five. welcome back to the big picture and tom hartman coming up in this half hour chaos erupts in wisconsin as a supreme court justice allegedly chokes another just it's one of the accused

governor scott walker's right hand man it was scandal unravel the governor's radical agenda plus big oil is added begin with or astroturf phony front perhaps see how the world's biggest polluters are manufacturing support for their anti-american agenda and what is it that corporate c.e.o.'s republicans don't want you to know it's just it's the same thing that any bank robber wouldn't want you to know just how much they're stealing from. the. students that was causing can forget about a quality education yesterday cockcrow their lapdog governor scott walker signed a new republican budget bill to tackle that state's deficits caused by governor walker's tax breaks for corporations and millionaires and billionaires so how does walker's bill reduce the deficit the republican way of course by cutting eight hundred. and dollars from public schools in the state and directing those savings

to even more corporate tax breaks for the two hundred fifty million was cut from state universities seventy million size from tax rules but walker may have other problems on his hands beyond a backlash from students walker's right hand man on the state supreme court and in fact his mentor justice david prosser is facing allegations that he choked out of other supreme court justice and walsh brady bradley excuse me in her legal chambers two weeks ago you may remember the processor is the guy who narrowly won reelection to the state's high court last month after twelve thousand votes mysteriously appeared in waukesha county to put him over the top and it was his decisive ruling that allowed governor walker's controversial anti-union law to survive a legal challenge earlier this fall so what will this latest controversy over wisconsin supreme court mean for governor walker's agenda and those of his concept we're fighting against it for more i'm joined by john nichols russian correspondent

of the nation magazine lives in madison wisconsin and democratic strategist erick newbie who grew up in wisconsin you're from wisconsin your family i live in that you have and i hope my family is our parents are out there i started my my work and politics out and out there all over was coming and john welcome great to have you with us going to be. so john let me start with you what's a. recap this story i touched on in the setup a what's the deal here choky one chief supreme court justice choking another. absolutely it's a pretty remarkable story and of course this whole wisconsin controversy has been remarkable from the start we've had koch brothers phone calls and secret me and scandals and fights and invasion so i guess a strange elation attempt had become eventually what happened was about two weeks ago as justice prosser who was as you suggest governor walker's mentor in the

legislature as justice process was preparing to force through a poor three decision allowing the governor to go ahead with his assaults on labor unions and also pretty much destroyed the open meetings law in wisconsin a meeting was held in the chambers of justice and watch bradley she's a senior justice and one of the most respected members of the court also very very congenial player who's seen as being in a really easy going probably the person that everybody gets along with the best during the course of this meeting in the end will spread lease chambers. justice process became extremely agitated very angry and well spread lee she asked him to leave her chambers and at that point according to and most readily justice cross or lunged at her grabbed her by the neck and held her in a chokehold. and other justices who were there at the time i will remain nameless

so this is second hand but other justices who were there at the time will cross the board will say that it was not eight bradley not a joking situation it appeared to those involved in a byline or at least a very animated angry attack oh no erica justice processor has apparently history of anger management problems he's got quite a temper and he was on the record calling kick-ass a sharlee evidence and i'm back. footage of him when he was in the assembly kind of go and walking very aggressively shaking his fists and raising his fist up in the air at another member of this place so he's got quite a temper but i think you know there's a really this is really reflective unfortunately of the divisiveness. the conservatives have had in the state capitol i mean there was constant supreme court is still in the actual building of the wisconsin capitol and that they were supposedly also you know discussing their decision here and that this law has

become so divisive has become so polarizing that it would come to the point where one justice would feel so much for great that they would put a hand on another is is really frightening justice has her supposed to be kind of the cooler heads that prevail be the wiser you know better thinkers and kind of taking a step back these kind of things and so to see something so restively you know approaching another justice like that putting a hand on the it's not ok shouldn't be tolerated i mean there. is no saying that she actually wanted him and he. could use the torture of those who are. you know with the cover up is worse than the actual you know the laws about it. yeah i mean i find it hard to believe personally that if someone was lunging at me that putting my hands out towards their neck would be the best defensive move so i mean i think it absolutely is i mean he has

a documented temper problem he has made comments about both some and last before about their kind about how you know they kind of drive him nuts and make he feels like they push him to kind of make verbal mistakes and i think that that particular people who even the most angry tea party are out there not a single one of them would ever say that it is ok for some for one justice to put their hands on another so i think that he's going to have a big backlash i think that if that is going to be investigated and it's being about it right now but if they find out that's what happened you put a. on her i think that's going to have an outcry there's an organization are wisconsin now that are launched today asking for him to resign and then a couple hours they can gain thousands and think in terms of well in addition to that john this is a felony if this is what he did is it not i mean isn't it a crime to physically assault a supreme court justice and it was gaza or england right as you saw there he won and the important thing to understand here is this is the second incident any year

in which justice processor has been abusive to the point of what many legal scholars would define it as assault early and now if there's a cli toward a woman justice and this is the striking thing in both cases both the violent language and followed by a threat remember just prosser did not just call chief justice abramson the senior member of the court a bitch he also threatened to destroy her and he did that a few months ago now we have a situation where after using what is going to characterize this violent language in lunged apparently toward another woman on the court and visibly assaulted her if we do confirmed this i think it's very hard to imagine how the justice process remains on the court because really the court itself were to hear a case with the same facts in play would rule that an employer not only had a right or perhaps

a responsibility to remove the unstable employee from that were place so i think ross was in a really bad situation maracle any updates on the recall elections from the one of the young people is a very significant sex african but a very interesting happen this afternoon one of the key republican candidates for the state said it was disqualified he didn't file enough signatures and so now we have a situation where one of the democrats who is targeted for recall looks like you'll have a very easy ride reelection up in the green bay area. that's a load off the shoulders or the concerns of a lot of democrats may search out a little easier john erica thank you both for being here and for the audience cred with us who knows what will come out of justice processor's case back to governor walker's budget bill you can clearly see where he places his priorities already number one giving corporations that already pay close to nothing in taxes even more tax breaks and way down toward the bottom of walker's priority list educating

wisconsin's children so they can can can can compete for jobs in the twenty first century with kids from countries like china japan and europe are colleges free or close to it. for the good the bad of the very very disloyal just sickly ugly or good this one chris murphy a democrat from connecticut weighed in on the growing out thinks questions surrounding supreme court justice clarence thomas thomas murphy introduce legislation to force justices to follow the same code of ethics that apply to all other federal judges and then whether justice thomas is still fit to serve on the bench saying. this is starting to rise to the level where you should start to be some real investigations as to whether to fire sounds he continued service justice

on the supreme court it's time for congress to step up and perform its constitutionally mandated job of keeping an eye on the run amok i cor progress murphy is doing just that and others need to join the bad jersey governor chris christie earlier this month christie caught some flak for this exchange on a public access program in new jersey take a look. you don't tend your children to public schools you send them to private school so i was wondering why you think it's fair to be cutting school funding to public school what's your name what's your name guys real quick the governor's talking what does it help talk to you know you know what first focus all your business oh if he were your send your kids to school don't bother me about where i said boy. christie was given a chance to walk back that comment when i was actually asked about it i meet the press yesterday but he didn't make the most of the opportunity. should a chief executive speak to people that way they are and are you too abrasive are

you too stubborn are you too tough when it comes to people questioning you i'm huggable of all that i am not a brace of i don't listen i'm honest. and i wish we had more of it in politics. huggable and loveable. sometimes we can dismiss a certain republicans bad idea by saying well only if he's a nice guy and go to christie not only is he screwed over the middle class in a state with bad policies but he's being a jerk about it too. and a very very ugly the t.s.a. a ninety five year old woman who is dying of leukemia was ordered by t.s.a. just remover adult diaper and undergo an invasive pat down search at a florida airport last week agents claim that the woman's weapon diaper was impeding their groping the daughter of the woman described the event as something she couldn't imagine happening on american soil she has since filed a complaint with the department of homeland security so we all feel safer now that

ninety five year olds died of cancer after the humiliated before they board an airplane that's very good. after the break i'll tell you why the iowa energy forum is not what they see. let's not forget that we had an apartheid museum right. i think from a beautiful one well. we never got that says they're going to confuse safe get ready because you get your

freedom. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you live something else here see some other part of it and realized everything you saw you don't i'm sorry there's a big. new

where of the big oil front groups in american petroleum institute which is made up of all a big wigs of the oil industry like exxon mobil b.p. chevron they're up to something in iowa where a handful of republican candidates for president are campaigning right now as investigative reporter leaf fog in progress has uncovered a merican petroleum institute has created an astroturf group to get average people to support be boiled without realizing the group known as the iowa energy forum has been hitting up republican presidential candidates at events across iowa to raise

support for a variety of big oil concerns from new pipelines to keeping intact taxpayer subsidies for the group may at first look like it's made up of average concerned citizens it's not it's merely a p.r. gimmick paid for by the american petroleum institute for more on what's going on behind the scenes here and run by leaf on reporter and blogger for think progress we welcome back in the show to tom nice to see of thank you another day another front group is this just becoming business as usual on the right. you know i think that would be fair to say this i will energy form is a new group created by the american petroleum institute just a few months ago and as we see the legislative and local lobbying campaign kick into high gear for this keystone x.l. pipeline from canada to houston we'll see a lot more groups just like this i mean remember this is a very dangerous pipeline that. lobbyists are trying to use eminent domain to seize

land to build so it's running into all a lot of opposition from environmental groups from local community groups from politicians across the board so this very slick. new entity to energy form is has been created to manipulate people to support my point how is this astroturf group this iowa energy form doing business. well they've got a field step of about forty people you can go to these events some of them are wearing a t. shirt that says i want energy farm some don't and they go up to candidates and press them and ask them to commit to supporting a pipeline the couch it has saying on this pipeline will bring jobs or will help america get off you know eastern oil and move to more friendly oil canadian oil and then when the candidate answers the question they continually hammer the candidate to say on camera but they support the pipeline and this is a very innovative strategy but it's not new the coal industry and the health

insurance industry did this to obama and clinton in two thousand and eight it's all the candidates around filled up the town halls with their own paid activists and got them over and over and over again to commit on on tape that they would support their goals in the coal industry a case that was clean coal back in two thousand and eight. why are they targeting republicans are republicans are that's a bad. well i think it's safe to say that most republican candidates probably support despite my anyways but you have to remember this is a very controversial pipeline they're using eminent domain stealing in a sense people's land to build this pipeline so i'll go there doing to the republican candidates now because it's a great opportunity with the two thousand and twelve primary going through iowa were part of this pipeline will be developed i imagine a doing this to democrats as well in the they're using eminent domain the fifth amendment which allows government to take land the government has to pay for that land is this pipeline going to be owned by the government is this something that is

is federal or state money. and to and if so who's to whose benefit is it in your. well that's a very complicated question you know congressman waxman actually recently sent a letter to trance canada on the main operators of the pipeline just find out which other oil companies are involved because i mean this pipeline runs from canadian tar sands production areas to houston and it goes through several different storage areas like a very large storage area in question oklahoma. trance cana has refused to reveal that the different names that identities of the companies involved in this many expected and larger fine companies like coke but has refiners in houston but if you look if you'll also get to the question about who's paying for the pipeline you know in kansas legislators recently passed a big tax cut to give the pipeline a ten year exemption from paying sales taxes so the lotteries are just creating

groups that are also pressuring local governments to give them a tax giveaway so this type of pipeline can be built absolutely amazing we fund thanks for the great research and you're doing great work you're doing. thanks tom thanks for having me you know you can bet if this works for the oil oligarchy and i will look for more and more corporate shills to show up in town hall event and asked scripted questions all around the country and what allows these corporate corporations to be so involved in politics when such activity is illegal in most of the rest of the world where it's rightfully referred to as corruption well here's the story arizona for example used to have public financing of elections and started with maine actually the number of communities did a portland oregon used to have it and then i went to arizona and it got struck down today by the u.s. supreme court not in the hole but basically eviscerated it does it's not going to work anymore and this is you know in fact when arizona had public financing you had

average citizens running for office because they didn't have to raise all kinds of money the state would provide the money every single day. every other major nation acknowledges climate change now we haven't seen like a stark and sudden shift just consider this for a moment every major nation in the world acknowledges the politicians of every major nation the world would probably change you here in the united states one hundred percent of the newly elected republicans in the house of representatives one hundred percent of them deny the climate changes haven't even as all the science around us is overwhelmingly showing in the news those two now frankly in my opinion it's not because one hundred percent of those republicans are stupid or even anti-science it's because of the money the fact of the matter is there was other companies called giving politicians money bribery here in the united states our politicians have to spend on average three to five hours a day and offices pay rent outside the capitol building on the phone begging for

money now politicians republicans or democrats frankly most of them would rather not have to do this if this was never a light created in a lot. that you know corporations are people in that they then that money is speech and always kind of stuff and that the political process can be corrupted this way it was never created in law by politicians in fact the opposite back in one thousand seven during the teddy roosevelt administration the tillman act made it a crime but so no member of the house or senate has ever promoted was no president is that we're promoting this in fact they've been speaking out against it since the presidency of james madison and no president has ever signed a lot of this is so how did we end up with this dysfunctional corrupted political system it's the supreme court the supreme court has consistently been doing this and it's frankly now we know it in one thousand nine hundred six when the first time it was really became a big deal deal with the santa clara county case that several of the supreme court

justices were on the take they were being bribed by the railroads they were claiming that they were paper so what the bottom line here it all came to us from the supreme court we need to amend the constitution to say corporations are not people and money is not speech so very very wealthy individuals and big corporations and now even foreign corporations can no longer buy american politicians and bring us in same politics or even sponsor phony front groups to try to influence politics which would be a crime in most other countries and if we can't amend the constitution and we need to make sure that there's a democrat in the white house over the next six years over the new with the next coming up election in the event that any of the five right wing crazies or four right wing crazies and swing vote on the court decide to retire or you know god forbid they should happen so that a rational person can be put into a place. corporate

c.e.o.'s have a secret they don't want you to know about and that's how much money they're stealing from their workers and republicans are accomplices in this thievery last year as part of the wall street reform bill passed by congressional democrats and signed by president obama there was a provision for forcing corporations to disclose just how large the pay gap is and when their c.e.o.'s and their average workers as in how much more money the big we're going to corporate office makes sitting on his go out all year versus how much money the factory worker makes busting his butt all year the provision was included in hopes that if people knew just how gross the pay gap was between c.e.o.'s of workers and maybe there'd be more pressure to shrink it as they say some right is the best disinfectant and today outrageous corporate pay is infecting our economy consider the back in the one nine hundred seventy s. c.e.o.'s made about thirty times more than their average worker as in what they did

was thirty times more valuable to the company than what workers did but since then the numbers of exploded and today c.e.o.'s make as much as four hundred times their average worker and in some cases on wall street for example as much as two thousand times the average worker can put a c.e.o. is really justify that they're two thousand times more valuable to the cloth company their workers really can't and that's why they don't even know how much money they're taking from their corporate treasure chest to pad their armani pockets and that's why as soon as republicans took control of the house of representatives at the beginning of the year c.e.o.'s of eighty one of the biggest corporations in america including mcdonald's general dynamics of i.b.m. started a massive lobbying effort to repeal the new c.e.o. pay disclosure requirement. when corporate c.e.o.'s talk republicans listen last week republicans did as they were told and repeal the c.e.o.

pay disclosure provision and a party line vote in the house committee house of representatives republicans don't think you should know that while unemployment is hovering around nine percent average employee wages are sinking lower and lower people like felipe delmon made more than eighty four million dollars last year c.e.o. . or the well nearly fifty a million americans languish in poverty rare ronnie of occidental petroleum made seventy six million bucks last year or that well more than forty million americans you need food stamps just to eat lawrence ellison of oracle made seventy million dollars last year but we're going to allow you to know that for every fifteen million dollars a c.e.o. gets is paid for with a thousand dollar pay cut to fifteen thousand workers or that for every thirty million dollars dollar check cut to a c.e.o. they could have instead hired six hundred new workers at fifty thousand dollars a year and these are the guys that republicans called the job creators in america

the guys who'd rather stash thirty million bucks in a swiss bank account will sit untouched collecting interest rather than spend a dime employing one of the twenty five million unemployed people in the united states right now this is more nothing more than stealing these c.e.o.'s are not job creators they're stealing from the people who are the actual job creators people like you and me who buy stuff when the middle class in america has money they buy stuff and the more stuff they buy and the more stuff needs to be made and the more stuff that needs to be made then the more workers need to be hired that's how an economy works but giving a guy who's already worth one hundred million bucks another hundred million dollars is going to create one damn job it wants to emulate the economy at all. we need to start calling out the republican party for what they are the wholly owned party of the rich c.e.o.'s and not the party of the other ninety nine percent of harry

truman knew this more than sixty years ago. and i say a word or two now. about what i think the republican philosophy is. the republican party as i said a while ago favors the privileged few and not the common everyday man. ever since its inception that party has been under their control of special privilege and the concrete they proved it and they asked congress people in all the democratic party is the people's party and the republican party is the party of special interests and it always has been and always will be. nothing has changed it's time to shed some light on the wealth inequality in america and expose greedy corporate c.e.o.'s for their blatant robbery of the american dream and expose the republican party as their accomplice. as the big picture for tonight for more information on the stories we've covered visit our website it's all marvin dot com

. also check out our you tube page is a you tube dot com slash the big picture r.t. if you tube dot com slash tom hartman and this entire show is available as a free video podcast on i tunes and don't forget democracy begins when you show up and you participate tag you're it.