if. the long john are going to washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture all our troops are fighting the war in libya back here at home another war is underway against the middle class the great lengths republicans are going to make the rich richer thinking for the working class even poor plus if you're a low income union worker and anyone in your family depends on food stamps you better not strike if republicans have their way standing up for better of a more safe workplace because the food on your table and

a call to action make bank of america exxon mobile pay their taxes more on the move and called us uncut as in stop cutting benefits for working people to give tax breaks to billionaires later in the show. while our nation is a war and living in a cloud of radioactivity sweeps across the west coast of the united states speaker of the house john boehner and the rest of his republican cohorts in congress have taken the week off to enjoy the new spring weather. of course for the rest of us any day that republicans are in congress is the day that the middle class isn't getting screwed by their budget cuts unfortunately though in state governments all across the nation conservative governors and lawmakers are picking up on boehner slack and there's a common theme to their crusades if you've heard the story a robin-hood then you know exactly what i'm talking about after thirty years of

failed reaganomics that has seen the richest one percent of our country accumulate eighty percent of all the new wealth created on the back a working class americans over the last thirty years leading to a wealth inequality gap today larger than it any other time in american history since one thousand twenty nine republicans still think these millionaires and billionaires don't have enough money so they've taken a sale robin hood story of an honorable thief steals from the rich and gives to the poor and turn it on its head they're stealing from the poor to give to the rich and the story tonight begins with three states ohio new jersey and maine and three republican governors who are proud to be part of speaker john boehner and robin hood gang of merry men this is pretty straightforward stuff in fact though let's just lay it out there are the pick of the first state here the governor's these governors are this is ohio ok so here we have john k six the

governor of ohio he's cut twenty five percent of the school budget and he's cut four hundred twenty seven million dollars from nursing homes he's cut twelve million dollars from children's hospitals now you know these are pretty radical children's hospitals and. remember st jude i mean i always thought the children's hospitals were pretty important stuff sanker so act like that but he's doing this in order to you know or to eliminate the paris hilton facts and facts so that children of rich people who happen to be members of the lucky sperm club you know beginning that it's really it's really quite remarkable that you pull money from children's hospitals to help the people in the walkies for. new jersey where we have a governor chris christie is you know he's kind of little johnny actually i think he cut the earned income tax credit this is a way. it's

a check basically that's written to the people who are working and substantial admirable those who assumes in many cases substantially below the poverty level and cutting the earning income tax credit and that's taking money away from poor people literally. had to balance that out so you raise the estate tax exemption from six hundred seventy five thousand dollars to a million dollars in other words let's help more of those paris hilton types or members of the rockies it's just it's just this is you know what what is it with these guys in maine a governor le page. he started out with the property taxes he says ok let's raise the property taxes on everybody in the state which most of the people in the state are the middle class there are four hundred people in the state of maine who are worth more than ten million dollars so everybody else with soap and of course they had their property taxes were raised as well but then he said let's raise the

retirement age for state workers so you know the guys working on the road crew sixty five maybe they could work until sixty eight who knows and he froze funding for any health care in the state from the state medicaid program different states have different names for it badger here in wisconsin dr dinosaur in vermont and whatever it is in maine says you know we're going to freeze this out why so that he could raise the estate tax exemption keep in mind four hundred people million and two million and it would actually i said ten million it's one. to two million dollars now this is something the estate tax frankly i don't disagree with the reason limit on a national basis but to to for a governor on a state budget to simply say you know we're going to cut you know we're going to give the rich more money and we're going to take from the problem literally that's what's been going on so here we have you know the robin hoods and their merry band

and that's that's that's where it's going. after the break more of what's going on a bizarre oh sure would forrest or other reverse robin hood republicans are doing their part to steal from working people and give to the rich. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so. you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything you saw

you don't own time or as it should. be two thousand and eight bailout of wall street is a person a perfect example of this reverse robin hood agenda that i've been talking about trillions of dollars sucked out of the pockets of middle class taxpayers to make sure millions of millionaires and billionaires don't take a hit on their stock portfolios and say many of these taxpayers are in debt thanks to these same banks toure's who screwed them over with predatory loans and fine print credit card contracts to get this would you believe it if i told you that some of these people are actually being thrown in prison for going into debt that's right america in the twenty first century is bringing back debtors prisons are in the wall street journal even we can't pay off their credit cards can be thrown in

jail in a third of our states and since the start of two thousand and ten over five thousand arrest warrants were issued just in the nine counties that the wall street journal at that against people who owed as little as a thousand dollars in that in that one case to a massively profitable corporation capital one so many of the straight peers after the financial crisis were massive fraud was perpetrated by wall street now one bank story is in jail but tens to hundreds of thousands of lower middle class americans who were screwed by these banks toure's are being sent to debtors prison ironically one of the people profiled in the wall street journal story jeffrey stearns who was quoting the wall street journal and kraft in front of his four children and had no idea he was being sued was thrown in jail for missing payments on his pickup truck to a.i.g. yeah at that. were jokers sano sold hundreds of billions of dollars worth the c.d.o. probably one including a slice of jeff stearns his pickup truck without having to put up a penny

a g.'s money and then when the bill came due went to you and me for a bail up i saw by the way is now living comfortable in the u.k. three hundred fifteen million bucks you have for me i.g. and in indiana the police are so clogged with requests from banks to throw people into jail but they can't access arrest orders for actual dangerous criminals it's such a crisis for the courts in that state it's a period court judge robert pigman has asked the state supreme court to stop the practice that's going on here on top of that a band of merry republicans in the u.s. house jim jordan tim scott scott garrett dan burton and of course louie gohmert have introduced a bill that would cut off food stamp assistance to the entire family of any person who's involved in a strike so if you're in debt you can be in thrown in prison and you can strike for higher wages to get out of that because then you'll have to sacrifice a little assistance you get from the government to feed your family all of this a republican chairman of the ways and means committee another member of john boehner is band of merry thieves david and often could line the pockets of

billionaires with his proposal to drop their top tax rate from thirty five to twenty five percent. starting to see the big picture here how can republicans justify this vote here to try and do just that seen model of president less government. welcome back those pesky poor people do you see yourself we have a robin hood thing that we've got the robin thing exactly wrong the real robin hood of stole from the tax collectors turn to the people who pay the taxes he's. rich well he wasn't necessarily from the asshole as in the version of the fairy tale you know the actual dirt fairy tale the actual real story was he was stealing from the tax collectors to return it to the people who pay the taxes ok so these so these guys are stealing. it it's an imperfect metaphor but these guys are not just there i'm just gonna correct it will think you know what these guys are doing is they are saying we're going to reduce benefits on working people and and you know

lower income and middle income people and we're going to make it a way of not benefits giveaways better giveaway exe food stamps or giveaways. ok but once they are on that they're giveaways are you suggesting that we should you want to live in a society where people are hungry i want to live in a society without food stamps yes there you realize there are i mean literally there are millions of children in america who go to bed every night i go to bed hungry and i i don't want food stamps. you know that you think easier because of a kid who is who's you know parents are let's take the worst case example you know born appalachia and dysfunctional and alcoholic and a kid shouldn't get a decent meal because parents are screwed that's the worst case i mean or or somebody who just you know lost their job they paid i was going better for their tax evaders not tax providers robin hood stole from the tax collectors to return to the people who paid on tag we are we already got that part of it but the point is

that these people are it is an unconstitutional governmental action do you do you really believe that the people in the us. we are going to go along with the republicans and say oh yeah this is great let's you know let's just forget about you did you not witness last november's election we don't have the money anymore i don't recall any of those governors running on the platform of i'm going to come benefits it's not benefits they're giveaways well whatever i am again i don't recall iowa's got a recall ever giving it and to any of those part i don't recall ever getting a thank you ever they just bitch all the time when they get free stuff from us what are you talking about the people who get government money they're supposed to thank you to us and just go thank you so much for your charity. when i write thank you know it's a christmas. i'm tell you what taxes. are for i says a half trillion dollars in debt thanks to ronald reagan and his tax cuts that's how it all began the mentally untrue that's where it all began he job with the national debt now he doubled revenue to the treasury the problem was top tip o'neill drupal

social spending you know that was the problem he had to pay off neil was social spending to get the defense spending you needed broccoli on his back straight from seventy four percent down it twice to the throat and ran up two trillion dollars it was a spending problem it wasn't a president i know it was a spending problem reagan is spent a billion a trillion dollars on star war was not a sign of battersea that is a totally made up number he did not spend a trillion dollars and so he certainly is damaging to anything he is a tween dollars on the national defense he spent a trillion on he came out in numbers out of two trillion dollars or something because when he came into office our debt was less than and that was the grotto needle and the liberal democrats in congress on social spending to to get the defense spending we were down the soviet union every every budget that has been submitted by any president in the last forty years has come within two percent congress has ended up until obama did alosi in rio now even now has come with it we haven't seen this but we're spending twenty four percent of the anybody right now do they really flooded so reagan we only had reagan was proposing those but we're

spending twenty five percent of g.d.p. we're only collecting eighteen percent we're not anywhere near two percent right now yet right. collection's know we need to lower the spending we need trillion dollar stimulus which are terribly you go to rallies the banks you've got guys on wall street who are earning two billion dollars a year on average that's the average pay for that's not the average for the top that's just like your trillion dollars on storms the last ten has been totally destroyed minnesota just a. mansion i'm seated which is a rehash of the whacked out newspaper you just quoted a trillion dollars on star wars and that was totally wrong totally bogus kyoto you made up you got to get the top hedge fund managers on wall street making two billion dollars a year and then paint fifteen percent maximum income tax fine it's their money this is it it's their money it is a are big they did not earn anything what do you think of value according to one of these guys to do other than creating collateralized debt obligations that went from zero when it was legalized by phil graham's lobbying yogas wife wendy on behalf can

lay with enron up until nine hundred trillion dollars worth of c.e.o.'s just in they have zero holders that have the trauma that's the worth the only film business a person gets paid is the person writing the check you have personalities it's no because there is they have no you will have a compensation which will have a great longing envy is the only one of the seven deadly sins that doesn't give the perpetrator a moment's pleasure stop being envious stop as he has nothing to do is a god salute because you are the fact that there are no i was your own to agree mind your own business three who are working their butts off for working fifteen hours five ten. hour days for doing so for pennies who are doing so for nothing and they can't make it they can't make it in this country and so cut taxes cut spending in the in the private sector will expand it's not how it's well he's worked it always were it has because he has absolutely never would know why because the government's been actually growing in iraq for you has pretty. good till nine hundred twenty one when harding came into office the top tax rate was ninety one

percent harding comes in oh that's not true either said it is true when he wanted hard edge and twenty one he drops it from ninety one dollars. when you lie percent coolidge cut it in the woods when he came in and exactly yes the economy was not available brewers oh in twenty nine hundred slices the same thing for was last thirty years it was one a week tax that's out i don't know that we have seen is one bubble after another we've seen the dot com bubble the stock bubble the real estate bubble we always aim higher than we were before don't we just as i do it well absolutely if we are the rich now right everyone you're absolutely right everyone one percent more you percent of all the other people are a good way as an employer the one most people under reagan moved from the lower fifth to the highest fifth and stayed in the lowest fifth that's of statistical fact so don't tell me lower people don't move they move up for congress i'm talking about during the eight years the rate reagan's big tax cut was only a year and a half before he entered what is presently ninety let's look at the last two in a years as well as a leisurely nine years he agrees to act as a standard raise tax revenue kill big on incremental and kill the guy out of town

he was already dying go away that's what what we have seen over the last that just shows the steady destruction of the middle class and any us see thanks for showing it's a government that stores and. tell that to anybody who lives in the fifties sixties or seventies they didn't see thank you apparently republicans think their reverse robin hood strategy will not be noticed by average voters or will be forgotten by next november. november of next year after all just a matter of time for reagan's massive tax cuts for the rich are going to trickle down to all the rest of us right i mean it's been thirty years and we're still waiting. for. a sign for a daily poll your chance to tell us what you think here's today's question arrests have been issued arrest warrants of the nation from people who always little as a thousand dollars in credit cards is the new debtors prison your options are and yes the new world order is robin hood rob from the poor get to the rich or the no americans will see republicans is that our country back to the days of the robber

barons and wake up so far the majority of you have said yes but you still have time to tell us what you think the guns on our background. cast your vote the poll be open until tomorrow morning. our next republican prancing around corruption sure would force as governor rick scott in florida with political enemies on both sides of the aisle scott is pushing full steam ahead with his staff and the poor scott is supporting legislation that will require welfare recipients to take drug tests that they must pay for out of their own pockets the drug test typically costs about thirty five bucks each for about thirteen cents for the chemicals and the roughly fifty eight thousand people who will be hit by this new law fifty eight thousand people who can barely scrounge up enough money to eat let alone pay for a drug test so the governor rick scott can feel better at night because welfare money is not going to someone who might smoke a little dope oh and by the way his wife now on these clinics all over the state

where these drug tests could be done or the multibillion dollar drug testing industry that can throw some campaign dollars this way either that or scott hopes he can kick a few families off the welfare rolls use some of that extra cash to slash corporate income taxes for the very very rich on top of that scott is also requiring that all state employees be subject to random drug tests those drug tests are going to cost florida over three million dollars at the same time scott is laying off nearly seven thousand state workers due to a budget crisis so how is this good policy and what happened to privacy here to offer their takes on this issue from miami howard simon executive director of the a.c.l.u. in florida and here in the studio daniel helper online editor of the conservative weekly standard and howard welcome aboard our. he's there for ok. great to have you both here jan with the usa the xray reporting that fifteen percent of the time these drug tests come out back with false positives isn't as

crazy. listen i think you're i think your last guest explained it well we're here we're in dire financial straits and the states are the ones that i gotta go it's not going to get in you know that you guys are not going to wash it out in the last segment but i think i think i think it's prudent for our government to spend our money response so that he's that if you're predicating assumption though is that we're broke. bill clinton raised tactic the top tax rate in this very wealthiest americans by three percent and balance the budget he and did a little bit of a disservice if this were hell he was i mean if this were all he was doing he'd be doing a poor job that isn't always i mean this is the smiter thing that is the here we're talking about rick scott rick scott in florida oh yeah i was just a very small part of it i think it's a responsible book welfare is a nice thing that our government does but it's proof it's alternately a privilege and it's nice of us to do it but we can as the third think government can i think we'll give you money on the condition that we get something in return

and we don't want to give people money we're spending to cleanse it all it's really a very i mean it's not sleeve labor it's called incentivising and you know when you have a driver's license i do ok that's a privilege but so is a welfare but there's not a fundamental right well on this not in this country i think it depends on how you look at the country i mean it but but this is it i don't want to be litigated welfare like well you know i don't want to be a rich guy i live in a poor country i don't want to have people in my country but that but that's not what we're trying to buy here we're going to give driver's test so give charity ok well isn't this in your opinion a violation of our privacy rights. well it certainly is a violation of the constitution certainly is a violation of a federal court order in a case that we won and i think it's wrong legally constitutionally and i think it's the wrong morally i mean it's not only welfare recipients that the governor wants to insist upon taking a drug test or

a urine test it is also people who are receiving unemployment compensation and as you mentioned time of the thousands and thousands of state employees is as well i mean i think the governor who is a lawyer governor graduated from law school and must have been asleep during constitutional law class because the we have a principle in this country i don't want to argue this with you and your guest on economic grounds i want to argue it on the basis of fundamental principle people have a right to be left alone until the government suspects them of doing something wrong including using illicit drugs and absent that the government has no rights or were to mandate a urine test or get into anybody's private business yet again the fourth amendment explicitly says the you have the right to be secure in your persons papers personal effects and home i in alaska somebody swear right to be or go ahead and serve the

right the right to be free from on reasonable from unreasonable search and seizures and on reasonable search as been the fine i think as a search by the government without any reasonable basis or reasonable suspicion the one exception that has been carved out by the united states supreme court i've been for those employees who are in safety sensitive jobs they have to carry a gun as part of their employment told they operate dangerous motor vehicles or something like that but absent reasonable suspicion absent safety sensitive job the government has no right to interfere in somebody's privacy and this is where i'm baffled and why do small government conservatives want the government to be looking at my ear. listen you're not a state employee you're not receiving well i was working for the state. why do you want to go you can add one hundred sixty thousand and one hundred sixty eight thousand employees in the state of florida is your do you and howard think that it's unconstitutional for the federal government to drug test its own employees as

it does now. but i think that's a whole separate issue i'm talking about rights attorneys and rick scott in florida doing this and by the way i don't know what i'm hearing i don't see you guys picketing you know i think you just as they are they they have to say they started pretty soon on if your going to hear at the st petersburg blog rick scott's new gift to salon take this is apparently how he made some of that seventy million bucks he spent get itself elected as governor of florida has just. florida has just under six hundred sixty eight thousand state employees for risk out that means nearly one hundred seventy thousand new potential customers for his sorry his wife's syllabic walk in clinics. this is what was that over he said seventy million yeah i don't know how you get there one hundred seventy thousand and he spent seventy million dollars getting elected. so you can spend that much study i don't understand why me isn't much point is a there's a conflict of interest in me there's a constitutional issue acknowledge it could be that people could actually have good intentions and it could be that just because his wife does do this and just because

there is the possibility i mean we maybe we should give him and all that other how can it be you propose in this party like there is french was a so i thought i think he's a complete hypocrite on this like he ran on the issue as a elected. he was elected as a tax cutting budgets slashing the governor promising to protect people's freedom from intrusive oppressive federal government and now here he is doing exactly what it is that he has railed against the federal government doing of course this is completely the opposite of what he was allowed on the base of which he was all like that so protect people's freedom from oppressive government i think you're completely wrong look this is about good governance and about accountability and i think him taking him making giant was just because somebody works for the day when it went in so there are going to go on is it ever good government so subject somebody to worse search who is not suspected of doing anything wrong that's not

good go or not that's a lousy government and it's unconstitutional and it's an essential to search it's not to i mean this is a search of your bodily fluids and he says i'm going to emanation of your body this is first of all it is ironic that i was and you you in particular don't want the government intruding into your life i have never if i have absolutely consistently my whole entire life felt that i had already i think the driver was stopped everybody on the road things are and i think you have the freedom to work for the government i think you have the freedom not to work for the government you can choose not to work for the government plenty of private employers do the state drug test or yes why can't the government say all right we want our people we want the people that are going to work for us not to come to work. not to come to work stone that's not to try to add don't think anybody should be able to be drug tested unless you have some evidence that they are using drugs somebody somebody should swear before a judge this person i have reasonable cause to believe that this person is pretty

is probably committing a crime using illegal drugs and the judge swears out a warrant and that word is executed in a drug test as is being forced to submit your choosing to submit it by work by choosing to be employed by the state in the injuns have in this country you can't as you would not a city employee you if you choose not to be what you measure loser is not what you're not to have a life how are we have thirty seconds your quick thoughts are the work you are can carry this through the surrender of your constitutional rights as a condition of employment for the working as a public employee regardless of what our other guest says government cannot force you to surrender your constitutional rights as a condition over and over employment and i think this is kind of also an irrational and this costly violence why don't we put up breathalyzers in every office and see who comes back from from lunch would have three martinis and who are high after lunch and are unable to do their job why are we focusing on this one thing if

there's a problem in the workplace in america the problem is alcoholism much more that it is drug abuse and that's more in the executive suites than it is but we should be ok a case to get banned it. i don't think so but any i dand think it would drop in by howard thanks so much for being with us tonight i appreciate it. it's time to stop the hysteria about drugs frankly and the so-called war on drugs nationalized the private prison industry has been lobbying for harsher sentencing and ban lobbying by the drug testing industry which is just fine in this country with no drug laws at all for more than one hundred forty years after the george washington presidency yes that george washington the guy. on his virginia farm. krazy alert a new fitness class called pole dancing for jesus has been started in texas in the

workout room you'll see women gyrating and spinning on poles while listening to the wholesome sounds of christian music in ideals in. order to see the class helps women get fit while staying in touch with their religious savior. this is about getting closer to god god gives us these bodies and they're supposed to be our temples and we're supposed to take care of them and that's what we're doing tiffany booth was raised in church now pull is her temple and if a spiritual connection or whatever you have their music on and it's singing about lifting up and being closer to god you can feel that getting class somehow i suspect a man came up with this idea anyhow it's unclear jesus would actually approve of the class named after him though he did turn water into wine i just don't think he did the champagne as for the collection baskets in church there's been a noticeable shortage in one dollar bills. coming out he sold his house moved.