it's efforts to screw over the unemployed plus when four hundred americans own more wealth than one hundred fifty million other americans combined there's something rotten in this nation and huge majorities of americans know it the latest on the class war coming up later. i. need to know this so let's say you're a very unpopular governor so unpopular that you might face a full on recall election in the next few months so unpopular that a majority of people in your state are suffering from an acute case of voters remorse for even electing you in the first place and hundreds of thousands of people have actually taken to the streets to protest against you let's say that you in the last thing you need questions about are whether or not you broke campaign finance laws to get elect in the first place yet that's exactly what wisconsin

governor scott walker is dealing with the group one wisconsin now released a new report this week showing governor walker violated campaign finance law over one thousand times while he was running for governor in two thousand and ten yes he broke the law a thousand times by failing to report contributions of more than one hundred bucks something you have to do and something every politician up there should know you have to do when you're running for office in total walker took five hundred thousand dollars in contributions from inside and outside of wisconsin illegally as a result the governor could be facing a half million dollar fine not exactly the thing you need just as progressive groups in wisconsin are about to turn their petitions in next week to officially trigger a recall election. which might explain why governor walker is in texas today begging

for more money for the latest on walker's quote disc on his quest for cash in the recall effort against him i'm joined by john nichols washington correspondent with the nation magazine john welcome to the show it's good to be the two so. what's walker up here right now he's down in texas right what's he doing down there well visually he's down there to speak to a group called the texas public policy foundation now this foundation isn't really like some noble group that gives money to poor folks it's really a texas variation on the american legislative exchange council the group that the koch brothers another stone and passed it anti-labor and i democracy legislation in the states so walker is down there officially giving a keynote speech telling these people how to pass and labor laws but in reality he's gone back to texas which has been the source of more than ten percent of all

of its campaign fundraising since the reply recall effort began e's raised more than five hundred thousand dollars out of texas by most estimates and it comes in very big checks including a two hundred fifty thousand dollars check from a guy named bob kerrey who some folks may remember as the fellow who funded the swift boat ads against john kerry back in two thousand and four wow so he's going down to texas to speak with alec which is funded by the koch brothers that pushes laws against democracy to raise money too that he'll likely use to finance his anti recall campaign is that pretty much how it's working out you are as savvy man there you've got all the pieces put together so let's let's turn to the recall campaign here for a little bit. i know that the groups organizing it have kind of stop releasing how much how much signatures they have it when they first started they were kind of updating you know we have two hundred thousand signatures and

everything and they've kind of stuff. but i mean they're showing us that they have enough and when they turn the petitions and we'll know why did they stop releasing those numbers are they afraid of certain antics that the walker campaign might be planning and what antics might we expect once they do turn those petitions in to kind of void them all. well let's begin with the core question. they they release of signatures early on i think primarily to suggest to folks that this was going well that this drive was real it was getting a and now enough traction out of it and human got for the final debate that it was sort of a credibility move if you will once people became clear that this drive was working that it was going to get a lot of signatures then they began to be a bit more cautious about doing releases so that they didn't come in dribs and drabs i mean frankly i think they want to have a big show on tuesday and really come through with

a massive number of signatures what i can tell you from observing it pretty closely is that they have to gather five hundred forty thousand signatures to force a recall they will turn and hundreds of thousands more than that so they will wait overshoot the baseline requirement the reason that they're going to overshoot the based on requirement is twofold number one. they want to have that symbolic show of force they want to make it clear that there is an immense support for a recall of governor walker but number two and this can steer in the other part of your question governor walker will hire one of the top legal teams in the country maybe in history he will pay that team millions of dollars to try him despite all of this recall the way that you just follow because it is go get to sion by petition signature by signature looking for any way you can to knock those signatures off and so this is going to be an intensive fight once that fight is

done and i i do suspect that the recall will qualify that the governor walker's attempt to knock it off the ballot will be unsuccessful then will go toward an election and has to be lucky and this is going to be one of the most expensive maybe the most extensive election in this state this size ever there will be tens of millions spent. both sides some people have suggested that governor walker may spend more than fifty million now just himself but with the support of super pacs so much like what we've seen in the presidential race that focused in on this one state with a very essential goal anti-labor anti public education groups that support the governor of keeping him in office that's the thought of trips down to texas he's going to have to make it is a lot of trips to texas and then also a few trips to k. street in washington. so let's let's take a look at how this all started walker went after working people last year triggered massive protests around the country and it led to

a lot of senators who supported walker to be recalled and then there's this backlash underway just like the same backlash that repealed governor jon case of an ohio's law but it doesn't seem like the republican party is getting it that this is a third rail now to mess with working people in politics especially the republican candidates running for office they just don't seem to get it do that. no not at all in fact i think it's fair to say that this is become scott walker's republican party the candidates for president and have told me in interviews that they will gladly come and campaign for scott walker in fact newt gingrich said he would do whatever helps walker the most either coming campaign for him or stay out of the state because people may not be that impressed with newt gingrich and the other candidates have been just as militant in their anti public employee anti-labor stances they have argued in favor of not just

a tax on public employee unions as walker did but also right to work law laws that make it difficult in some cases almost impossible for unions to organize and collectively bargain so we really have in the republican party at this moment the most militant leet anti-labor the age your political party in modern history yeah and i think it was highlighted when you know the secessionists governor rick perry i think was the last to bed said he's all about a federal law a federal right to work law to involve than to overturn all the state rights about labor unions but we're out of time and on and thanks for coming on to give us an update and it's nice to hear from you it's a pleasure thanks for having me on. despite staring down a massive fines and a grassroots uprising gov stuff scott walker has a secret weapon to keep his job during this upcoming recall fight and that's right wing restrictive voter laws wisconsin like several other states around the nation

under the control of republicans passed a voter id law last year requiring voters to present a driver's license to present a driver's license or some other state issued id in order to vote of course a law like this will disproportionately affect people who don't drive cars or don't have a state issue i did people like the elderly the poor minorities college students people who tend to vote for democrats. republicans argue these voter id laws are necessary to curb voter fraud but according to a comprehensive report by the brennan center for justice voter fraud is practically nonexistent based on the burning center's report the voter fraud rate in america is just point zero zero zero six percent that's six ten thousandths of one percent you have a greater chance getting struck by lightning than someone committing voter fraud or to put it another way rick perry has a better shot at winning the presidency the voter fraud occurring so it's pretty

obvious what's going on here republicans especially scott walker are trying to keep as many democrats from the polls as they can to keep on winning elections in the future recently tom took on this issue with the help of a very important figure in american history take a look. between the insecurity of our voting machines and the right wing push for stricter voter id laws the right to vote and to have their vote be counted which is the beating heart of our democracy is in trouble that's why today it's more important than ever to listen to what thomas paine said about voting rights more than two hundred years ago. payne hated that up the idea that only property owners or the rich should have the right to vote in seventeen ninety five he said the true and only true basis of representative government is equality of rights the rich have no more right to exclude the poor from the right of voting or of electing and being elected and the poor have to exclude the rich but voting rights are under

attack in several right wing states right now in the united states with new voter id laws the brennan center for justice for example estimates that five million americans eligible americans will not be able to vote the next election. thomas paine explained why that right is so important he said to take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery for slavery consists in being subject to the will of another and he that has not a vote in the election of representatives is in this case the proposal therefore to defeat disenfranchising any class of men is as criminal as the proposal to take away their property paine said the only time we should ever deny someone the right to vote was quote the only ground upon which exclusion from the right of voting is consistent with justice would be to inflict it as a punishment for a certain time upon those who should propose to take away the right from others and yet this thomas paine said the only time you you shouldn't let somebody vote is if they try to take the right to vote away from others in other words thomas paine. i said that what we should be doing right now is stopping republicans the koch

brothers and scott walker and all those other folks who are trying to make it harder for young people old people people minorities poor people from voting. they're the ones that we should be taking the vote away from according to thomas paine now i'd rather just see everybody vote let's just make it very straightforward. after the break the race to the bottom heads the south carolina where coincidentally state lawmakers are waging a war against the unemployed it list to say the republican candidate should feel right at home.

let's not forget that we had an apartheid regime right here. i think is feeding on the well. we have the government says they're going to keep you safe get ready because you're going to their freedom. you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lengthly you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom hartman welcome to the big

picture. we just put a picture of me when i was like nine years old and she told the truth. i think that since i am a total get it that i was traveling to pop music and. she

was kind of yesterday. i'm very proud of the world without its place. later this month on january twenty first south carolina will host its primary and already the campaigns and their super pacs are getting ready for it they're mobilizing their canvassers buying their t.v. spots in scheduling their town hall meetings with mitt romney looking like he's cruising to a victory of the other candidates have laid claim to south carolina as the place where they will pull out all the stops to derail the romney train newt gingrich

told c.n.n. that south carolina is quote going to be armageddon former republican party chairman michael steele called the south carolina primary quote bloodletting and several other conservative pundits have warned that south carolina will be a bloodbath. all right that assuming that this is not just hyperbole the campaigns will definitely definitely need to staff up if they hope to win the south carolina primary or war or post-apocalyptic scorched earth duel to the death that means they'll need a lot of volunteers people willing to work for no money just out of the goodness of their heart or people willing to shed blood to see their guy win and just in time republicans in the south carolina state senate are pushing for a new law that will force people to volunteer at least force unemployed people to volunteer not necessarily for political campaigns just in general a new law that would force unemployed people in south carolina to do volunteer work

for certain number of hours a week if they want to collect their unemployment benefits. it's the latest incarnation the republican war against the unemployed joining me now to talk about this more is turning so many other puerto with think progress tanya welcome to the show thanks for having me glad to have you on so talk about a little bit you know they're going to talk unemployment benefits with volunteer hours how exactly is this going to work ok well so south carolina has about an unemployment rate around ten percent so it's pretty high there are a lot of unemployed workers who are relying on unemployment surance just to get by well some south carolina republicans think that they're taking too long to get a job so the bill says if you have been on unemployment insurance for six months and still have not gotten a job you will now have to volunteer for sixteen hours a week just to get your benefits so you've been looking so long to get a job that you haven't found one yet the you want you to spend less time looking

for a job and start volunteering i mean wouldn't be better served looking for a job than volunteering somewhere yeah you think so and i mean studies have shown that unemployed workers who receive benefits actually work harder for jobs than people who don't qualify for benefits so they're already spending their time looking for a job and this bill would just take time away from what they're already trying to do so i guess the big question is what's the reasoning behind this bill who's who's the representative who are the state senator paul campbell ok why is he doing this well i think his main idea behind this is that people are more likely to get a job if they already have another job of some sort but the implication is that they're not doing anything with their time right now so why don't we help them along by giving them something to do when you know they're already working extra hard to find a job that they get paid to do so he's trying to just. push forward the idea that

all the unemployed people. we're just lazy in that we just instill a little bit of work ethic in them they'll suddenly find a job like that in a commie that really doesn't have that many jobs available but it's very. early so in florida. we've seen this same sort of i guess war against the unemployed but this is come in the form of forcing people to take a drug test because not only are people unemployed lazy they're also i guess drug addicts is is there any plans to implement a drug testing. you know force people to take drug test to receive unemployment benefits in south carolina yes actually i mean any idea that senator campbell might say that this is just the g.o.p. offering a helpful hand straight out the window when you see that they're pairing it with a bill to drug test anybody who's receiving benefits just if they don't pass the drug test they don't get benefits so it's basically this idea that the unemployed

are lazy drug users and you know kind of vilifying these unemployed workers is becoming somewhat of a bedrock principle of the g.o.p. yeah just a second there but i think in florida they they did do the drug testing and i think something like two percent two percent under two percent or two percent actually has a positive thoughts on what people write whereas the national average is something like six percent people would like to you know so they're wasting taxpayer money to test these people as people for no reason right. so you say it's a bedrock of the republican party to it appears that way vilified i mean how is that how is it happening i mean i guess we're seeing in the debates you're seeing it on members of congress right senator jim de mint he was on the daily show last night right that's right and he said something to the extent. federal programs to help people who are in poverty are unemployed they don't cure poverty they subsidize poverty is that the case are we just enabling poor people with these

programs yeah that's right we're creating a dependency class but that is absolutely false i mean that is that is a kind of a perspective that the g.o.p. seems to have but it's completely inaccurate these programs are vital to keeping people out of poverty and helping them get the jobs that the g.o.p. seems so adamant on making sure they get because it makes sure that they remain economically secure as much as possible in such hard times and if you're not economically secure you can't focus on getting a job i keeping your house i mean if you're if your entire security crumbles around you how are you even going to start participating in the economy that they want you to so badly it's you're just marginalizing a growing number of americans and i think a lot of people think of unemployment benefits you know we see unemployment benefits but it's really unemployment insurance when we work we contribute money to a pool just in case you might lose their job so basically south carolina is saying

is i know you put all this money in your unemployment insurance pool but now we're going to put some strings attached to it if you want to keep using exactly this is something that employers pay on behalf of their workers so this is this is planned for that in case you fall on hard times you have these benefits for you so now they're putting all these extra hurdles that people have to jump through when they've earned it so i can understand why conservatives want to get rid of the social safety net to a certain extent i understand why they want to go to social security because there's a lot of money in it for wall street if you move everybody's retirement you know benefits to wall street where they can skim off the top i can understand why they want to get rid of medicare because if you get the government out of the way that it all goes to private health insurers to understand why they want to get rid of unemployment insurance they. doesn't seem like a very lucrative industry for a private company to get involved in it at all i think it's just

a little you know like it's a perspective it's every man for himself perspective that the g.o.p. seems to be playing. a little bit of a little bit you know they make assumptions about a group of people that just turn out to be completely false it just feeds a narrative that they've been pushing for a long time so a lot of states. i mean is south carolina pushing this because they're worried about their finances the dollars the strickly just a move to you know make sure those those unemployed people can get a job i mean a lot of these states that are pushing you know bills like this they they say it's all about the bottom line but in reality when they put bills through better like this it actually ends up costing the state more because if you don't take us to the drug testing if you take a drug test and you pass the state has to pay for it or in south carolina case there or there pay for it no matter what so you know they're actually causing their state more to do something just to follow a myopic view they have of the unemployed it's doesn't make sense and we've seen

similar efforts all around the country. when it's especially when it's austerity based when states are facing trouble you know attack the social welfare programs can you think of one sacrifice that. conservatives. made wealthy people in this age of austerity or a vast wealthy people to take my missing any of them or i mean we could search really hard together right now i guess i guess means testing your security stuff they won't use or anything like ray i think that the saccharin i mean the g.o.p. has sacrificed common sense on this one but i think for the most part you know they are electing to enact a lot of corporate tax cuts because it's the job creators will create jobs but let's vilify the people who are looking for jobs and the actual people who contribute to the economy so it's a weird balance that they are going to have to see what happens and hopefully people remember you know when it comes to elections and hopefully they'll be able

to vote with the you know the other thing they got going tanya great reporting thanks for coming on the show thank you. it's really simple limiting unemployment benefits is an attack on the social safety net in america that social safety net that make sure that we as a nation will look out for each other that when one of us gets sick gets old slips into poverty or loses their job the rest of us will help pick them back up because ultimately we're all in this together as tom says it's it's the we society and without a social safety net and we all live in a maze society. there's a point in michael moore's movie his is movie about health the health care system where he looks at the camera and says words to the effect of at some point we have to decide do we want to live in a we society or a nice society historically humans have chosen to live in a we society whether it's tribal people whether you go back to the bible i mean matthew twenty five the foundational concepts of christianity of judaism you know

it's restated matthew twenty five care for the homeless care for the you know hungry feed the hungry heal the sick this is fundamental stuff thomas paine laid out in his book agrarian justice he actually proposed a social security system thomas paine in the seven hundred ninety s. when our country was first being founding thomas paine the proposed social security proposed minimum wage proposed equivalent of unionization proposed that every person upon birth should have some basic fundamental amount of money allocated to them that they could use throughout their lives that there would be a decent retirement and it's really quite extraordinary most of the things that came along with the new deal thomas paine proposed in seventeen days the occupy wall street movement for example the ultimate example of a we society free books free health care free food people working together and if you look at the republican budget you find the exact opposite the republican budget is all about a society maybe societies are called feudalism where the very very few own pretty

much everything including all the property of the of the of the serfs. it's kingdoms it's coke ville as in koch brothers ville this is the world that the libertarians and the right wingers want to bring us and frankly it's not the world that has historically been america and it's an america that i don't think anybody would recognize. the coming of our democracy is breaking down and our economy is only favoring the very very rich i'll speak with oregon state representative jefferson smith and what needs to be done to fix our nation. what drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions it's going to break through had sort of a been made who can you trust no one who is in view with

a global missionary see where we had a state controlled capitalism is called sasha's when nobody dares to ask we do our t. question more. welcome back to the big picture i'm sam sacks in for tom hartman coming up in this

half hour massive wealth inequality shouldn't exist in a nation with a democracy so why then do six walton heirs own more wealth than thirty percent of the nation combined i'll ask that question oregon state representative jefferson smith in just a moment and who's crazier the presidential candidate who wants us all to prepare for the zombie apocalypse or the presidential candidate wants to ban contraceptives we'll settle this question a bit later and in tonight's daily take tom breaks down the myth of the so-called job creator and calls on the president to put an end to outsourcing jobs in america . after mitt romney won the new hampshire.