well i'm sam arbonne in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture wealth inequality now as an international code so just how is billionaire in control the world's richest hurting the working people and the federal communications commission prepares to sign off on yet another huge wireless corporate merger would this be the career revolving door needed for one of the f.c.c. commissioners and he's a thirty year old man who acts like a baby while collecting disability benefits let's make our guests had explored.

the credibility of the f.c.c. the federal communications commission was called into question earlier this month when it was discovered that one of the five f.c.c. commissioners there that well baker was leaving her posed to become a lobbyist for comcast just four months after she had approved comcast controversy all acquisition of n.b.c. universal it was just the latest example of revolving door antics that take place all over washington d.c. now the f.c.c. has another controversy a merger on the darker docket this one between eighteen t. and t. mobile it could have profound effects on the wireless market brain in nearly half of all wireless customers about one hundred twenty eight million americans under the umbrella of one corporation and some organizations are worried there could be

a revolving door repeat this case to one of those organizations is free for us and is planning to launch a new campaign to shut the revolving door in america it is talking more about this campaign is just a tourist senior advisor for government and external affairs free press dot net joseph welcome and seventy. great to have you here with us first of all what is free press doing to raise awareness about this issue so tomorrow we are going to file a letter with the f.c.c. asking all four remaining f.c.c. commissioners sign a pledge that he will not seek employment after you see since going to be reviewing eighteen thousand eight hundred you don't want to see if it would happen in the contest n.b.c. universal merger to happen with with as much as well so this is your asking them not to do the revolving door right we're going to commission is not to. seek employment once they leave the f.c.c. into an. ever. lease. up when he actually does leave it actually leaving the door like they made it out what they could just leave

in. the scene for months later to talk and there's some provisions in some of the various departments like i thought d.o.d. had a waiting year or if you're a member of the way the rules it's like the f.c.c. is that you don't have to run for two years you can't lobby the f.c.c. and we don't want to play it you can't have a lobby it's the second agency you go to two year period is that it isn't all this revolving door is is i applaud you for going after and it's a major major problem but it's been going on for a long time i mean in one of my books on equal protection i documented this was back in two thousand run back to late ninety's or it actually was before there was the george herbert walker bush administration monsanto as i recall had a bit of pressure as monsanto had had a senior executive leave go to work for the e.p.a. or the u.s.d.a. or whichever agency was regulating their seeds or their pesticides or something write the rules that legalize the product they had made right you know took

a pay cut from hundreds of thousands dollars a year like you know ninety thousand bucks a year to be a bureaucrat and then left the u.s.d.a. and went back to work for monsanto at a huge salary right and nobody even raised an eyebrow other than a few journalists who were like well. you know what we cannot accept this practice has been going on forever. and it actually is happening as you see former staff members who are now working for the. staff members which is on the essence he recently worked for democrats working for comcast and other companies we can never accept he still i mean we just can't we have to use our responsibility to tell the american public that this is unacceptable american public has. a little trust in the government only thirty percent thirty three percent of the american people actually trust or believe in the government and you know because of things like this that we can as a public interest group you could just sit here and allow this to happen so we have to speak up well and going after the revolving door is

a really good important do you have a systemic solution for this one that it would apply beyond the f.c.c. or are you simply asking the f.c.c. to voluntarily say we're not going to do that that sleazy thing that everybody else is doing or asking as you see the voluntary make this pledge that will remain for commission is we're trying to expose some public companies back in the f.c.c. one hundred thirty thousand people congress asking. house oversight committee chair to actually look into this matter people were outraged by this recent clearly show complicit she was. not of a newspaper editorial so this is a way to try to restore faith that the when the as he looks into the eighteenth you mobile merger that he actually trying to sort of publicly public interest is opposed to perhaps maybe commissioner already thinking about the next job or just apropos of that just briefly we have about a minute the a.t.m. t. merger is the exact opposite of what happened during the ford and carter administrations right when he was busted up into separate properties as i recall it

was actually an increase in shareholder value there was that explosion of innovation bell labs became mission technologies and all of a sudden start betting betting all kinds of cool stuff it was a good thing that they were broken up i mean there's a general consensus this is the exact opposite of that are you also working on that . sure there are other groups all year we've been complaining about the consolidation of the telecom industry from one time. a.t.t. has reconstituted itself is eighteen to ones this town when it comes to telecom policy is so powerful would be happy to give more money to include members of congress and yet the telecom company we're really concerned this merger really resulting in charlotte eight nearly eighty percent of the wireless market will be. nearly ninety percent of revenues so this is will become one company or if this is in this is shot this is troubling for folks who are you know. what i've said all competitors. is getting rid of a major competitor and amazing joseph thanks for the great point you gotta keep it

up and good are good and all are great folks of progress thank you so much that we need more groups like free press standing standing up to this increasingly corporate corporate control. not only are millionaires and billionaires in america contributing to massive wealth inequality within our borders are also playing their part in the massive wealth inequality around the planet according to a new study by the boston consulting group around one percent of global population controls thirty nine percent the world's wealth and the u.s. beats pretty much everyone else here the top one percent own forty six percent of all wealth from around thirty percent and ronald reagan came into office and began the process of raising taxes on working people and cutting them for the rich the bottom eighty percent of americans by the way have only six percent of this country's wealth about a eighty percent down from about twenty percent or one fifth of the wealth when

ronald reagan took office and the rich in america are getting richer they increase their wealth share by two percent just last year so what can explain this widening global wealth inequality gap is a silly consequence of thomas friedman's flat earth so-called free trade here to offer his take is andrew langer president of the institute for liberty andrew welcome thanks for me great to have you here with us right we have a condom is what are we commies yeah well why do why does the government set up a court system to to adjudicate to make laws will keep in mind that governments exist to protect individual rights that's the nature of government to preserve rights governments are instituted among men driving their their powers from the consent of the government and in any sort of a truly free system you have government essentially creating a regulatory state that's close to govern interactions in terms of the exercise of those rights that's why governments exist in terms of economies well economies spring up to they don't spring up organically people want to trade with one another

and we believe that free trade is the best way to promote global prosperity so why do these exist well economies exist that's a tom it's an odd question and i let me rephrase i don't know i'm not even sure he was like what you're trying. let's get out of the rhetorical is the is the purpose of if we create the government has created our economy no yes no good you know obviously if i made out i have a. wife having a gardener and absent a government mikami would still exist i do what before there were global governments before there was always trade going on you had to do for you since travelling or across the us what are you talking about ok if we had an agreement where you are my car no more your want that that is an economy of sorts but that's talking about an economy that uses currency sure which is provided by the government evaluate which is determined by the government as it goes to the wires because such a state so is no good it can be and that's our system yes yeah it's our system that has a court system and forces get word that passes those laws in the terms the rules of

the game of business just like just like you have the rules of the game of baseball and largely to prevent the it to prevent drop by prevent fraud by a large that's right and then another and so on and theft in exactly and and and then the larger question is why would we do that didn't the founders when when they first set up this whole issue and the huge debate you know jefferson's debate on not wanting you know wanting to put a ban on commercial not which right into the constitution for example those huge debates in hamilton had about whether this should be whether should be illegal for a corporation own stock in another corporation for example or for a company to do more than one thing they were clear that the purpose of an economy was to serve society ok and that's why the government was established for it and it seems to me increasingly that that people like yourself are suggesting that the purpose of society is to serve the people who are the biggest players in the economy no i'm not saying that at all what i'm saying is that what you call the biggest players of all actually do a great deal to help society providing jobs providing they don't provide jobs where

they do things to do that i don't know how do you think how do you think how do you think you know the bulk of americans two thirds of all was authorized jobs if i go into a store and i buy something that store owner is going to have to buy saudi only that actually so that is. you know maybe something that it starts with. absent that currency you would still have people trading with one another in all sorts of ways as now we're talking about her outside a more as we're talking about the u.s. economy the world of it but this one is to put it put it sems you you were stemming from the supposition that absent the u.s. government all trade in economics from c so you're asserting that because of the existence of supply there will be demand i'm saying no that man is what creates sure demand always creates supply but that doesn't do it but that doesn't start with the with that doesn't mean that or with the dollar right then and well no it doesn't it starts with spending the dollar no it's parts or it's with someone who manage it starts with it starts what exactly does it have then you think i am somewhere it starts and it's over so it's also what is driving the economy is the consumer sure ok you know i agree i rule and you get no argument from me on that in

the end because people who are making the jobs are the consumers because they're driving the economy yes consumers yes i hire somebody and i'm a business person and i do it for any really good reason bedsit it is already yes i'm crazy that's i agree with you wholeheartedly ok so so we've established that employers don't create jobs demand creates jobs. but it would put employers still ahead knows a lot is fired it will free trade none. i and thirty years now it's been fifty years now sir james goldsmith pointed this out of in one thousand nine hundred four and why charlie rose wait a bit wait a bit people in brazil there was poverty in brazil and there were poor people in brazil who live lives of quiet desperation lives or nasserism shuns tens or hundreds a thousand i should say no to say that you know slums lies a gross understatement but millions of people literally millions of people were displaced off the land by as a consequence of this we saw the same thing in mexico you had in fact you almost had a revolution almost as state would drop and if you look at because we would we want to be knowledge there there corn farmers with with now if you look at if you look

at economists like fernando de soto they talk about they talk about the fact that you are a lot of these great economic struggle struggles between the haves and have nots arise in societies where private property rights for instance are completely ignored by the powers of the business and they do primarily it's not here to talk america david ricardo you're not out here talking at all as you go back talking about land reform and like agree i know that i'm a land reform i'm talking about free trade wiping out the ability but if you look at our differences to think a little bit if you look at the economics if you look at global economics over the last two hundred years and there's a great video that's out there i commend terrence called the joy of stats and just do a google search for it here is a great video out there that tart charts how global prosperity and life inspect and see have all gone up massively over the last in every nation around the world largely because of that free trade so where you as you has olds who are living who are living longer life expectancies that one in five years and below to see the video and it's conflating causation with causality it's it is it is well there's

nothing here and no one has seen of that history should have. global prosperity what has that what raise the standard of living of people around the world and is destroying ours how is that it is absolutely not to st the american life that we have we have not seen a significant and increasing real wages in the usa since the late seventies since one thousand nine hundred eighty seven and we in sag they have been declining we have so we see a fifty seven thousand factories closed just in the last ten years and he has details we have seen this is a little. reasonable free trade and you and i have talked about this before in terms of the cost of the economic cost of regulation in america well there's nothing to do with regular abscissa as we do it cheap labor on business arbitrage labor thirty hundred fifty percent of all trade done is not well in the united states with foreign countries is inter-company trade it's a school bias each pinch of the whole laps of the american manufacturing sector is directly related to the rise of the global of the of the american regulatory state it's not so regulatory state stands of nearly two letters and you have to leave out so you don't anybody thirteen million said to you can't you get it you think we

have more of a regulatory state than germany we we we do not you think regulatory state in germany is your body your ideas are getting your ass in exports and there is that's all it is of because our for growing economy and they because it's highly regulated but that's no it's got nothing to do with regulations well we dropped tariffs and we've got protection of american industries what you know i mean i'm a businessman and i can make something in china for i can have thirty seven and they are going to try to use the same cause they want their regulatory state is nothing they rely on slave labor and they steal every good idea from the united states but that's why our companies are going there trade brings us don't know free trade free trade brings us what we get in return for that is the working families in the united states have access to she's just good so yeah ok we're going to wrap it up and i thought you know thanks that's about the so-called free trade ideology is what planet recent decades is turning the third world into slaves shots are transnational corporations c.e.o.'s get richer and richer their workers get poorer or we'll revisit this topic and i still eat it sticker. coming up

a california man is literally milking the system he's thirty years old lives like an infant while collecting disability benefits. and yet. into the only mechanisms to do the work to bring justice to accountability. i have every right to know what my government should do if you want to know why i pay taxes. but i would characterize the obama as the

charismatic version of american exceptionalism. means family thorton jr he's thirty years old and has an odd lifestyle which was recently documented on national geographic show taboo take a look. to step into stanley and sandra's modest home to enter a fantasy world. where a grown man pleads with maker. sucks on a pacifier. spoon fed. uses. and even when. it's as stanley

lives his adult baby lifestyle he's also collecting social security disability benefits arguing that his condition prevents him from holding a normal day job after hearing about this one republican senator wasn't too pleased tom coburn wrote a letter to the cell security administration's inspector general asking them to look into the matter a letter read even as the thorn is able to determine what is appropriate attire and actions in public and drive himself to complete errands designing cars to make babies. sure to support a three hundred fifty pound adult and run an internet support group it is possible that he has been improperly collected does a benefit disability benefits for a period of time in response to his benefits possibly being cut off stanley or threaten to kill himself saying i have no problem killing myself take away the last thing keeping me here and see what happens next time you see me on the news it'll be in a body bag so given our deficit problems in america should probably you people like stanley be cut off from receiving social security payments just because their disability manifests itself in some bizarre way for more on this i'm joined by

amanda carey reporter of the deal the color band a welcome i am for having me thanks for joining us this guy is i mean it peanuts isn't a disability what is well you have to look at this exact to decide i mean if you read it you have a park right and he's written about how he sort of got into this and it was a choice i mean i don't really see this as sort of a disability that he couldn't avoid or that he was born with and you know if you kill somebody for this person but that quickly gives way to fury i mean it's sort of the picture of everything that's wrong with the ball versus them into an entitlement say well it's let's let's assume for a moment that this guy is scamming the system yet ok i would submit to you that it's not a picture of what's everything that's wrong with the welfare system it's a picture of a guy scamming the system i mean you know you have you ever worked in an office where people stole off a surprise walked off with pens i mean there's inefficiencies right i mean it's

like you know sometimes things just of a national look at all of this over them breathe that kind of dependency what they mean to for someone to reply to famine exists so you're suggesting that this guy is doing this because security's avail but i'm just saying look how dependent he's become on such as the carriages yuri's available to you right now if you behave like this is that i mean that you're going to start sucking on a pacifier i'm not thinking of he's on it because it's not security i'm just saying because it's. there and for someone like him who obviously no one ever said that will he doesn't really need the security i mean i think i'll go let's look at a system for a moment he doesn't mean we don't need one of us really know his story might be might be much more whacked out than we know he i think he is i mean he wrote about it on his ok so it's also history. but let's assume for a moment that he's not aware of lack of understanding the system i would much rather have just like i would much rather have a job and know that you know install a plan yesterday but i'm not going to you know ok it's less than officials but hey

we still have a business i'd much rather have a social security system where there's a couple of guys who are scamming it and there's people who work for them in their quest though i don't have a social security system ok but you do you both got a vote will tell you that though that there needs to be major reform keep this from happening i don't know how many people there are who are doing what's in his huge driver of the national debt i mean this is a huge problem stanley thirty social security stanislas are not going to do this mission are going to go i mean it's zero down it's something harry has a two point people like you know are surplus. going to be around for someone my age sure will know it's not true will know i know you have are going to see that money is just security right now is going to be solved for at least twenty or thirty years and by the time you're old enough to need it all they have to do is right now if you only make one hundred six thousand dollars a year or last one hundred percent of your salary goes you know this taxed at thirty percent or so security well they're going to be making we're going to be six thousand you know pip and i think what we have to do as bill is about to say we're going to say dory with the bottom line here is that family has obviously when he

needs help and i don't think that help come from the government in a form of a social security check i'm not exactly sure what's going to fix social security when social security came into being one hundred thirty four of the leading causes of death about elderly people were so severe with poverty you had over sixty percent are going to tolerate as they were sixty five you know i'm i agree with you and and and people are dying from hyper. from the truth malnutrition and heat and now because of social security the poverty rate for people over sixty five has gone below twenty percent used to be really really high i've had to do was a third of all the payments the social security makes of the things like what stanley is getting from people like my friend michael hutchison who is out jogging a couple of years ago and said if they felt broke his neck and has been paralyzed that i found he lives on social security ok and there's a few friends of his who you know kick in a hundred yards from here and having a system he's not gaming the system and that's the point is that if

a third of the payments that social security is making are literally going to disabled people and widows and orphans because that was about it you know the survivors. and you've got a couple scammers like stanley wouldn't you rather have a system that actually works and prevents poverty in old age and and keeps my cold my friend michael alive in his wheelchair even if the price of that is that occasionally we have to put up with an about that this isn't a case for getting rid of this isn't completely this is a case for making major reforms and being able to weed out people like family well yeah i mean what was around here are there going to be there are huge debate over what those reforms are i mean nobody's putting forth a plan obviously because of say a polarized subject but i mean this is definitely a case where president obama actually sort of proposal he said let's start charging people over a quarter million dollars a year social security tax just like janitors severus that's a great well it's not actually asking the rich to pay the same to have in their heads or pay for people like family you know asking the rich to pay the same tax that their janitors are paying so my friend michael can continue to live in his

wheelchair and so that your grandparents can i do anything with ok this isn't this is sort of the thought to get him out of the system i agree with that if you say you know if i did say you know yeah i you know and there are people in social security whose job is to get him out but it just seems to me that. any system has some inefficiencies and that what companies with the stolen guns. that doesn't mean that we take the company down. ok let's just. get at least at the very base ok we're really going to stay on the thing and if they could drop the three hundred at the end of the day the question in my mind that we all have to answer is that we want an america to live and we society. frankly for myself if it's not sufficient even if it's less i rather it's. just.

it's the good the bad and the very very opposed to the logically our good the good congressman ed markey on the floor of the house today congressman markey took advantage of all the reasons in the world talk and compared the republican budget to the rapture take a look at. the house republicans come up with a ruling apocalyptic vision the republican rapture. it is sign this put your sons who gets lifted up into the economic stratosphere and who gets left behind under this scheme if you are a millionaire or eight billionaire you get raptured into heaven with all well said congress and maybe a fall or republicans are raptured things wouldn't be too bad on earth after. the bad sarah palin the gubernatorial quitter is making this list two days in

a row in an interview with fox so called news the only network appealing will give an interview to paling threw out some of her not so factual facts. look at the debt that has been incurred she related in the last two years it's more debt under this president it than all those other presidents combined i think you are right except that it's not president obama came into office with a ten point. six trillion dollar debt thanks largely to george w. bush we're down to about half of that reagan started the process obama's only added three point seven trillion dollars to the debt since mainly to fix the bush recession while at the real facts that we have a perfectly good story right sarah oh yeah how are those factual death analysts in the health care bill coming in. and the very very ugly rand paul last week rand paul was doing a heck of a job standing in the way of the patriot act extension in the senate but it only took a few days for rand to jump on the crazy train last week in

a radio interview paul put on his defense of the prostitution on hold to tear down the first amendment. but if someone is attending speeches from someone who is promoting the violent overthrow of our government that's really an offense that we should be going after they should be deported or put in prison right throw people in prison for listening to a speech i was taught paul was against the patriot act because it shredded our constitution apparently he's against it because it didn't go far enough in shredding the constitution and that's very very ugly. coming out conservative strategist heather serve all and deputy editor of the daily caller jeannie weinstein joining me for this week's lone liberal rumble.

let's not forget that we have an apartheid regime right now. i think the bombings feeding on the well. we have the government says they're going to keep you safe. raddy if you are freed up. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and hear see some other part of it and realize that everything is ok. i'm

charging welcome to the big picture. for. food for. thought about the big picture i'm charging coming up in this half.