spy saw the u. turn the father of a former f.s.b. officer poisoned in london six years ago says he was mistaken when he accused of. being responsible for his son's death gets the story firsthand from alexander litvinenko father. after three days of debate u.n. security council ambassadors have agreed to a revised text of a solution on syria which will now be sent back to their respective countries for approval. more than six hundred have been injured in clashes in central cairo as police fired tear gas at protesters this comes just a day after a riot at an egyptian football match left seventy four day. that's

a look at your headlines up next the big picture with thom hartmann focusing on greeks which is now three years into austerity and economic meltdown. welcome to the big picture i'm tom hartman in washington d.c. here's what's coming up tonight indiana governor mitch daniels signed the right to work legislation into law yesterday so what can a workers in indiana expect now also greece's three years into its austerity experiment is its economy stronger or worse than ever and america's nuclear power

plant infrastructure is aging as a system for posing a clear and present danger to our nation. but first. but first you need to know the state a look at this this was the scene yesterday as thousands of union workers and supporters marched outside the state house in indianapolis inside lawmakers passed legislation to make indiana a right to work for less state it was later signed into law by republican governor mitch daniels indiana is now the twenty third state in the nation to go right to work for less but the first in the last ten years to do so and the first in the manufacturing belt of the united states the place for unions were essentially born in this country so what exactly does right to work for less mean it basically means that workers in union shops are required to pay union dues to get the benefits of the union like better pay better benefits and better working conditions they just

don't have to contribute to the union and what the what is the effect of this while the unions lose critical funding and eventually shrivel up and die and so to do all the better pay and benefits and working conditions which is great for the c.e.o.'s who want to make five hundred times more money than their average worker or don't feel like giving their workers health benefits or safe working conditions on the factory floor. you know it's not right to work like mitch daniels calls it it's truly right to work for less on average workers and right to work for less states make five thousand three hundred thirty three dollars a year less than in free bargaining states not only that twenty one percent fewer workers on average receive employees sponsored health care and right to work for less states and there are fifty one percent more workplace injuries and deaths in right to work for less states that's what workers in indiana can look forward to now that their lawmakers and their governor struck a shift in their rights to democratize the workplace but this isn't the first time

this is happened in india there was back in one nine hundred fifty seven just like today thousands of workers were marching outside the state house in indianapolis why because republicans inside passed legislation make indiana a right to work for less. then indiana was the eighteenth state to do said the governor harold hadley didn't even sign the bill he was actually run out of the building by a crowd that pushed that past the state police but absent a veto it became law anyway so how did it all work out well there was voter backlash the republicans got hammered in the election of one hundred fifty eight the next year by one nine hundred sixty the democrats have taken control of both chambers of state government and by nine hundred sixty five in indiana the right to work law was repealed it had lasted only eight years. today republicans in indiana are doing pretty much the exact same thing as they tried back in one hundred fifty

seven similarly republicans in ohio are trying to get right to work right now right to work for less on the ballot this november and in minnesota republicans have just announced that they're going to try and push it through the state legislature but they're not alone this is been preceded by a thirty year war on unions started when ronald reagan fired the workers of patco after he had actually made an agreement with them before the election and they supported him in the election in arizona governor brewer and the republicans are fast tracking anti-union laws these are laws that would prevent public workers from collective bargaining and pain union dues having them automatically deducted from their paychecks ways to break down the unions and in fact in arizona they are including the police and firefighters we've seen similar attacks now in wisconsin ohio and jersey but like one hundred fifty seven there's now a backlash and it's happening across the country in ohio senate bill five was repealed this was the law that john case it pushed through that that basically took

away union rights in wisconsin a million signatures actually i believe it was one point eight million signatures that were presented to recall governor walker's going to be in elections for the labor movement has woken up the labor of the workers individual workers in the workplace have woken up people are getting enough already with this stuff if the union busters like mitch daniels what scott walker john case a jan brewer if they want to fight they're going to have a fight. for more on what's going on around the nation when it comes to the roads or working people and how working people can fight back i'm honored to be joined by congresswoman tammy baldwin representing wisconsin's second district in the running for the united states senate congresswoman baldwin great to have you with us it's wonderful to join you thank you so much what's the what's the state of working people right now you know. well and it was constantly working people and middle

class families are taking it on the chin right now and it's not only because of this deep recession that we've been in but it's really as a consequence of i think many years of bad economic policies and when i travel around the state of wisconsin. i hear people really open up about their struggles right now and tell their individual stories i mean whether it's moms and dads who can't scrape any savings for their kids' college fund seniors who don't think they'll ever be able to stop working and ever retire because they literally have to dip into their life savings just to pay bills on a routine basis i remember a single dad who's working two jobs today making less than when he only had one full time job and he is a single parent so it means he it doesn't happen as much time with his children so these are the stories of working families middle class families across america and certainly across wisconsin right now they are taking

a beating right now i was you know the red i just did was suggesting that there is a backlash against the war on labor on the other hand there's a massive amounts of money being put into that warm labor alex supported legislation and all these other things. how do you think this is shaking no what's your sense of how the you know we're seeing this up front and center in the state of wisconsin you talked about how many signatures were just filed you know there's a pride in our state at the history of our state we were the first state to pass workers' compensation laws. the first state to enact unemployment insurance benefits and in one thousand nine hundred fifty nine the first state to grant collective bargaining rights to public employees so it's a state with a rich history of. respecting. workers rights of understanding how important it is that you be safe at work things that labor has

argued for over the years you've watched what's happened in the state of wisconsin over the last year since the last election voters in wisconsin are standing up and speaking out about these actions to repeal decades worth of progress in just a matter of weeks and they're really particularly upset because they feel like they were deceived in the course of the election we didn't know any of this was coming and so people are as i said speaking out taking action i've seen that all over the state what do you think about the the the we just saw this primary down from the republican primary. newt gingrich two to one in south carolina that wasn't enough and so in florida he ran. the campaign outspending five to one but we know it looks like the super pacs might about spending one hundred or more to one year in thirteen thousand ads versus gingrich's two hundred ads i mean this is big outside

money coming into the state what's the consequence of this kind of money in politics now as a result of citizens united decision i want to tie the answer right back into the struggle of the working families of the middle class are having right now their voices are being drowned out certainly on television by these unlimited amounts of money it seems and you know the sources of which we'll never know because it's really secret. this is drowning out the voice of the average voter the average. working family and that's trouble troubling alone but also i want to say in the state of wisconsin we've had additional assaults on voter rights in the form of a very cynical voter identification has to be government issued they can be issued for free but nobody tells you that we're going to literally see the disenfranchisement of working people and middle class folks across wisconsin

because of the combination of unlimited spending brought on by the citizens united decision and and these restrictions that we're seeing across the country at the state level. requiring voter i.d.'s it's deeply troubling to me as i mount a statewide campaign for u.s. senate. because we are going to have to figure out how to get our message out in the context of this incredibly large spending. it's going to be a challenge for every candidate the country who doesn't have a billionaire behind them and the internet is still a democratizing influence so tammy baldwin dot com is how people can hear more about my campaign presented right and then we will have it on the screen what are the issues that you care most about and and that you're seeing battle you're in the house of representatives right now you're running for the senate if you get it was one of the issues that you think are most front and center right now two minutes or so we're right so we're talking about the struggle for working families and middle

class families right now and there's a lot that can be done at the federal level i mean the most immediate is we've got to extend this payroll tax cut that will ease conditions for working families across the country hundred sixty million families affected by this we've got to move it forward in wisconsin in a year the average impact of that tax cut would be sixteen hundred dollars per family that is a lot of money that is. several mortgage payments that's. food for the family we've got to get going on that in that same measure as we know it also extends unemployment insurance benefits for the long term unemployed but those are only some immediate. immediate actions that need to be taken i'm really concerned about the fact that we're in a global marketplace and wisconsin's a big manufacturing state and we're burdened by the fact that other countries are cheating there's not a level playing field right now so china's cheating with currency manipulation that

bill has passed the senate is high time the house of representatives take action to level the playing field because wisconsin workers and us workers will win if we have a level playing field very very interesting and it's not the house is not picking this up or any you know what else is the house it's been so frustrating well so far the house has not advanced a measure to see this payroll tax cut last through the entire calendar year we've got to do that. as we're talking about china currency manipulation is a very troubling if you walk to the house to pass a law to turn medicare into a vulture program he has said we were afraid that we're going to revisit that in the budget battle this year this program that has kept so many seniors healthy and out of having to spend their life savings on their health needs is something that we need to fight with. it's extraordinary we live in

a momentous time so you do tammy baldwin thanks so much thank you thank you. coming up grease a vision and austerity policy as the savior of its economy three years later as austerity beyond. means of protection can be used. when global supremacy does its take. between two thousand and five and two thousand and nine the u.s. has spent fifteen billion dollars in the price to pay for the entire program that we are dealing with right now here in two thousand and eleven is another one hundred fifty billion dollars that's larger than the country's entire military budget twenty six because the best for the.

coalition is that so much of. which of course you wanted to hear is the ones presidential campaign become a horse race pitting incumbent caracal bamma against republican mitt romney if this is really the case that. europe is screwed and we are next if the hundred thousand dollar donors to mitt romney's super pac have their way that's how it's going to play. in the european economy and the world's economy for that matter when the full meltdown in two thousand and eight new experiment in economics was tried out it was something called austerity and austerity isn't all that new using it as a tool to beat back

a recession never been tried before totally new concept brought to us by financial elites technocrats and governments who wanted to make the markets and the investors appy at the expense of the working people that meant cutting back on spending cutting on social welfare programs cutting government jobs raising taxes on working people all while increasing tax loopholes for the very rich deregulated their corporations and increasing corporate welfare programs. it's a massive transfer of wealth from working people to the rich and wiping out millions of jobs in the process in that spirit they ripped up the middle class to make sure that the banks got a full return on their bets in places like ireland and greece with the result being massive unemployment what was overlooked in this equation is that economies are not driven by markets and investors these people are behaving like they are but

they're not economies are driven by working people in two ways working people who have money in their pockets to buy stuff and stimulate demand and working people who actually produce the goods and services that make the economy happen you know working people producing goods and services like having a football game with no football players and working people having no money in their pockets to buy things to create demand in the in the marketplace that's like having a party with no friends and no booze it just doesn't work after all why would any entrepreneur start a business when there's no demand for products because nobody has any money in their pocket to buy things how can a market flourish without demand which is and demand is kind of the opposite of austerity right but this spite this glaring hole in their all in their logic austerity was tried out anyway in fact it became merriam webster's word of the year

in two thousand and ten so far the country hit hardest by it has been greece since the onset of the greek debt crisis in two thousand and nine and the anatomy of austerity the greek economy has crept closer and closer to collapse this year three years into the austerity experiment greece's economy is expected to shrink by by percent and in the last three years it's already shrank by almost sixteen percent and beyond the numbers. you can see the effects of austerity in the streets in the last two years there's been ongoing riots in the streets of athens brutal clashes with police and massive strikes that have quite literally ground the nation to a halt so today in paper in the finding in the city's financial times the international monetary fund the guys responsible for pushing austerity in the first place they're now saying maybe that wasn't such a good idea for

a senior i.m.f. official paul thompson the architect of the greek austerity program admittedly this week that a new direction needs to be considered he told a greek newspaper we will have to slow down a little loose far as fiscal adjustment is concerned social tolerance and political support have their limitations you see with an economy on pace to lose a fifth of its wealth in the last three years unemployment in one thousand percent hundreds of thousands of people in the streets fighting with police i'd say yet you have hit some limitations but greece isn't the only nation on fire so too is the united kingdom where conservative government primarily under prime minister david cameron committed that nation to austerity cameron cameron famously proclaimed in two thousand and nine that we are now living in the age of austerity and just like

greece the british economy is crashing since austerity was an act and two years ago in two thousand and ten there's been a minimal economic growth in the u.k. and in the last quarter two thousand and eleven the economy started shrinking again sparking fears of another recession also just like greece austerity has led to violence in the streets in the u.k. five days the riots in london in august left five people dead over three hundred million dollars of property damage over three thousand people arrested. you see a pattern here wherever austerity goes so too goes economic destruction and violence and yet austerity is already being talked about in other financially in secure nations in europe from italy to spain to belgium to france but despite all this sweeping carnage across europe there are winners and those winners are the

super rich and in particular the super rich bankers first of all they're so rich that they don't even notice the austerity since they don't rely on government spending or social safety nets if their own private jets chauffeurs and the technocrats are bending over backwards to make sure that while working people are getting wiped out these super rich bankers don't have to take a haircut at all on their european bets so a spirit is good for the banking business which brings us to the united states austerity is a lot tougher to bring to the united states it's a lot tougher since we have divided government here but republicans are trying to do their best anyway especially at the state level twenty four states across the nation mostly controlled by republicans have pursued austerity slash their budgets and laid off government workers and just like in europe it's been bad for their economies on average in those twenty four states the unemployment rate ticked up one percent private employment shrank two point one percent and the economy shrank

by two point nine percent on the other hand twenty five states mostly controlled by democrats didn't pursue austerity and actually increased spending and taxes and on average those twenty five states saw eight digits of a percent decrease in unemployment a one point four percent increase in private employment and a half percent increase in economic growth once again austerity doesn't work. so why are republicans pushing it so hard both at the state and federal level for us here in the united states is something going on here that has nothing to do with fixing economies austerity is just a vehicle it's not supposed to help a commie it's actually supposed to remake an economy ever since franklin roosevelt put in place the new deal there have been forces trying to destroy it he called them the economic royalists today we call them the banks of the one percent they envision a world without a government

a world run by the so-called free market a world that will make a few people mind bogglingly rich but make the vast majority of us the working poor this economic vision was named neo liberalism is a word that's pretty much everybody in europe knows most americans don't it's got nothing to do with being liberal means that it's the market is wide open it's liberal for the for the big corporations it's what ron paul of the libertarians preach it's what i and rand invision when she came up with objectivism in atlas shrugged and it's the modern republican agenda it involves total destruction of the social safety net the question was how do you do it how do you dismantle the social safety net when most of the people love it it's wildly popular milton friedman new and it's one nine hundred sixty two book capitalism and freedom friedman wrote there is enormous inertia

a tyranny of the status quo in private and especially government arrangements only our crisis actual or perceived produces real change. these crises allowed friedman and his economic team to dismantle governments around the world they were brought in as consultants in chile for example of many of the former soviet states the results were disasters chile became a dictatorship privatization social security there was a disaster still trying to dig out from underneath many of the former soviet states are still struggling under this rapid shock therapy as naomi klein points out in her book the shock doctrine some of the most infamous human rights violations of this era which have tended to be viewed as sadistic acts carried out by undemocratic regimes were in fact either committed with the deliberate intent of terrorizing the public or actively are in a scene harnessed to prepare the ground for the introduction of radical free market reform that's what's happening in america today and exploitation of

a very real financial crisis and a debt crisis that was started by ronald reagan when you know nearly tripling the national debt and then george herbert walker bush add into that and then george w. bush added another couple billion dollars to the debt all to the story of the new deal or as the most radical example forced us to it is what's going on in michigan and michigan governor rick snyder's new financial managers is a little emperors his crony buddies who are now in control they're now in control the cities of flint pontiac ecord and benton harbor now some of the republicans pretty much uniformly across the party this is promoting there are they all like this some of these republicans are probably promoting this because they listen to the shills for the rich and they actually believe that nonsense but most of them like mitch mcconnell know that austerity over the past year you know for a half a million fewer government employees we have right now than we had when president

obama came into office mostly fired in red states. and the next year they want to lay off more government employees mitch mcconnell knows the consequence that is going to shoot up unemployment and what's what's going to happen if one employment goes up between now and november president obama will probably lose the election this is why the republicans are willing to crash the economy again just to win an election and by the way that's just fine with their billionaire donors who make money when the economy goes down just like they make money when it goes up back when it goes down they have a crisis that they can use to push through and sound familiar deregulation more tax cuts things like oil pipelines meanwhile according to research done by talking points memo almost eighty three percent of the donations to romney's super pac came from that very elite group of one hundred thousand dollars plus donors both individual and corporate and by the way the keeping them

a secret is possible now why would they keep them secret is an obvious you know here's some definitions the definition of fascism the old merriam webster dictionary definition of fascism is the merger of state and corporate interests the definition of oligarchy is one very rich people basically take over the reins of government. now in the republican primary we just saw a show of adelson was giving millions of dollars to newt gingrich he's now by the way she sins were hanging out with the coax and romney was getting his money from the wall street billionaires what you're watching here is a power play by the very rich to strip the working class of the last of their rights and their money courtesy of an oligarchy goals supreme court you can call it fascism even call it oligarchy whatever you call it's not democracy austerity is the means to the end of the takeover of our country by the very rich romney wants to do it to us what bain did to company after company rang them out and put all the

cash in his and his rich buddies pockets and it's no coincidence that the day after he said he didn't worry about the very poor he was kissing billionaire donald trump's but it's time for america and europe to wake up. after the break everyone saw the devastating earthquake in japan wreaked a nuclear have a good focus shima what if the same thing happened somewhere in america are nuclear energy plants in danger. to the limits.

to. see.