David Selig, conservative commentator, joins Thom. If you thought the recent job numbers were bad - with an unemployment rate ticking up to 9.1% - take a look at the unemployment rate for teenagers. Based on last month's job numbers nearly a quarter of all 16 to 19-year-olds looking for a job - or just a summer job - are unemployed. In California - that number is as high as 34%! It's no wonder though - considering that people with Masters degrees can't even find a job at McDonalds where a recent job fair collected over 1 million applications for about 60000 job openings - and nationwide, corporations only hired 54000 Americans in May. You know your economy is screwed when 16-year-olds are competing with masters-degree-holding engineers for burger flipping jobs

Are you happy? Chances are...you probably aren't. That's because according to a new study by "24-7 Wall Street" that looked into the OECD's Better Life Index to determine what the happiest nations on the planet are...the US didn't even crack the top 10. The happy nations spend far more of their GDP on social programs than we do here in America. What's the point of being exceptional - as Ronald Reagan would describe America - if that exceptionality doesn't make us happy? Until we fix our elections - and kick the corporate millionaires and billionaires out - and claim once and for all that our democracy belongs o We The People - that it's part of the commons - then we'll always be stuck in the muck wondering if this...is as good as it gets

Dan Gainor, Business and Media Institute joins Thom. Overall - Fox viewership is down. Fox had a Faux news bubble for angry white guys with their rants on guns, gays, and the war on Christmas. But now - those same angry white viewers are thinking about economic issues as they lose their jobs and homes - and Faux news' only solution is tax cuts for billionaires like Murdock. So even though the Daily Show is primarily a comedy show - as Jon Stewart himself often admits - more people are getting their news from Comedy Central than from Fox so-called News. Isn't this a sad commentary on the state of American media when the battle for news dominance is between a right-wing propaganda outlet and a comedy channel?

John Nichols, The Nation Magazine joins Thom. In a closed door meeting last week - President Obama set a drop-dead date for a debt limit increase of July 4th. In response - more than 100 Republicans in the House of Representatives wrote a letter to Speaker John Boehner instructing him on what he should be negotiating for. In other words - it's a ransom letter. The demands of this large minority of House Republicans include $700 billion in spending cuts - targeting mostly working class families. These fringe Republicans also want statutory spending caps to hold federal spending at no more than 18% of GDP. Currently - federal spending accounts for about 38% of GDP - so we're talking drastic cuts. And finally - and here's the kicker - Republicans want to pass a balanced budget amendment that handcuffs our government from spending in the future and requires a supermajority for any new tax increases - a move that would effectively enshrine the Bush tax cuts ito American law indefinitely

Thom discusses whether or not the GOP are seriously considering 700 billion dollars in spending cuts aimed at the middle class, in efforts of raising the national debt limit. Later in the show, he debates conservative commentator, David Selig on the issue of rising unemployment among American teenagers.

Chuck Collins, a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies joins Thom for the first half of the show. He discusses one of his books which he co-authored titled "Wealth and Our Commonwealth: Why America Should Tax Accumulated Fortunes", which highlights the growing problem of wealth inequality in America. Later in the show, Thom and his panel of political experts discusses the biggest news topics in the Weekly Rumble.

For tonight's "Coversations with Great Minds" - Thom welcomes an authority on wealth inequality in America, Chuck Collins.He is the senir scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies here in Washington, DC - as well as the co-founder of "Business for Shared Posperity" - an organization that brings together business leaders to address wealth inequality in America and increased opportunites for everyone in our nation, He's worked with several of the welathiest people tliam Gates Sr. and Geroge Soros to advocate for taxing millionaires and billionaires. He's also co-authored several books including, "Wealth and Our Commonwealth: Why America Should Tax Accumulated Fortunes" and "Robin Hood was Right." For questions about the effects of extreme wealth inequality in America - he's the guy to talk to

For tonight's "Coversations with Great Minds" - Thom welcomes an authority on wealth inequality in America, Chuck Collins.He is the senir scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies here in Washington, DC - as well as the co-founder of "Business for Shared Prosperity" - an organization that brings together business leaders to address wealth inequality in America and increased opportunites for everyone in our nation, He's worked with several of the welathiest people William Gates Sr. and Geroge Soros to advocate for taxing millionaires and billionaires. He's also co-authored several books including, "Wealth and Our Commonwealth: Why America Should Tax Accumulated Fortunes" and "Robin Hood was Right." For questions about the effects of extreme wealth inequality in America - he's the guy to talk to

The Big Picture Weekly Rumble with Daniel Halper, Weekly Standard, Erikka Knuti, Democratic Strategist &Jamie Weinstein, DailyCaller.com --It took an hour for a man to drown himself in San Francisco Bay last Wednesday - Can you name one nation in the world that cut spending and cut taxes and actually achieved prosperity - name one?? --This week - it became pretty clear that our housing market is in a double-dip recession - and Moodys Investment Service threatened to downgrade our debt rating if we don't raise the debt ceiling by next month. Also - new job numbers show weak economic growth. And President Obama is now officially in an illegal war in Libya. But you may not know any of this stuff - because this week was also...THE WEINERGATE SCANDAL! So do the events of this week just go to show that our fourth estate of journalism is seriously dysfunctional? And how can our democracy survive without it?

This isn't the first time there's been a show-down in Congress over raising the debt limit. In tonight's Daily Take...find out what happened back in 1985 that could give President Obama a secret weapon in the debate today.

Thom discusses a letter from Europe's top financial regulator written to the Obama administration about placing restrictions on corporation executives' salary bonuses. Later in the show, he debates the topic of Republicans eliminating the right for union workers to negotiate union rights while on the clock.

Senator Rand Paul spoke out last week against the constitutional abuses of the PATRIOT Act on the floor of the United States Senate. He's against the government spying on American citizens - but if Muslims are attending speeches that Rand doesn't like - then he thinks they should be deported or thrown in jail. And, just for listening to one speech or being in the wrong place at the wrong time and listening to the wrong person speak - bam - you're in the slammer! Pursuing that sort of policy is like putting the PATRIOT Act on steroids. Right after the end of World War II, Chicago-based journalist Milton Mayer was struggling with the question of why good, average Germans like the local baker, butcher, and clothes-maker sat quietly as their nation was completely transformed into one that became totally and utterly lawless. How could this happen? To find out, he spent a year in Germany, getting to know very, very well ten "average Germans" - from a baker to a University professor - and he found the answer to his question in their stories. Mayer wrote in his book, They Thought They Were Free, "What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if he people could understand it, it could not be released because of ...

Lee Fang from ThinkProgress has been digging into the forces at work stopping net neutrality legislation and has found a familiar name that could be orchestrating the opposition. That man is Ralph Reed - better known for his association with criminal lobbyist Jack Abramoff. So how is Ralph Reed sabotaging a free and open internet? Lee Fang with Think Progress joins Thom Hartmann.

The war on labor continues. House Republicans are opening up a new front against federal labor unions - going after something called "official time." "Official time" is a phrase used to describe the time federal workers who are also union representatives do union work like bargaining and meeting with employees, while still getting a paycheck for their federal job. So is "official time" REALLY a problem for taxpayers - or are Republicans just looking for another way to take a whack at unionized government workers ahead of the 2012 election? w/ Dan Gainor, Business and Media Institute.