the deficit is words bob is closing eight schools in detroit and selling off another forty five schools to charter corporations or c.e.o.'s can make millions off these new monopolies in education one of those schools being closed down as the catherine ferguson academy a school specifically designed to cater to pregnant and parenting teens and their children school was featured on oprah for having a ninety percent graduation rate and a one hundred percent college acceptance rate after graduation very impressive numbers but not good enough for republican rick snyder who wants to shut it down or maybe just hand it off to one of his campaign donors a protest was staged in bad school by parents teachers and students to fight back against the proposed closure of their school but the police were immediately called in and appalling more than a dozen people including children off to jail take a lot. happening inside more than

a dozen students two of their children and a teacher refused to leave kathryn ferguson a cademy the school thing not so much going on. right now in handcuffs. and. others clashing key signs and smiles so what can we make of these latest actions by governor rick snyder joining me now is a woman behind the movement to fight back against snyder's radical agenda childhood driver the national chairperson of by any means necessary. welcome to the program thank you what's the latest out of detroit what's your organization doing. we're fighting to defend public education in detroit we're looking at a situation in detroit now where it is the policy of both the governor and the mayor of our city being to try to depopulate this school to end public education

and to create a situation in which the new jim crow is being implemented on a full scale basis and it's something that we just refuse to allow to happen in the city of detroit chad why would they go after me catherine ferguson academy this seems like the ultimate success story. you know it's it's the closure of this school i think isn't just the scandal that represents the scandal that is taking place in the closure of public education throughout the city of detroit we have a situation now in which there are literally tens of thousands of school students that are being pushed out of the public school system as a conscious policy because of school closures to their neighborhood schools and then the schools close the neighborhoods to klein and we've just seen that in place after place in detroit now we're left with a core group of schools some of the best schools in the country schools that have

served detroit students very well like katherine ferguson of model school that's provided young mothers an opportunity to not only get a high school diploma but to learn the skills that they need to learn to be good mothers and has provided their gun children with an opportunity to come to the school that they are attending a high school that they are attending and receive child care services early education programs health care services to be able to be and i thought arm in the city of detroit and we're all kinds of skills that they could never get any place else in any other school and to schools been put on the auction block it's going to be either sold off to some private charter company or it's my organization pam and the students in at school have their way it's going to stay at detroit public school and we are prepared to take action occupying that school doing what ever is

needed by any means necessary keeping that school open is would it be. a misstatement or even an exaggeration on my part to suggest that this very successful school. it were it privatized could actually generate a very very nice profit a substantial profit for its new owners. yeah i think it could have and and here's the problem that we're running into in detroit as more and more public schools are being closed parents are looking at all kinds of alternatives now that do require them to pay money there's been a resurgence of people looking at religious schools and other kinds of academies that that mean that you have to pay for the education that you get so not only do those schools get the per pupil funding that comes from the state they also are able to make in addition to that money based on on on poor parents having to pay

for for a decent education for their children and it really is that it's up it's an abrogation of the one of the most important democratic rights that we achieved through the civil rights movement and that has existed in this country which is the right to public education and coupled with that in the city of detroit and other places we've seen an ending of our democratic right to elect our local school boards or or or city administrator mayors steel city councils that can oversee the will of the people in terms of the priorities of the running of their city chance of the it seems like this is. a knife into the heart of detroit i used to live in detroit so i'm familiar and worked in detroit. one of the things historically that every town in america

will use to say to companies you know come build your offices here bring your workforce here is to say your workers are going to want to move to our community because there is good public education here easily accessible good schools that your kids can go to it's like one of the major selling points and. i don't understand why governor snyder would want to rip that out of detroit what am i missing. you know. i can't answer that question we have been the city of detroit has just been under assault for the last several years arnie duncan has said that he wants to prove that what happened in new orleans with the charter is sation of that whole school system could be done in detroit without something a natural disaster like hurricane katrina and so we've just seen our city just

being i'm here at just a concerted attack against our rights and and we think it really is an expression of the new jim crow detroit is a city that like many many of the cities that are being placed under these receivership see is a majority black and latino city it is a majority minority city and we have taken great pride four years in terms of being a leading center for civil rights and for equality and to have this thrust upon us has just been it's been a devastation to the city and it will continue to be and it's part of why we feel that it's saw essential for young people to step forward become leaders build a new civil rights movement because it's just got to be done if we're going to save the city of detroit and other cities like it absolutely by any means possible thank you very much. thank you this move against public schools is not exclusive to

michigan pennsylvania and florida are the latest states that will consider voucher legislation that would give away millions to private schools so those states can close down public schools more and more private schools are sprouting up across the country headed by c.e.o.'s who are making a fortune in this new industry and every study that's been done in private charter schools parents are forced to pay higher costs for education yet don't receive any better results compared to public schooling and those parents without money and up with poorly educated children even neil bush has gotten into the x. rays and twenty three million bucks from a saudi prince and a chinese businessman for his privatized education company that makes most of its money from federal funds intended to help troubled schools it's all about the money and conservatives are working as hard and fast as they can to turn our once great public school system into a get rich quick scheme for their cronies. crazy

alert put out an a.p.b. for the great american air thief authorities are investigating a robbery that occurred early yesterday morning two men broke into a beauty one air salon in chicago and made off with a very valuable amount of human hair a police sergeant investigating a case that he's worked a lot of robberies but this is his first case of an air robbery unclear what the motive is but isn't this about the time of year when the donald starts shouting and needs a new coat of hair i'm just saying. time for a thought experiment but if america's largest employer of low wage and workers suddenly decided to pay all their employees a respectable living wage of twelve dollars an hour with a company have to shut down immediately we have to fire

a slew of workers would have to jack up its prices the answer is no no and no according to a new study coming out a u.c. berkeley and city university of new york wal-mart our nation's largest employer of poor workers could easily afford to pay all one point four million of their employees a fair living wage about twelve dollars an hour without having to fire anyone and without passing a huge price hike on their consumers in the most extreme case wal-mart shoppers would pay about forty six cents extra per shopping trip about twelve dollars per year to support the pay raises of them are employees and wal-mart would still have the lowest prices because of their monopoly purchasing power and market control but would that pay raise the twelve dollars an hour many employees of the retail giant could see as much as six thousand extra dollars in their annual earnings and considering the taxpayers foot the bill to the tune of four hundred twenty thousand dollars per year per store to help support wal-mart workers who are

underpaid and thus in need of government assistance a few more bucks a year on groceries is well worth the investment securing this information is not timely because the minimum wage and force employers to give their workers the necessary eight to me to make ends meet their offer his thoughts on this issue david selig conservative tax expert free market proponent david welcome. they thank you for having me on your program it's a real pleasure thank you wal-mart's one point six million employees the largest employer in the united states the largest company in the world being only one point two percent live above poverty and over ninety percent of wal-mart's workers live below the poverty level what's wrong with paying people living wage. let's really look at the issue for a moment these individuals are presently working out wal-mart now i've heard the arguments a bump up the salaries from these essentially phoneys at berkeley who think it

would just be all well and good to do it the fact of the matter is these individuals have a lot more dignity working and holding a job than they ever would unemployed or perhaps even on the dole are you suggesting. it i'm astounded here's this is a research paper from the from the atlanta fed minimum wage hikes may not reduce unemployment fifty four economists factorize minimum wage raising minimum wage increases employee from the new york times after fifty years of minimum wage coverage only once during the seventy four seventy five recession did unemployment increase after a minimum wage increase it the common sense argument for increasing the minimum wage is that when you do so you put more money into the pockets of people who spend it it's the henry ford thing you know he was pain is and is workers a dollar a day and ford started paying five dollars a day god sued him to get the michigan supreme court and forty one because he said

hey i'm giving my own employees the ability to buy my own cars and he was right it worked shouldn't any business whose business model relies on ruining communities and basically throwing people into poverty not be allowed to operate business that way. now wait a minute wal-mart does not ruin communities certainly they do throwing anyone into poverty quite the opposite you know average wal-mart store puts over one hundred local businesses out of business when it opens within within three years of the time buying it i i have heard this i want to tell you if it does any harm it certainly does an awful lot more good now there's always unintended consequences however most people particularly in this economy are looking to save a dollar at every turn and if you raise prices sales fall off and if sales fall off they're not going to need all of these people working and there will be a lot of other issues raising prices you think that house with twelve dollars

a year in in additional costs to wal-mart customers which is going to keep their prices because they are. you know frankly i think a violation sherman act a dman giant monopoly in most communities twelve dollars a year is going to cause people to stop shopping at wal-mart are you serious wait a minute tom this is just the wal-mart argument of the week you know this is the math of these economists that are these two universities you know i really have to call these economists to the carpet i think this is smacks of a political hatchet job and these people may fool you tom hartman but they certainly don't fool david is that outside of seventy four seventy five outside of that recession when. the minimum wage was raised and g.d.p. dropped for one year outside of that can you give me any example ever of any time when raising the minimum wage didn't actually produce the result of over a three year if you look at a three year window actually increase in g.d.p.

and employment more than was predicted by the economic models with out the rise and in the minimum wage i defy you really don't want to quibble so this so you won't find saturn though tom every single time the minimum wage goes up economic activity increases and that results in a benefit for everybody. you have these individuals in i could damier right now saying i'm not talking about accuracy i'm talking about the real world when you and i did it in all the why not exactly where is the money going to come from tom should it be twenty five dollars maybe they actually have why dollars here i don't know i might not in the pockets i'm going to tell you david by people who are looking at la guardia any millionaires or billionaires shopping there it's on ice or regular everyday working people or as you would call them proletariats trying to make ends meet you can't keep choking and kicking the consumer in the family you know only about twenty percent of the of the people who shop at wal-mart first of all are below the poverty level but fascinating study was done

a couple of years ago by the i believe it was c.p.r. showed that people who work at wal-mart if they bought one hundred percent of everything that they used to live at wal-mart could not even afford to live without and this is why the average wal-mart store was to this attack somebody who already had one thousand dollars a year because they got to provide food stamps and housing support to people who were underpaid. are you saying they're collecting they're ending on credit because i'm opposed to that as well i think we should certainly put some controls on so you think that the economy is hurt here to serve the wealthy people who own the economy rather than that we the people create an economy by a court system in a financial system to serve the people. well tom are you saying you want to control the prices through the courts or should the fair market decide what the person pays or toilet paper or toothpaste or some of the other necessities of life i'm suggesting that the market should that minimum that there should be

a minimum wage and that minimum wage should be increased very simply there is a minimum wage and i have to tell you the issue may not necessarily be increasing the minimum wage the issue appears to be these attacks on wal-mart you know the you have the the left and various rabble rousers for some reason keep lowering the boom . i can tell you david we're out of time but the really simple reason why is because wal-mart pays so poorly and you know ninety eight percent of people are working in poverty that any case thank you for dry disagreement tom but thank you for having me on you're welcome this issue comes down to a very simple question is the economy meant to serve all of us or just the wealthy c.e.o.'s until we bring back the reforms that f.d.r. put into place at a power workers and built the middle class reforms or ronald reagan blew up in the eighty's when our economy will continue to serve only the richest in america and the rest of us will continue to work each and every day with little hope of ever achieving the american dream not a dream of riches dream. life there's

a very simple reality here just a very simple reality demand equals wages supply equals productivity i learned this from ravi popper a professor of economics at southern methodist university very straightforward stuff when wages go up so does demand and so does the economy if productivity however goes up without wages going up what happens is that person of that explodes and profits explode clearly this graph is one hundred fifty. q twenty ten the blue line is output per hour in other words productivity the red line is wages from one nine hundred fifty after war world war two right up until the reagan presidency as workers became more productive they were rewarded by that for that productivity by their wages being increased then reagan allowed this to be uncoupled through a whole series of policies in particular blowing away the tax bracket and what

happened was wages flattened out and productivity went up so people working harder and harder and making more and more stuff but they were getting more and more pay so what fill this gap well first of all what came out of his gap was profit that went to the c.e.o.'s and what went into this gap was debt first the workers started using up their credit cards to fill in the gap because they see they're used to living at the standard and then when they maxed out their credit cards they started maxing out their houses using their houses a.t.m.'s and then the great bush crash happened and you know right here and they couldn't use their houses anymore they can't use their credit cards anymore people are basically screwed we need to bring these two lines back together again we need to do it by blowing up reaganomics and saying that's it no more reaganomics time to return to rational economics and serve this country so well for over two hundred years. after the break i'll break down how the federal stimulus plan actually gave billions to moammar gadhafi instead of

our economy. 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 see some other part of it and realize that everything you saw you don't. charge is a big issue. this

week the federal reserve is expected to announce that it's winding down its efforts to jumpstart our economy and it's by trillions of dollars of cash the fed has secretly let out and hundreds of billions of dollars of debt purchased economic growth is still painfully slow jobs are still nowhere to be found and more and more economists are starting to worry that america will slide back into another recession as an article yesterday the new york times had wind of stimulus by the fed is disappointing so why didn't the fed strategy work it didn't work because there's really not much the federal reserve and do they could lower interest rates but right now interest rates are close to zero so that's off the table. they could buy up huge amounts of debt this is known as quantitative easing which basically unleashes a tidal wave of money into the economy in the last few years the fed has done this

twice most recently dumping six hundred billion dollars into our money supply at the end of last year the problem is this helps the bankers on wall street have you noticed stock prices are higher than ever but doesn't do jack for people on main street have you noticed unemployment and finally the fed can open up a secret lending window and give away trillions of dollars with practically no interest this is what they've been doing for years now giving away massive piles of cash to the biggest transnational corporations in the world foreign banks rich people in the united states and even ruthless dictators like moammar gadhafi that's right the fed gave doppies bank three point two billion dollars in two thousand and three years later we're bombing the guy don't ask me how that stimulate our economy or maybe it helped the military industrial complex the fed also gave out a quarter of a billion dollars to the wives of some morgan stanley banks toure's as mad t.v.

pointed out in a recent rolling stone article christy mack the wife of a high profile bank store on wall street john mack was given two hundred twenty million dollars by the fed to prop up an investment firm that she and her friend susan it started up neither the two women had any experience in finance but the feds figured they were a safe investment through a boatload of essentially free cash at them for free and interest free care services and all of this all the secret lending to major forwarder corporations their taters the wall street wives all of whom would have gone down in complete secrecy had it not been for the efforts of senators bernie sanders and frankly in the house ron paul to make the fed open up their books and let us taxpayers take a look. so are you still wondering why the fed's actions aren't fixing our economy

let's imagine for a second that this wall right here is keeping our economy from collapsing think of it as a giant dam but this dam is starting to crack and holes are starting to form due to all the pressure behind pressure joblessness massive student loan credit card debt student loan debt by the way just exceeded credit card debt over a trillion dollars for the first time in there is three of america millions of home foreclosures rising health care costs and norma's trade deficits all of the things that are pushing our economy to the breaking point i think of ben bernanke he is the little dutch boy with his finger in the buy all they can do is plug up some of these holes the only thing he has to do them with is money that's all the fed can do is manipulate money that's it. plug up a few holes by buying up debt for example plug a few holes by giving

a few trillion dollars away to banks toure's on wall street. plug up the hole by giving a few billion to. go home by giving a quarter billion a christie macking or buddy susan felt like gambling with our money in an upstart investment firm. but with each hole the bernanke he plugs up the pressure is growing and growing because that changing the structural problems underneath it all and sooner or later ben bernanke these things are. metaphorically that paper won't be able to prevent the dam from collapsing. we can't keep plugging the holes we need to either do something about the pressure behind the dam or rebuild the dam back to where it was before reaganomics started drilling these holes into it. the fed can't do that stuff it can only mess with the

minutes money supply to fix the structural problems to address why the dam is cracking to begin with and how we can go about building a new stronger dam congress needs to stop they need to start helping people on main street and try to relieve some of the pressure on our dam help people stay in their homes for example you know rather than throwing money to the gangsters when the when the mortgage meltdown happened why didn't they give money to to homeowners it would have been this is what franklin roosevelt did back in the thirty's he created because most people had five year mortgages back in the thirty's and they were blowing up and so that's why i would create a federal agency would buy your five year mortgages turn them into thirty year mortgages and you can pay them off over time the federal government actually made a profit on that over a forty year period with they could throw out a lifeline for the unemployed they can say ok unemployment insurance like with virtually all the european countries it lasts as long as you're unemployed it

doesn't end at the end of fifty two weeks or ninety nine weeks or whatever it lasts as long as you're unemployed so the unemployed still have money in their pockets to spend creating that demand which is what stimulates the economy. congress could close the corporate tax loopholes that allow companies to ship us jobs overseas by the millions they could get our students a jet debt into a job but more importantly to fix the problem for good we need to build a new dam dam with a solid foundation of a protective trade policy that allows us industries to prosper and not have to compete with cheap labor around the world but damn piece together by a reasonable tax policy that helps grow the middle class and not just the top one percent of wealthy americans or the four hundred oligarchy a damn that's not the pen and upon the military industrial complex and was wars around the world like george bush brought us a dam that's agile and can bend and move according to the pressure behind it in

other words a dam built by lawmakers who know what's best for america and aren't afraid to tell their corporate owners go. we need to give ben bernanke you rest and call on congress to fix our economy by rolling back reagan's insane taxing and borrowing policies and clinton's failed so-called free trade policies that's the only way to keep our nation from being washed away when the van finally broke. that's the big picture for more information on the stories we covered visit our website it's on our but. also check out our youtube page at youtube dot com slash lobby picture r g and slash power and this entire show is available to free podcast on i tunes and. democracy begins with you show off your it will sit.

down to your social on your phone or pulled touch from the dumpster. like. the. old car. and. palm of your.