these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. china operations are today. well i'm tom arbonne in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture from the labor battle in wisconsin to the front lines of environmental protection the republicans need the koch brothers permission for everything these days and sixteen million strong and growing as a number of american children living in poverty increases republican screw them over by cutting off their assistance programs plus your congressman peter king is launching a new which the u.s. and american muslims are the target in his scope so how will dividing america make

it stronger. you need to know this things are getting personal in wisconsin yesterday koch brothers lapdogs scott walker called out the democratic state senate minority leader mark miller for sabotaging negotiations between the two parties and one of the filibustering democratic senators spencer coggs responded by saying that all the democratic senators are firmly behind their leader mark no there are reports yesterday that filibustering democrats were willing to negotiate a return to wisconsin but walker rejected those negotiations calling them ridiculous it's like republicans and democrats are still at an indefinite standoff over what to do in wisconsin but with a majority was consonants and americans permanent support public unions collective bargaining rights is the time for walker to throw in the towel joining me now with

more on this issue is one of those wisconsin democrats who are taking a stand state senator chris larsen senator welcome to the program. thank you so much for having me he associated press is reporting that e-mails released by scott walker's office indicate he may be willing to. partially compromise expanding slightly the number of areas where he'll allow collective bargaining do you first of all do you know about this and secondly whether you do or not it would you interpret this is an attempt by him just to flip the news cycle to his benefit i mean his office did release these things or might something come out of this yeah i think he's just trying to distract from the greater story here and that's that he's still attacking worker rights and the fact is we put the solutions for we've put other solutions forward and what he's pointing at right now are the beginning of discussions they're not necessarily negotiations we asked him to have negotiations which with that letter yesterday saying ok you know let's vote start making these more formal he said of doing that he used the letter as

a prop to wave around in the charade while he may be called us. instead of actually engaging in real discussions and bringing this to the table so the letters in the e-mails that he's pointing at they're not necessarily negotiation it's more like the first thing that happened when you step on a used car lot you know there's no final offer there's no real negotiations it's just the beginning of it and i think it's unfortunate that he's politicizing it instead of engaging right and he has yet to go to his bosses the koch brothers to find out what the final price is going to be for the car wisconsin republican congressman jim sensenbrenner was unable to successfully hold a town meeting in i think it's pronounced while we're toast because people kept asking about you guys and and the congress would get so angry that he ended the meeting early are you aware of the level of support you have in wisconsin and nationally are you guys doing you know beleaguered or boyd up by this. you know i mean that's that's where we get

a lot of our strength you know the fact that there have been tens of thousands of people marching on the capitol we hear from thousands of them the e-mail and phone calls and we can see pictures and videos on twitter and facebook of what's going on so it's really. lopsided the amount of support that we've got and i watched a video from that i found it interesting how they tried to kill by about what was actually in this budget repair bill and i'm thrilled because the supporters knew exactly what was it and you know how many times in history to people know what's contained in a hundred forty four page so legislation and people are engaged people are paying attention and there's not any way around the pressures really on those republicans what they're going to do if they are going to couto to the right in this race to the bottom and go with walker on the sinking ship or if they're going to side with the working people who have stood up and spoke and know that they want a future they don't want to see the working class divided and that's exactly what this bill seeks to do with

a constant state senator chris larsen from illinois thank you sir so much for being with us. who is constant democratic party has filed an ethics complaint against governor walker explaining that he violated campaign finance rules by asking for support from beleaguered republican colleagues phone man he thought was david koch on a prank call a few weeks ago seems like everything republicans want to do nowadays must go through the koch brothers former chairman of the house energy committee congressman henry waxman said it like this when describing environmental regulation although it seems to matter is what koch industries think science is partisanship and the rising power of special interest are deeply intertwined and they feed off each other koch industries benefits immensely from the rollback of e.p.a. regulations. so it backs republican candidates who advocate this position and it funds so is that the case whether it's environmental or labor policy the

republicans have to first ask permission from the koch brothers and what we do to advance progressive policies in the face of a billion dollar headwind to speak of this i'm pleased to welcome from capitol hill california congressman henry waxman congressman welcome to the program has to be with you thank you back in one nine hundred ninety year were a major hero you still are in this regard fighting against polluters on behalf of the clean air act he's you ever a bajan back then that people who own companies like koch industries that literally kill people with cancers and make billions for their owners would end up calling the shots for america's republicans i am amazed where we are right now the republican party had champions for the environment there were many who worked with us to pass that legislation in fact when we finally worked out the compromises on the bill that passed almost unanimously in the house and the senate but now the republican party as a party has become the science deniers there in the pockets of guys like the cokes

and the cokes are just ordinary conservative republicans one of the koch brothers ran against ronald reagan because he thought he was too liberal in one nine hundred eighty but now that the supreme court is says it said that you could put it unlimited amounts of money into campaigns the koch's are standing up putting in their money and trying to call in fact calling the shots with the republican majority in the house of representatives to me give you an example please our committee the energy and commerce committee which has jurisdiction over energy policy and environmental issues. jordi of the republicans received money from the koch brothers and signed a pledge that they would try to strip the e.p.a. of its jurisdiction to go after the polluters that were causing global warming in the. payne they put in at least forty million dollars that we know about elect republican candidates and now they're telling the republican party what they want

and moving them very very far to the extreme then even libertarian but extreme right wing libertarians because they don't want government to tell them what to do because they want to make the maximum profits but they're usually not so libertarian when they want to tell a woman that she can't decide whether to have insurance that would cover a legal medical procedure and reproductive rights. to what extent is and by the way i mean if my recollection is right that environmental question is came about as a result of the efforts of richard nixon in part. to what extent is the american average americans confusion about global warming i mean you look at the poll numbers and they're just startling the number of americans who don't understand or have believed misinformation to what extent do you think that that is the result of things like well funded and oil industry funded right wing think tanks getting their shells out in the media or fox news and that sort of thing it's the it's the

accumulation of all of those echo chambers that are funded by the koch brothers and the right wing and so people who see themselves as republicans here the republican leaders saying over and over again oh this is all a hoax that's what senator inhofe told our committee it's all a hoax and of course they have in mind in their minds that one of the chief spokespeople to do something about this problem was former vice president al gore so they think it's a partisan issue but science has never been a participant matter if you look at the evidence and you based on the evidence reach conclusions and almost all reputable scientists have reached the conclusion not just in this country but around the world that the that the temperature is getting very very warm it's causing. climate change in ways we never imagined floods and droughts and very strange cold winters like we're suffering in

the united states lack of food coming out of russia and pakistan there's sort of ring from the droughts it's just a very very disturbing weather patterns and almost half of the north pole is now in dissolving because of the heating of the planet so the approach of republicans to say oh look at that evidence it would be as if my doctor said to me i've got the better. school i'm a specialist and i think you have cancer and i would scour the country to find a doctor who would assure me that i shouldn't worry about it and if i told the doctor that i feeling fine how could he think i have cancer and say well you just do even though you're feeling fine i would say well if he doesn't know for sure why i'm feeling fine he's probably made the whole thing up this is the approach the republicans. or the extremists in the republican party are taking i think most republicans in the congress know this is sort of this is all. ridiculous position

they don't want to do things because they're hearing from their peak campaign contributors but the american people think well maybe the science isn't subtle i had the same thing when we had the tobacco industry before my committee every time we had a hearing on tobacco the industry was insistent parading their scientists who said it's not so clear and there's no clear consensus yet and that science is still open because there was a message to keep people smoking and people did die because of it and now in this issue of climate change and and carbon emissions they're trying to make people think it is a real it isn't true but we see the evidence and they're wrong very well said congressman waxman thanks so much for being with us tonight thank you still ahead here. still ahead here on the big picture with the sixteen million american children living in poverty you'd think americans would try to help them out well think again. next we'll explain how america's children are in the republicans

crosshairs. lindsey lowe and. the preacher. she speaks she's. you know she says she's a. who

is screwed america's children are sixteen million children living in poverty right now if trends continue order of all the children in our nation will be living in poverty we haven't seen numbers this troubling since the great depression and what one of the republicans want to do about it cut services to low income children programs in the republicans crosshairs include the ed start programs the challenge christian assistance program i don't have other education health care and support programs all designed for and serving disadvantaged children so in a time of unprecedented child poverty republicans cup programs aimed at preventing child poverty these guys are really that heartless here offer his take your andro

president and executive director of the i and rand institute you're on welcome to the program thanks larry i knew you save up these topics specially for me i take it oh no actually this kind of stuff is in the news every single day would you want to be a rich person in a poor country. i want to be a rich person in a free country i want a country in which the government is not taking from some and giving to others i want to country in which the government leaves business alone and lives the private market alone to create the jobs that poverty is who advocated through market forces and redistribution of wealth a system that is proven to be a dramatic failure so rich people have more money than ever before so why are there so many poor people are they all lazy unproductive well no because of government i think i think government policies government regulations government controls inhibit job growth by the way they do create distortions in the allocation of well

some people away the richer than they should be and would be in a free market and some people a week than they would be in a free market because government chooses their locations instead of leaving it to the marketplace iran who would have a lot richer if we allowed the markets to function properly you know it sounds great and you point to any country or society in the history of the world where everybody act in total totally selfishly and it produced a positive society healthy nation where this this free market is only if you needed states the united states in the nineteenth century early twentieth century hong kong. harry's through the nine hundred ninety s. there you can label it but that's that's not guilty there are those who gilded age that these poverty was rampant i know it says that it was worse than that it is now up. we created so many jobs your he had a big nguyen's of people the poor the hungry the suffering for all over the world came to this country that saw things so bad in america that millions and millions and millions of people came here and we fed them and we clothed them and today they

of our ancestors they are great grandparents and they created a better life for us so you know it took what is much better back in the people in coming to america growth that freedom produce iran people have come into this part of this continent since the fifteen hundreds it wasn't unique to the late nineteenth century during the gilded age why is it why is it that when our taxes were the highest in our social safety net was the strongest or in the l.b.j. nixon ford carter administrations we didn't have the problem of poverty that we have now it wasn't anywhere near as bad. it was much worse and you know it was much worse not to talk about inflation and corruption and crime and the true reading cities nobody nobody you know lyndon johnson or harvey back half and near the seventies you know that even the basis of art entire. class in the united states. no quite the contrary if you look at the graph of thomas soul has been this quite carefully if you look at the graphs the growth in the middle class stops with the

establishment of the great society and johnson it was going for magically through the one nine hundred fifty s. and one nine hundred sixty s. and it's holt's and declines into the one nine hundred seventy s. eighty's and ninety's look why i realize it came with the original b.s. was reaganomics but l.b.j. was worley's it was not the eighty's. no l.b.j. is ok sixty three through sixty eight great and you see them bolting and declining and they suddenly decline and the richard nixon and economy declines and hovan economy but you know i wish that. each one of those three decades you had more than three point two percent g.d.p. growth the the the best of the entire century not in real terms not in real terms in the seventies not to wilton's at all in the seventy's and you had well over fifty percent unemployment do you not you would see on country is what we need in this country is more freedom the fact that somebody is poor is not a moral claim on my life it doesn't mean that it's right for the government to force me to pay for them and freedom and somebody else and or that's

a whole unit of people it's a it's a really easy word to throw out but when you look at research like you and i'm sure you're familiar with this wilkerson pickett's book the spirit level the you know equality trust or get u.k. that shows that more equal societies are healthier both physically mentally emotionally and unequal societies like the u.s. how do you respond i would put a bet on the table tom and you can you can take this bet if we lowered all the immigration standards in this in this country to europeans and you can't load all of this is when. i think the people would flow europeans would come here in the millions in spite of all the problems and despite in fact that i don't like the society we have today in america we needa improved dramatically things still better than they are and you have been sight of a it's wonderful because it's nice nice rhetoric you're on your boat will never have come because nobody would come with its modest little ready coming never lied so we can. ensure they are a one to three hundred people who anybody who are in

a stripper who is stewed wants to be here iran yes but you're on countries like the us thank you so much for being with us tonight my pleasure is always good for talking with you this type of tone deaf behavior from the republican party since surprises after all and not speaking of your audience not a republican is an objectivist but the republicans of the same guys who in a time of historically high unemployment wanted to cut off unemployment insurance and the same guys who when facing an all time high of uninsured americans fifty million want to repeal health reform the same guys who on the heels of a financial crisis want to kill wall street reform legislation the same guys who were in response to the b.p. oil spill want to kill alternative energy legislation keep giving the oil industry three billion dollars a year in welfare payments and finally the same guys who had record high budget deficits wanted to give their millionaire and billionaire buddies a x. cut they could have paid for all the things i just described in my opinion we need a change of leadership and maybe today is a perfect day to look at alternative it's international women's day in sweden forty

percent of the members of their parliament are women in norway thirty eight percent are women in finland thirty four percent are women i'm guessing if we saw that level of female representation in the united states congress that we see we wouldn't see a fifth of our children in poverty or the rest of these crucial family programs on the chopping block. baseline for a daily poll your chance to tell us what you think or question for the day will the republican lapdogs continue to give billionaires tax cuts rather than helping children living in poverty your choice is a yes they're cutting head start child interest is and support programs for poor children or b. now they're not that tone deaf so far the results are one hundred percent yes you still have time to vote just it's amartya dot com let us know if you think the polls will be open until tomorrow morning.

republican chairman of the house homeland security committee peter king is set to officially launch his investigative hearings into american muslim communities this thursday despite pleas to broaden his investigations into non muslim domestic threats like white power or anti-government militia groups king is pushing ahead with his narrow scope aimed solely at islamic threats over eighty religious leaders from all of the nominations were a letter to king last month asking him to think twice about these investigations as the letter read quote building and maintaining trust with the muslim community is crucial to furthering this cooperation and we fear your hearings will only so much so greater distrust and division at a time when unity and moral courage are needed so as king dividing our nation and

embarking on a twenty first century mccarthy yes which joining us to offer their takes a one hundred beutel government and policy analyst at the muslim public affairs council and seton motley the president less government or dot org. i'm surprised not dot com actually so many a seat and conservatives like tim mcveigh jim david advocates and eric was a conservative that killed a lot of conservatives and these are all people who caught claim that they were conservatives have killed a lot of people and conservatives like them continue to threaten america or use only five years what i can actually give you a much longer list why won't peter king investigate these right these right wingers who are threatening america and have killed so many for the same reason willie sutton well banks that's where the money is there when you have a list in my part to work here of twenty four domestic muslim terrorist incidents forded or executed since nine eleven for them twelve them involve multiple. people not just

a single isolated person but multiple people working in league with other terrorist organizations around the world and i'm not so you are i give you a long list of conservatives who are also what know you do you know people you know you'll get a lot of times you're not accusing them of being a good sort of i mean people like your lawyer turned out not to be so a lot of those lives. aren't conservative muslims killed a lot of americans on nine eleven. but have also killed a lot of muslims in other parts of the world how does the muslim community best deal with its murderous conservatives. and do you think that peter king's so-called investigation is going to increase the power and the number of these. radical or conservative muslim first of all thank you very much for having me on your time and second i think that like all other americans muslim americans are very concerned about terrorism you mentioned before that muslim violent extremists such as al qaeda and bin laden have been largely killing

a lot of the muslims around the world in addition to the to the horrific attacks on nine eleven and according to a study by west point eighty five percent of all of its victims are actually muslims so that's the first point the second point though it's going here to our shores is that muslim americans again are very very concerned about this issue and we're front line partners in the fight against terrorism according to a study that we've been doing so for several years now our post nine eleven terrorism incident database we have found that two out of every five plots have been thwarted since nine eleven because of the assistance of muslim community members so when representative king is saying for instance that our community is not cooperating with law enforcement or that we're not doing enough to combat extremism i'm sorry but his quotes are wildly off the mark. peter king worked as a lawyer with roy cohn who was the famous lawyer for joe mccarthy. do you think that

he's modeling himself after joe mccarthy because he was right you know i have here in my pocket twenty four the names of twenty four commoners working in this very hard currency was right so you think that was appropriate to do this yes absolutely look and the some parts of the muslim community do you know muhammad. he's a good friend of mine so i know we're talking about there are large swaths of the muslim community that are working against terrorism he didn't say the entire muslim community isn't working against terrorism he has run into pockets of american mosques and muslim communities look at the words terrorism is terrorism here working against exposing terrorism to be looking to terrorism as a whole rather than just the vast majority of terrorist attacks in the united states and the world right now. are conducted by people acting in the name of islam so if you want to really want to destroy your car i don't want to do it so actually when we look at for instance terrorist attacks directed at the united states in

fact we find is that since nine eleven there have been forty five by al qaeda its affiliates but over eighty by non muslim violent extremists we're talking about neo nazis we're talking about anti-government extremists and other folks the other important point to make here is that of those eighty cases five of them actually involved chemical biological or radiological weapons attempted or actual possession of such weapons and none of them were by a muslim american case in point would be in two thousand and three william krar he was he was not. affiliated he was an anti-government extremist his religion was not islam and frankly it doesn't even matter what his religion was but the point being is that while there is so much of a focus right now soley on muslim violent extremism i think what we need to do is have a comprehensive approach to this issue because if we don't we're imperiling our national security with my point for me he said there are ninety five muslim related.

activities versus eighty by everybody else on the planet and i said forty and forty . four that's the majority is non muslim. i have sitting on my desk a list of over two hundred conservative attacks you're going to hear a lot like the guy who shot the. guy like the guy who walked into the unitarian church and murdered a couple of people i mean you could go. to mass globally but there isn't a problem with people murdering people in the name of islam you. know when you're the name of you know boy growing up a seat and everyone you and i both will find common ground that the fact that we are very concerned about muslims. an extremism question the difference between i think you and i right now though is how do we go about it and that's the question are we going to be treating the overwhelming majority of the muslim community as partners in this fight because frankly we do have a dog in this fight or are we going to be treating them as suspects and what i'm

saying is that in order to go forward on this effectively we need to make sure that we're treating our muslim american communities as any other americans and as partners in disguise and if you're going to live with this decision to have this hearing in five seconds he's been investigating for a long time and what he wants to do what he wants to do is expose the portions of the american muslim community that aren't cooperating in a way that really should rule. i wish that was absolutely true but unfortunately though the way that this is going about is that this is focusing more on broad brush issues as opposed to actually targeting a violent fringe of individuals which both you and i are very very concerned about in your opinion is the best way for america to deal with. radical islam with cancer i think i think that what we need to do is really look at the u.s. constitution i think that you both you and i see our constitutionalists together here and ultimately what i see is a constitutional counterterrorism strategy in which at the end of the day what we

need to make sure is that the marketplace of ideas works itself out against any sort of extremist ideology where muslims are at the forefront of combating the ideas and law enforcement make sure that it is focused very targeted on those particular criminal elements so this way we can make sure that there is no injustices and we don't play into the hands of the propagandists for the terrorists . thank you both for being with us. we need to make sure that our efforts to make america safer are not undermining our values we need to put an end to as long. as it's. still ahead here in the big picture roughly one hundred thirty two thousand teachers were laid off during the recession and what organization figured out a way to rehire them all twice will tell you just. flimsy low and. rachel that these women people.