our nation needs a bold new plan for the future republicans and democrats can't seem to make one is anyone willing to create an f.d.r. style new deal and if so when and scale also the republican transportation bill was an absolute failure when can americans expect to see the creation of a twenty first century infrastructure and workers in indiana are fighting back against the state's new right to work for less law how does their battle translate to the newest offshoot of the occupy movement. you need to know this republicans held literally their twentieth debate last night and for the forty six million americans living in poverty fifty three million americans living without health insurance and the quarter of a nation that is unemployed or underemployed the candidates were very short on

specifics about what they'll do to help meanwhile president obama is pushing for his corporate tax overhaul aimed at increasing american manufacturing by closing tax loopholes for corporations that ship jobs overseas is also his american jobs act and putting americans back to work by rebuilding our infrastructure a bill that the republican controlled house has refused to consider and that the minority republicans in the senate a filibuster even if republicans had a change of heart even if they had decided to pass the american jobs act even that isn't enough to completely remake our economy at least not enough to remake our economy in the fundamental way fundamental way necessary to revive the dying middle class and increase economic opportunity for all americans and not just the top one percent for that we need a bold new plan or to borrow a phrase from president franklin roosevelt a bold new deal and heading into the two thousand and twelve election neither republicans nor democrats seem committed to a revolutionary new deal but that doesn't mean no one running for president this year is offering up

a new deal of sorts that my next guess is doing exactly that dr jill stein joins me now she's running to be the green party's candidate for president in two thousand and twelve underside welcome thank you it's great to be like you're the one my joel stein from for president but in the bonanza he gave me another last time he was in town we had he was on the show we had dinner. what's the green new deal breaker down for us the green new deal is basically what we need as you know we've got about twenty five million people now who need a full time job and. all of them about five and a half million or so have been unemployed for well over a year a year and a half so we've really got this ingrained entrenched problem we need a solution to actually rise to the magnitude and the seriousness the emergency of this jobs problem so the green new deal of exactly that it's modeled after the new deal that helped get us out of the great depression so it would be basically twenty five million jobs that would be created to put people back to work to end

unemployment and thereby eliminate put an end to the recession at the same time that we transition quickly to a secure green economy for the twenty first century at the same time we create a secure energy supply you know what's not to love about this it's sort of motherhood and apple pie. but those that's a kind of broad brush strokes one of the specifics so you know technically there are four pieces to the green new deal so there is a full employment program that also comes with an economic bill of rights that also ensures that everyone has a right to and will have health care as a human right education through college etc affordable housing part two is like franklin roosevelt. exactly the name you know new deal is not a coincidence here it's very much inspired by what f.d.r. did and you know it had a dramatic impact on the economy and we need that every bit as much now the

president's plans you know have aimed for two million jobs or three million jobs and they've sort of come and gone in those those jobs packages have relied a lot on tax breaks which are nonspecific they really don't get the job done so this specifically would provide the funding to ensure that everyone is back to work it's estimated to cost about what the stimulus package cost the first time around in two thousand and eight around said. one hundred billion dollars thereabouts but the impact would not be you know two million jobs or three million jobs but rather twenty five million jobs. it would also include a financial reform as well as a series of democracy reforms which clearly we need if we are going to be able to implement these economic reforms but getting to the jobs piece because that's really what is i think front and center in most people's minds that's really where the urgent need is so focusing on that what the green new deal would do would be

able to basically create jobs in the areas of the new green economy to create sustainable communities and thriving local economies so what does that mean that means jobs in the typically green areas like in green renewable energy in public transportation in clean manufacturing. and in also local and sustainable agriculture so these are sort of the pillars of it in addition that would include also jobs that make our communities socially sustainable that ensure that we have teachers and that we have child care and senior care workers and after school workers and so on it would begin to fill the critical needs we have people who are willing and able to do the work we can redirect funds instead of two wars wall street and tax breaks for the wealthy we can redirect that money there is enough to put to basically invest in our economy to be able to solve the economic problem at

the same time that we solve our environmental emergencies well that's that's quite a package. tell us you're running for in the primary to be the pretty good presidential candidate for the grants already or to the to the candidates seas of david cobb and ralph nader and others kenny cynthia mckinney . tell us a little bit about your son so i am a. medical doctor by training that discovered that there were a lot of problems with our healthcare system and actually with our health but that we were neglecting the very simple cost effective solutions up front as well as neglecting a you know a win win medicare for all single payer type healthcare system that could actually provide the care that people need to so as a medical doctor early in my practice i saw health care system really failing us i

thought gee i'm a you know i'm a doctor i'll be a public advocate i will talk to my legislators and you know you start doing that and you learn pretty quickly that if we want to fix the things that are broken the health care we need the jobs we need the healthy communities we need the schools you name it if we want to fix those problems we have to first fix the political system which is terribly broken and unfortunately you know is being run by the foxes in charge of the chicken coop here and you know over i'd say two decades really of advocacy i've only seen us backslide and backslide to where you know i began to feel like instead of being a doctor of health care in the clinic i needed to move up and be a doctor of politics which is what i talk about now practicing political medicine because that is sort of the mother of all illness to this point we've got to fix that one in order to fix the other one i think so i agree the. green party in the

united states one of the things that i'm most on are about the green party that one of the main reasons that i voted for ralph nader in two thousand i lived in vermont . i knew i could make my vote would much affect the presidential election but i wanted the green party to get the federal matching funds and it's because there are at that time two thousand there were something like three. thirty communities across the country i'm not sure san francisco had by that point yet but they're the largest had adopted in one of voting something that is opposed by both democrats and republicans because it would break the doowop away and the green party has been doing this in at the community level and i just have been aggressively encouraging people for ever to get involved with the green party at the local level even if you're going to vote for a democrat or republican at the national level. although i have no problems as i saw the. top of the national house the green party doing right. good

grades so. you know as you know there are a lot of unhappy campers out there you know with the crisis in our jobs and our and people think million people losing their homes and students up to their eyeballs in debt and basically you know being indentured servants right now you know polls are showing and just the man and woman on the street will tell you you know they are not happy with what we're getting from establishment politics right now and a recent washington post poll i believe like a week or two ago said that about forty nine percent of people you know were saying we need a third party and were seriously considering voting for one and surprise surprise we have actually we have two prominent ones the green party and then if you want to go to the right wing whack a doodle go to libertarians i would advise that yeah. that's right i think we need a public interest third party you know that is a third party that stands alone because it is not financed by corporate money you

know we are not. sponsored by parties the donate with with a lot of strings attached so we really can be a party that's of by and for the people that supports you know creating the jobs we need a single payer health care for all health care is a human right which will actually save us trillions of. you know at the same time that you know that it provides health care to everyone forgive student debt and provide college education as a as a right there's a lot we could do. thanks so much as talking i wish you the very best thing. to really get a gauge of how far behind the united states is in the green revolution sweeping the planet take a look at what's happening in germany for example right now while we're still subsidizing big oil germany is cutting back on their solar subsidies and say wait a minute they're cutting back why would they be cutting back bloomberg reported

germany the world's biggest market for solar power plants record auctions and subsidies for the industry as part of a program to rein in a boom in installations here that happened about a decade ago the german government said you know we don't want to build any more nuclear power plants but we need the electricity from at least two of them couple of gigawatts of power so let's give people an incentive to put solar panels on the roof and the banks an incentive to funded and the way it worked it actually end up not costing the government anything but it you know it was a really good subsidy it worked quite well. and they were trying to get to go out or maybe three and what happened was in the first five six years they end up with ten gigawatts they've got too much electricity in germany so they're cutting their subsidies and also the price of a lot of solar power is collapsing in germany i mean which is great it's the panels are getting cheaper and cheaper they don't need to subsidize them other european nations like the united kingdom italy france are also cutting their subsidies

because the prices are falling they don't need to subsidize so much solar installations last year in germany alone doubled the government goal. it's very very simple if anyone doesn't think that the age of fossil fuels is over their nuts this is the beginning of the end of the carbon nuclear power era if the u.s. doesn't adapt like germany and the rest of the developed world that we're going to come out the other side of this energy revolution as a second tier economy. coming up after the break republicans in the house can't seem to get their act together and invest in our nation's roads bridges and transportation how much longer do americans have to wait for twenty first century infrastructure. we just put a picture of me when i was like nine years old and she told the truth. i

think i am a total get of that crap in hip hop music and. she was kind of a yesterday. i'm very proud of the world without its 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 realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture.

if you rely on our nation's roads and bridges you're screwed we like to think the united states leads the world in everything but when it comes to infrastructure investments we're not even close to the top in fact our infrastructure ranks sixteenth in the world be in japan and iceland so that means time for some serious

investments in infrastructure i'd say so republicans in the house can't seem to get their act together to make it happen their version of an infrastructure spending bill was deeply flawed fail to get enough support from either side of the aisle and is now indefinitely on hold so how much longer do americans have to wait for a twenty first century infrastructure and how my tea party republicans blow up any sort of investment in rebuilding america here to address that question is surely a borrow former secretary of transportation for the state of virginia and current senior trip transportation policy analyst at the reason foundation surely welcome back thank you good to be here great to have you with us while the rest of the world is building high speed rail investing in green infrastructure we seem to be getting stupid is the time to admit that the era of fossil fuels an internal combustion engines is over well the way we're funding transportation right now user pay user benefit has been based on the gas tax that was the decision made back in

the fifty's to build the interstate system and what we've done over the years is divert an awful lot of that money almost thirty percent. to others things not necessarily things that everybody would agree with and into question is sure to be the federal government's responsibility to build sidewall build. museums to build roads and handsome and well it should be the seventy percent goes to roads but the problem is we've fallen behind in all of the good ideas that you're suggesting in terms of solar and electric cars and so on don't pay fuel taxes so maybe we should be looking at sort of down the road maybe we should be paying on the vehicle they use or charge a vehicle mile fee and let that be the funding for the roads well part of the part of the gas tax problem is that it's fixed at eighteen so it's all right leave

eighteen cents a gallon point six eighteen and change and then the tap their yachts. but they're not percentage i mean if if it had been back in the fifty's at three percent or two percent or one percent or five percent or whatever of the cost of gasoline like european countries do and as the price of gas goes up the income for the revenue from the tax would go up right now we've got a situation where cars are getting more efficient and as cars get more efficient people people are driving was like the demand for gasoline right now is lower than it has been since two thousand and seven or a walk in gasoline in america and and the gas tax is just not keeping up it's not generating the revenue yeah i remember that the debate back in the fifty's when they were looking at the interstate it was the debate at that time and hindsight's twenty twenty but the debate at that time was is that fuel taxes as a surrogate or as the user fee or is that tolls and you know looking at it now for the interstate maybe tolling would have been better

well and in fact a lot of people if you're if reason is in with the libertarians they're suggesting that we should privatized all the roads turn him over to big corporations and let them charge tolls and drive out your driveway well and these wild thing is that the interstate now everything's virtually fifty years old and you can't just go paving and patching these for. for add in for not item you really need to now dig down and literally rebuild it the standards are different now so tolling would make a lot of sense for rebuilding about doing high speed rail. trying to just laid five thousand miles of high speed rail in less than a decade five but our first of all how are you going to pay for it you can use all the gas tax and not maintain it would you know that would. try to put the money down and said ok we'll make a back and user fee from the government sure well they're not about it yeah but they're not paying for that they are not breaking even yet on that high speed rail

or i would seriously doubt that if they're going to ever break even francis making money on their high speed rail joanne's making money there as well but they've never paid for the capital cost yet but when you take the societal game it's out off you got you no longer have people driving cars you no longer have carbon pollution and yet those are going to be a longer have car accidents no longer have fifty thousand people you die in car accidents it's less than that now but the problem is that you know our country is a lot bigger than all those countries other than china all go it all and china while we're small i've said other than china all those other countries those so those are really what i call short haul airline i got it surely we have to wrap it up thank you saying well you know when i spoke it's good talking with you as republicans try to revive the keystone x.l. pipeline we can see how wrong their priorities are rather than trying to move across the nation as quickly as we can with the keystone x.l. pipeline frankly i think we should be trying to build people across the nation as

quickly as possible. you know there's screwed news workers in indiana are fighting back against republican governor mitch daniels who recently made in the end of the twenty third right to work for less state in the nation as you pointed out often on the show workers and right to work for less states make an average of five thousand dollars a year less than workers in non right to work for a lot of states internationally. operating engineers local one fifty four thousand members filed a lawsuit on wednesday asking a judge to block that state's right to work for less law arguing that among other things it violates the equal protection clause in the constitution regardless of how the court rules what the war on unions proves in indiana and elsewhere around the nation is that the days of workers receiving a fair wage in america are probably over which is one of the reasons why the occupy wall street movement has been able to gain traction over the last few months and now one offshoot of the movement calling itself the ninety nine percent declaration

is planning to create a national general assembly to compile a list of grievances to take to the president congress and the supreme court later this year included in that list jobs for all americans and a fair wage for more on this david is that it can it can it david can joins me now he's an attorney and candidate for the delegate to the ninety nine percent declaration david welcome thank you great to have you with us and before we get down to what you guys are doing first of all. the dockyard wall street folks heard that we were going to have you on the show we got a e-mail from their p.r. department the official new york occupy wall street saying that i've presented declaration and it's called for a national general assembly in philadelphia in july is not affiliated with or indorsed by occupy wall street and the organizers plans blatantly contradict occupy wall street's stated principles and quote. response. it's not unusual that when progressives set up a firing line they stand in

a circle and they point in words. i think it's accurate to say that this is not an organization that is affiliated with occupy wall street it's moved by the spirit of the occupy encampments all over the country. you mentioned a couple of things that are in the draft declaration the actual declaration will be written by the delegates from philadelphia. jobs for all right to work. get. being workers organized is something that we all have in common yet the occupy wall street movement is moving in one direction they're occupying camp that's all over the country and there are probably as many fingers on the hands to wiggle upwards as there are ways to approach this sure. present decoration is simply one of those ways and i can't say that even represent the ninety nine percent declaration i'm running for one position out of eight hundred and seventy hopefully we will have delegates from each of the congressional districts in the country plus the last

column in d.c. and the other territories in the us. we all agree i think that the wealthiest americans are organized. the wealth in america is concentrated and the only way workers are going to get a fair shake is if they too are organized right to work laws or as you accurately described them right to work for less laws cut down on that organization my hat's off to the operating engineers they are making the right equal protection argument it is absolutely unfair for a union to have to bargain for a contract but not have all the workers who benefit from that contract pay for the negotiation sure so that while many people when occupy encampments around the country are not members of unions they're all workers i heard you say earlier today some of them are underemployed some of them are unemployed

a fair number of them here in d.c. at both encampments are employed that's why they have showers there that's why they have bathrooms there these are people who are working and they're not able to get a decent wage because unlike the people who are trying to pay them the least amount they are not organized so you know the first military constitution says that we have the right to organize. together to assemble peaceably assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances and that's there for your list of grievances on the website you can actually come up with a list which is not unlike the original declaration of independence here's the problems we have buddy that we would like fix. a lot of it reads like stuff from the new deal in the green party i mean it's pretty straightforward pretty common sense stuff how are you how are you reaching out to america how are you trying to pull people together to become delegates here if you're trying to be a delegate yourself we have about a. social media largely there is

a ninety nine percent declaration website there are facebook pages anybody who wants to look for may. they're welcome to get ahold of me if you want to find me easily find my blog by googling the phrase left wing bullshit i am the number one hit in all of america for left wing bullshit and i can buy a happy man ok we're going to the bleep that toys if it's ok. in. it in twenty thirty seconds the assemblies how are they supposed to work what we hope will happen is that after the delegates are elected in the week and first week of june we will organize on line to take this draft document that you've seen and whittle it down to something that makes sense and is put forward in a way that everybody can understand the final drafting will take place in philadelphia during the week for the july the first the first one exactly i thank you very much and thank you great to have you with us david. the nature of all movements is to start out with

a honeymoon phase where everybody's in the same page and then to splinter to pieces that work together or sometimes even work against each other these are actually the signs of a movement maturing in my opinion are a good thing for more information on this particular offshoot of the original occupy movement check out the ninety nine percent declaration for. crazy alert they want to keep it p.g. the academy of motion picture arts the group responsible for sunday's academy awards has pulled the event's tickets from actor saussure baron cohen he was to be at the awards for his role in the movie hugo which is nominated for eleven awards baron cohen planned to arrive on the red carpet dressed as a dictator which happens to be his main character in his upcoming movie the dictator farrelly matter are.

currently the academy was worried the baron cohen would cause too much of a ruckus on the red carpet and would be shamelessly promote his movie baron cohen was the star of the hit comedies brat and bruno and it seems that while the academy doesn't mind women competing over who can wear the most provocative even in dress they don't want men wearing anything other than penguin wear tuxedoes apparently the academy has was one group of people the world's newest dictator just couldn't control. after the break the audience booed the jobbik of contraception when it was discussed at last night's republican debate how long will contraceptives for women remain a hot button issue in america. for five. five

. you know 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. are welcome to the big picture.

mr. welcome back to the big picture i'm tom.