well i'm john harshman in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture the seven republican presidential hopefuls duke it out in their first debate are you on thing was that ever mentioned the middle class or education i think they mention the two areas where the country is struggling the most meanwhile the very foundation of america was built on its own billing the hands of wall street just how powerful have our banks to speak up and how would you like to own your own piece of lunar gave

history details and i you can take action with your very own anthony wiener and it's crazy. getting to know this last night seven republicans converged on a hampshire debate who would be a better president the debate touched on topics like the economy health care immigration our foreign wars and whether or not newt gingrich prefers american idol or dancing with the stars after the debate the democratic national committee released their response take a look. i do not believe in surreal all in american courts. i support a constitutional amendment to define marriage as between a man and a woman. i think governor palin's a remarkable leader i think she's qualified to be president united states. if

i'm elected president i will repeal obama care. we would today probably have a prime minister nation on the moon three or four permanent stations in spain. now for the republican take i'm joined by daniel helper deputy online editor of the weekly standard and jami weinstein senior editor of the daily caller welcome guys i would say the republican take a neutral take i'm not asking for the republican party it's fair and balanced here come the journalists not a republican always the most impressive thing about the debate last night he did of both of actually i don't know if there's anything overly impressive i wasn't awful but it wasn't superbly astonishing there was nothing that great that stuck out at me you know seemed it seemed to me that there was there was nobody drilled everything was soundbites and and surface stuff would you disagree that no it's

certainly part of certainly that's true but part of it is the questioning the questioning they regarded thirty seconds for each question i don't know from watching c.n.n. but every time they went over or seemed to go over in the eyes of the moderator they they were brutally interrupted so nobody was given any more time it's terrible format it was really they tried to integrate new media it was so confusing with who makes those decisions c.n.n. you know you're going to say on this you know i think was totally c.n.n. but i don't know i don't know the inner workings i just know it was it was a terrible thing ok the word middle class was not mentioned once telling us and i don't know i mean i'm not sure they were talking about all americans generally the word upper class wasn't mentioned nor was the word lower class but there were you know i didn't get the sense that you know it seems to me like the the god gays guns didn't come into it are you saying more and more to it that are you are you saying you don't care about the lower class the jobs you're concerned or the lower class

they want to be there that you're really going to play gotcha here with the jamia this is a serious thing it seems to me that there was a real appeal here could you explain something into the two i mean to a narrow narrow slices of a you're playing semantics you can look through the transcript and find many phrases that weren't said last night the middle class was referred to in different and different ways without explicitly. saying middle class i don't think i wouldn't take it as a slight it wouldn't return much answer and i would go back to my first point which is that a lot of it has to be reflection of the questions and the questions themselves didn't answer when asked about the middle class and they didn't refer to those points so you know i disagree with what you say you know their comments which were many of them trying to expand the economy to turn around the economy that always includes the middle class it was all america i'm not disagreeing that here's. a quick clip of. well in fact this is this is why i think temple and he is now running for president i think he's running for vice president on this

clip. and you don't want to address why you called governor romney's obamacare well the issue that was raised in a question from a reporter was what are the similarities between the two and i just cited president obama's own words that he looked to massachusetts as a blueprint or a guide when he designed obamacare but you chose you so you asked the question which is fair enough but you chose those words as one of my questions is why would you chose to choose those words maybe in the comfort of the sunday shows studio your rival is standing right there if it was obamacare sunday eyes about obamacare standing here with the governor right there it is president obama is the person who i quoted in saying he looked to massachusetts for designing his program he's the one who said it's a blueprint and that he merged the two programs and so using the term obamacare was a reflection of the president's comments that he designed obamacare on the massachusetts health care plan so i think he's doing the exact same thing that john edwards did when he refused to take on john kerry or john edwards and and ventura

in the two thousand and eight bates and two thousand and four i guess or whatever. you know he was running for vice president i think who in this case there do people this so wide open he actually a miniscule especially has i mean he's the alternative to romney at this point romney implodes in my horse unless i don't get in the he's there so i don't see why you wouldn't be. running for president i just think you just want to take he could have imploded you know i mean romney so employers could question i don't know why i did it he was so boring and maybe he was it like to get in fights on stage if you want to i think it's because romney's got forty million bucks his own back pocket he's the most well funded of all the other candidates he's almost certainly going to be the party's nominee unless he really screws a badly and supports he's ready for it i was going to push back on that i don't think he's even the nominee i think the nominee was not on that stage last night i think are people going to jump in and they have his good looking answer better as christie just beat off his former employer with three hundred million bucks chris chris christie or paul ryan both courageous great candidates all right the fields

are already different beers on ten congressmen jumped in today but already announced that you would jump in today rick perry just on national t.v. to feel good be different but i think going to be asked about plenty i mean what would your criticism your the point he was just too nice i just i just saw him doing what what i saw john edwards doing and i remember at the time thinking to myself john edwards this guy's not running for president running for vice president i think i was right i am fairly convinced poland g.'s is running for president and i don't see sharp line of attack of him being just tonight in the republican party ever since reagan and he talked about his eleventh amendment which was now strong never criticize a very good republican fellow republican i think is along the same lines he we had him into the office couple months ago and he and a reporter recently talked and a couple weeks ago wrote a lengthy piece for us he he always refused to knock any of the other republicans i think the sunday show is actually an aberration from who he is and how he's going

to run it is you know what he went off. but romney would have to reach out without the that's the part that's really out of character yesterday for me it was not ok here's a clip from the from the get go but the big i'm reluctant to call it a baby i can guarantee that baiting actually. but whatever the debate last night about the war about wars. i would wait for my journalism the commander in chief i make the decisions i tell the generals what to do and i bring them home as quickly as possible and get them on of iraq as well and i wouldn't start a war in libya i'd quit bombing yemen and i'd quit bombing pakistan i'd start taking care of people here at home because we could save hundreds of billions of dollars our national security is not enhanced by our prisons over there we have no purpose how this this is you know ron paul's position on war is increasingly

becoming the american people i completely disagree ron paul also didn't favor going in and shooting that lot in the face without notifying the pakistanis i think ron paul is out of the mainstream on war and i don't you know well i mean if that was the case then maybe i don't know what he what his position was but i don't think most americans would agree with that but most americans do agree now republicans and democrats it's time to get up. i mean it's not that there's a difference but saying that they want to draw down in there certainly there's a move by some people in that direction in taking ron paul's decision a position which is far more. isolationist than some as i'm sure any of these other candidates in favor of getting. i i don't know they didn't make it exactly clear romney decision that will isn't isn't clear and it wasn't fleshed out it's still early in the campaign huntsman is running to the left of obama on foreign policy i don't think any successful republican candidate is going to run to the left of obama on foreign policy i think republicans are best arguing that obama is what it

what's right or left about having or not having a war you can write right means you will write more and libyans you don't write political not you love war but that you love that you love america you love peace and freedom that you and that you sometimes need to go in to the north that you know your america is that eisenhower did actually get a very prominent order to in order to maintain you know eisenhower campaign slogan was one hundred fifty two when he ran. the president he had there was a great t.v. we've played it here before he had a it was an elephant walking across the stage a cartoon of an elephant beating a drum and the other word peace on it and the slogan was vote for eisenhower vote for peace he was p. pleasure to be happy and the war in korea the absence of war doesn't mean the proliferation of peace across the globe sometimes war establishes peace now you have a defense secretary robert gates who's leading the bomb ministration who was quoted by both the public the democrats saying that we shouldn't be cutting and running at a time when we're pushing the taliban on their back foot so i don't think the republican candidate we'll. daniel saying you know go to elect obama in

so far in saying establishing to get is considered ron paul position is immediately withdrawal prime. foreign policy address just a few weeks ago and he made it clear in. the middle east is changing. america needs to. go from different countries so your interests are we need you to change so i think the people think it's fair to characterize give you some see how do you know if if if if if if obama draws down a significant number of troops between on election day it's going to be interesting to see other places. just very yeah ok we're we're out. jamie thank you thank you both thank you for having us going to our. moving the debate and its glittering talking points aside i think what best personifies of the republican party is a little incident that happened in chattanooga tennessee was there that republican congressman chuck. decided to pump gas at a local gas station for the day part of

a publicity stunt to call for more oil drilling so he cut a deal with a local racetrack gas station was given a one day gas pumping gig unfortunately make room for congressman fleishman the gas station had to send one of its actual employees just a louis home costing the us a day's paycheck as you can imagine it wasn't you please take a look. no three was there as the congressman comes gas in england with customers of moolah says he's bonce wanting to be there for the meet and greet cost him a day's pay i needed that should. you know obviously i don't make one hundred sixty five thousand dollars a year so missing a day means a lot more to me. but isn't that what the republican party is all about today bells whistles and publish the stunts to make it look like they care about the working class but in reality they're just looking out for the bankers and the billionaires . it's time for our daily

poll your chance to tell us what you think here's the day's question the repeal of don't ask don't tell is nearing the finish line will make it your choices are yes defense secretary gates has confirmed he will center of this month and in sixty days it will officially end or know last night nearly all republicans if they would reinstated if it were if elected does taking away civil rights for gays but i got to town arbonne dot com to listen what you think the poll be open till tomorrow morning. after the break our politicians love affair with the stock market has ruined our economy. let's not forget that we had an apartheid regime right now.

i think. either one well. whatever government says they're going to keep you safe get ready because you give them their freedom. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so. you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else here sees some other part of it and realized everything you thought you don't . charge is a big issue. for

. a great transformation has taken place in america over the last thirty years and this chart best illustrates that our economy used to be based on manufacturing and building things in one thousand nine hundred seven america's manufacturing sector accounted for a quarter of our nation's g.d.p. that only makes up about eleven percent and we can thank so-called free trade for

the decline so what sector has filled the hole left by outsourced manufacturing wall street which has grown from being only one tenth of our economy in one hundred forty seven to more than twenty percent of our economy today and during the surge in profitability wall street's mad scientists would mix together a ray of complex financial concoctions like credit default swaps and quater lies that obligations to make more and more money basically for themselves that are actually producing anything perhaps the most frightening wall street creations what's known as high frequency trading it was a sixty minutes piece from last year on high frequency trading. it may surprise you to learn that most of the stock trades in the u.s. are no longer being made by human beings but by robot computers capable of buying and selling thousands of different securities in the time it takes you to blink an eye just four years ago high frequency traders accounted for thirty percent of the stock trades in the u.s.

today thanks to much range as high as seventy percent in this new economy depending on high frequency trading and exotic finance or financial instruments has consequences as we learned in two thousand and eight financial crisis that exposed the underlying dangers of complex derivatives and as we learned last year with high frequency trading computers caused a flash crash of a thousand points in the stock market in just a matter of minutes so how do we rein in wall street and keep our economy safe from their tricks sarah anderson has an idea that has something to do with the tax she's the director of the global economy project at the institute for policy studies and she joins me now sir welcome great to be here. to step tax is what you're talking about the securities transaction excise tax we're talking about the idea of putting a very very tiny tax about a quarter of a percent or so on each trade of stocks and to rivet and foreign exchange and it

would have to go all of this kind of financial speculation tax it would help generate a lot of money for a good thing so it's really now we need and the second goal would be to put a curb on the kind of short term financial speculation you're talking about to discourage the kind of high frequency high risk trading that has a very little social value and makes our financial system so much more volatile well the here's the problem the you've got a bunch of hedge funds and a bunch of banks that are doing high frequency trading in their back rooms and making a fortune over there not really there are manufacturing one thing that's useful for anybody in the world. they're not increasing the wealth of our nation to use out of sports metaphor because you know you sort of nation the nation's wealth is the stuff that gets made you know you get treated women you're really going to actually have all you know now you've created wealth you can't see and frankly could even be multi-generational about these people are producing absolutely nothing but they're

producing a lot of cash and because of the citizens united decision and in previous ones you know the buckley vs for way oh first national bank versus the audi by the way back to the first national bank of. santa clara county versus other pacific railroad eighty six the string of supreme court decisions and basically said whoever has the cash has to buy the politicians and you can't call it bribery anymore so now that this industry has been created what makes you think that there's any possibility that politicians will be able to resist it i mean these guys are making so much chaos they could yeah and there was a front page story in the new york times yesterday about how obama welcomed the wall street executives to the white house to time and i warm up relations with them before the election campaign starts going because he needs money for it that campaign run thing i can't see you as an alternative it's looking at the european system where leaders there are not immune to the pressures of their financial

lobbyists but they have a lot less dependence on them and that's why we're seeing so much more progress on issues like this around financial speculation taxes in the european countries just today the french parliament had a vote on a resolution to adopt such taxes throughout europe it passed almost unanimously and i think one explanation for that is because of our different approach to campaign finance and that's a huge that's the oath of nobody talks about but instead there's a lot that people can be doing here and i want to say there is tremendous energy around this issue about making wall street paid for the cost of the economic crisis the national nurses united which is a. union representing registered nurses is doing a big rally on wall street on june twenty second and it's part of a global day of action on this issue around tax thing financial speculation they'll be groups in at least twenty five countries taking similar actions so there is tremendous momentum we need to be ready for when that political opportunity khans

to push ideas like this through and i think if they could get such taxes implemented in europe they start raising a lot of money off of it in the sky doesn't come falling down policymakers here are going to have to take a second look at this and think maybe this isn't such a dumb idea maybe we do need that revenue and we should be following nearly absolute agree i wrote a piece for common dreams on the stock tax in fact it goes eight suggesting we should have it pointed out that we financed the civil war with the state tax we financed the spanish-american war with the stretch x. and then we started one in one hundred fourteen that led to world war one and that held until nine hundred sixty six in fact f.d.r. it shifted in one hundred thirty five when he created the a c c he allocated all the revenue from the steps tax to fund the a c c but joe kennedy in charge of that gloria swanson told me one night but one afternoon we were having lunch she said joe was her manager and whatever she said he said the f.d.r. put him in charge of the f.c.c. because he needed a crook to catch the crooks but any of the f.c.c.

by sixty six the reason that the end of this to tax was because the step sections producing so much more revenue than as you see cost base of you know. so i mean we've done it here the countries that have state taxes in the u.k. france japan germany italy greece australia france china chili bowl asia india austria and belgium i mean this is not it is not going to be controversy and you know it started before here and you know treasury secretary geithner has said well i haven't seen a version of this tax that i think would work and it i wish he would more seriously look at this issue because there are countries out there that are already implementing such taxes raising a lot of money that goes for a good purpose. and it with in the middle of a fiscal crisis and in the wake of the financial crisis we think this is an idea whose time has really come in the us and and it's amazing in europe also to see that it has appeal across the political spectrum they're still able to have rational discussions about fair taxation across the political spectrum there and we

need to bring that back in the lobby i think that's what you're doing really well is what i was writing about it some more with which to i was called was step less like you know what was your message and it's like s.-chip you know it sounds like something you're going to stop it if you know that. you know program for kids you know so you're calling it i call it a financial speculation tax i have a lot of allies around the world who call it a robin hood tax in their countries because it is the general notion that we're targeting the real big time handlers in the financial casino here this is not a tax that the ordinary investor is going to feel that it's going to be virtually minute you know unnoticeable for the ordinary investor it's the big time gamble or it's that would feel this hopefully it would encourage them to have more long term patient investment strategies instead of this you know high frequency short term speculative stuff and so it really is a tax that would hit the segment of our society that is most under attack so the

financial sector you know doesn't have the same kind of sales taxes and so forth as other taxes and so it be fair it would raise a lot of money it would help make our markets more stable to me it's a no brainer and i think we need to just keep pushing the idea here and now we see that that opening we just have a couple seconds left do you have any sense in congress because absolutely about it doesn't bills have been introduced there are about one hundred fifteen members of congress who have co-sponsored one or the other of them. we just haven't seen the traction and a lot of the problem there is because the white house has not been behind it. and we're just hoping that they will especially with the change in the debate in europe opened their eyes to this possibility that could solve so many problems there right and it could be a revenue source and a time when everybody sister a little buddy the absolutely at the center for economic and policy research estimates about one hundred fifty billion dollars a year could be raised on this kind of

a tax. it would if the winner sir thank you so much for dropping by tonight thank you. i'll have more on why wall street needs to meet with its proper place and still take. pretty easy alert are you playing with a winner doll and on live action figure company that specializes in making talk of the town dolls like syrup illinois barack obama's releasing its latest creation the anthony weiner action figure that's right the company's not letting weiner date fade away without taking advantage of it if you anthony weiner figure is dressed in gym clothes retails for thirty nine ninety five another more anatomically correct adults only version of the anthony wiener dollars selling for ten bucks more let's just hope the action figure company is not planning a special end of the year rerelease of the anthony wiener doll to everyone's christmas lists it's a commune wiener dog. coming out new jersey governor chris christie has thought of

a new way to fatten the pockets of his former employer and it involves turning school kids into profit machines so. let's not forget that we had an apartheid regime right here. i think may be the one well. we have the government says the keep you safe get ready because you're going to their freedom.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so silly you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realized everything you saw you don't know i'm sorry welcome to the big picture. for.

welcome back to the big picture i'm tom arbonne coming up in this half hour the roses don't smell too great for the garden state's public schools governor chris christie and his g.o.p. coro corporate overlords claim to rob the system meanwhile front runner for the republican white house seat that romney is catching a lot of heat from his party for his take on global warming for the possibility of the only sane republican in the bunch just with a topic and while millions of americans are seeing their paychecks get smaller some even disappearing the bankers on wall street are pocketing big profits huge incised

really take a break down now j.p. morgan chase ripped off a county government so badly that their police could no longer afford to show up for traffic accidents. new jersey is becoming ground zero in the republican campaign to turn public schools into corporate profits governor christie's education plans include a new eight hundred twenty five million dollars private school voucher program paid for by cutting eight hundred twenty million dollars out of the public education budget program was designed by christie and his education commissioner but by the name of christopher surfer who just happened to previously be the president of the world's largest for profit school corporation edison school pics so.