broadcasting live direct from our studio central moscow this is our team. at least four people are reportedly killed in fresh clashes as thousands continue to demonstrate across egypt at the country's military rulers after violence at a football match on wednesday left seventy four dead police in cairo fire that volleys of tear gas into the ground said they rallied to forty third. united nations security council is set to vote on a resolution on syria amid reports of escalating violence in the country according to a syrian human rights group and the army is shelling the city of homes with reports

of pressure breaking out in other towns as well. and all polling stations across russia are to get their own digital observers as prime minister putin orders the installation of webcams to counter a potential fraud ahead of the march presidential elections the move comes after tens of thousands protested in moscow and st petersburg following the december parliamentary elections alleging widespread vote rigging. brings you up to date for now but next on our team it's time for part two of the big picture the top part. are you ready to rumble on our panel tonight for the big picture rahma will run political reporter of the daily caller karl fresh progressive strategist syndicated columnist and partner at both fight strategies and vince colonise senior online editor at the daily caller welcome to you all and let's get started with this thing

the u.s. economy outperformed expectations adding two hundred thirty four thousand jobs in january drop the unemployment rate down to eight point three percent this is the twenty third straight month of job private sector job creation and the numbers would have been even better if fourteen thousand government workers and been laid off by republican governors so eight point three percent this is the lowest since the beginning of the obama presidency here's president obama talking about it today . now this morning we received more good news about our come. in january. american business is added another two hundred fifty seven thousand jobs. the unemployment rate came down because more people found work altogether we've added three point seven million new jobs over the last twenty three months. terrible news for mitt romney

so what do the republicans in the house in particular and the senate going to do to crash our economy before november. well i hope they don't do that and i don't think they will go connell so that's their number one priority no but you go back to those those job numbers i mean you have four million people who have just left the workplace altogether they've just been disappeared from these numbers because they've given up hope because economic growth is so slow some people get old and retired well yeah even when you factor that in engine really it's a very this is a really. recovery that's ninety nine weeks and battle i mean that once they get beyond that threshold that there's obviously people that are just like falling off here i mean so the other side of this is that it is positive news and like i would buy i saw the job numbers this morning i was like thank goodness some good news now republicans i think have an easy argument to make here when it comes to in terms of the political optics of this thing they can basically say look we would have been here a lot longer i mean

a lot of long time ago were not for the president so so it's i think republicans are set now your question mitt romney i absolutely think that it's going to make it more difficult for him to run against obama simply on the basis of the fact that he hasn't done a lot to really help the economy because now as the economy improves his argument has to be look i'm a concern unless and emotions can he needs to find a way it's likely that the romney i mean he was on laura ingraham's radio show and he said look you can argue it is getting better the president you know the president's policies get kicked and it's getting better three point seven million jobs have been created since the president's policies went into effect that's not debatable and i agree you know the way we calculate unemployment numbers in this country has always been a little bit correlation is not causation i mean it's pretty simple just because he has policies and in that time frame there has been job growth doesn't mean that one led to the other in fact the lesson plans look look look at look at the big industries look at look at what's happening in michigan right now with the auto industry it's a booming marketplace for american jobs right now and that if mitt romney and

conservatives had their way there wouldn't be in america and i stood right there was a story here and i think we can pull this thing up that we have we have a graphic. yes no maybe here we go the red is the bush administration the blue is the obama administration and when the blue stopped and this is unemployment and or employment private sector job job creation the loss of jobs below the line the creation of jobs above the line and you look at the third month in there that's when the stimulus package kicked in and all of a sudden the line starts getting a whole lot shorter and pretty soon it's positive how can you say that that's not causation faster that's not correlation that are they should know they're due to the i for one i think you're wrong i think you're wrong that is not cause i believe it's not causation now the other side of this is if you factor in population growth this is not even hitting that line the growth is not enough to make up for the amount of people that are actually in the work force granted there are jobs being created completely i guess that numbers show that's true and you know what it what it points to is the need for republicans to get of the way and let the president

keep doing what he's been doing and do more of it republicans keep provoking about if they don't if the present would only work with the house to get things through the senate but loney what the house has proposed is an extension of what bush did throughout his terms in office and that's why we're in the position that we are right now and that's exactly what mitt romney and newt gingrich or rick santorum have proposed on the campaign trail if they want to have that debate that's great but things are improving just like they're going to let me say to rob me let me if i may move along mitt romney won florida this week i would say that this actually what we're seeing is the battle of super pacs not the battle of candidates romney ran a thirteen thousand t.v. ad actually romney did run them a super pac that he's an affiliated with that is paid for by wall street billionaires ran thirteen thousand ads ninety percent of the negative newt gingrich's super pac which was funded by shelly adelson another billionaire ran two hundred ads and you know romney has received over two hundred forty one

contributions. actual campaign of over twenty five hundred dollars obama's only got twenty. it sure looks to me like oh and on top of that romney had this to say this week about poor people. in this race because i care about americans i'm not concerned about the very poor we have a safety net there it's fixed so you know and that's a little out of context because you said it and said i will fix the safety net if it's you bite more context there the most people would ignore the call that mitt romney deserves for what we've given his work track record with well and with and and his idea of fixing the safety net is paul ryan's thing of let's let's privatized medicare says it is we have no one to turn turn into a voucher program but here's the question i mean obviously poor people are donating to his campaign too but here's the question isn't the whole romney campaign just a facade for wall street isn't the gingrich the. gingrich campaign just a facade for sholay i mean has the supreme court turned this into dueling

billionaires and corporations well going back to that clip we saw a second ago that was an inept moment and you're right he does deserve to have these lines taken out of context you know we did the same thing to obama. a few months ago that was one bad moment he can kind of get past it you look at them every week oh ok listen part of the middle class going to ten thousand dollars to come forward and he has to start explaining his gaffes but meanwhile joe biden exists on the obama side the campaign trail so i don't think you know the gaffe quality is going to change anything i kind of like joe biden so i'd need to exam to be all months of just pure unadulterated truth that should have been said jim guys truth or truth can be a get go this is the. well you know but as for super pacs i mean what i think what it tells you is and romney brought this up in a campaign debate recently he said look that the way the campaign finance works we should be able to take the money into our campaigns as oppose these super pacs and what and and what these super pacs do is they create distance from the candidates so they can say stuff like oh i can't control my super pac i can control what he

does we need to have accountability in politics here we need to be able to say to the candidate guess what you made that at. to be accountable for as long as they are allowed to give money to these shadowy super pacs they will give money to these super pacs they would even if you raise the limit you'll have rich people giving directly to the candidates but they're still going to give to the super pacs because they retain autonomy over the how that money is spent it goes into the campaign and they lose the ability to dictate what the candidate does with it they want the ability to go nasty and negative and do things that they're that their chosen candidates just won't do the fingerprints absolutely yeah and you know as to the gingrich's people romney's people i mean the whole notion that these things are you know independent is just baloney but this is i mean when you can tell i mean bear and jon stewart have done an excellent job of showing precisely how stupid this whole system is the fact that you can go on television pretty much say openly what you'd like to see happen in a campaign and then somebody can write a check to somebody else to go execute it as long as you don't talk to them directly i'm wondering is there a consensus here that this is like this is putting our democracy at risk only on

our own but will think there are a lot of people on both sides that are kind of uncomfortable with the current system what the five one c three is revival and yeah all of the super pac stuff and i mean right now the comparison that we're making to romney and obama that's a little unfair because of course romney has a republican primary right now he has to split up donors with the other candidate and i'm toying with the dynamic yeah you know that obama doesn't have. a bomb it doesn't have a democratic primary and that is you know there's no doubt in my mind that obama's going to be getting his big money big time energy and i was going to be on hand the los angeles are going to be thrown their way to us right now and it should be us if we have a consensus the idea here is and where i am where i differ from carl carl doesn't think that that money really should be involved in politics at all no that's not true. but the fact is but the fact is the solution is different the idea is that these super pacs shouldn't have to be vehicles for what should be done already for candidates people want to able to get money they should be able to do and there should be and there should be transparency i guess i guess we're close to

a consensus any of the new york giants the new england new england patriots are going to face of this weekend's bowl super. indianapolis indiana indiana a state where the n.f.l. players association the union for the n.f.l. players and by the way the n.f.l. is the most socialist organization out there right the top team gets the worst draft pick the next year around the bottom team gets the best draft pick i mean it's even a team owned by the public yeah yeah you know the green bay packers so any in indiana is now the twenty third right to work for less state and people who live in right to work for less states earn fifty three hundred thirty three dollars a year less on average twenty one percent of the few fewer workers have employer sponsored health insurance and right to work for less states and fifty one percent more workplace injuries and deaths occur in the workplace in right to work for they got a liberty and freedom tom. well so now you know the occupy wall was occupying the super bowl the question why did conservatives hate democracy in the workplace not

to talk about occupy super bowl thing can you think of a better gift for mitch daniels and mitt romney than the naacp next republican nominee mitch daniels who was given his audition at the state of the you can the governor of indiana all that well the governor of indiana match mitch daniels who of course has sold some of it you know former leader of the bush administration i'd like to rebut now nomic leader right. doing a good job in indiana recovering nicely. i mean the idea of an occupy super bowl is being actively obama this being viewed by everybody in the country some kind of like ruckus you know is that even look at obama's gallup numbers he got in the most trouble when occupy was really starting up and gaining steam occupy doesn't do anybody has his numbers were only bad because more progressive were upset with obama and they were he didn't blessin in popularity among independents don't think that that look you know looks bad for the democrat a reason to have to put in popularity in gallup when occupy first came on the scene it was getting a lot of press was because it exposed one of the issues that

a lot of liberals have with this president that he's not been liberal enough ok but also now by. nor an occupied in the ideas like you say if there's a correlation there by ignoring occupy his numbers actually have improved now i mean occupies deeply unpopular but none of this is is addressing the question that i asked which is why do conservatives hate democracy in the workplace unions are democratic money in the workplace all about why do conservatives not you know why why this push for a right to work for less states what's wrong with when you have to pay your employees a wage that they can live on when you have to supply them with benefits when you have to you don't even have to do any of those when you swear just have a democracy you have your job when you do that the people that own the companies can't take up home as much money so they're paying the politicians to go in and legislate that ability the numbers the numbers that you show they believe they said a.f.l.-cio numbers the numbers that you showed factored in unless i'm mistaken you can correct me factor in a public sector workers and this is going the problems that the states have been trying to attack is that public sector workers courtesy of their unions who have

a lot of strength are making substantially more in both their benefits and their personal saudis where they were this little circle where reserve the right to work for state right or nine zero or less states versus not i'm well aware of what public sector workers workers are going to use but actually i would think if anything public sector workers would have a moderating influence because generally if their federal or state workers they're working under similar circumstances so if all workers in right to work states on average are making fifty three hundred dollars less public sector workers would would moderate in other words it's even worse for private so right they'd actually be doing the even more work to do the long haul i would say we were to tell an employee in any circumstance that you would must join a union is certainly not a good if you want to take advantage of the benefits of the union contract negotiation we had better be a part of that if you read this after the break have republicans lost touch with reality when it comes to the bush tax cuts more. common.

but i see. a scenario you know. there's no way to see the film on screen if you want to have sex go and have sex. means of protection can be used. between two thousand and five and two thousand and nine 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 many country's entire military budget offerings because the best form. of the.

the big picture on the on the panels and i will ron political reporter of the daily caller karl frisch progressive strategist syndicated columnist and partner bullfight strategies and vince collin a senior editor online editor at the daily caller and so yesterday every single republican in the house of representatives voted against a resolution this resolution that congressman peters put forward congressman gary peters and he said let's simply acknowledge the key fact and that is the so far the bush tax cuts have caused those two trillion dollars and this is by the book in the congressional budget office this is now this is two thousand and twenty two and this is the zero point knowing deficit if congress does absolutely nothing in the

bush tax cuts expire guess what happens within a decade or so we get to almost no no budget deficit raise taxes a little bit add that everything's fine and on the other hand if we keep everything the way it is the bush tax cuts continue things get even worse like they've been getting for the last couple years so you know. well and in fact let me add to that the actual corporate tax rate right now is at a forty year low twelve point one percent was announced today and taxes on the rich are at a ninety year low so where are the jobs and why won't republicans acknowledge the two trillion dollar contribution to our debt by the from the bush tax cuts in fairness to the jobs debaters of people call the the job creators they have created millions of jobs that if that happened to be overseas you know on the the numbers here are startling because they're true and the reason that all those republicans voted against the resolution is the same reason there are they don't believe in

evolution or or global warming or science or numbers letters mass shape size is that i was really shameful for obama to renew the tax cuts well he. i did what he had to do to get a compromise through but he i mean that he did what is legal and i he did this thing called a compromise which republicans just if he wanted he did that because the republicans said if you don't do that we're going to we're going to kill off get out another to do with maybe shave them three points off of g.d.p. if you had a massive tax hike in the middle of a recession you want to actually you know there are there have been a number of times where we've had significant tax hikes and they have not caused recessions or to provo but you know you imagine a time when i can when it was well you were absolutely twice and when it actually got things about how we had conservative say you don't want to raise taxes when things are so bad when things are good you don't want to stifle growth by raising taxes is that they have a fundamental problem when it comes to any increase in taxes even when it's going to fix the problem there are because there are better factors are the people that are going to be hurt by having to spend a couple of more dollars on a couple of very disingenuous things about this debate one thing that they voted on

was a show vote i mean it was a rider a ceremonial thing of course people are going for going to serve out of fall out of the line secondly remember remember you can talk about this and you can say all of this is a terrible thing but when it came to the payroll tax debate i mean it was kind of obvious like if you're going to let it if you're going to let it rise like they don't want to talk democrats and want to talk about oh this is a tax increase if it goes back up they only said that one of the of the bush tax cuts both have the effect of contributing to the deficit it's true that graphic is accurate and that's not the point of contention but the idea that you can have this debate and not honestly say that it's not just a partisan one is absurd now going to the question of taxes you talk about saying how when times are good republicans say that they can't raise taxes the fact is there is something in tom your head explode of this but there is something to art laffer curve it really does have a very commonsense role obviously is that the zero on the one hundred percent points but that's that's not the question my question is the bush has bush took us to a forty year low on cap corporate taxes and

a ninety year low on personal taxes and according to reaganomics that's supposed to produce ecstasy in paradise and wonders but what where are the jobs where you're talking about. the deficit this being eaten alive by entitlements i mean if you're going to use the deficit not talking about the deficit i'm talking about tadg was very low you guys got your tax cuts where are jobs if you there are metrics for success if the economy is going to improve it has to do with the government not running a deficit i'm not hearing where the jobs are where is the what is the economy improving do so so you can cut taxes as reagan did and you borrow the money from other countries you cut taxes as george bush did you borrow the money from other countries you guys said that was going to give us jobs now you want to play one that gave us a deficit what happened in the ninety's following the collapse of the cold war did clinton raise taxes like crazy no did that yes yes he did in one thousand nine hundred twenty eight and want to go to the floor that was represented and said this will create a great depression like we've never seen before and every single republican voted against that tax increase and brought us a balanced budget but clinton stood there as

a moderate he governed to the center and he had even the you know even welfare reform resulted in resulted in a period of surf i love here it's nice either we got to move along i mean i haven't heard anything about where the jobs are but we've got time for our last question a quick fire the super bowl is of course this weekend and aside from the football itself the commercials draw a lot of attention so what might we see the g.o.p. candidates being spokesman for how about ron paul a spokesman for acme pain away now with heroin or mitt romney a spokesman for acme dog carriers now you can attach one to the roof of your private jet or a new gay marriage spokesman for acme moon shuttles round trip fare includes united stay in the bio in the biosphere. or other ideas this is pretty obvious is not mitt romney for just for money i mean just for me. i don't know your face. cult deprogramming services for ron paul supporters ok and i'm going to take it on paul to do a throwback i think or

a slight or something less government more filling oh well frankly pretty good story and you know what he said all right well i was going to say santorum is going to. as the spokesman for a spokesman for the new acme internet search engine or no results from google allowed the photo he said if you have. been thanks thanks all of course as always for being thank you. who acted alec i mean really if you ever seen a pallet that looks like this it brock obama newt gingrich alec i happened this you know is a representative democratic republic here the united states or at least is supposed

to be it's a government where we the people like legislators to represent our interests and a corporatocracy that's a government where the legislators are own or run by corporations and there's an organization out there it's called the american legislative exchange council that appears to be taking america down the road toward corporatocracy. a few times a year alec gathers together lawmakers corporate c.e.o.'s and lobbyists all together in the same high end resort hotel ballrooms to present to the elected officials model legislation written by the lawyers of alec and voted on by the corporations if the corporations approve that legislation and gets carried back to the state legislatures or even the u.s. congress by the obedient lawmakers in attendance who submit it is new laws and it's long been speculated because he identified laws keep popping up in state after state that republican lawmakers who attend alec conferences are taking their orders

directly from alec and therefore legislation dealing with everything from voter id laws to harsher prison sentences for drug offenders to dismantling e.p.a. regulations have their roots in alec now we have some proof in florida republican public and state representative rachel bergen introduced legislation in the state in the state house back in november of last year to reduce corporate taxes something that's right in alex wheel house she got a bit sloppy though and forgot to take out alex mission statement it's located at the top of all it's model legislation so the law she introduced had a header that read whereas it is the mission of the american legislative exchange council to advance jeffersonian principles of free markets limited government federalism and individual liberty. nice words if thomas jefferson was alive today and read alex's proposed tax loopholes for rich people and corporations he

barf or declare another revolution so here is state representative bergen who was handed legislation written by corporate interests at alec to reduce their own taxes and she turns around introduces that legislation into the florida state house with no changes as if it was their own idea the alec language the top. her office discovered the screw up they withdrew the legislation really quickly and reintroduced it without the alec mission statement. it was too late the group common cause sought and blew the whistle you know it's becoming increasingly clear what's going on in our country now that the supreme court has given corporations personhood rights and said that money is speech through super pacs and think tanks like alec we elect representatives and they represent corporations so i say why hide it from now on our lawmakers should just be honest with us take cue from representative bergen in florida i mean i've been pushing for to make members of

congress wear nascar patches in their suits like nascar drivers so that we know of corporations are sponsoring them for years but i think they should also put a new ad or on top of all the new laws they propose letting us know who a lot will benefit the most or who wrote the law in the first place for example the next few weeks republicans in the u.s. house of representatives will hold hostage either middle class tax cuts or infrastructure spending or both to try to force the president to approve the keystone x.l. pipeline and when they do that legislation should come with a nice little header that says well as it is the mission of the cobra there's no other oil barons to maximize their profits by keeping our nation addicted to dirty fossil fuels we had news this build a force the construction of the keystone x.l. pipeline or later when republicans again try to got new wall street regulations their legislation needs to have this federal whereas it is the mission of goldman sachs j.p. morgan wells fargo and other wall street bankers who fund our campaigns to maximize

their profits with predatory lending five percent and economic destruction we introduce this bill to dismantle the consumer financial protection bureau and other wall street reforms in dodd frank. or how about when house republicans again try to repeal obamacare whereas it is the mission of united health care at another for profit health insurers to make massive profits denying children's health care turning down lifesaving treatments and jacking up premiums to pay for more c.e.o. mansions we introduce this building repeal the affordable care act this is much needed transparency or that would be until we get a constitutional amendment that says the corporations are not people and that money is property and not speech then we have to have this sort of transparency to see who is buying whom on capitol hill and whose interests are being represented above we the people go to move to amend or free speech for people or to put an end to the

corporate takeover of our democracy that's it for the big picture for tonight for more information on the stories we covered visit our website at totn arbonne dot com free speech dot org. you can also check out our two youtube channel stillings with tom foreman dot com this entire show is also available as a free video podcast on i tunes and we have a free tom hartman i phone and i pad app in the app store you send us feedback to twitter at tom underscore our been on facebook at tom underscore our our blogs message boards and telephone comment line at target and don't forget them ocracy begins when you show up again actually get out there get active tag your it sit next week.