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russia's foreign minister says there is a risk of repeating i believe in style scenarios there's a foreign intervention in syria will stall so warns that the west is building a case against their assad regime that could be used just to par in the tree action . that's helping the euro prices or the euro zone achieve centers assurances are still awaited from the greek and its committee does and how they are to implement an austerity for a while in return for a vital one hundred thirty billion euro bailout to save the country from defaulting as moody's ratings agency downgrades and six easy states. and more speculation of iran as russia's retrieve predicts the west and might decide on a strike against the country before satellite and this follows tell me it's

accusations that does not meet state was behind in monday's bomb attacks targeting its embassies a meeting last in bangkok on tuesday. of next to the us production campaign and much more were announced his big picture around washington studio. oh and some are going to washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture. republicans like any government are supposed to follow the principles of the constitution so why are

they following the actions and words of a tax billionaire instead also state prisons everywhere are up for sale at least that's what the corrections corporation of america wants is this desire signaling the doomsday scenario for capitalism in america and in tonight's daily take why are americans being challenged by the telecom interest industry europeans are free to text whom ever they want. you need to know this as expected one day after president obama released his twenty thirteen budget proposal a top ranking republican in the senate mitch mcconnell is declaring it dead on arrival it was the minority leader's speaking on the floor this morning. we had a little more time to look at the president's budget and up to say they want the

more one looks at it the harder it is to believe that there's the president's considered response to the crisis that we thought last year's budget wasn't worth the paper it was printed on and neither is this one not worth the paper it was printed on. and then this morning the ranking republican on the senate budget committee jeff sessions put in his two cents. this budget increases spending over what we agreed to last year it wipes out part of the sequester half of it increasing spending one point five trillion dollars increase in taxes by nearly over one point five trillion and that it was the tea party house of representatives turn to respond speaker of the house john boehner slammed the budget saying the president's budget is a gloomy reflection of his failed policies of the past and of a bold plan for america future failed policies of that past that have created twenty three straight months of private sector job creation i might add and then

house budget chairman paul ryan whose own budget last year ended medicare as we know it said president obama's irresponsible budget is a recipe for a debt crisis of the decline of america so this isn't really surprising publicans lining up against a democratic president's budget there's a bigger picture here something else causing these republicans to line up against the president's budget beyond just typical politics what are these four guys have in common what the senators mitch mcconnell and jeff sessions and representatives john boehner and paul ryan all have in common beyond just being republicans what is it give up they've all signed multimillionaire lobbyist grover norquist anti-tax pledge forbidding them from raising taxes on anyone anyone except one hundred sixty million working americans by letting the payroll tax cut expire and these four lapdogs aren't the only guys who signed the pledge so to have two

hundred thirty six other representatives all but six republicans in the house and so to have thirty nine other senators all but seven republicans in the senate. and since president obama's budget calls for making millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share of three major tax increase your publicans are contractually obligated to vote no on it just as their anti-tax master grover norquist demands in other words republicans are choosing grover norquist. over our founding fathers. according to the article six of the constitution members of congress shall be bound by oath or affirmation to support the constitution that oath reads i do solemnly swear that i will support and defend the constitution the united states against all enemies foreign and domestic and that i will bear true faith and allegiance to the same that i take this obligation freely without

any mental reservation or purpose of evasion and that i will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which i am about to enter so help me god but two hundred seventy nine republicans in congress have taken another rose oath that's the americans for tax reform over taxpayer protection pledge. pledge to the taxpayers of the state of blank and the american people that i will one oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal income tax rate for individuals and businesses and to oppose any net reduction or a limitation of deductions and credits and was matched dollar for dollar by further reducing tax rates in other words no income tax increases no closing tax loopholes no cutting off taxpayer subsidies for millionaires billionaires and big corporations no matter what so there's a fundamental cost you know constitutional conflict here or conflict i guess

governing conflict between the constitution and the oh. what do you do if you have a war. in egypt you need to be paid if it's a front to defend the nation right well actually george bush didn't he just put on the credit card trillion dollars what if you have an energy crisis what if the arabs cut off for oil again for example or you need to make new investments in clean energy you're not allowed to cut off oil subsidies no you can't touch those will subsidies those those are important to billionaires financial crisis one of the banks do incredible temperature the economy oh no tax increases for the banks manufacturing crisis how cutting off job tax breaks for job outsourcers not can't do that sorry that would be cutting away a tax loophole congress is basically paralyzed today because nearly every single republican has put a lobbyist's oath above their oath to support depend on the constitution now the republican lapdogs grover norquist have a new strategy. a lot of people are saying the house republicans caved yesterday

when they proposed extending the payroll tax cut for the rest of the year without paying for the straight clean bill basically what democrats were asking for all along but this is not a cave this is merely the release of one hostage one hundred sixty million working americans who are eligible for the payroll tax cut and the retaking of another hostage millions of unemployed americans who depend on unemployment insurance benefits to survive by deed linking the payroll tax cut from unemployment benefits republicans can avoid looking like they're about to raise taxes on working americans but at the same time quietly hold millions of unemployed americans hostage until they get the spending cuts they want or at the very least until they kill any prospects of tax increases on the rich that's not a cave so how much longer will republicans bow down before millionaire lobbyist grover norquist while ignoring the general welfare of millions of unemployed americans as the constitution demands here to offer his take on this is andrew moylan vice president of government affairs at the national taxpayers union andrew

welcome pleasure to be here great to have you with us i. know you're a fan of grover norquist pledge i take it sure i believe that we should be reducing taxes not raising them i have a pledge for you here that and see if you want to sign a high end of the oil and pledge that i will always put the interests of the very wealthy few ahead of the interests of my country my fellow americans including during times of war famine pestilence and natural disasters. we've we've already discovered a difference between you and me which is that i'm not going to impugn your motives than having a difference in policy i think that we have a federal government that's too large and small is those who much you know is what is that what i just read in this different big room from from i will tell you exactly what the reason is that that you think that my job that my goal in life is to protect the very wealthy few and that's not the case my goal in life is to protect my three year old daughter who is sitting at home right now to make sure that she has a country that has

a solid future the do. doesn't have that kind of debt crisis in its future and that's what i'm caring about i don't care as much about millionaires as i do about my daughter and about my family our debt our so-called debt crisis you know when we last when we ended world war two we were one hundred twenty seven percent of g.d.p. and debt right now we're less than one hundred percent. you know how we got out of that debt after world war two economic growth is the biggest answer we borrow more money. to. go back and look it up harry truman and dwight eisenhower democrat and republican they borrowed more money they built the national highway system they built hospitals they built schools they put people like my dad through college for free and gave one hundred dollars a month stipend to live on they borrowed more money and spent it and invested it in the intellectual and physical infrastructure of this nation and and created fifty years of of prosperity as a consequence of it and then reagan came along and said not we're not going to do that anymore we're not going to invest in our people we're going to stop building schools stop building hospitals stop putting you know no more federal funds for

anything and by the way tax cuts for the rich in and he ran up the biggest debt in the history the country ronald reagan one guy you are more money than every president sort of the are going to jimmy carter you just revealed a problem with your argument which is that you bring up ronald reagan and a lot of folks talk about ronald reagan certainly people in my side of the world are very fond of him but people forget that ronald reagan spending under ronald reagan was actually very high comparable to what we're seeing right now twenty two twenty three percent of g.d.p. year after year after year so if what you're saying is true that spending a lot of money as a percentage of g.d.p. or as an absolute amount is what's going to ensure prosperity for the future then you should i guess i'm going to say it is investing in america will ensure prosperity ronald reagan spent a lot of money stupidly he had almost a trillion dollars off to his buddies in the defense industry for the star wars program that never materialized and a lot of that money just vanished into space i mean not literally but well actually literally i suppose but you know if you're concerned about your three year old

daughter i would think that you would be wanting america to be making investments in their feet in our future like we did fifty sixty years ago not just spending money for the sake of running up the debt so that the you know the jude wineskins to santa clause three could play out like reagan was where if you run up the debt big enough the democrats when they come into power or go. to be forced to cut social security but i don't think that there's anybody that disagrees that there are certain investments that we ought to be making for a future i wouldn't advocate that we should be cutting government by ninety percent or anything like that what i'm saying what a lot of folks that are fiscal conservatives are saying is that we have a spending problem in this country we have something we have spending right now that's at twenty two twenty three out of g.d.p. and we are. we are spending at historically low levels barack obama just introduced a budget that never balances he envisions a future in which we never balance a budget i think that that is insane i think that the debt that we have right up to this. day in the economic and that well you know. again i say go back after world

war two we grew our way out of that debt you put people to work they start paying taxes tax collections go up being go you're doing great and you know what happened at the end of world war two there were a lot of keynesians who said when government spending was going to drop dramatically that we were going to put ourselves into another depression at the end of world war two when we ramp down all of that military spending there were a lot of folks who thought that the sky was going to fall and it didn't and you know it started at the g.i. bill because you had all those guys come back then that what they were saying was that all these guys are going to come back seven hundred thousand men are going to come back to the united states without a job and it would have been a disaster without the g.i. bill and the g.i. bill it was done with borrowed money and and here we are you know built a great nation so but and andrew thanks for coming in and sparring with pleasure and. a souvenir i'll take my three year old they are going to write it. coming up coming up after the break the corrections corporation of america wants to buy your state prisons well this for profit corporation be lobbying to make legal

or illegal so you can be tossed in the slammer increase their revenues. thank you. resistance is not politics but a culture of. this could. cultures of resistance are to.

the lose. of the. science technology innovation all the rest of melanin spun around russia we've dumped those huge earth covered.

in screw news corporate america's high crimes plunged our nation into a great recession two thousand and eight pushing several states to the brink of bankruptcy today and now they're back looking to turn a profit off the damage they caused and the corrections corporation of america. the largest for profit prison company in the nation c.c.a. is now reaching out to cash strapped states hoping to make a deal basically c.c.a. is saying sell is your state prisons and we'll take over the job of incarcerating your citizens why would c.c.a. want to do that because they want to sort of profit off each new person who gets thrown in prison in the same way for profit health insurers turn a profit off each person they deny life saving medical care it's part of a contract states the individual states have to pay c.c.a. what are called prisoner predicament pre-date costs and looking over the letter c.c.a. sent to forty eight different states corporation has just a few requirements the state has to agree to to maximize insure excuse me to insure

maximize profitability one being that the prison has to be able to hold a lot of prisoners minimum a thousand beds to be exact and another being the state has to guarantee a minimum of a ninety percent occupancy rate over the term of the contract which is twenty years that shouldn't be much of a problems and c.c.a. working with alec has been successful in passing several stricter drug laws that lead to more and more americans being thrown into prison for longer and longer times just last year ohio's old state own palais curie correctional facility to c.c.a. for seventy two million dollars according to a report by policy matters of ohio that state will actually that sale it's going to actually cost ohio taxpayers eleven million dollars more over the next twenty years than it would have had the state simply kept ownership of the prison so here we have corporations making huge profits buying up the commons forcing taxpayers to then guarantee and subsidize their profits and then making a living off throwing those very same taxpayers in prison this isn't

a good deal for the states this is the cancer stage of capitalism the point at which the drive to make profits is literally ruining the lives of america so this is from really the sort of economy we want joining me now is business attorney seth barron's way seth welcome pleasure to be here glad to have you will. so of all the things we privatized shouldn't police functions like imprisoning people do the very very last well police functions in the broadest sense in many instances are not privatized you're talking about in this aspect a small segment of prisons the prison system there has been a trend over the last twenty five years to privatized prisons at both the state and federal level c.c.a. is one of over a dozen companies that provide proposals and bids to the federal government they aggressively bid against each other they're under financial pressures to be able to sharpen their pencils and give the best deal and in this kind of an era where we have huge budget deficits at both the state and federal level this is an opportunity to be able to save very rare federal federal and state dollars to be

able to make sure that we can keep teachers to take care of our children to make sure that we can keep them that i'm not buying it i'm sorry c.c.a. last year i pulled their annual report total management read revenue for the fourth quarter this is just for three months out of the year right increase to four hundred thirty eight point three million for the fourth quarter of two thousand and eleven c.c.a. generated net income of forty point five million now that's after they had paid one point three three million to david adele one point three three million dire berman earlier years kevin bold lend you know one point point one five seven million john ferguson two point four nine four million i mean they're paying their executives millions of dollars they're paying their stockholders forty million dollars it looks to me like nine percent roughly that is being paid out as profits and they're doing this with with our taxpayer dollars this is the comments. shouldn't the job of a prison be to imprison people and rehabilitate people rather than to make

a profit it is in order to be able to run it in the most efficient way one way to be able to do it is to give the private sector an opportunity to be incentivized to be able to run a more efficient prison system and then run a more effective presence whenever we've. whenever we've turned large chunks of our commons over to the private sector you know the best example i think of the last and most people are familiar with this is enron you know you had cities and in some cases even a couple of states privatizing public utilities selling them down ron saying look at all the money we made and then you know let's make some more money and that's you know very different situation grama crash and burn center stage in that analogy but it's a very different situation there are states that have actually conducted studies to look over the years about how companies such as c.c.a. have been able to run these institutions the state of louisiana for example conducted a study that compared a state run institution with an institution run by c.c.a. and they determine statistically that c.c.a.

red institution that ran very well and had to tell us it was fifteen percent more effect what that tells us is that there's something that can be learned by prisons but again again do you really want a corporation whose principal business is keeping people in prison out there operating in the public sphere it's i mean they have literally participated in lobbying for harsher penalties they don't have any control over the judiciary system they're not going to be privatizing the judiciary system that are can be privatizing the prosecutors they can funnel their money through through half a dozen different places including the u.s. chamber of commerce to to lobby for stronger drug laws to lobby for longer sentences or just just to support law and order candidates this is what for profit corporations do they make you know it well they're allowed to make a profit though i mean what there has been is to his not all of these have out of the system well what they don't have in organizational what's known as an organizational conflict of interest they run the system they don't control the judiciary they don't control the prosecutors have someone who doesn't they don't

even enter surveillances the laws so they don't even interface when people go through this system no one even interfaces for there is not even for them to have go through the system but there's not a four imposed citizens united there's not a for profit corporation in this country that doesn't have. influence over the law making process while they're allowed to have participation the political process and the in many instances have a first amendment right to be able to have freedom of speech in part let's remind let's have just a man in their own right and not have them run our prisons but in this environment where we have absolutely these states and the federal government are not just broke there were added arizona dea privatized one of the prisons just last month because that is the king a trend that over the last twenty five years over a dozen states have continued to increase the privatization of prison c.c.a. is one of over a dozen companies that bid this process the government contractors go through a very competitive process they have to bid it is not enough not just regulated you

know you know again if we're talking about you know the pentagon buying computers i don't want the government making the computers. but i think you know private companies should be making computers but word and private companies can be out there lobbying for ways to make computers more profitable but i don't want a company lobbying for ways to make prison more profitable but how will you or i might be the one who end up in that prison because some whack a doodle lawmaker got some broader is tale about wearing yellow ties or how does the state provide a better infrastructure or better methodology for these prisons the states are broke the federal government is broken federal government even when they run their own postal service they use the fed they use fed ex which is on the g.s.a. schedule even the federal and state governments understand that there's an important place in our society for private enterprise and when these items are to nothing and they help i'm not disputing that i'm simply saying that there is this thing called the commons it's why you have like the commonwealth of virginia there's this thing called the commons the functions that government is is designed to provide and we i personally don't think that it's

a good idea for those things to be provided by private or these states for profit these states over the last twenty five years have voted with the trend of demonstrating that certain states like new mexico for example have about forty four percent of their inmates that. or being served by a government contractor that are in some aspect being privatized such that he said to stay a little demonstrated their cherry picking the same way the charter schools do though they're not run supermax prisons the not taking the most difficult convicts they're leaving all that to the state what you're what you've got is you know the ghetto is ation basically or or. i lack a better word of prisoners there are different strategies and different security levels of prisons that these companies are serving and the type of the cost of each contract is depend upon what the security level is but regardless of that it is a cost effective approach that we have to rabbit. leave you with the last word thank you for dropping by tonight pleasure as always the strategy that corporate america has employed over the last few years to eat up more and more of our commons

is really paying off at least for them i was talking about the cancer stage of capitalism consider financialization through buying up prisons schools public utilities what we're seeing is that wall street is well look at the. this is the percentage of walsall wall street that represents our economy twenty one point five percent in two thousand and nine it was about ten percent back in the seventy's and manufacturing has dropped from quarter down to ten percent this is crazy wall street is playing a bigger and bigger role in economy which which means massive paydays for gries of wall street for the big corporations in two thousand and eleven the six biggest banks and wall street paid a total compensation of one hundred forty four billion dollars was the second highest ever response to a crisis right second highest ever bonuses fell last year a base pay didn't morgan stanley's pay two times two hundred percent goldman sachs three hundred percent. since for their c.e.o.'s since two thousand and eight six

big banks dished out five hundred thirty nine billion dollars in compensation they received eight hundred seventy nine billion dollars in bailout funds why are. you in this so that they can robo sign so they can engage in more mortgage fraud more securities fraud creating bubbles and beyond the banks what about the entire corporate structure this whole idea of eating the commons and turning them to profit throwing americans in prison for profit denying health care where we have a for profit health care system where the only developed country in the world that allows this to read did a whole brilliant. two hour special on this for the corporation for public broadcasting made them take his name off it because they deleted the one sentence that he thought was so critical in which he pointed out that america is the only country among the developed countries in the world that actually allows legally allows a profit motive in the health care industry in the health insurance industry profit

over going to war you know. not to eisenhower franklin roosevelt famously said i'm not going to see one war millionaire made off the credit current troubles profit on pollution and this really is the cancer stage of capitalism we need to control this . crazy alert these dogs are making a lot of noise it appears that mitt romney's dog isn't the only one who has a bone to pick with him dogs against romney as a group reportedly founded in two thousand and seven after news about the now infamous crate gate broke in which it was revealed that romney had tied the family dog to the roof of their car for a twelve hour car ride. former massachusetts governor mitt romney was in pittsburgh today for a fund raising visit answer some questions about a boston globe report that during a family vacation some twenty four year.