insist that these ideas aren’t “politically feasible”. The plan is too ambitious, it will never pass the dysfunctional Congress, it’s too … yawn. Over the last year, we’ve watched as brand new spaces for novel approaches to politics have been blown wide open—Occupy Wall Street suddenly brought the nation face to face with its own income inequality and the safe-housing of corporate greed. The same could happen for energy and pollution. In a recent discussion, former US Energy Secretary Bill Richardson told me we need an “Arab Spring for the environment”. Indeed, across the nation, concerned citizens arebeginning to rally against the cushy alliance between D.C. and the fossil fuels industry. Who can blame them?

Americans are paying through the nose on their tax returns and health bills to help Big Oil and the political elite maintain the illusion that cheap, dirty energy is a bargain. But enough is enough, and time is of the essence. We’re paying for wars, pollution and handouts to massive multinationals—instead of allowing the free market to reward the innovators and industries that will lead us to energy security. To stop the vicious cycle, we must unravel and reset the rigged market for oil and coal, revealing their true costs once and for all. We must loose the nation from the stranglehold of its aging, fossil-fueled energy regime.

As Ratigan says, “There’s no greater path to freedom than energy independence.”

This post originally appeared at Treehugger.com on February 7, 2012.

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The 30 Million Jobs tour rolls on, and this week we’re in South Florida.  The sunrises in Florida may be goregous, the beaches beautiful, but it’s a paradise in peril…

We kicked off our Wednesday show focusing on one big issue: America’s mortgage mess and foreclosure crisis.  According to RealtyTrac, one out of every 360 homes in Florida is in foreclosure, compared to one out of every 634 homes nationally.

Even if they’re not in foreclosure, many Florida homeowners are in trouble.  This is a state where more than half of all homeowners are underwater — almost double the national average.  That means people can’t move to find new job opportunities elsewhere, and it also means they can’t keep up with their payments.   As Dylan talked about with mortgage analyst Jack McCabe and DE AG Beau Biden, we need some big solutions, and we need them now. A stable and healthy housing market is directly tied to our push for 30 Million Jobs and renewed American prosperity, and we’ll keep on this issue!

Here are a few behind the scenes shots of the show from Monday, January 25th here at the Mondrian Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida.  If you want to see all the photos, they’re on Flickr here:

Producers Steve, Brian and Mary working with Dylan before the show.

Now this is the right way to do a conference call!

Dylan and the always dapper Jonathan Capehart!

Imogen Lloyd Webber and Jonathan Capehart before their hit.

Major equipment to make this all happen!

Dylan and mortgage analyst Jack McCabe talking mortgages, of course.

Dylan and Rep. Ted Deutch of Florida.

Dylan and John Wonderlich, Policy Director of The Sunlight Foundation.

Show team with Dylan — Brian, Sasha, and Steve Friedman.

Parting shot – sunset!

Meg Robertson is a digital producer for DylanRatigan.com.

Dylan was on ABC’s The View yesterday as part of our Greedy Bastards launch.  Check out the video below as he talks with Barbara Walters, Joy Behar, Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Sherri Shepherd.

They opened up with Dylan’s rant from last August, and Elisabeth asked Dylan what got him to that point. “I was in the middle of finishing the banking chapter of that book, and I literally was in the middle of having to document all of the backwards arrangements,” when it came to the banking system, Dylan explained. “My biggest gripe is that we have two sets of rules in this country — whether it’s getting access to American Idol, or whether it’s getting access to the American tax code, whether the laws in our government are made for your benefit or not. It has become so apparent I think, to all of us, that both political parties have been participating in creating two sets of rules. That’s the most fundamentally un-American thing, and that’s why I got so emotional,” said Dylan.

Dylan also talked about some of the bigger themes in Greedy Bastards.

“In order for America to have prosperity, it’s got to have investment.  Money has got to be coming into the country.  And the walls — the gates that prevent that from happening are your tax code, your trade policy, and your banking policy.  And right now our banks are not lending to America, our trade policies are not putting money to America, and our tax policies are not encouraging investment,” explained Dylan.

Thanks to everyone from The View for having us – it was a blast!  Here are some behind the scenes shots from the visit:

- Meg Robertson is digital producer for DylanRatigan.com, and was thrilled to be within ten feet of Joan Rivers yesterday.

by Eliot Spitzer and Dylan Ratigan

Finally, a presidential candidate came out and honestly addressed the biggest problem in our economy, the enormous debt overhang in our mortgage market. A few days ago, Mitt Romney was at a forum in Florida talking about foreclosures, and his comments were actually refreshingly honest about our housing and banking situation and the need for a debt write-down.

We're just so overleveraged, so much debt in our society, and some of the institutions that hold it aren't willing to write it off and say they made a mistake, they loaned too much, we're overextended, write those down and start over. They keep on trying to harangue and pretend what they have on their books is still what it's worth.
Mitt Romney was pointing out that the banks are carrying debt on their books at inflated values. When was the last serious politician to make that point, openly? There's more.

In some cases, if the debt is not in something you can service, it's like you have to move on and start over away from those debts. It's helpful if you get an institution that's willing to work with you, but if you don't you have no other option.
Romney is now saying that if you can't pay your debts and your lending institution won't work with you, walk away. Perhaps this isn't so surprising, though, as Romney is an expert in debt restructuring. This is actually just common business sense.

And finally, he offered a real solution to the mortgage debt crisis.

The banks are scared to death, of course, because they think they're going to go out of business... They're afraid that if they write all these loans off, they're going to go broke. And so they're feeling the same thing you're feeling. They just want to pretend all of this is going to get paid someday so they don't have to write it off and potentially go out of business themselves."

This is cascading throughout our system and in some respects government is trying to just hold things in place, hoping things get better... My own view is you recognize the distress, you take the loss and let people reset. Let people start over again, let the banks start over again. Those that are prudent will be able to restart, those that aren't will go out of business. This effort to try and exact the burden of their mistakes on homeowners and commercial property owners, I think, is a mistake.

This is the right approach to the problem. If you force the banks to recognize losses on the mortgage debt they are holding, then all of a sudden they will have an incentive to write down debt. Otherwise, a bank will do anything it can to maintain the fiction that the debt is worth 100 cents on the dollar, including lie, harass, and robo-sign.

There are ample reasons for cynicism, the cup overfloweth with them, perhaps. Still, what's shocking about these comments is how casual they are, as if it's common knowledge that the banking system is still insolvent and that our debt loan cannot be paid back. Among financial elites, it in fact is common knowledge. Tim Geithner noted this when he talked about Lehman Brothers and the "air in marks" on the debt it was holding on its books. And Martin Feldstein on the Republican side and Alan Blinder on the Democratic side are both arguing for debt write-downs. Everyone knows this has to happen, that the accounting manipulation needs to stop. But Mitt Romney actually said it.

We're pretty sure that Romney will walk these comments back if necessary, since he holds positions only insofar as they are convenient. Since at that same forum he called out for praise one of the most bank-friendly state officials in the country, Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, we can probably measure his adherence to this common-sense approach in micro-seconds.

But what this episode shows is that the solutions to our crisis are understood. In the book Greedy Bastards, the question of restructuring debt is considered in detail. We need a debt deal, as Romney inadvertently noted. More fundamentally, getting rid of the accounting gamesmanship will lead to a healthier economy because it will align financial assets with real economic assets. As another example, credit default swaps are linking American banks excessively to an unstable Eurozone. Credit default swaps are in fact yet another accounting game designed to further balance sheet fictions. Dick Grasso offered his solution to this obvious problem. We can, according to Grasso, simply declare these contracts online gaming, and void them.

What Americans should be taking from this episode is that finance, while complex, is not conceptually hard. If it's a lie on the balance sheet, it's going to be destructive to ordinary people. If you stop the balance sheet lying, the economy will do better. But while Mitt Romney might have said this out loud, they all know it behind closed doors. Our question is, who will be the first to make this a policy reality?

We’ve got two public Greedy Bastards events coming up, and we’d love to have you there!  If you don’t live in DC or Miami, don’t fret — more will be announced soon when we come to other cities around the country.

Leavin' on a jet plane... Greedy Bastards style!

MIAMI: Wednesday, January 25

7:00 PM Event
LOCATION: Books & Books
265 Aragon Avenue
Coral Gables, FL 33134
Tickets NOT required.
For info visit Books & Books website, or call 305-442-4408.

WASHINGTON, DC: Wednesday, February 1st

7:00 PM Event
LOCATION: Sixth & I Historic Synagogue
600 I Street NW, Washington DC 20001
MORE INFO:  To purchase tickets visit: www.sixthandi.org
Or contact: Jackie Leventhal, jleventhal@sixthandi.org / 202-408-3100
(Note: Receive two FREE tickets with the purchase of the book at Sixth and I; individual tickets are $10)

Dylan with Steve Friedman, Executive Producer of DR's Show. (He was also the EP for the Today Show for many years!)

By Tanya Hayre

After a whirlwind two weeks of launching his new book, 'Greedy Bastards,' Dylan Ratigan can officially add the term 'New York Times best-selling author' to his bio. The Times released their list this morning and 'Greedy Bastards' came in at number 9!

In between book signings and media appearances, Dylan has also launched a new venture - the '30 Million Jobs Tour.' So, what 30 million jobs have to do with 'Greedy Bastards'? Dylan has coined the term "connect the dots" to explain the correlation between the two.

Dylan Ratigan with a copy of his New York Times best-selling book, 'Greedy Bastards'

Though he can explain it far better that I can, in layman's terms: 'The Dylan Ratigan Show' is traveling around the country to demonstrate that, there are, sectors and examples or what Dylan refers to as “cradles of innovation” of successful models of education, health care, and energy. Through his show on MSNBC, Dylan is highlighting areas of the country that are booming, i.e. - Silicon Valley and it's working model of fresh, new ideas and innovation. If we take the smaller models of what is working (nationally adopting the formula that makes Silicon Valley so successful), perhaps we can create new jobs and showcase that (in Dylan's words) "we are a nation flush with potential."

That logic Dylan has adapted is what he details in his book 'Greedy Bastards' – that there are systems holding back this potential, starving it of necessary capital. 30 Million Jobs is the number of jobs we need for full and complete U.S. employment.

If you're scratching your brain trying to make sense of this, come see Dylan in person while he's on his book tour and he'll explain it and sign a copy of his book for you. Check out his schedule of events around the country here.

For more information, please check out the 'Greedy Bastards' webpage here. Keep up with Dylan on twitter at@DylanRatigan. You can follow me @TanyaHayre.

This week, I'm launching the 30 Million Jobs tour. We're taking the Dylan Ratigan Show on the road, and going all over the country to demonstrate that we are a nation flush with potential. We'll visit what I call "cradles of innovation" all over the place -- in education, health care, and energy -- mini-ecosystems where innovators and pioneers are taking resources and capital and using it to improve the world. We will also show what I detail in my book -- Greedy Bastards -- the systems holding back this potential, starving it of necessary capital.

30 Million Jobs is the number of jobs we need for full and complete U.S. employment. We start our tour in California's Silicon Valley -- one example of our country's cradles of innovation. Where most people see a problem, the people I'm spending time with see a job. And it's pretty clear that, once we end the corruption in our banking, tax, and trade policies, we will have more than enough work for the 30 million people who need it.

Let's begin with energy. When it comes to stationary power generation efficiency, we're at 34%, according to the U.S. Department of Energy Information Administration. That means two out of every three units of electricity we use are tossed out, with nothing to show for it. Generating efficiency gains will take work, and thankfully, we have plenty of people that are unemployed. The problem here is that there is no investment in the sector - t's a desert landscape desperate to be irrigated by a flow of capital. Remember, capital isn't just the central banks and governments. It's private businesses, personal accounts and most importantly, all human potential. The river exists -- its massive, some might say even infinite. It is surging with potential if we only release it. Right now, as I document in my book Greedy Bastards, this flow is going into the pockets of status quo interests because of rigged tax, trade, and banking policies. But there's no reason it couldn't instead go towards bumping up our energy efficiency to 60%, 70% or even 90%.

Or take health care. We all know how screwed up the health care system is. But spending time with Dr. Jeffrey Brenner in Camden, New Jersey, or at the Mayo Clinic, shows that this is a choice. Brenner has demonstrated, through his hotspotting work, that we can dramatically reduce costs by targeting the small number of extremely high cost patients. And the Mayo Clinic, with its innovative team-oriented approach to health, is relentlessly bringing evidence on outcomes into its practice. These are models for us.

Education is another arena where innovation is bursting out all around us. Take the Khan Academy in San Francisco, which flips the traditional model of teaching on its head. Rather than a teacher lecturing students and assigning homework, the Khan Academy offers supremely good lectures online, and then enables classroom time to be a workshop where students get help from teachers. It lets teachers teach, and students learn at their own pace. But importantly, the philosophy behind the Khan Academy strategy is "expect failure, demand mastery" -- failure is NOT penalized, but getting 70% on a lesson quiz means you don't move on to the next lesson. The lessons are about learning, not bureaucratic testing regimes. Again, reconfiguring our education system will take enormous amounts of work, but fortunately, we have plenty of unemployed people that want to work. All it takes is the right financing flows. And that's what my 30 Million Jobs Tour is about.

There's plenty of sun to grow these ecosystems of innovation. We have the know-how. But the river of capital that can enable and scale these models is being held back by three major barriers: man-made levies of bank, tax and trade policy auctioned off by our bought election system. We, in our Greedy Bastards behavior are creating these gates and in the process are holding back the flow of capital by incentivizing credit speculation, job outsourcing, and corrupt pricing on almost every major U.S. service. We auction tax benefits and subsidies through the money and political system to ensure that. But this too is a choice. We will also show in this tour the fights in our electoral and political process, the gerrymandering and corruption, the noble activism and citizen work to get money out of politics.

By using our values of shared visibility, integrity and choice we can achieve aligned interests and demand real, comprehensive trade, tax and bank reform to break down those barriers. And in the process, we will unleash a flow of investments to irrigate these cradles of innovation and yield solutions to our problems while building millions of jobs for America.

Join us, as we explore this fascinating place called America. It is brimming with potential. And it is us.

The Greedy Bastards tour continues, and Tuesday night was a great one. LA’s KPCC Radio & the Crawford Family Forum held a talk, which was co-hosted by the nice folks at Rarebird Lit.  Not only was the conversation one of the most extensive and in-depth we’ve had so far on Greedy Bastards, they recorded the entire conversation, which you can listen to up top or download here.

Also fun: here are some photos from the event. If  you want to check out the full set or share there, they’re over on our Facebook page, and on Flickr.

Up on stage with the awesome and funny Matthew DeBord.

Saying hi to our friend David DeGraw and his beautiful family. (Cute!)

The crew at KPCC/Southern California Public Radio – amazing job guys!

Friends from @OccupyLA in the house. #miccheck

Totally self promotional, sorry. Please buy our book, it’s good.

Thanks again to everyone we met tonight for the amazing event.  (When do we get to come back?)

- Meg Robertson is a digital producer for DylanRatigan.com.

by Russell Simmons and Dylan Ratigan

As we celebrate the life and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr, it appears we are a far less prejudiced country than we once were.  Individual expressions of racism are less tolerated than ever, we have an African-American president, and African-Americans are increasingly being accepted into executive suites.  Yet when we look closer, we find that Greedy Bastards have rebranded racism and made it acceptable again, by calling it “the war on drugs.”

These statistics compiled by New York Times columnist Charles Blow and author Michelle Alexander (author of "The New Jim Crow") are mind-blowing.

• Since 1971, there have been more than 40 million arrests for drug-related offenses.  Even though blacks and whites have similar levels of drug use, blacks are ten times as likely to be incarcerated for drug crimes.

• ·"There are more blacks under correctional control today -- in prison or jail, on probation or parole -- than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began."

• "As of 2004, more African American men were disenfranchised (due to felon disenfranchisement laws) than in 1870, the year the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified prohibiting laws that explicitly deny the right to vote on the basis of race."

• In 2005, 4 out of 5 drug arrests were for possession not trafficking, and 80% of the increase in drug arrests in the 1990s was for marijuana.

• There are 50,000 arrests for low-level pot possession a year in New York City, representing one out of every seven cases that turn up in criminal courts.  Most of these arrested are black and Hispanic men.

Why is this happening, when personal prejudice is so much less common, medicinal marijuana initiatives routinely pass around the country, and illicit drug use is accepted enough that Steve Jobs could praise psychedelic drugs as key to his creative success at Apple? 

The modern drug war in politics can be traced back to political operative named Clifford White, an advisor to Barry Goldwater, who recognized that there were votes to be had in the backlash against the civil rights movement.  From the 1970s to the 1990s, the war on drugs became convenient code for politicians who wanted to appeal to certain working class white voters with coded racist appeals.  President Reagan used this political support to escalate the war on drugs.   

A federal law passed in 1986 allowed law enforcement agencies to seize drug money, and use it to supplement their budgets.  Grabbing cash connected to drugs meant that police departments could buy more tools and training.   Like the fee-for-service model in medicine, that pays doctors for performing procedures, not for making people healthier, the “forfeiture laws” effectively pay the police departments for making busts – not for reducing the drug trade.  

In fact, if the war on drugs was ever won, it would be a financial disaster for law enforcement.  There's so much dirty money funding law enforcement agencies that now, according to NPR, some police departments have become "addicted to drug money." 

The second significant institutional incentive is of more recent origin, though it too has its beginnings in the Reagan era - the development of for-profit prison companies and their vast lobbying and political apparatus.

Prisoners now manufacture and assemble products for Microsoft, Starbucks, Victoria's Secret, Boeing, as well as body armor for soldiers and handcuff cases for law enforcement officers. In 2007, taxpayers spent $74 billion on prisons, with the largest percentage increase of prisoners going to for-profit prison companies.

The Justice Policy Institute noted that these companies make more money through longer prison sentences, but you don't need a report from a nonprofit group to know that.  Just look at their own investor reports.  The Corrections Corporation of America, the largest for-profit prison company in the country, lists as a business risk in its 10K to the SEC "any changes with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them."  CCA also told investors it would make less money if there were lower minimum sentences and more eligibility for inmates for early release for good behavior. 

Putting people in jail and keeping them there is good for business.  So that's what these companies lobby for.  According to the Justice Policy Institute, these companies "have contributed $835,514 to federal candidates and over $6 million to state politicians. They have also spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on direct lobbying efforts."  They are large donors to state-based think tanks like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), who market harsh immigration, drug laws, and prison privatization laws to state level politicians around the country.  While the rationale is no longer outright bigotry, the net effect, in terms of stripping millions of blacks of political and economic rights, is the same.

This is the face of racism today.  It isn't the racist sheriff in Alabama turning hoses and dogs onto protesters, or the all-white development or country club, but the smooth lobbyist and campaign contributor discussing the efficiency of private prison initiatives or the politician too cowardly to act on decriminalizing marijuana for fear of antagonizing a powerful lobby.  It’s racism, Greedy-Bastards-style.

What’s the alternative?  David Kennedy, the director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, has highlighted a very simple common sense approach known as hotspotting.  He advocates for sitting down the gang members that perpetrate most of the violence, police, prosecutors, and community leaders to talk about their shared problems and the consequences of crime.  Such an approach has dramatically reduced homicide rates in Boston and Chicago, and across the country.  Yet these programs and programs like them with proven success in reducing crime are the first to go on the chopping block, because they don't provide the budgetary incentive that forfeiture laws do.

Today, the march for civil rights isn't about convincing Americans that racism is wrong. It is about getting money out of politics, so that the profit from institutional racism is eliminated.  The Supreme Court's decision in Plessy v. Ferguson saying "separate but equal" has been trumped by the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, eliminating all restrictions on corporate cash in politics. 

If we are to honor Dr. King, let us make this our generation's cause.  It won't be an easy fight, but as he said, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice."

Dylan stopped by MSNBC’s Morning Joe this morning.  Kicking off with Dylan’s famous summer rant of 2010, which Joe Scarborough compared to “the shot at Lexington — it started the war!”

As Dylan explained, “the bottom line of the book is very simple — we’re at a point where people are seeing a lot of the symptoms of the disfunction.  Whatever your point of view is, the electoral system is not really reflecting a healthy way to solve problems in this country.  It’s gerrymandered, the primary system is closed, you know better than anyone Joe — and the role of money,” said Dylan.

“All I was trying to do — and it was very simple — try to define the problems in the core issues we depend on.  Banking, trade, energy, health,  education, these sorts of things. Then, make it clear that there are already  people fixing these problems.  We’re in a situation where if we understand what the problem is, you can solve it.”