rachel martin you're broadcasting live from washington d.c. coming up today on the big picture.

but about the big picture i'm sorry marvin coming up in this half hour we're going to workplace may bring home the bacon for the men are bringing home the philemon their own so why on earth are american women in two thousand and eleven getting paid less than the teachers in tennessee under green lights teach the bible alongside evolution ever proposed bill makes its way through the states that have the potential to get a passing grade and sadly today's average college grad will now gain a degree along with a dead bird that's probably more than their first year's salary i'll explain how the american dream is vanishing for the class of twenty four.

today is equal pay day a day to recognize that women in america still don't receive equal pay for equal work alongside men making roughly seventy seven cents for every dollar the men or i start although take a look at these charts women working in retail earn even less than men one third less in fact roughly sixty four cents on every dollar and if you thought things were getting better for women in the workplace think again last year women's earnings compared to men's earnings plummeted and since two thousand women have only caught up to men by a measly three percent. so this is acceptable and. your offer their takes on this issue kerry lucas so it could have director the independent women's forum and that of a gross graves vice president of the national women's law center welcome to you both thank you thank you both for joining us. curio women just not worth as much as men

in the workplace no and that's why it's great news when you look at the statistics that women are increasingly earning in some cases more than men if you look at a study just came out recently that looked at women living in metropolitan areas and found that for twenty two to thirty year olds who are single and childless women are outearning men by about eight percent so should men be getting all up in arms no it's because women those women are better educated than their male counterparts and that's what these these statistics that just look at who these you know just are comparing men to women but leave out so much relevant data that they tell us centrally nothing about what men and women are paid in the. for what kind of work it's really doesn't tell us anything about discrimination and so that's why you got to look a little deeper team of girls groups are we comparing apples to oranges here well the bad because it's talking about seventy seven cents that looks at all male workers versus all female worker is that what we have found is no matter how you

cut that statistic if you control for all the factors that you can control for seniority experience occupation in education and that there still remains a pretty significant explain wage gap and they've been a number of studies that have come out that have looked at lawyers for an m.b.a. . and they've all come to the same conclusion gaps starts early and expands over time so i think what i want you know i mean i was pleased to hear that we are talking about i think that that we can still you know i think there is probably still a wage gap but we shouldn't keep propagating this lie that women are earning seventy seven cents for the men's dollar because when you start looking. some of the big five sons maybe you know it's more like ninety five ninety five when we start and i think it's interesting when we start when we start talking about exactly how much it is then you can start seeing you know a lot of women i mean it does appear there's been studies that have suggested that some women are more reticent to negotiate for their salary and i think it's a great thing to say you know when when i was offered my first job that i say you

know i work two thousand dollars more than that and if i didn't and if that's part of the problem and not something i can teach my two daughters but just telling them oh you're being paid you know that's true. korea mean that's that's that's the issue that men are more likely to negotiate than women and that's one of the causes . of this is yeah i think it's jump in here and i. this seventy seven cents statistic there are a lot of factors that come into play some of it is pay discrimination and i think when it's been studied further that perhaps what people have found some of it is. one study actually started out with a g.a.o. report that looked at it and people to kind of leader of the part of president obama's department of labor just came out with something that found nothing but could not work against discrimination driving. i don't think that's exactly right but in any event. occupational segregation and the fact that women's wages tend to be depressed and a male dominated industries that also places i mean there are a number of factors that play

a role and contribute to that wage gap but i mean is there is some measure of that is related to discriminate and the policy proposal that's on the table the paycheck fairness it's going to really address that if it is also designed to address some of the issues like salary negotiations well there are provisions in there that talk about salary and let me just take a step further you know in norway they require forty percent of the parliament to be women in iceland i think it's fifty percent. last century the twentieth century i think we're all born in the twentieth century it's all the twenty first one hundred fifty million people died. in wars and with the exception of maggie thatcher in the balkans all those wars were declared by men why don't we why don't we learn something from this why don't we why don't we say that half of all legislatures have to be women and half of all boards executives have to be women and that for the next ten years men are not allowed to vote and i'm dead serious. i

mean it's such an offensive one hundred and you know you know can you imagine tom hundreds part of your million people here saying that they i don't i'm saying that there was a journey across the world as we said punish all men for things that happened in you nineteen seventeen and in your home you know that john if your city and the people took yes i am what i was a. friend of mine harvard medical school the most dangerous drug in the world is testosterone and here is what you do. with your i demand you know as your employees do you actually do as as as ben franklin pointed out at the opening of the constitutional convention where there were thirty four members of your coronation he said if if it should be an odd thing if five nations of ignorant savages which was not as a slur have been able to survive in peace for a thousand years it should be an amazing thing if their team. colonies of educated

englishman cannot do the same and what the euro court had done is they had for hundreds of years only the women vote because every decision is made based on the seventh generation you know i'm not trying to make your head explode kerry but seriously i think the most i mean if we've got a problem here it's not really like the red iraq thing if you mind the good people we have one thing that i will thing is that i think back it seems like fair pay really at this point are family issues that need to be ones that men and women prioritize generally and i think when polled that american people are very excited about this issue and i understand that it's a it's a pocket. that impacts men and women to the extent that these critical issues aren't being prioritise in congress that simple problem and i think the representation of the average temperature of the curious point if i mean if i may just take your side for certain what you know the women particularly if you look at

a particular cohort you know twenty to thirty years old college educated they're making more than men are in their group we have a problem with was the this generation of boys coming and if so what do we do about the young men that are out there who are not succeeding i mean i think that there needs to be a focus on all young people who aren't succeeding and i think what's been clear in this economy is that if you don't have the skills they need to have a high quality job and won't get so there are groups of young men and groups of young women who aren't able to do that right now and it's a real problem and i think the study that you're pointing to wasn't comparing it was interesting that study didn't actually compare apples to apples either because it was saying these the reason that these young women are finally earning more is because they have. they have a college degree and having a college degree more early and read with leisure to k. so we have we have just just thirty seconds what's what's the solution. government

isn't going to be the solution i think when you look at what's happening with boys right now and you think about right now we have a college system where we continue to push you the only place where boys are to get more degrees than what it is in science and math so what is are this administration doing the create they're pushing proposals that say ok we're going to go in to micro-manage universities until women are earning half those degrees what is going to stop is it only when women have no women in college and well i mean when we only have women in colleges that's when that's when it seems like the left is going to stop going to be satisfied and tom it sounds like if you don't want to vote then maybe who cares we don't need to be educated anymore. well i mean i will say that this administration is rightly prioritizing and persistence and because it's a nap. it's you know a national security issue really but in general i think that families and ensuring that the areas that are in play fair and not allowing equal pay are with them and you have to have to have the security but you know thank you very much both of you for showing up. despite legislation to mandate equal pay for equal work

corporations that are mostly run by men of long holes in their requirements making it harder and harder for women to prove they've been discriminated against every attempt to close the loopholes been met with near unified opposition by the republican party as the old song goes it was too much white male power in this world. the tennessee state house finally passed much anticipated legislation to allow teachers to question evolution give me more ammunition to people who want and teligent design taught in our public schools so despite the fact that evolution is without a doubt accepted in the scientific community it will present be presented as a controversial subject in tennessee classrooms the bill still has to pass the state senate something expected not to be a problem for republicans when another battle in their ongoing war against science

so we seen religious fundamentalism on the rise in tennessee. here to offer his take is vincent bugliosi an attorney and author of the book divinity of doubt the god question then some welcome to the program. thanks for having me on tom appreciate it it's great to have you here on the on the t.v. program we talked on the radio a number of times i have a lot of respect to you in your work. you write about intelligent design in your book your thoughts on its political processes or progress rather than us in the forces that. just first real quickly your thoughts on you know what's going on in tennessee in this you know promotion of intelligent design so-called intelligent design as a as a side by side fifty fifty alternative to evolution. well let's get into something that's beyond the book whether or not we should have it i don't think we should because i don't think it's a science but that's way beyond what i'm talking about in the book not my view is

that. it's not scientific it's a story yeah well you have the issue of intelligent i'm sorry. i was just i you know i read most of your book and you have talked about yes intelligent design in the and the i can't hear you tom i got something coming out of my ear no no i said well i agree yeah you know what i what i'm telling you what i'm telling you is that i do discuss intelligent design in the book no question about it whether it should be taught in schools i think that's beyond my canon my view is that it should not be because of the simple fact that it's not a science ok and you you for people who are not familiar with your work you not only wrote the book helter-skelter the new york times bestseller but you were the guy who prosecuted charles manson you've prosecuted you know many many capital pieces i think you've only lost one in your career my recollection is correct you

wrote a book about lee oswald you wrote a book might one of my favorites called the prosecution of george w. bush. which i thought was just a brilliant prosecutors are you for why this guy should be in jail as a war criminal why take on religion now why this not even take on religion what brought you to this book. well i had thought a lot about god and religion throughout the years i read the bible but i decided to take it to a different level take two years out of my life literally immerse myself completely in the subject seven days a week to see if some of these some of these religious beliefs that we've had around for centuries had any merit to them and at the expense of sounding presumptuous when i discovered what i. never it is so startling and i hate to say that it's a fact and so startling that have someone read the vanity of doubt it was not stunned they're the type of people tom the product would be surprised if they saw

a man jump way from his own shadow if you have if we have a time i'd like to go just very briefly into some of the things that i know that i find to be startling we have that i promise you know we have agree have a couple of minutes go. among among other things i found the after contrary to popular belief the bible does not support the notion of free will in fact astonishingly the bible supports the exact opposite that there is no free will it turns out that the immortality of the soul was a pure invention of plato that christianity was forced to embrace because of the simple fact that without immortality of the soul there's no life after death if there is no life after death and there is no heaven and hell for christianity to offer or threaten their millions of followers with perhaps the most startling thing i came up with. is the fact that if you look at the new testament in conjunction with the old testament the evidence is very clear proves not just beyond

a reasonable doubt but beyond all doubt that jesus was not born of a virgin and therefore by definition was not the son of god it's not the son of god then the christian doctrine that god had his son die on the cross for our sins that goes out the window to in effect ravaging much of christianity you know i know that's hard to believe for your viewers the only problem is that it happens to be the truth i believe that no one who reads this book and that's the consensus of people who have is ever going to feel the same way again about god or religion and that's the precise reason why i say this that if someone is deeply religious and they have no doubt about god and religion and jesus and they get much solace and comfort and strength from their religious beliefs i absolutely. i recommend that they don't read this book no i'm not i imagine some peers will say well he's just using reverse psychology to get people to read the book and if they feel that way

there's nothing i can do about it i'm just simply telling you this is the way i feel my daughter wendy is about to france close close friends very very deeply religious they want to read the book and she said do not read the book you're going to be heard who's the book for well i think it's for christians who have a gallop most christians do have a doubt and for agnostics and atheists but someone who deeply believes in god etc they can only be hurt by this book ok then some billy-o. scene after thank you so much i don't know yeah that's quite our thanks is frank so much for joining us and you did a great job summarizing your book i appreciate your being with us organized religion is relatively recent human history and interestingly it's both growing and collapsing at the same time and spirituality has always been with us and probably always will be with us and perhaps for some very good reasons if you hug a tree recently. after the break college students won't have to wait until with

career house and kids to join the national debt party pretty much our as a v.p. for it assumes it's on their first class more on that and it's daily take. hey tom our been here broadcasting live from washington d.c.

coming up today on the big picture. the good the bad and the very very extremely ugly first the good d.c. mayor vincent gray gray took a stand yesterday for the people living here in the nation's capital responding to congress's new budget the places a slew of restrictions on d.c. by preventing him from using funds for abortion and for needle exchange programs as well as implementing the republican school voucher program in the district gray

took to the capitol to protest and was willing to and did get arrested for after seven hours gray and others were released from jail well done mr mayor the bad ikea . the global furniture giant up to in virginia try to discriminate against workers and group anyone from unionizing despite massive profits at this particular ikea factory workers have seen their wages and benefits. and now six employees are filing a lawsuit against the corporation for discrimination to see just how bad the situation is for american workers that i and in general figure that the average i.q. worker in sweden that's the headquarters of the company and where the biggest factories are that average worker gets five weeks vacation and makes one thousand dollars an hour. but in third world america yeah average ikea worker only get. twelve days vacation and makes eight dollars you know. it's like america is sweden's like he has sweat shop. and the very very ugly one back on

his radio show this morning beck came to this conclusion about labor unions and in particular the service employees international union as i. look at what i see are you has done to our nation could be done just with health care and they are moving us to a new global order that doesn't look anything like something that has been written down in the constitution or a new global order where workers have a strong minimum wage a safe workplace environment and a few days be afraid be very afraid when banks fear of workers' rights is frankly just very for earth.

welcome to america the only developed nation in the world that encourages its students to go to college last year for the first time in the history of our nation student loan debt outweighed credit card debt in america and it's likely that by the end of this year there will be more than one trillion dollars in outstanding college debt in the hands of our students one trillion dollars every student leaves school today already twenty four thousand dollars in the hole and considering these new graduates are staring down an anemic job market more and more of them each day will be forced to default on their loans this is the state of higher education america if you want to go to college be prepared to be swimming in debt with no prospects of ever paying it off or even finding a job in the field you study a few weeks ago i bought a suit at macy's a man waiting on me was

a lawyer degree and everything admitted to the bar no work he said so i'm here selling men's suits. i guess it's better than mcdonald's thomas jefferson wrote the declaration of independence he served two terms as our third president and as one of the most iconic figures in american history or jefferson was most proud of was not his eight years in the white house but he was most proud of was his founding of the university of virginia in fact before he died he drafted clear instructions for his tombstone to read here was buried thomas jefferson the author of the declaration of american independence of the statute of virgin for a junior for religious freedom and father of the university of virginia jefferson instructed by these as testimonials that i have lived i wish most to be remembered nothing about being remembered as a two term president jefferson want to be remembered as the founder of the university of virginia that's because he along with the rest of our founding

fathers knew that the most important part of our nation's infrastructure is an educated populace not roads our bridges but educated young people it's from this pool of intellect to put next great leaders would emerge the next doctors and engineers and betters and problem solvers statesman and authors and most of all jefferson wanted the university of virginia to be available for everyone not just the children of a wrister kratz but also free to poor young people in fact he wanted to make all education free and wrote extensively about the need for free public education from jefferson's model inexpensive or free land grant and state colleges going up all around the country over the next two centuries for example i had friends in the one nine hundred sixty s. who moved from michigan to california to get a free college education has to ration at the university of california system statewide was effectively free as a result the american workforce particularly in california and silicon valley became the most intelligent inventive and competitive in all the world then

something changed. as soon as he became governor of california ronald reagan ended free education across the state referring to the university of california students particularly those preferred protesting again against the vietnam war he called them brats freaks and cowardly fascists the end of protests he said quote if it takes a bloodbath was it get it over with no war appeasement and next week when students were killed at kent state reagan said that anybody who voted him on his need for the bloodbath was quote an erotic after killing off free college education in california as president reagan cut the federal education budget helping kids through school from twelve to six percent of the federal budget and in the process paved the way for profit making businesses to get into the business of offering college educations in a big big way that had never before been seen in america for example the head of the for profit university strapped meyer robert silbermann made forty two million

dollars in two thousand and nine and on average c.e.o.'s like superman make more than twenty six times what traditional heads of real universities nonprofit universities make in america and yet this ninety percent of the funding for these for profit so-called universities comes from you and me the taxpayer and to top it all off despite the fact that poor profit universities only account for eleven percent of i are education in america just to levon percent they make up nearly half of all student loan defaults that's because they're not focused on educating their job placement they're only focused on profits reagan transformed our nation's education system in a fundamental way turning his back on what thomas jefferson and the founders created a strong public education system. so faced with these startling numbers about student loan debt what do you think our elected representatives are doing turns out they're making the problem worse face of budget deficit states are raising tuitions

of public universities and capital hill pell grants the last way for a very bright but poor kids to go to college are on the chopping block also to pay for tax cuts for the very rich so we work to trim our budget deficit or hurry to new deficit in our nation's brainpower and this is already having devastating consequences for america's standing in the world while most patents are still filed in the us it's no longer it was exclusively americans and american companies filing them worldwide on a per capita basis were beat by japan and south korea and out of percentage of g.d.p. basis comparing business apples to business apples were beat by south korea japan germany and new zealand in germany higher education is completely free in eleven of sixteen states in denmark higher education is completely free to residents and denmark is considered on the most educated nations in the world and one of the happiest in china home to the world's largest pool of college students people pay

between four hundred and two thousand dollars a year for everything classes room board books everything and there are generous government scholarships in china for the brightest students at the same time that republicans here in america are killing off our similar programs called pell grants . these are by the way just foreign nations operating their own education systems in a vacuum there our competitors and local market and their students are learning the essential skills to compete for jobs in the twenty first century our students are learning the essential the payment plans and how to be slaves to banks for decades after they graduate once again reaganism and it's conservative spawn are destroying our nation has the big picture for more information on the stories we covered visit our website at tom hartman dot com and also check out our youtube page at youtube dot com slash the big picture our teeth and entire shows available for free podcast on i tunes don't forget democracy begins with you get out there show up get out and

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