i would say i'm disappointed in the direction we've got do you think because it seems like this day and age everybody is prepared for body scanners for use by the t.s.a. and people aren't that upset anymore i mean the pew research shows that fifty four percent of people say it's not necessary to give up civil liberties in order to curb terrorism but that's not necessarily an overwhelming majority is this a new norm that people just accept and oppose nine eleven world yeah i hope not but you know a lot of those polls are misleading and by the way the reason that some of these rights are in our constitution is because they can't be taken away by a poll or even an election majority cannot decide to take away not only minorities race but even their own rights if it's in trying in the constitution and our founding fathers were incredibly smart about that unfortunately the fact to our current leaders in the government where there was a bush administration or the obama administration of simply just de facto taking

away some of those rights such as our right to be free of warrantless surveillance which is a fourth amendment. freedom is as you're alluding to this some people growing up in this era don't get that you're not supposed to do warrantless wiretapping to that's unconstitutional but they don't understand that you're not supposed to do indefinite detentions with dictators to where they don't give whoever their detaining due process rights is profoundly un-american and i hope that as a country we don't lose track of that well so then what ability though do you think american people have to change that because as you mentioned there seems to be bipartisan support to just pass an extension of the patriot act to give one example that you just used. yes well look we've got to challenge the system overall because unfortunately the people who promises change. very very very little of it and so president obama said yeah ok i'll stop torturing you know meaning not

that he was doing the torture in the first place it was an ministration was but even they had stopped actually before obama came in office on an extraordinarily dishes which is kidnappings again before obama came in and obama out of the mercy of the his soul and and goodness of his heart decided to continue not doing kidnappings and torture but outside of that they have done every single thing the bush administration has asked them to do and right now dick cheney and don rumsfeld brag about it all the time we had obama to violate everybody's rights just like we were doing so i honestly i don't have a lot of hope that we're going to a new democratic certainly not a new republican who's going to come in and say hey this was radical stuff and we should get back to the american norm so i think we've got to do a wholesale change of the system because they rely on the democratic party has been a very false hope so when you say wholesale change of a system what exactly do you mean. look you know i always push for an

amendment to clean up our democracy because i think a lot of this is the result of money buying our politicians so there's washington post of course an incredible story on a whole industry that has arisen around homeland security and how of course they make billions upon billions of dollars doing this so they're not going to let go of the security apparatus because they make tremendous amount of money off of it so the only way that we can begin to change any of this and on all of it is to take that money out of the system now which is extremely hard but i think we need to show amendment to say that corporations cannot give politicians as an example why corporations because it's a crime court ruled that corporations have rights to free speech stirring up leave and free speech. ah. no i'm always a free speech more than i do i just live in corporations are human beings endowed

by their creator with inalienable rights such as free speech corporations are profit making robots they're machines they're not people they don't have freedom of speech rights and what the supreme court is done is a travesty it's a horrible decision and they've been making these decisions backs at least since that he said he says but in reality. to some degree since eighty seven was tom hartman explains. that wasn't even really true the supreme court did not make corporations people but anyway we need it because this right wing supreme court has grossly violated our constitution and the activist judges that they are by considering corporations as people with pritam of speech rights you say that corporations are people they pay taxes does that give them the right to representation. absolutely and listen corporations have special rights and that's the problem ok so a corporation is

a legal fiction literally right so the government gives them rights that protects them things that normal human beings are not protected from so for example if you're a shareholder in a corporation you are not personally liable for the actions of that corporation so if a corporation winds up killing somebody out of negligence out of pollution whatever it might be the shareholder is not personally responsible but if you do that in real life a human being did that you would be responsible and you would have to go to jail etc so corporations are created out of a legal construct and they have these special rights they don't get to have both they don't get to say hey you know what i'm not responsible for any of my actions plus i like all the rights of human beings so i can spend money buying your politicians and totally perverting your democracy that's not how it's supposed to work but you're also not supposed to have taxation without representation in this country so if i was to say to you let's strip corporations that having to pay taxes and then wall street their rights to donate to politics would you be ok with that.

i'll tell you what i know what i'm not ok with. the rodman get to it as i'm answering this question what we have in this country right now is taxation without representation for the real human beings in this country ok well because what has happened is the corporations have blocked all of our almost all of our politicians so we go you represent all only people who are represented and they're not people these corporations they're the only ones who are represented and look there are a thousand different things that we tax that don't get to vote ok so for example we have tariff tax so there's every we do it we put a terrifying china so i guess china as a human being we should have all the rights of any american citizen that makes no sense of course we can do taxation on corporations foreign countries etc etc doesn't mean that there are human beings endowed with any of the rights of our constitution only us american citizens should give us the right notes topsy-turvy

we don't get that at all ok well we're almost out of time but just a quick question i mean yes or no the koch brothers they're people too i mean they contribute a lot warren buffett you know the guy. yeah that's fair and there's a whole separate question and we've had rich people in this country trying to influence our politics for a long time on the right side and sometimes even on the left side and i'm not addressing that issue yes the koch brothers are obviously human beings and they can spend money to promote their ideas and that is separate from what i'm saying i'm talking about corporations which occurred at the system all right well we certainly appreciate you coming on and explaining to us why especially as they play such a role which you may not imagine at first when you talk about the anniversary of nine eleven thanks frank. thank you. and coming out a silent protest during obama's jobs speech earns a lawmaker it's night school time award then we'll dive into adama's jobs plan to

vote for any of his proposals actually bring jobs to the millions out of work here in the u.s. back in a moment. into it only a military mechanism if you don't work to bring justice and accountability. i have every right to know what my government should do if you want to know why i pay taxes. i would characterize obama as a charismatic version of american exceptionalism. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so bleak you think you understand it and then something else you hear see some other part of it and realize that everything is ok if you don't. chart look at the big picture.

let's not forget that we had an apartheid. i think. one well. we never got the shows there for keeping safe get ready because you know your freedom. fighter.

all right guys it's time for tonight's tool time award and tonight it goes to congressman jeff landry the louisiana republican attended president obama's jobs speech last night on capitol hill but instead of just sitting there he decided to multitask and hold a silent protest during the thirty minute address the congressman sat in his seat and held that sign drilling equals jobs he raised the scientists shoulder level when obama acknowledged that republicans might have different ideas on creating jobs he held the whole time now we understand the congressman is trying to make

a point but is this the time and place to hold such a protest is this speech by the president before a joint session of congress during economic hardship for the country really an appropriate time to be holding up signs and banners but you know one thing that we thought of earlier today in our meeting to be fair maybe you know hey the n.f.l. kickoff game was last night there was some confusion and concern about this speech in the game and maybe them coinciding it who is going to choose to go to what so maybe landry was just getting ready he was gearing up to hold a support sign were guarded list is it too much for landrieu to hide his love for big oil for thirty minutes and listen to what the president of the united states of america has to say i think as we all know big oil has no trouble having their views and opinions heard in washington d.c. when they spend two hundred. the million dollars a year on lobbying congress that was back in two thousand and ten according to open secrets for your information i'm pretty sure they don't need the advertising for

a freshman member of congress with anthrax like this it's really not hard to understand how congress has a fourteen percent job approval rating and not surprisingly this is not the first time congressman landry has had a public issue with president obama he was invited to the white house back in june to talk about the deficit crisis but he refused at the time saying this he said i don't intend to spend my morning being lectured to by a president who has failed policies have put our children and grandchildren in a huge burden of debt all right this is exactly why people are so disappointed with washington d.c. because people like this tea party congressman are still in transit gente they refuse to go hear the president even speak newsflash this is a two party system and this kind of bipartisan squabbling is what get the country's credit rating downgraded for goodness sakes and a congressman jeff landry really wanted to get some attention hey he could have just pulled a joe wilson. right those who claim the record of achieving sure legal immigrants.

this is. the. proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally. ouch it still is just like makes me cringe it's the famous you lie remark when obama was addressing congress on health care reform remember how the cable news channels went crazy over that outburst well congressman landry you mr chance you could have been the media darling for five minutes but as a consolation prize will give you tonight's tool time award. now speaking of jobs and obama's jobs he just gave it last night i'm sure you heard that he announced a four hundred fifty billion dollars plan but to what extent will initiatives like an eighty billion dollar infrastructure plan create jobs for some of the fourteen million unemployed americans and how would this plan help the united states stack

up with a country like say china because that's the often used comparison made again by president obama last night. building a class transportation system is part of what made you can omit superpower and now we're going to sit back and watch china build newer airports and faster will won't at a time when millions of unemployed construction workers could build them right here in america. so will those unemployed construction workers thirteen point five percent of that industry according to the bureau of labor statistics be put back to work all of china will this stimulate us industries in this construction of infrastructure and how do the efforts to compete stack up globally just to compare when it comes to something like building faster railroads china will spend three hundred billion dollars on their is through twenty twenty that's according to their ministry of railroads while in obama's last stimulus guess how many dollars were devoted through two thousand and twelve eight billion it's

a little less than three hundred billion now that's according to the us federal railroad administration so we're going to put this plan and speech in the context of the global economy and that the u.s. is competing in is ryan of that his primary contributor to the economist free exchange economics blog he's also author of that kindle single you see there the gated city thank you so much for being here tonight thank you so you actually wrote a book on on nimbyism on the not in my backyard phenomenon and its effect in the united states on the economy so considering that and these comparisons to china as building of infrastructure and railroads and saying the u.s. needs to compete to do the same is that even possible in the u.s. given factors like exactly what you've written about india's m well i mean certainly one of the things that china doesn't have to deal with when they're building high speed rail networks and things like that is complaints from local residents i mean those residents might not necessarily be happy about a railroad running in their backyard but their system of government just makes it

a lot easier to build those kinds of infrastructure investments. at the same time they're spending a lot more money than the us is. and you know its infrastructure improvements and some of that is because they need to catch up to where we are they are growing so a lot poorer than we are they're going through a development phase that we went through a long time ago but that doesn't really give us an excuse to neglect investments we need to make we haven't spent nearly the kind of money that we need to spend on roads and infrastructure in general and certainly obstacles from neighbors or something's going to be in the way but there are things we can do to go ahead and push for projects and be built but just basically yes or no when obama says something like that we need to commit to compete on high speed rail infrastructure with china is that really rhetoric what it would be impossible right it's rhetoric i mean we don't need to spend ten percent of our output like china is spending on our infrastructure we do need to spend more however and i think you know the president is using a rhetorical tool to try to get across the point that we're not doing what we need

to do. a little bit but the bottom line is we're spending about half of what your experience in europe is much similar country to us in terms of their development level they spend about five percent of what they produce every year on infrastructure investments we spend about half that we really ought to be doing better still below europe and i think your kids the president whine a little bit but when the true ending that you're with the eighty billion dollars in this infrastructure project that obama is proposing would that create a lot of jobs for all of these unemployed construction workers are unemployed americans who create some jobs and i think in this economy some jobs better than no jobs i think you know there's a couple things or remember about infrastructure investment. when we were talking about the weak economy one is that it's kind of what we call a tropical intensive sort of project in that it takes a lot of big equipment a lot of materials not necessarily a lot of manpower to build a high speed rail system for instance and so we're not going to put millions of people back to work building rail systems the other thing is that you know to

remember though is that these are investors that need to be built anyway you know we need to build them and we need to be making these investments for the. twenty years we haven't done that so whether or not we're creating a lot of jobs on these individual projects it's a good time to spend this money because us can borrow cheap treasury bill rates really low and we can get labor for cheap because there's so many people looking for jobs so it's going to save taxpayers money to do it now it's going to create some jobs is not going to create enough jobs to bring us back to full employment it doesn't mean it's a good not a good idea so what helps the country's bottom line is it needs to make these investments but isn't this supposed to be about jobs you know i mean certainly that's the context in which the president is pitching and i think one reason is because americans may be more willing to spend the money that they need to stay and given the promise of additional jobs i think it's going to be realistic that this is not going to put you know the fifty million unemployed workers that we have all of them back to work it will create some jobs but i think to really put all of. america would like

a job back on the job we're going to focus on other things and the payroll tax cuts are a bigger step in that direction there's more money going there and it's likely to create more jobs and then there's other things that the can do but the infrastructure bit is just one small part of it so one small part there are other things in this bill other things they could be talked about some say are what about looking bigger picture a competition with china when it comes to manufacturing and trade you know how is the united states supposed to compete when china subsidizes their industries with billions and billions of dollars in state loans and they subsidize fuel and electricity and do all of these other things that we don't in the united states i mean it's definitely a good point and something that a lot of leaders have paid attention to the currency issue is one one thing that mitt romney mentioned last week in his jobs plan as well as the direct subsidies and i think you know there are things there that we would consider to be unfair trade practices. i think there's a good argument that says how far do we want to push china trying to get these things fixed because it's actually

a relatively small part of the problem i mean i think the big problem that we look at when we talk about a country like china is a the fact that they are making investments to make their infrastructure has up to date as. and b. that their workers just don't earn very much money i mean they're poor country still and so it's been difficult for american workers who tend to be more productive and a lot more to compete with chinese workers in a lot of those cheap industries speaking and competing i want to play what president obama said about free trade last night where all that. now it's time to clear the way for a series of trade agreements that would make it easier for american companies to sell their products in panama and colombia and south korea. helping the workers. thank you. you were just talking about workers affected by global competition who do free trade agreements help though. they help the consumer certainly i mean that's the big reason why i think a lot of people support them is that in general they move production to where it's

most efficient that makes good cheaper the u.s. the problem obviously as the president mentioned is that when that happens a lot of workers are just located and some of them need additional training they need support while they're going through training so they need a greater bills and don't lose their house and over the past in twenty years the u.s. simply hasn't done a very good job at doing those things and so if we're going to continue to to liberalize trade we need to make sure that we're supporting workers along the way so i think i just heard you say that we lose jobs not necessarily i mean it depends a lot on the industry some jobs are going to move abroad some jobs are going to move here actually and i think one thing that's been interesting is that companies have been increasingly willing to hire workers here all right we have to leave it at that according to the economic policy institute they say we could lose a couple hundred thousand jobs in some of these trade agreements but i guess we'll see what ends up happening i appreciate you being here to clear this all up for us and. now she may have taken a day off let alone a left behind tonight fireside friday we will have that next and then happy hour i know from my couch is the t.v.

and house speaker engaged in a very serious thing discussion plus being anti-aging at the box for a show pulled from the air back in just a minute. inside only a military mechanisms can do the work of supreme justice or accountability. i have every right to know what my government should do if you want to know why i paid taxes. but i would characterize obama as a charismatic version of american exceptionalism. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so for sleep you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else or hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything is all you don't i'm trying hard look at the big picture.

let's not forget that we had an apartheid regime right here. i think iraq is feeding one well. whenever the government says they're going to keep him safe get ready because you're going to hear freedom. for five ft five.

tonight's fireside. this sunday is going to mark the tenth anniversary of nine eleven the largest terrorist attack on u.s. soil we talk constantly on this program about the numbers the lives lost in our wars instead the doubling costs of defense spending the expansion of our surveillance state the erosion of our civil liberties but this sunday at least for a moment probably just about everyone out there is going to try to remember where they were that specific to what they were doing how they heard the news of her silence can be more painful than for others as they are member lost family members

or friends some who were there and survived are going to recollect those horrible memories and i don't have a deeply personal experience to offer like those who sacrifice their survivor whose loved ones died but i do want to speak about people like myself in terms of my generation the ones that have grown up in the aftermath of that attack during this war on terror on the day of september eleventh of two thousand and one i was fifteen years old i was a sophomore in high school i was learning about modern european history studying shakespeare was a learning about current affairs not about al qaida or the taliban not even the gulf war but the soviet war in afghanistan i was a learning about the middle east through the countries in which soon enough america would be a war and our soldiers would be dying i where history in some way would be made public opinion changed forever so you can say that it's normal you were fifteen you didn't need to know about that stuff yet but now for so many people my age and those even younger than me that's become a really big problem since i was fifteen years old we've been

a country at war globally and most of us know far too little about where and why it's happening about the region the history the culture now it's time. of course of afghanistan with his notion of revenge that it drifted into iraq based on lies but now it's pakistan it's yemen somalia for other purposes it's also libya and for those who are younger than i am they might not even remember a time when their country was in a war these days most people probably don't even feel it either so far removed from the battles that are going on or using more sophisticated weaponry the casualty rates are much lower and let's not forget of course the media coverage of what's going on is sparse the most gruesome stories of what happens covered up by the government everything is peachy keen speed spin that our military generals try to sell to congress to the media that goes largely unquestioned and for both fear of looking soft on terrorism and national security and fear of disrupting the business flow for military contractors who line their pockets or bring factories to their

districts our politicians let these wars go on so if you're my age especially if you're younger chances are you might think that all of this is normal it's just how the world works it's just how things go and most of everything around you reaffirms that if that's the case why would anybody go out and protest call for any of this to end and that makes me want to tear my hair out it makes me angry it makes me scared constant global war is not and should not be the norm neither is being told you should live in constant fear or give up all of your rights first the railings accepting the government can skirt the rule of law and make exceptions can torture indefinitely detain citizens on assassination lists we should not and we cannot just accept any of that we need to bring it to an end and that starts by having open honest conversations about it about the cost in lives and dollars and perceptions in values not by letting an entire generation growing up thinking that

this is the way it has to be. all right it's friday night it's about time it's time for happy hour and joining me tonight is our two web writer andrew blake and telling us on the date a reporter and blogger for a think progress dot org thanks guys for being here absolutely right having us so a show that aired on fox sports it was called the college experiment it was getting a lot of negative attention because of the way it for trade asians on the u.s.c. campus but you can see for yourself here colorado and utah this is or you. could run and i you. know you tell me all come. true. you're. welcome to your see if you can if you were home

and you go to the park well there come call utah. all right so many people consider that segment very demeaning i can see that asian americans and fox sports says it regrets that the segment ever aired and it was pulled from the network immediately when you consider that it is going too far was that really that not p.c. is a great the box of this is offensive we're going to take it off the air which to do the little bit more often i mean it is the truth. is it's a start of you got to start somewhere but why do you think i mean a lot because it was actually the first time i'd seen as lance i thought it was going to be far far worse i thought it was going to be more intentional i mean those were people that has strong accents big deal i think that's what they were going for i mean i got to hand it to fox this is the first time i've seen a minority on the network. that's a positive but it's nice to know that.