there are increasingly low wage low skill jobs you know jobs that don't pay sustainable you know a stable wage are not enough to support a middle class lifestyle mcdonald's famously had a million people show up for thirty thousand or sixty thousand jobs it was national hiring day april nineteenth and it was a basically nationwide cattle call get as many people out you know for mcdonald's exactly restaurants all around the country they had they said they're going to hire fifty thousand matter of hiring sixty two but the real number for me at least was the fact that nine hundred forty thousand people did not get a job so a million people came out just to work at mcdonald's and that probably if they extended the period the open window a few more weeks it probably would have been several months well you know a lot a lot of americans went to the bar bill effective notice of mean for the very future barbell effect is a more long term trend we're seeing with the american labor force essentially what it what it talks about or what it centers on is that we're having jobs clustered at two ones of the spectrum you have low wage low skill jobs going on and you know

secretary jobs flipping burgers the hallways at the other end you have high skill high wage jobs lawyers doctors you know creative fields like acting for instance in hollywood and what we're losing is the middle the middle is withering away the middle is shrinking while the two ones growing especially the low end jobs are growing and those are middle class jobs and in the middle of that barbell or what is now a barbell was what supported the american middle class in the fifty's sixty's and seventy's and it's disappearing y. well for a number of reasons offshoring of jobs as bob told you earlier you know with with autumns you know automation and computers and technology jobs are being replaced and the jobs that are left they can't be you know given over to technology or going to india or they're going to china or they're going to vietnam they're going outsource so that's that's one point and the other one is you know the slow fade of organized labor which can't fight for middle class jobs anymore and so we just are

declining benefits are declining we're seeing this right now heigho elsewhere and really a theory on you. charles dickens father went to prison he was very very familiar with the economic circumstances a victorian england wrote about that extensively during dickens time. the the economy was very intentionally managed actually to create that barbell there was a huge class of basically working poor about graduates there was a huge class of a very very rich the landed gentry not a large but economically large small number of people and there was this little tiny middle class that would look at the book the baker the candlestick maker the and screw it scrooge actually was the middle class he would he owned a little company with one employee bob cratchit and and england had maximum wage

laws we have minimum wage laws it was illegal to pay people over a certain amount because they wanted to keep people poor now back in the fifty's russell kirk was suggesting something like this for america saying that this would create the kind of stability that england used to have and then it was basically endorsed by. kirk's main disciple was named just escaped by brain that william f. buckley jr and and you know kirk wrote the conservative mind and if you want the bible of a conservative movement and it did it's possible if the there's a bunch of guys sitting around going you know it would be a whole lot more stable if we didn't have that pesky middle class you know women burning bras and students saying i won't go to war and and african-americans demanding rights and all at the awful stuff that happened in the sixty's and seventy's and eighty's we can just do away with it all by just making everybody or . it could be that my over the edge what i think it is really what it what my take is i think it's a lot of guys and they are mostly men in really nice suits in boardrooms who have

a sole focus which is ironic corp i have shareholders my goal is to maximize profit margin. shareholders and you know the pay that goes to my workers if they're even here in the united states is that a priority and so back that only happens because politicians change the rules of the game to allow to very true yeah and you know as we've seen over the last thirty forty fifty years politicians have cared less and less about what the middle class and the working class only used to be functionally illegal for example to pay c.e.o.'s of stock options and it yeah and they changed that all of a sudden c.e.o.'s stopped representing the company and started representing the shareholders is a major change in america and that has roots in congress it has roots in policy it absolutely does mean the two are intertwined and you can't tell the story of one without the other but i you know i think that it's the relentless pursuit of profit in return on your investment in the stock of your shareholders that has led to this outsourcing you know finding ways to shave every penny you can to produce that

stock price i mean that's a huge reason behind is that the only one but i'm going to hang on to my conservative theory any croll thanks so much for being thank you i appreciate it great to have you. were quickly becoming a would you like fries of that kind of nation the days of winning world war two the space race the cold war distant memory and so we start building things in america again so we return to domestic manufacturing our days as an economic superpower are numbered and soon will just be another one of the large third world nations. two muslim religious leaders were kicked off an airplane last week in memphis simply because they were muslim and two m. moms both in traditional muslim dress went through multiple security screenings and board of the delta airlines commuter flight shortly after taxiing toward the runway

the plane returned to the gate and t.s.a. came aboard remove the two men saying concerns from other passengers the a mom's went through an additional security screening once again proving that they weren't a threat but the pilots still refused to let them on the plane again and took off without them delta is now conducting an internal investigation of the matter so far have yet to offer an official explanation as to as to why the men were kicked off the flight coincidentally the two in moms were on their way to attend a conference on islamophobia in america islamophobia the irrational fear of there's a lot of muslims needless to say they have a bunch of new material to report so how troubling is that the something like this is happening in america supposedly the freest and most tolerant nation on earth here to offer his take is bill keller author of live paradise bill welcome. always good to be with you my friend so how how odd is it that in the nation of the land of the free and the home of the brave that we're not so brave we seem to be

cowering in the corner. well unfortunately we live in a world that has some very real threats out there after nine eleven obviously we saw all those threats first and and over the last ten years since that horrible day we've had over one hundred twenty incidents involving muslims with plots to blow up times square blow up different buildings it's just been one it was not all the incidents within the recent years that we've read the common thread has always been it's been islamic men who have. made these threats there has been a common thread tell me a little bit i was going to the tides foundation over two hundred bullets in the cars in california the guy who assassinated the guard at the holocaust museum you know right wing talk show hosts. were so you know let's have it let's let's nail all the male christians to maybe we should just have all men you know kicked

off airplanes well here's the probably got tom christianity does not teach the jihad chris yids the teach killing people williams they are history this is this is a this is a this is a fourteen hundred year historical passion jim of the islamic religion or you ever heard of a guy named eric rudolph darby you ever heard of a guy named eric rudolph. absolutely and here's the here's and you know he whose name he murdered those top and here's the difference in whose name that he heard of those people tom here's the difference it was in jesus's name bill you know that let me finish it when people do such acts and claim they're doing it in the name of jesus they are operating in absolute violation of what the bible to and these amazons and saw a single thing about when i was. in those loans. will

have lost your audio. i think. it bill is gone on so i'm so sorry bill it would have been it would have been a great debate with more and more of these stories of discrimination coming out sooner or later we're all going to have to do something just how bad is islam a phobia have to get here before we realize that it may be time to start a new civil rights movement for muslims in america let me share a take with you on this is probably quite unconventional but i think his it's very possible. the airline involved here there's a kind of two pieces to this and it's not about bad pilot because that's how most people are playing this thing is the you know this is a this is a terrible pilot who did terrible things or or even a bad t.s.a. want to set that aside from him and let's consider a couple of other possibilities first of all at lenox southeast airlines was the commuter with delta contracts with we know from michael moore's documentary

capitalism a love story that on american airlines commuter and i think we can assume it's probably the same with the alter at these guys starting pay is fifteen sixteen thousand dollars a year as pilots are making less than them then a manager of a burger king so they're basically kids they're fresh out of pilot school or fresh back from the military where they learn how to fly and you know just just to have enough time in to get a thousand hours under the belt or whatever it takes to get a commercial license and really don't have all that much experience in the world and being and if you fly on a lot of commuter flights like i have you've probably seen this over and over over again the guys in the cockpit look like children you know at least for school. their third marriage wants and this is somebody who's twenty five years old right now was fifteen years old. more or less when nine eleven happened so they've had basically all of their formative years being filled with george bush go on be

afraid be afraid be afraid it's as muslims as those muslims and the whole media the giant echo chamber and news and all these right wing politicians if you know republicans you know trashing muslims to run for political office and so maybe maybe we should think of this pilot kind of the way that we would think of i don't know the bus driver who told rosa parks this at the back of the bus that. he probably didn't think of himself as a fundamentally even evil person or maybe even as a bigot he was reflecting a cultural illness that had infected america in the case of in the case of rosa parks' had infected america for four hundred years and was just beginning to fade in the one nine hundred fifty s. and sixty's and now we've got a brand new cultural illness and this is this is this cultural illness i remember a native american professor of native american studies actually name is jack forbes at the university of california davis i interviewed him back in the ninety's for

a book i was writing called the last hours of ancient sunlight the book that inspired leo dicaprio to make the eleventh hour movie and and tom shadyac to make his movie i am and and i think it was frankly frank's or jack forbes's concept that inspired those two filmmakers. what jack told me was that native americans had this concept when they first came here you know when europeans first came to this continent with a cold and it's a word that means one who eats a cannibal one who eats the wife of another and what they were looking at was basically a dysfunctional culture that european culture a culture that was willing to murder a culture that was willing to rob a culture that was willing to steal well i would suggest to you that we are. still in many ways in fact a culture that we've we've awakened a lot since this country was founded but we still have a one way to go and then in the middle of this comes along

a demagogue like george w. bush and you know stand in a with the bullhorns of the mission accomplished and the ears of saddam hussein's sons would have these gory pictures always kind of stuff you know it's really remarkable when you think about it what america has gone through in the last eight years and presumably these kid pilots and these commuter airlines are going through so you know yeah it's incredibly ironic if the moms were on their way to a conference on islamophobia and you know i have some new stories to tell but for me the carry on message is thank god literally that president obama refuses to use the phrase war on terror and that we can begin waking up from this nightmare with george bush through a suitor. it's time for a daily call your chance to tell us what you think here's today's question is it

time for a new civil rights movement for muslims in america it choices are yes how bad is islamophobia have to get america before we do something or no it's ok to profile muslims so far every one of you that was voted yes good on you log on to tell marvin dot com and let us know what you think the poll will be open until tomorrow morning. after the break a daily take on how veterans returning home from the war are not getting the welcome back they deserve. let's not forget that we had an apartheid regime right here and.

i think. even on the well. we have the government says they're going to keep you safe get ready because their freedom. you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so please give think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything is ok. i'm charging welcome to the big picture.

what drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions. made who can you trust no one who is your view with a global missionary see where are we heading state controlled capitalism is called sackfuls when nobody dares to ask we do our t. question more.

it's the good the bad of the very gay the really ugly first the good senator bob menendez the lawmaker from new jersey is the author of a bill in the senate that ends taxpayer subsidies for some of the most profitable oil companies in the history of the planet democrats in the house of representatives that we needed really tried to rescind his corporate welfare only to be shot down each time by republicans who are snugly in the pocket of millionaire and billionaire polluters like a cockroach so now senate democrats are stepping up to do their part as senator menendez put it big oil certainly doesn't need the collected money of taxpayers in this country this is as good a time as any in terms of the problem and revenues needed for deficit reduction good works are now let's put more pressure on the republicans with all the suits. the bad gretchen carlson the gang at fox and friends are trying to figure out who

deserves the twenty five million dollar reward for information leading to bin laden and aggression carlson suggestion was that maybe you should go to the guy who got water boarded right fox news is desperately attempting trying to give credit to anyone except president obama for finding and killing bin laden including known terrorists and the very very ugly. florida republicans governor rick scott is on the verge of signing a bill that includes some of the deepest cuts in unemployment benefits in our nation the bill reduces the number of weeks of benefits from twenty six weeks to twenty three weeks and eventually all the way down to twelve weeks currently florida has an unemployment rate over eleven percent yes we're all the money that the government will take you know from screwing over the jobless we're all that money's going to go corporate tax breaks rick scott as the sheriff of nottingham that's very very.

on the way to my radio studio this morning just outside the judiciary square metro stop here in washington d.c. a man asked me if you can shine my shoes i look down and they were a bit scuffed up. we're in a pair of relatively formal shoes and so i said sure sat down as i went to work buffing out the scuffs i also learned that this wasn't an ordinary shoe shot or he was wearing a bracelet that i hadn't seen before and i asked him what it meant and he showed it to me and said veteran u.s.m.c. and told me he was a retired marine that had served in lebanon a few decades back. he had the wounds to prove it and lifted up his chin and showed me the hole were a bullet had gone through knocking out his front tooth which was still missing.

anyway we got to talking about politics and he told me how horrified he was and how republicans are treating the president also talked about the economy and he told me that he was sure we were headed for disaster but a far worse crash is coming that reminded me of a story that my old friend the late gloria swanson told me and she said was told to her by her longtime manager and lover joe kennedy back in the thirty's kennedy she said told it that he got out of the stock market before the crash because a shoeshine boy literally a teenager offered him a stock tip and that was his clue the market was overheated my shoeshine guy no teenager but a man who'd seen the world knew what he was talking about and was genuine about what he saw for the future of this nation a future that this man had fought for. maine for and nearly died for. he said to me you know we don't make anything in america anymore it isn't like it was before i went to lebanon when you could get a job in

a factory anywhere in america and no i don't think he's been watching the show but all the while he was working on my shoes i kept thinking about how sad it was that an american united states marine was shining my shoes on a street corner in our nation's capital really a marine shiny shoes. what the hell's going on here i frankly don't think anyone should be shiny shoes in america the wealthiest nation on this planet was thirteen ager looking for a few extra bucks during the summer but an american marine shouldn't he have better opportunities. you know after world war two president franklin roosevelt made a promise to our soldiers he said if you went out there and risk your life to protect our nation and this nation will never forget about you for the rest of your life any time you need a hand we'll be there for you because you were there for us when we needed you the

most the g.i. bill was passed and promised our returning soldiers a free education four years of college books living expenses all completely paid for it promised them low interest loans for mortgages and help start small businesses they promised them weekly allowances of twenty bucks or two hundred dollars in today's money to get back on their feet and find work and the g.i. bill made sure that anyone who was wounded would be taken care of nursed back to health rehabilitated and the workforce in america if possible all free of cost ten years after the war more than ten million veterans after world war two more than ten million veterans went to school college on the g.i. bill and with the tools of higher education if found great jobs settled and started families and we saw the middle class america thrive and grow. my wife's father went to law school on the g.i.

bill and ended up as the associate of the assistant attorney general for the state of michigan my dad served in japan and at the end of the war and he went to college bought a house on the g.i. bill he raised four boys and had a good pension until the day he died and he worked in a thirteen man local tool and die shop a union shop thanks to franklin roosevelt and the wagner act roosevelt had learned from the mistakes of the three republican presidents who preceded him harding coolidge and hoover who had turned their backs on the veterans of world war one denying them their pay leading a massive tent cities across washington d.c. google the story of the bonus army if you didn't learn about it in school unfortunately today those lessons have been lost even though there are no ten cities in d.c. at veterans have largely been forgotten about there is no g.i. bill for the men and women who serve in the military today or in recent decades over and over again democrats have tried to create a right to introduce

a new congress new versions of that old g.i. bill that each and every time they've tried it their efforts have been sabotaged by republicans and today our soldiers are shining shoes just to keep from being homeless during this course of this year a half a million veterans will be on the streets without a home and without work and even though there are some benefits available benefits the pale in comparison of the g.i. bill these benefits require people to wander through an endless maze of bureaucracy to get them and takes years for their health problems like agent orange for the vietnam war syndrome. veterans or gulf war syndrome for the gulf war veterans or p.t.s.d. frankly for all versions takes years for these illnesses to be recognized as legitimate wartime injuries. so water cut and dry like it was in the g.i.

bill or if you when you went to war you're going to get a free education now it's like if you went to war and you're in such and such a time and did this and that and joined just this moment when bush was offering this kind of incentive and satisfied this requirement during this time then maybe you qualified to receive a few of these benefits but wait in line we're sending people to some of the worst parts of the planet telling them to risk their lives in the deserts of afghanistan and iraq knowing that when they come back they'll be left behind. veterans today didn't get the low interest home mortgages that f.d.r. gave those of his generation instead they got exploding subprime loans from crooked bank strippers and they're getting kicked out of their homes when those loans go bust we learned just last sunday just how invaluable our soldiers are other will

you put everything on the line in a moment's notice just to make us all safer and we learn just how good they are at it how efficiently they do their work you know it's amazing it's troubling to believe that the navy seals who took out bin laden a week ago earn an average of around forty five thousand dollars a year while the average c.e.o. makes the eleven million dollars a year and the top ten banks toure's on wall street last year average averaged two billion dollars a year a year each and these guys pay a maximum fifteen percent income tax on that money which is half of what a navy seal could talk about our nation's priorities being overweight and all of this you know brought to us courtesy by and large with not all of us were by and

large most of it from republican policies conservative policies and we don't have money for veterans we'd have to raise taxes. and while these c.e.o.'s are getting golden parachutes when they retire are retiring soldiers are getting a lead weight to hang around their neck no educations no job skills to make it in an american economy that increasingly doesn't have any jobs to begin with because thirty years of insane reaganomics have moved all our jobs overseas we don't make anything in this country anymore except stuff that you can drop on people and have explode and then where is its value the marines shine my shoes that it was a wise man and no doubt a good soldier and it's a shame that in today's america there is no path you can find to take that live and that he can take it's easy to find that elusive american dream that he fought to defend. as the big picture for tonight for more information on the stories we've

covered visit our website of thom hartmann dot com and our team dot com also check out our youtube page at youtube dot com slash the big picture our take and this entire show is available as a free podcast on i tunes and don't forget democracy begins with you when you show up when you get active tag your it sooner.

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