doesn't hurt people from rising up if you create an opportunity for people to get something for nothing and you put them in a place to desire the something for nothing they will never try and build up to say otherwise if you think it's going well you know you're just going to just toss david go ahead i don't think you're safe here therefore you want david i don't know i just tore up the welfare checks and went to work the jobs would be there right right. i guess i'm really not what i said what i said david you've got to actually pay attention to the words that come out of the mouth what i said is that when you pack about the idea that dependency class as if it's mythology that's not true that is in accurate when you have more people on it ever than ever on food stamps one has to ask the question why some of the question has to deal with the economy some of it has to deal with the ease of being able to do that as opposed to other things so you have to take a look at it in its totality not in the political landscape you desire it but quoting karl marx as

a guy who understood and that is how little you know there aren't jobs for those people their jobs are there for those people that's the obvious if all those welfare people went out to get a job is it there now you believe david all right gentlemen i want to go to new york david dreier engines we have free time now for your time no no no no tell me what you claim i have to go to new york ok lou i think it's one of the interesting things that's happened right now is that and i would tend to agree with you and particularly in looking at europe and in the construction of the welfare state which was very popular with people in europe after the war but as the financial ization of the economy occurred you have this double whammy where the state can or cannot produce protect these people anymore and you see slashes and budgets and all that austerity doesn't create jobs at all that's a double whammy and that's another reason why the middle class at least in europe is being crushed and there's very little prospect of seeing them coming back. in fact a. note on

a do not g.'s turned on extremist case of welfare state is that it's not good it's not intrinsically good or bad the problem is in many western countries the heights and always that we are who bad with your state so it is not investing in should share in some not to take your pay and countries such as had earned you have a good way for a state that is investing in the future of children giving giving saying what all the genes a bitter education in immediately. technologies enough and in fact a good way for state is a way for theta which is interesting to well future so the problem in many western countries is that we are of welfare states of. fat cats we took which are not investing in the future of our children in order to to to have a better situation then to his use of frustrations of the middle class we have to invest in that have been education and not simply need to cation mitch mars and we

do ok again is very interesting here because we actually look at who has showed up to the miracle house we had so little has done i mean our children we have to look who has the money and the fact katter's you say or the states and states seem to you have not the money right now tony if i go back to you does it bother you does it bother you that the the very rich in the united states particularly have recovered completely from the crisis of two thousand and eight they're getting their bonuses their dividends vary and the economy is actually growing but the middle class is still being pulverized i mean how do you feel about that because you know if you're really well off in the top one percent well you don't really worry about much of anything because you just outsource everything abroad. well i i don't accept the premise of your question and in the slightest i think that one of the greatnesses of the open markets is the opportunity to thrive and survive in my point to david earlier was that this idea that the job has to be handed to somebody

whatever happened to the creation of the job what happened to the small business owner engaging a small business this goes back to the conversation about regulation which is a good conversation about how you grow an economy and make let's make it easier for people to open the business less paperwork more interaction with customers and that's a far better opportunity and let's not talk about the rising the way just being stolen by a by the by the owners that's not true rising wages help people all the way around though the those companies and corporations. and save it are the people who create opportunity ok david go ahead because i haven't heard of an increase in wages for a long time with these are rising the part of the problem with the with the small business is it's part of the problem there's it's not regulation that's the you know yeah there's some regulation and so the problem is the customers aren't there people don't have the money now they've got so far in debt they're trying to get out of debt when people aren't buying small businesses suffer small businesses take

the hit before the large businesses do so you've also got this peculiar perverse kind of new monopoly where the big companies the wal marts and so on are our cost cutting cost keeping prices down which is what people want but that means they keep pressure on their suppliers so that those wages stay down so that you've got this big problem when wages are down all over and the more unemployment the more downward pressure there is who's going to buy the stuff businesses private sector won't invest because they don't see the customers there it's going to take the business private businesses will create jobs if demand is there if the. mandas there they won't create jobs they'll speculate the put their money somewhere else it doesn't make sense for them to invest in the real economy it doesn't make sense in them to invest long term this is why you've got such gridlock in the political system frankly i don't think the conservatives or the liberals know what to do they

don't have any solutions so let the wealthy do what they can and make as much as they can you know before i don't know before i don't know what's going to happen but it's not going to be good if i go to you i mean and i'd like to focus a little bit about the political implications of this is david was saying here i mean if we look in the united states we see not only gridlock but we see fragmentation here and we don't see really strong allegiances anymore that we would think we're middle class because we can have the occupy wall street movement we can have the tea party simultaneously ok and that's a reflection of the inability of the republicans and the democrats to get out of this economic mess and i would throw in cultural wars that are absolutely useless for the united states and not so much for western europe i mean how is this happening here because again we look at middle classes of having certain political identity that's changing as well and it may not be good it may be good i don't know yet in fact in many many countries of the west you are increasing

frustrations of the middle classes over the last twenty years and both heights wing and left wing solutions fade in front over of economy clearly t. and of fairly t. over thinking and thinking you know well neither class so there are problems high to know is true of extreme frustration as the development of strong produced movements over and you hope and maybe or so in the united states n.z. is frustration or increasing vicious cycle of political end they could make problems so high training and lifts we. these are your two talking create class and these international competition you we have quite an hour or so political systems of the west all week in the week and i guess that in the end that's what it looks like you go back to that problem if i go to tony on this because the middle class in the united states has been crushed for thirty

years it is damaging the democracy in the united states because people are not seeing that they're the the political process can address their needs because far away from the united states most people look at the republicans and democrats and say what in the world is the difference between the two the do what's the difference between mitt romney and barack obama i mean standing at a distance there is no difference. yeah but that's another conversation a few other day right now there is a ground problem in the program ok. i'm going to wait lee out for that but your conversation is really about is government the ones to make this decision and are those those the ones we're supposed to depend on if you create the situation where people are depending on government to solve their problems they will of course be dissatisfied because they can't work it could never ever happen government can't solve your problem what government could do is create more problems for you and that's what we're seeing that's why these elections coming up the elections

presidential election senate elections are so incredibly important because it's a conversation of dependence on horse versus independence days government to do for you or are you to do for you that is by the way the entire tea party basis you do for you you enable your life government control again to me and say we don't want to. run out of time here many thanks to my guest today in new york chicago and in los angeles and thanks to our viewers for watching us here arky see you next time and remember cross talk. and. sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything you thought

you don't know i'm timer is a big push. down the official. i pod touch from the. life on the go. video on demand all teens mind old cars. and already says streets now in the palm of your. question on all t.v. dot com.

me please leave me. mission. critical three. four chargers.

arrangements three. three. three. three brokers video for your media projects. tom. owen tom are going to washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture. move over citizens united americans elect is the new corporate ruse in town what is it and how can we save our democracy from more corporate influence also workers a team mobile usa are threatened and intimidated if they bring up talk reform any unions are going to be the case for their parent company as union members on the board of directors and wealthy elite like that romney live up dividends from

investments why can't the rest of us do the very same thing. you need to know this is another setback for democracy last week on friday unlike the justice of the u.s. supreme court decided that the citizens of montana as to give up their elections to deep pocketed corporations choosing the side of three montana corporations the high court suspend a recent montana supreme court decision that up the one hundred year old montana corrupt practices act which banned corporate spending in state elections now corporations have free rein to spend unlimited amounts of money in montana elections just like they can in the rest of america there is a small sill sliver of silver lining here though. since the high court merely suspended the ruling and has not yet overturned it the door is open for

a possible second hearing on citizens united this year or next and now that we know just how damaging that citizens united ruling is to our democracy all the super pacs hanging around maybe the court will reconsider. but i'm not holding my breath not until the makeup of the supreme court changes at the very least in the meantime a growing number of americans think the solution to our post citizens united broken political system is a new political party a third party from the tea party to occupy wall street the failures of the two party system in america is a favorite talking point it's a talking point that's made its way on to the page of the new york times on sunday in a in the form of an op ed by multimillionaire and corporate shill thomas friedman friedman wrote eventually the circular circular firing squad that is the republican primary will be over and the last man standing will be the party's nominee for president if that candidate is rick santorum i think there's a good chance a third party will try to fill the space between the really severely conservative santorum or even mitt romney and the left of center barack obama it would be

fitting that their party candidate friedman things would be fitting is this guy david walker walker is not a moderate he like the rest of the republican party is a deficit hawk who's been working on behalf of right wing think tank the peter g. peterson foundation to end social security and medicare as we know that he's even further to the right than mitt romney when it comes to economic issues he'd be a corporate third party candidate not a rational middle of the road cutting guy which brings us to the second piece of this third party puzzle the shadowy organization known as americans elect basically it's an online organization that's going to nominate and run a third party candidate for president this election how it works is you go online to become a member and then later this spring the site will hold an on line election in which members will pick the third party that americans elect puts forward as their candidate americans elect already has a spot on the ballot in fourteen states including california and with some twenty

two million dollars raised already a likely be a all fifty state ballots by the time of the election so whoever is picked by american electorate hold a lot of sway in the upcoming election and here's the best part the american like committee. will have the final say in who gets to be the candidate regardless of who you if you're a member vote for in other words the vote is meaningless window dressing. and considering that americans elect is getting a considerable amount of its money and support from wall street hedge fund managers and other millionaires and billionaires it's safe to expect a millionaire or billionaire sympathizer to come out on top someone like new york mayor michael bloomberg who's actually now being touted on their website or someone like thomas friedman's main man david walker who is also featured on the american select web site for americans trying to save our democracy by getting corporate influence out of it corporate ruses like americans like to make it all the more difficult so what can be done catherine crier joins me now and in fact i the

bio at the back your book is so much better than what i have on the prompter i just have to share this hour with our viewers catherine crier the youngest elected state judge in texas history has covered national international affairs for c.n.n. a.b.c. news fox news and court t.v. an emmy and dupont columbia award winning journalist she's also the new york times bestselling author of a deadly game and the case against lawyers and you have written an absolutely brilliant book here in a patriot acts as americans must do save the republic that what i really like about this is that it doesn't come across as a. a biased you know polemic it's just solid and rational what's your take on this americans elect well i am with you in that i find it a little scary and as you were reading it you're sort of going through that information it does remind me a bit however of the old backroom politics and when they start talking that that we may end up with a brokered convention because of the republican chaos that what was that in the in

the old days that was the smoke filled room and yes we're going to get people to vote on the internet now but it's the smoke filled room that will pick the americans elect candidates right and and so many times in the past we've seen certainly that a certain group put forward a democrat or republican out of that back room in the convention to go forward and run for election so in a sense it may not. we so different which can be good or bad because right now what we're seeing though is is such domination in my opinion of both parties by corporate money or by big influence that the american voters don't have much of a say in those primaries much much less in the american electorate the merits of this in your book in fact it's one of the repeated themes through your eyes the story of jamie diamond for example with robert rubin rather excuse me that when you get in with we complain that is sort of the change that took place in the reagan

administration i presided over one of the s. and l. cases when i was still on the bench so i went through that chaos and you saw what happened but democrats forget that robert ruben and summers those guys turned their back on regulating derivatives they the wall street guys were sort of running that show we do know despite republican protestations that an awful lot of wall street guys have been running the economic advisory camp for president obama for both and we yet when we know that a lot of reform has not taken place or been watered down like the volcker rule is as one why because even the democrats are in fact catering quite a bit to wall street you know i have a former member of congress who i knew some years ago. tell me that he had a lobbyist walk into his office as a couple years ago and say you know i've got a half million dollars i can spend in your district i can use it to build you up or

destroy you which would you prefer jack a vermont. my lord the fact that i've been touting used book but here is you know these republican godzilla who's come come out and he's opened his coat and shown everyone he said i wanted to do was walk in to go when you're tired of working here i got six seven figures for you and all of a sudden the republican staffers were letting him write the bill. you know me at least lead the way well that's going on on both sides of him and it was not a good thing it's not a healthy thing you mention that you were on the bench during the crisis that would've been eighty six as a room and what i find fascinating is. from the grand rapids i was born in grand rapids you know we did a fair amount of bill sweetman on my radio show back five six years ago when he was speaking out on this and you know he ran the resolution trust corporation put the thing back together but but the reagan administration prosecuted sixteen hundred people sent a thousand people to jail oh absolute the perp walks that we had and were screaming

i mean you've heard just what the last forty eight hours is count for these guys belong in jail right and if you people republicans who don't want regulations here's how you cut back on regulations you actually prosecute you enforce you get really serious with these guys when the drug companies messes up you don't find them a million dollars after they've made four million dollars on a drug you know you do you charge her or you you know you really go after these guys and guess what you can cut back on regulations same thing in the financial industry you put some of these guys in the pen for twenty five to life guess what they'll start taking seriously the rule of law and they're and they're very much not what is the type of the type of capitalism we're seeing in america today this is something that's so interesting to me and i had to go back literally to adam smith because if you go back to founding principles guess what he was writing

capitalism to object to the marriage of big government and big business mercantile isn't in english that is theory of moral sciences even more to the point absolutely and he says in here that the only way to have broad based economic opportunity not outcome is you cannot allow the concentration of wealth and power at the top that that group. are unaccountable sovereigns as as detrimental to economic liberty and opportunity as a tyrannical government and the people's government must be the counterbalance because individuals can never counter the power of that elite one percent and he also talks about things like workers' rights a social safety net that capitalism inherently creates dramatic imbalance and you've got to not make it equal but you've got to work on creating social stability with things like workers' rights and the social safety net to create the

environment in which capitalism can flourish and if people don't go back and do their homework and learn what capitalism really is versus the the very corporatist economy and global corporatist economy we have today then they're they're no way we're going to make the reforms that we need i think most people don't realize that the phrase the invisible and appears only once in and his nation talking about is it more a stick well and he said it's really about a domestic economy you're local just like jefferson in a local democracy is really the best and a local environment that that sort of balance occurs all the time but once you've got sort of the wal marts of the world that can dictate the invisible hand becomes meaningless on a large scale or certainly a global scale in the in the middle we have left what is in your mind the most important point that you want to share with people in this book that one of my favorite quotes is from john adams idiology is the science of idiots past and and

right now the parties are so wedded to idiology that actually there's no relationship to the founder conservatism or liberalism among the founding fathers complete opposite but you've got to understand that preserving the republic our constitutional republic comes before our idiology. and we are threatening to tear that apart and if we don't understand what is interesting what is mandatory to the preservation of this remarkable system then we're going to throw it all away. catherine for thank you for the great work they were doing and a brilliant book patriots great to have you with us don't get. don't get fooled by corporate funded third party candidates by the way our best hope for getting money out of politics and overturning citizens united will be through a constitutional member this is corporations are not people and money is not speech go to move to a mandatory to join. coming up after the break t.

mobile in america vehemently opposes the idea of unionization of employees with their parent company in germany embraces unions with open arms where's the disconnect and will t. mobile workers in the us ever see and i'm moving working on. it we just put a picture of me when i was like nine years old until she told the truth. i'm a contestant i'm a total get of friends that i love traveling hip hop music and. he was kind of yesterday. i'm very proud of the role without you see it's a place. you

know sometimes you see a story and it seems so. you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realized everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harvey welcome to the big picture.

t. mobile is the fourth largest wireless company in the united states with over thirty eight thousand employees domestically thirty three million u.s. customers and every single team mobile employee in the u.s. is getting screwed and is the victim of a war against workers' rights for years and ploys of trying to unionize for better wages and benefits only to be shot down metaphorically t. mobile has routinely distributed and anti-union and books for managers and conducted campaigns to stop unionization when workers tried to form a union management has consistently threatened to fire employees if they formed

a union and told them that they would be punished if they said it in a negative about the company even on personal social media sites like facebook in short the environment within t. mobile in america is one of fear imitate intimidation and absolute disrespect which is ironic considering their website which says the mobile usa supports will comply with such federal law in all respects and will not take any action against employees because they have to exercise their rights under the law nor will it tolerate retaliation against any employee for exercising rights under the law. the actions of the u.s. team mobile subsidiary are in stark contrast to the operations of its parent company in germany they should tell a cop so this week twelve there should telecom workers all members of a union with a german government official are visiting the us to meet with american t. mobile employees and observe the hostile environments that they face joining me now to discuss more about the hostile working conditions facing team mobiles american

employees and the disconnect between us management and to talk is cloud close very full member of the social democratic party of germany and a member of the german parliament and george cole senior director of communications for the senior director of the communications workers of america union gentlemen thank you both for being so completely for being here with you being available to us why is there such a disconnect between the telecoms german operation and philosophy of business and that in the united states. mr burton. this is a can of then so because this question is the victim for them in the treatment of the mobile usa and this then this then the between too many and you would say you know. mr cole when you're an american here watching this. what are your thoughts on. it is iran.