so the police and then some gulag of our time. we. get a conflict. over what to do if you did you know the price is the only industry specifically mention in the constitution. that's because a free and open press is critical to our democracy correct helpless. feeling you know i'm sorry and on this show we were revealed the picture of what's actually going on we go beyond identifying the problem to try to rational debate and a real discussion critical issues facing america in particular ready to join the movement and welcome the big three. auto market in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture right now a small court of eight judges portion in d.c.

is deciding the fate of the internet more on that what it could mean for you in just a moment also today is election day and all across the country americans are taking to the polls he has a balance for the candidate or issue of their choice and break down the most important election day stories and tonight's big picture politics and. as republicans say we need to cut food stamps because we can't afford any more handouts then why are individual taxpayers forking over thousands of dollars every year you need to subsidize big corporations more on that in tonight's deleted. you need to know this get ready to kiss the internet as we know it goodbye that's because the d.c. circuit court of appeals the second most powerful court the country after the supreme court is getting ready to. turn the internet into

a crummy expensive toll road maybe let me explain for years the american internet has been based on a very simple principle big corporate internet providers like horizon and comcast cannot treat the internet as if it was their own personal highway by law they have to treat all websites of all web users equally you know like big public highways companies like arisan are not example not allowed for example to run a music website a crappy speeds just because that music site might compete with the verizon own music website its principle is called net neutrality that's important because it keeps the internet open for all of corporate internet providers were allowed to discriminate between websites they could make the owners of competing websites pay them top dollar in exchange for running their websites at higher or even normal speeds without a trial of arise and could and probably would treat the enter net like it's own privately owned highway people who wanted to drive on it would have to pay up

beforehand that those people didn't pay up verizon could slow down the speed of their website so obviously be great for rising but it could make it near impossible for rival websites to compete with horizon own websites and could put a damper on all innovation which is why big corporate internet providers have been for years trying to gut net neutrality and now they have their best shot yet that's because right now the d.c. circuit court of appeals the court that handles most cases involving federal regulations is deciding the case of the rise and versus the f.c.c. the risin is challenging the f.c.c. has power to regulate the internet and wants the d.c. circuit court to strike down net neutrality stakes couldn't be higher the d.c. circuit court currently has an even four four split between democrats and republicans according to most reports the judges were sympathetic to verizon's point of view during oral arguments in september. meanwhile republicans are doing their best to make sure the democrats who normally support things like net

neutrality don't get a majority on that d.c. circuit which still has three vacant seats just last week for example republican senators blocked the confirmation of for patricia millett who if confirmed would have given democrats a five to four majority on the d.c. circuit court and that's not even the worst of it iowa republican senator charles grassley actually wants to strip eleven seat d.c. court of three of its seats to make sure that president obama never fills the court with democratic nominee nominees get a republican president of course will probably put him back but any a why does this matter it matters because the d.c. circuit court has power over all cases involving federal regulation if republicans can continue to successfully sabotage president obama's attempts to fill those three remaining empty seats that could mean the end not only of detrimentally but a whole host of laws that are enforced by federal agencies it republicans can keep democrats from taking a majority in the d.c. circuit they can use its power to gut workplace laws and force by osha to take away

the e.p.a.'s power to regulate greenhouse gases you name it the d.c. circuit court is right at the center of the republican corporate led assault on regulation the fight over net neutrality is just the latest battle in that war of course you won't hear any of this on fox news let alone the so-called liberal media like emma said b c n n b r a s n b c is owned by comcast one of the largest internet providers and n.p.r. just began running comcast ads for the first one today that might have been running for a little while good luck catching anything about net neutrality over there for more on this i'm joined now by barty's cox director of media relations at public knowledge parties welcome are you doing great great to have you with us thanks for having me on a really good to be here let's start out by i tried to do a description of internet you neutrality what would you add to it and what might you corral you know public knowledge i mean we look at net neutrality when we boil it down to this year i should not decide what you can or cannot do with the

connection that they give you right so. when i log on the what web and i want to go to i.m.d.b. to see a movie i shouldn't be redirected to a competitor that has paid verizon or comcast for preferential treatment they shouldn't have any say in what i go and do on the web that's what introduced us so so i'm trying to come up with a parallel i guess the old phone company vs the current phone company used to be if well i think probably even now if you register a phone number as a business number you pay a higher price even though you're using a phone space that costs them the same. but they still fall of a common carrier regulation right they don't what the phone company is not allowed to do is listen to your phone call and decide that you're negotiating a multi-million dollar hedge fund deal so we're going to charge you five hundred dollars for that phone call as opposed to talking to grandma well we'll let that be fifty cents and regulating what goes over the internet kind of falls in that

category of deciding the meaning and value of what's going over that wire is that something that differentiates that from common carrier regulation well the reason that we're having this discussion in first place and why it's such a big deal right now is because the common carrier problem keeps popping up in two thousand and ten when they made the open internet rules the f.c.c. could have been clear that they you know were going to rule on this list title to authority which would have made broadband you know a common carrier basically which means it's a public yet you're still a little bit silly it's just like our public highways even right you can't charge somebody based on why they're there what they're doing right exactly but but as you know they didn't do that so now we're in a situation where they're looking at these rules they're saying you know some would say that the way the case is going right now that it looks like the f.c.c. is not going to go to retain any authority to make an open internet rule but if you're at the case like i was in

a lot of people in my office you can tell that there was a little bit of sympathy for the the f.c.c. in their right to afford. to rule on things that dealt with broadband right because there is a provision in the communications act for f.c.c. to rule on advanced telecommunications services which in this case is being by broadband what what specifically are you talking about wireless says in yet over your cell phone yes i'm talking about. i work in a telecom shop so that's ok idea yes but yes so that's where we are right now and i think what should happen and what i will not what i think should happen what looks like what might happen is it's not going to be a clear win or lose i mean it's very possible for the judge to say hey f.c.c. you are right on the authority issue you got that but you're not totally right on making these rules for net neutrality so they might be able to send the f.c.c. back to the drawing board and say look at all the rules again and bring me back a better argument for why you can rule on net neutrality why you can enforce these

rules because right now there is not a clear way for them to identify in the communications act there. i guess jurisdiction over now you know we. we already see things like. when you get your internet through a cable company and they say oh yeah we'll saw you you know twenty minutes down in five minutes if you try to use it for any period of time they'll twaddle you down to five minutes down. to three three three of those down and on broadband they're saying yeah here's what you've got but you know after the first gigabyte you're going to start paying for the first five hundred megabytes of the first four gigabytes or whatever to pay the plan i have friends in europe i spent a fair amount of time there where they don't understand any of that it's like i listen you know it's like it's like you know everything's on limited is there a you know like the way the europeans view would like you know the cautionary

principle you know you don't you don't just dump chemicals in the environment you have to prove they're safe you're in a pretty dump of million environment people start falling over. dead change things i mean is there that big a difference in world view between the way that we're doing things in the way that the europeans of the south koreans of the japanese are doing i don't think it's a world view because in america we want unlimited data like it's not a question of we're ok with not having it we really want it and it public knowledge we work to make sure that data caps which are what you're talking about throttling down like your speeds or even cutting off your connection but as you're going you're blowing off your cap they say i mean americans don't want that the biggest difference though is how their system is geared over there i mean british telecom is way different than american telecom i mean at the fundamental principle it's just run totally different and in america the way things are because of the split that happened in this because british telecom came out of a publicly again and it's a problem where as an american our all of our american telecoms are all private it

was privately owned for profit corporations so if first of all i'm assuming that if . it did did. the new guy on the on the d.c. circuit on the d.c. circuit court gosh i don't have any i couldn't tell you there's a new democrat president obama finally got them in a court right was he too late for the here for the arguments he's going to be part of this decision oh i don't think it's going to be part of the decision. pending on how long they stretch it right but i mean as of now we don't think he's going to be a part of the decision and is this the sort of thing that however the court rules it's going to end up in the supreme court anyway. that's a tough question you know it's going to if the f.c.c. loses on authority definitely they're going to try and get it into the supreme court somehow some way so i can tell you that the bottom line basically is that we've. published interest groups the f.c.c. in the public desire saying like

a public utility right and you've got all these for profit corporations comcast arise in one thousand nine hundred principly sane. we want to not only be able to make as much money off as possible but even control you know if you have a website if you don't pay us more your website is going to load more slowly or you know we're going to a right and you know the first thing i think of when i think of net neutrality in the many problems that could come out of it is this fast lane slow lane type of situation right where you can get on the internet and say like i'll use the i.m.d.b. thing again i'm going to aim to eat the b. to check out a movie and i get to the website and it says hey you're viewing i'm d.v.d. on the regular plan but if you want premium access to this lead site give us five bucks a month or it will unlock a better part of the be for you i mean the internet was supposed to be the great equalizer right i mean in its conception as opposed to giving the same happened all the information you would want to see going to help minorities thank you no problem brilliant work brilliant thank you thank you so much thanks for coming out today is

election day and voters across the country are heading to the polls decide on a variety of issues that could have lasting impacts both locally and nationally are getting to some of the biggest issues on the ballots across the nation and its big picture politics. people are interested but he has something to say everybody has a story on the potomac person want to sit next to an airport. i mean there's always in the was and. that's whether it's a ballet dancer a ballplayer president things that are curious to me is it just things i think about. them or not it. the for the for the purpose it was a. very hard to take over the get along here. that

he ever had sex with that make their. lives a little or they'll. they'll. they'll be a. little. for the people.

joining me for tonight's big picture politics panel kyle peterson an engine editor of the american spectator christie setser progressive strategist and president c.e.o. of new heights communications and marc harrold libertarian commentator attorney and author of let's get to it. i think they just close their polls but we don't have the data we want to results for a little while but it appears the terry mcauliffe is probably going to win those there are. those there was a op ed in the politico today i think about saying you know hey he outspent cuccinelli so course it's all about the money but i think the the. there's

a larger issue here i mean the guy who's running mark over cheney who's running for a.g. on this ticket who's running for cuccinelli soldier proposed actual legislation that if a woman has a miscarriage she has to present herself to the police department within twenty four hours or she goes to prison for a year and i'm not making this up this guy actually proposed this as a law as a state senator which is what he is right now and and frankly cuccinelli is not all that different and he hasn't he hasn't come out in favor of that particular law but he's right there with you know governor alter sound and it's like. i'm thinking that these social issues you know there was all kinds of energy for this stuff when the republicans actually never did anything but now that they're doing it people are gone a wait a minute i'm not sure that you know we really want to you know it's like what we're going to take the vote away from women next is that the thing and you know. anybody want to throw in anything here that might be true the numbers i've seen over jane was running ahead of cuccinelli in the polls but i think there's something going on

here to. washington d.c. is sort of like a black hole that sucks in all math and it's growing and virginia is just not a purple state like it used to be sort of a colleague that's running about three morrow and i remember in these numbers they're not it probably exactly he said prince william county over the past decade or something like that has grown seven percent while the rest of the state has grown two percent so i think that to some extent he is what the closest to d.c. will is in is in the metro area and i think to some extent republicans just have to use the idea that virginia is going to be more like colorado the future of the us like texas but on the other hand the richest zip code in the united states is no longer beverly hills it's southern virginia where all the military defense contractors have their thirty forty bedroom mansions so that's. it seems more republican. i think it's both christie i just think what's been surprising has been how much of a role the women's vote has continued to play in this election i mean obviously we

saw it last year when it was you know the so-called i guess i wouldn't say so-called but it was the war on women that was the issue that came out you would think that republicans would have learned their lesson in fact they seem to have doubled down if you will. on the ticket yeah i mean it looks like terry mcauliffe has basically a port one point advantage over creature nelly on among women that's huge again you would think that if nothing else you know ken cuccinelli is clearly running as a social conservative that he would bring in surrogates that would in some way balance him but no again he's also doubled down in the third if that have come in for him on his behalf as well it just seems like there's not many lessons being learned here so he brings in rand paul wants to do it was civil rights a right start so mark what's going on here over this is this is not even good libertarians no virginia is an interesting state and used to be beverly hills used to be gross point michigan outside the industrial base of detroit those were the rich places in this country when the business of america was business what's the business of america now you see it from northern virginia being so rich fairfax and

the business of america now is government and more and these social issues don't play well they don't play well with women they don't play well with the changing demographic all over the country and you can't be small government and have these type of social you can't really be small government and still want to have these types of social controls on the citizenry it just it's. so which which you know brings up a really interesting second question and that is if the demographics are changing and basically all white men you know which have made up the power structure base of the republican party for years and years are diminishing in importance and women and people of color are increasing in importance in that in the. electoral mix that the republicans only strategy seems to be to fall back on the old. paul weyrich thing that you know back in one thousand nine hundred where he said you know i don't want everybody to vote for a player i love original elections goes up as the voting populace goes down we've got now three or four republican elected officials who are just in the last two

weeks on record saying the exact same thing that it says that essentially they're passing or have passed legislation to reduce the number of voters because it'll do it'll work to the advantage of republicans in virginia cuccinelli supervised you know the knocking of forty to forty forty to fifty five thousand people off the electoral polls is the same thing jeb bush did with eighty thousand african-americans the week or two weeks before the election of two thousand that allowed his brother to get in there i mean is this the only strategy that the speaker jim wright the guy who was the speaker of the house who had the job that john boehner has right now couldn't vote well you ultimately did but i mean you know had he been just an average person he probably would have been turned away or he would have been given a placebo ballot i mean is this a legitimate strategy for the republican party to make it harder to vote i mean clearly it is the thing is though it's not just a despicable strategy it's also incredibly ineffective the law that you're talking about the texas voter id law has been successful in making about one third of women

in the states in eligible to vote because they're married women and there's some discrepancy between their married name in the name it's on their id or something like six hundred to eight hundred thousand voters in this state who would not be able potentially to vote given these ideas now at that point you're talking about six hundred to eight hundred thousand people you're not just talking about the people that are not inclined to vote republican you're talking about everyone you're talking about as i said married women you're talking about seniors you're talking about you know obviously the guy who actually was the architect of the law attorney general for the state who had a problem myself out of that right because it said you know gregory had his i.d. he goes by gregory you know or whatever it is going to vote or it's a registration grigory on the start of the event or if it's an incredibly ineffective sort of actually. it reminds me of the jeff foxworthy bit about you know like if you if you're a better idea something that you know that doesn't allow women in seniors then whatever to get out to vote you might have

a bad voter id law you know it so that yeah and you might be in a state where there's a whole lot of. i don't know if redneck is a slur but it's a jeff foxworthy does it funny. but is this you know is this. is this going to be a problem for the republican party i mean there were there was a theory that was probably gated that you know it worked in two thousand and florida there was never any significant blowback against jeb bush pulling that off and still trying to litigate that but it worked you know but but in two thousand and twelve these voter suppression efforts actually increased the turnout in african-american communities because people are so frankly pissed off about this they're saying you know you're going to try to keep us from voting and like christie is saying in texas i mean they in one thousand nine hundred four texas passed a law that has to do with this whole women will take care of the women thing mandating that if a woman gets married on her driver's license or middle name has to be her maiden

name you know creating a standard but it didn't mandate that for voter i.d.'s and typically women go on their voter i.d.'s i mean their voter registration card with their first name their middle name and their and their last name if they took their husband's name and this is this is what is time i mean i would disagree that this is a coordinated attempt at voter suppression i think that were republicans are trying to do here and have done that across in republican states across the country is try to ensure. the fidelity of the elections and i know some would disagree with that but but as you stated there have been mixed reports about how this affects turnout how this affects racial along racial groups and so it's not clear that these laws are pretty new it's not clear how they have an impact but i think if i could make a philosophical point it's that i don't think this. outrageous on its face as you do on one side we have no evidence of voter fraud sure but just so that i could make a little reason to put people through all this but i agree that those of about ok

so on one side you could have very strict access to the ballot polls are open for one hour or something like that on the other side there's a lot of countries that have mandated voting it is a requirement of them ship that you vote you could do like the census you could have people walk around with ballots and knock on doors and hand ballots out in and sit with people as they fill it out i don't think either of those things or there's very little that's what oregon exactly i think there's a middle ground and i think the reasonable people can disagree on what that middle ground is so republicans think that. the electoral process and i don't think they think. fool anybody with that law i think i think they absolutely do and we can disagree a lot of think reasonable people can disagree on the middle ground reasonable people could if there was any evidence that there is voter fraud but there's no evidence of it you know george bush sent seventy four million dollars looking for voter fraud sure for people but the perception of fraud in an electoral system is almost as damaging as fraud itself to people and the republicans are the ones who

are probably getting that perception but if people don't believe in their elections that's that's why in polls significant numbers of people are for voter i.d. laws you know i understand that i understand that impulse and i understand that that's why the democratic party will not speak out against electronic voting machines being tamper a bill and probably the republicans won't either but i've had high level democrats say don't talk about that on the air because it will discourage people who will show up at the polls i think that's crazy logic just like you know but any and mark i want to get your thoughts you know there's a lot anybody in power is going to try to stay in power in this case that the the two major parties are trying to restrict access to the two running for election campaigning and of course the g.o.p. does seem to be trying to restrict the electorate or at least it's accessed in certain cases to go into voting look i don't think there's that much voting fraud either i think this is a solution without a problem and it's sort of a stair. thing that gets you know comes up every time we have an election but the bottom line here is if there's fraud when you take care of that at the registration process if there are you know it's in the problem it may not be showing id it may not be having to to come forth with something to get you on the on the roll on the

voter rolls the proper these gotcha tactics that where you're there you're registered but you can't actually vote so if we're talking about something that registration when there's time and all that that that could be something different if there's actual fraud and evidence of fraud some real problem but the problem here is you're going after certain types of documents that do have a disparate impact on who has them whether it's made names and women whether it's minorities whether it's people who have come to this country naturalized recently and you go after the document that they may not have it has a disparate effect so i again think this is a solution without a pro it's actually not a solution it's an attempt at a solution to try to curry and this idea that there's this fraud i just have never seen me give someone a good attempt to reduce the number of people who are going to vote for your party there was a group last year called true the vote that they're still around but they got a lot of attention during the twenty twelve elections and they had this pretty famous quote got a lot of attention and they said we want to make voting like driving with the cops driving behind you so that i can really get through what they're actually out here

with a pretty racialized quo like driving with the cops riding behind you. know there is we want to make you afraid to vote exactly that's what you want to be about in a boat nervous if you are that's exactly right if you're if you're doing something wrong then we want you to go to the polls you might be voting while black for example or below the voting all female vote this is this is stuff you know but also this fraud if we had the idea i guess is that somebody with some sort of fake id somebody on the rolls they're actually registered to vote you know they're not coming so you go down there you person a them or however this fraud is perpetrated a lot of it's going to be chased out when the real person shows up and says wait a minute i already voted well that is it that never it doesn't ever seem to happen again unless it is a real problem or something we could show the problem then maybe there needs to be a solution where the four cases that. identified nationwide last year were all cases where a child was voting on behalf of a parent and they were adults it was like you know somebody in the forty's or fifty's had a seventy or eighty year old father or one and voted for them you know and or use

their name or say it's like and this is it's a flip elections is petty stuff for people who are felons who didn't realize that they can't vote in that state that's the frankly the most common one if there was if they don't quite get how we got but it will be right back more of tonight's big picture politics panel. i would rather as questions to people in positions of power instead of speaking on their behalf and that's why you can find my show larry king now right here on our t.v. question for. i know c.n.n. the m.s.m. b.c. and fox news have taken some not slightly but the fact is i admired their commitment to cover all sides of the story just in case one of them happens to be

accurate. that was funny but it's closer to the truth and i think. it's because one call attention and the mainstream media works side by side with you is actually on here. at our teen years we have a different price. because the news of the world just is not this funny i'm not laughing dammit i'm not sure. if. you guys stick to the jokes will handle they said that. this is my angel whenever i'm feeling low or going to look at all this i still can't believe that i stoop interest to. my first she says. try to be good

for. good fortune may be the hope of those even maybe i'm very cold so these wars that i took. in your body or. that you let them are. welcome back to tonight's big picture politics panel with mikhail peterson christie setser and marc harrold let's get back to it i think one of the most important this is one of these kind of bellwether things you know are is the nation shifting more conservative more progressive what's going on colorado has this thing called amendment sixty six it's going to replace a flat tax in colorado with a progressive income tax and it's going to raise taxes by a billion dollars and they just did this in california two years ago that it's going to raise taxes by a billion dollars and force the state allocate forty three percent of their total budget to their schools people are saying enough already we want the schools to

work and it has the support of both the teachers' union and people like bill and melinda gates who are typically so friendly to teachers unions are more typically promoting things like charter schools so. because it's also increasing funding for charter schools. thoughts on this you know thoughts on on where this is going and what it may have to do with the democratic and republican strategies you know the old you'd win in ski theory that democrats always played santa clause that you know they gave away so security they gave away free free education they get and the republicans had to figure out how to be santa clause tax cuts but you know we've kind of hit the limit of that where the republicans are going to take this anybody have any thoughts on this who it was a huge tax increase it's ill advised anita. you know you get more and more government into education and if they're going to fund it they're going to find it and this turns you know this whole day kindergarten is just a route to indoctrination and getting kids very early in what usually are very liberal or very this is really just i mean the whole point of all day is so the

parents can work because because we've don't have enough time to do the government's going to take care of your kids so you can work i mean that the parents can make you know arrangements for that are more in danger now than they do in food like the d.c. public schools where we are right now is going to dispel the myth that the more you spend per student or the more you spend on education the better the education you get this is a huge tax increase the flat tax made a little bit more sense the way that they had it there's a huge increase in the senator's been forty three percent this is sort of a feel good thing people think you need education and you do need education the bottom line is if they have forty three percent of a state budget is education they are going to be heavily heavily entrenched ideologically in defining education and when the government pays for something defines it the education itself is affected by the government's whim or the government's you know whatever the way the you know the wind is blowing in that current administration whoever's in charge of state this is ill advised. i think that's a pretty of view i think one thing that polls well from democrats and republicans

across the board of education we get this pretty smart politics because again it's hard to vote for educate against education or for one thing and it's also they're being incredibly transparent and transactional about the way that they are shaping the messaging in this campaign and you know i watched one of the ads for the pro amendment sixty six and it basically said for one hundred thirty three dollars we can get more aid from classrooms we can do all day kindergarten and these are things that people can really grab on to and they can also hold the government accountable at these things aren't happening so they're really putting themselves on the line there and i think people are going to be really interesting about that . were the republicans for this is this why why it is really that in a partisan effort i agree that it's very smart politics to include schools because that's probably going to go a lot of republican voters into the yes column we will have to see how it turns out . but i would i would agree to some extent with the fringe view i mean if you look at at the funding for education over decades the graph goes like this and if you look at test scores if you were if you had actually if you look at real dollars

though actually we had funding drop in some ways during the vietnam war at least. it depends on the programs you're looking for i mean one of the big things is is you know in the fifty's there was a dramatic increase in funding for education for gifted kids and then in the sixty's education start leveling off and then it was like ok we've got to deal with learning disabled kids and that created a boom and an educational spending but the mainstream kids were left behind in all the gifted programs have been dead pretty much since the end of the eisenhower administration or the second year the kennedy administration and i would be. the point i'm trying to make is that i think there are deeper structural issues with american education that needs to be addressed and so this might be a band-aid for colorado for a while you know pour some several million dollars back into the into the system and see how it turns out but i think it without addressing those deeper issues we're going to end up in the same place down the road i also agree that it's good politics i mean very hard to vote against education or certain issues can't go to

get so i think it's very smart politics and i want to say it all and i think it's bad policy ok new jersey is voting out a ballot initiative that raise that state's minimum wage in fact they're going to bend the constitution to raise it to eight dollars and twenty five cents and automatically kick it up with inflation. records fall seventy six percent of the jersey and support this twenty two percent are opposed meanwhile over in seattle in the suburb of seattle sea-tac which is where the airport is they're voting out fifteen dollars minimum wage which would put the minimum wage just a little bit above where it was in one thousand nine hundred sixty eight it was you know about twelve dollars and. to ten twenty five or twelve twenty five i forget which so i get anyway we would be higher than it's ever been before her minimum wage is seven twenty. it's been that way since two thousand and nine so you know first of all thoughts on the minimum wage and then secondly in one thousand nine hundred eighty six when we had welfare reform and this was a bipartisan effort this was new game bridge and bill clinton getting together and

saying let's do away with welfare as we know it clinton famously bragged that he had done that and it used to be people basically were just broken poor they were on welfare or they had a job and they didn't get benefits and other than the earned income tax credit that came along with the nixon administration back in the seventy's and what this did was a said you know if you're if you're poor and you're not working you've got to get to work within four years or months to get the work of the pay is really bad you can still get some of these benefits and you could argue and we've got a graphic here that shows the rise of the use of just food stamps is one of the metrics on that it's just one full screen that you know to to the right of this is that you see this bump in the ninety's that a lot of employers drop down because i think because of the tech bubble there and in two thousand but that what happened in the mid ninety's was that wal-mart mcdonalds and all these what we call low wage employers now they said oh gee you know our employees used to have to live on what we paid them so we had we step to

pay them decently now they don't have to live on what we pay them because the government subsidized that the taxpayers will subsidize that this is where we get these numbers like it costs a basically a million dollars a year for every wal-mart in america in terms of subsidies for medicaid food stamps housing assistance things like this so we're basically subsidizing a business model that shouldn't exist i mean talk about preserving perverse incentives this is not clearly what bill clinton had in mind. but this ties into that whole minimum wage things so this is kind of a gordian knot i suppose but you know anybody want to take up an axe to it some thoughts on this well again i think i think it's good politics i don't know if it's good policy i think for. a minimum wage increase. employment i think a minimum wage makes it more difficult for people without skills there's no evidence to the system i mean just just i mean i had an unpaid internship but i was starting my career without i would not have gotten all of the next world wouter and

i think there are a lot of people who don't get on the first rung because they are very their work what the skills they have in the work that they can produce is not we've had about always since nine hundred thirty six and there is no correlation between increases the minimum wage is going up in fact is the reverse when you look at increases in the minimum wage and you look at three year blocks what you see is that g.d.p. actually goes up it's a stimulus it's a form of stimulus because people earning the minimum wage hundred percent of their income but really really the question i guess that i that i should have asked just more bluntly tightly is shouldn't we say in america if you run a business you have to pay people enough to live on and if you can't come up with a business model where the people who work for you can live on your wage you have no right doing business in america i mean isn't that the essence of the idea of a minimum wage christine absolutely and then to to go back to cows but that's exactly why it's good politics every time there is a minimum wage increase on the ballot we see it be for the party by seventy eighty

percent of people it's always sort of a helpful thing to have on the ballot but but yes of course i mean this is something that we've talked about during the health care debate ad nauseum as well which is that there should be minimum standards for company is in america the minimum wage is that they want a mark maybe you want to go back to where the way it was in the seventeen seventy's in england where they had a maximum wage in the maximum wage was to maintain the service basically i certainly don't want to hear some way any more than i want to minimum wage i think it's an artificial barometer that is set in there by government it's doesn't always correlate the way they think it's going to obviously will see you're saying it doesn't go down employment i think it will have that effect in seattle fifteen dollars minimum wage what there should be no minimum wages should be no maximum wage but what happens is you start to price out some of the. vulnerable people as we all know everyone doesn't make the minimum wage ok if all if all you had to do is pay the minimum wage every company would pay the minimum wage but that's not what happens people have a different place in the market and then whatever goods or services they bring

they're able to charge for that with minimal so it is based on that that fundamental philosophical notion that there should be a bottom through which people don't fall now if that somebody wants to work for a certain right now there's the thing that people are going to work for certainly one hand but wants to work out to go you know nobody's exactly right but if you're in a market place and you're skitt what you have it brings very little money it's also the turnaround of the idea that the prices are going to go up if everyone if you go to mcdonald's or seattle mcdonald's and you have to pay everybody their fifteen dollars you're going to see part of the reason that they have fast food employees which is cheap food that's going to go out the window and i cannot see any way you could run a fast food restaurant on a model where you go from double to double the minimum wage in a in a stroke like that you go from one seven twenty five to fifteen there are no professor who has traveled around the country to do that just know very few nasty that's exactly right but why are they big national chains why are they stockholders who are sucking the on all the profit health because they keep the price of the food low and you're not going to be able to do that you pay everybody at mcdonald's

fifteen dollars there is no way to keep the food. that's not because they don't have money in the company there's plenty of money in the company and again the profits are going to the c.e.o. and their shareholders they're not being going in the form of actually paying their workers a decent living wage and i think that's a problem but it's not a nutty idea that the profits from a company would go to the shareholders that's what the companies for that make money by the arab world it is a problem we have i mean you know look i think you want to go in and say to the company who may can too much give some of this away and to some people to that's not that's just not a market economy we're suggesting it's what you know what i'm saying is look we can obviously have this conversation about large you know large businesses but the fact of the matter is that you know ninety percent of businesses in america are small businesses that are actually run by a handful of moderately paid employees when you. those people a minimum wage we don't pay both people. you know a lifestyle that they can live on then you're really sort of hurting your bottom line i think that model should be you know extrapolate it but not just decide

everybody is going to be middle class or upper middle class will set the minimum wage to seventy five thousand dollars and the thing that i would add to that point is i mean i'm i'm i'm i'm a big proponent federalism so let's let new jersey said their minimum wage they want what seattle for the minimum wage would ever want if those policies work those economies will grow there will be more jobs there people will move to those states if they don't work the it's going to happen to anybody would move up in portland oregon when i was living there they they changed the was so the. tip workers restaurant workers we used to make two dollars twenty five cents an hour as the minimum wage had to make the twenty five fifty whatever the state you know wage was and the restaurant workers associations were heads were exploding no it's going to be unemployment everything worked out just fine so anyway we got to wrap this i still think it's good politics too by the way it is you know it was a very it's good politics i really do i totally agree and it will be good economic stimulus scott peterson christie setser our carol thank you so much for. coming up republicans are outraged over the high cost of food stamps on the social safety net programs but those cost comparison of the billions of dollars you and i are forced

to hand over to big business every year i'll explain in tonight's. dramas the truth be ignored. stories others through a few stupid notes. faces change the world. to picture those two days. from around the globe. i think. everybody. should you know the price is the only industry specifically mentioned in the constitution and. that's because a free and open prize is critical to our democracy shred albus. in

fact the single biggest threat facing our nation today is the corporate takeover of our government and across a semi-colon we've been a hydrogen lying handful of transnational corporations that will profit by destroying what our founding fathers once i'm tom are going to get on this show we were to feel the big picture of what's actually going on in the world we go beyond identifying the problem to try and rational debate and a real discussion of critical issues facing america if i ever feel ready to join the movement then walk a little bit. in

tonight's green report we're all paying a heavy price for the carbon pollution that's filling our skies and driving global climate change but that price doesn't just include more extreme weather events and summer like temperatures in the winter from driving global hunger and water shortages to eating up our tax dollars carbon pollution is having major effects on just about every aspect of our lives so what can be done to combat carbon pollution and save our planet to a good first step would be to introduce a carbon tax and force companies to pay for the carbon that they're dumping into our skies all debate washington over national carbon taxes gone nowhere across the

globe other countries are realize the environmental and economic benefits of a carbon tax one of those countries is ireland and joining me now from dublin to talk more about ireland's experience with a carbon tax is a man ryan former minister of energy and communications of ireland and now the head of the green party or mr ryan welcome. thank you very much indeed good to talk to you thanks for joining us what motivated carbon to create a carbon tax and how did you go about doing it. it took a long time i guess we were looking at it from the late ninety's and it took almost ten years before it was introduced in two thousand and ten and maybe not time it was useful in some way we got a lot of economic analysis done to show that if you introduce those and you use the revenues to reduce labor taxes and to protect people against fuel poverty and invest in new green energy systems that actually it does your economy good or it gives you a net gain to the economy it raises activity cuts down the expense of imports of

fossil fuels as well as cutting out the carbon so we were in government two thousand and seven two thousand and eleven and it was one of our kind of key commitments to try and deliver i was glad that we were able to do and i suppose glad as well just to see it working and you know if the world didn't come to an end it wasn't an easy thing to do politically but the figures for ireland i think show an example that you can actually start cursing out the carbon and your economy still holds up and we went through a difficult period in our county but but the actual green economy has done well and i think it's a lesson for the rest the world not you know we're and we're a good people say doc a scandinavian countries they're always doing the right thing maybe aren't as a nice example because we're perfect sinners as well but the same time we were able to do it and it worked how does the irish carbon tax work. we did vantage of the spores were an island and it was fairly simple to introduce it in the sense that you put we put it at the point of entry so as as an oil ship comes into the into the port of cork and supported doubling our culture it comes into

sharp shannon river we're able to put the tax at a point of entry and that's a big advantage because you cut out the expense of collecting it and it kind of trick astrue the rest of the economic system so you put it on the order tanker coming in or you put it on the code the code shipment. and that is applied in a myriad of different ways it's not a huge tax signal that accounts now for about one percent of our overall tax revenue but it's a signal that it's one of if you put it in as one of several segments it starts to have that effect in even there you don't expect you know in improving your energy efficiency in your homes or improving industries energy efficiency when they see a carbon tax in place people know that they can vest in alternatives that actually cut out the use of fossil fuels so that's a big advantage we had is that it was able to be fairly easily introduced at the point of entry it applied on on every aspect of transport he's saying. you can have it trickle through the economy enough way. and it was reasonably easy to

to collect if you were to translate ireland's carbon tax into. dollars or euros per tonne of carbon in their head do you know if you have a sense of or or even an exact number for what that would be and how my comparison to get carbon tax is you know a little bit. roughly twenty five dollars a tonne twenty or twenty euros a tonne whatever the current exchange rate is so we originally set it up by force to mirror the european union has another way of pricing carbon called emissions trading scheme we've set it up tomorrow to mirror the thousand that price that exists across europe now the emissions trading scheme of things fall into a very low price but our carbon price this trade. saying i did stop consistency that you you know it's twenty euros a tonic whatever different up occasion that it applies it raises about four hundred million euros in tax revenue and in terms of arms going through different economic

situations so we needed to balance our budgets and the carbon tax i suppose provided about twelve percent of the just meant we needed to make on the tax side so we were fortunate in some ways in the revenue situation was very difficult and we were able to apply the carbon tax to help on that side but the real benefit is the signal it gives to investment in other areas and i suppose in ireland we've benefit i mean we are firstly we're a very exposed ninety percent of our energy is imported fossil fuels so we need to cut it i was and what we've seen in the last five years is we've doubled our amount of our new but energy supplies we saw a twenty five percent improvement in the efficiency of new irish cards and so that those sort of signals and there was another in the car tax side we did some other measures around car tax to kind of have that happen i suppose but the message the public one is it's not popular it's not easy to introduce it but every new irish car going into the to buy gasoline is spending twenty five percent less than i

would have been had we not sent those sort of price signals so it's not easy to introduce you know no one should should underestimate the difficulty but the benefit for the consumer is even if through those signals you can cut out the wasteful use of energy that everyone saving money in it more than covers the cost of the carbon tax in the press but now there's irish carbon taxes first proposed by the irish green party which you're the head of right now what how do other political parties react to it have you found any interesting coalitions or alliances with parties that you might not think of as typically being concerned about global climate change or the cost of carbon. i think we have the advantage here in that there was broader complete consensus around the transition towards a clean energy future that maybe it seems to exist in the states and i'll be honest i don't think it's easy to introduce this if it's turned into a left versus right or by republican versus democrat issue i think a key way of getting it getting it through is actually getting bipartisan agreement

and i suppose if i was giving advice to the states where it is a current issue you know we know the budget negotiations you have ahead of you still isn't resolved surely it's one of the measures that actually could get some sort of bipartisanship support because it is sense it's leaving it to the free market to decide what sort of technology foster solutions you want to develop putting a price on carbon actually leaves the freedom of the market to actually work out plus the best way of doing that rather than a whole myriad of different government interventions so i think we were fortunate here where we introduced it that there was reasonable broad support for us i mean people play politics with the to a certain extent but we were able to introduce it because we could build stuff sort of deal across oz and i think that needs to happen elsewhere otherwise it becomes a political football and people are scoring points and to be honest the public opposition then it's a real problem so i think the first precursor to getting some sort of agreement is getting some sort of deal with parties different sides of the highs and then i

think once you have that then you're you're you're one tenth of the way they're aiming ryan thanks so much for being with us tonight thank you david. republicans are outraged that for all the wrong reasons this past friday five billion dollars was automatically slashed from snap the food food stamp program affecting the lives of forty seven million americans u.s. department of agriculture the u.s.d.a. estimates that because of these cuts a family of four who receives food stamp benefits will lose about twenty meals per month but these enormous cuts to food stamps are not enough for the republicans they want to slash an additional forty billion dollars from the program in the name

of reducing spending and federal debt republicans love to argue the programs like snap but other social safety net programs put it unfair burden on american taxpayers with a good number of minute to crunch the numbers and realize that that's flat out wrong in two thousand and twelve the average american taxpayer making fifty thousand dollars a year paid just thirty six dollars toward the food stamp program that's ten cents a day that's less than the cost of a ground ball the republicans think that's still too high a price to pay to help the neediest and most vulnerable americans and when it comes to funding other welfare programs the average american taxpayer making fifty thousand dollars a year pays just over six dollars a year simply put the american taxpayer isn't paid much in a social safety net programs like food stamps and welfare. we are paying a lot for the billions of dollars that the u.s. government gives to corporate america every year the average american family pays

the staggering sixty thousand dollars a year six thousand dollars a year in subsidies through republican friendly big businesses and that's just the average family family making more than fifty thousand a year say seventy thousand dollars a year pays even more to pad the wallets of corporate america so where does some of that six thousand dollars the un our pain every year actually go for starters eight hundred seventy ever goes to direct subsidies and grants to corporations that's like the government writing checks to big businesses this includes money for subsidies to big oil companies that are polluting our skies and fueling global climate change and global warming compare that to the thirty six bucks the you and i pay for the food stamp program every year an additional eight hundred seventy dollars goes to corporate tax subsidies the tax foundation is found that special tax provisions of corporations cost taxpayers over one hundred billion dollars

a year roughly eight hundred seventy dollars per family but in reality that number is even higher citizens for tax justice found that the u.s. treasury lost one hundred eighty one billion dollars in corporate tax subsidies which means the average american family could be putting out as much as sixteen hundred dollars a year just for that piece of the corporate welfare part. finally of the six thousand dollars in corporate subsidies that the average american family each year pay twelve hundred thirty one dollars of it goes to make up for revenue losses from corporate tax havens this is this is mitt romney in the caymans right this money goes to recoup the losses from giant transnational corporations like apple and g.e. and smaller companies like bain financial or mitt romney himself that hide their money overseas to boost profits and avoid paying taxes to help the american. bottom line here is that american families are paying six thousand dollars or more every

year to subsidize giant transnational corporations which are already making billions and billions of dollars in profit every in the past decade alone corporations have doubled their profit it's republicans on capitol hill keep suggesting that we can't afford to help the poor in this country and they're wrong what we really can't afford is doling out one hundred billion dollars every year in welfare to corporations that don't need it that's where the real outrage and the real news coverage should be. excuse me it's time to bring and to corporate welfare and to use those dollars to help those americans who need it the most. and that's the way it is tonight tuesday. twenty thirty and forget if you have a question or comment send us your video questions for your take my take a live segment just grab your phone pointed at yourself it record and then e-mail have video question to your take my take at g. mail dot com and democracy begins of you get out there get active take your.

mind. all that all about money and other families like for a politician right the boss and referee that. somehow. there's just too much. today's side. that. well. it's technology innovation all the developments around russia we've got this huge area covered.

fully under the law of the new knowledge base just like you know the. legislature. a pleasure to have you with us here on our team today i roll researcher. i'm the president and i think a society that i think corporation kind of can. do and the banks all that all about money and i think that's like that for a politician right the last. time. coming up.

there is just too much rat is a guy. that. coming up on r t it's election day twenty thirteen here in the u.s. and from new york city to miami beach unconventional candidates are shaking up the usual red versus blue politics in-depth coverage of today's elections just ahead. and in washington state there's a major vote on labeling g.m.o. foods initiative passes that would force biotech manufacturers to disclose the use of genetically modified crops more on a vote for greater transparency coming up and down in colorado there's an initiative to divide the state's eleven counties in northeast colorado will vote on whether or not to seat sort of the chances of a fifty first state tell you more later in the show.