can the progressive commentator sam sax and mike ricks associate editor and columnist at reason magazine and reason dot com and thank you all for being here with this new job numbers out today two hundred twenty seven thousand jobs created last month this is the twenty fourth consecutive nonstop month of private sector job creation third straight month of over two hundred thousand a month this isn't. this isn't like the boom of the one nine hundred fifty s. this is pretty good take a look at this at this chart this looks less where's the chart there ok see it over there in the graphic right there. the red is the bush administration the blues the obama administration this is private sector job growth and it's not just looking like a bikini anymore thirty look like a mountain so how can republicans say that the stimulus package didn't work and does some good economic news mean that the republicans are going to start yelling about abortion and guns and gays because it was the talk about the. time i don't

think the economy is nearly as good as these numbers would have us believe i would say the government's cooking its books they are completely removing people who aren't even looking for jobs these are not no those from the administration these are numbers from from like the congressional budget office i mean there's i mean with the other agencies that are not hard as though well wait a minute i think this is a little bit of sleight of hand even for governmental accounting ok and i would challenge these numbers i think they're using the same standards that every president has used when it comes to job creation but i think you're partially right there's two layers to be economic recovery there's a person here which the optically good how many jobs are created in the unemployment rate and that connects with low information voters they say you know will be economy better and that hurts republican politicians who want to connect with him and blame obama or the president obama for the bad economy but there's a whole nother level where the economy really isn't doing so well i mean there's still forty nine people in poverty. african-american.

unemployment. actually and those kind of things identify real structural problems with the economy that republicans don't want to talk about it because that would go against you know free trade that would go against i just know well it's a let's give mike you know i just like challenge it is that graph shows amount to looks more like a foothill to me though i'm grateful for anything that's that's above the law and to be completely honest and i would just go to say to that i think you know you asked if you thought if we thought that the debate over contraception was a distraction from economic improvement considering that the economic improvement is really not that outstanding i also think that there's merit to some of the contraceptive debate at least in so far as that this really goes back to obamacare and what companies should be spending and what people should be paying so so you think a private corporation should be able to use a religion to define what kind of benefits are going to offer their employees i

think a religious group should be able to use religion as you're in favor of sharia law in the united states being supported by the u.s. as i don't think this is a i'm not a fan of sharia law being spoiled by united states cover us also not a fan of secularism being enforced by the united states i mean on a private research i mean organisation i think this is sort of a distraction what we're really going back to and i think there are some great points been brought up by conservatives such as none of this not of the debate over the contraception fight addresses the fact that the penalty for not providing insurance coverage is significantly less than the cost of insurance coverage it would have been talk about the fact that the rebels as you know if you tell us about that's that's a whole right i mean you know so but let me move along here looks like food stamps are a crucial lifeline for americans still on the economy. americans were climbing their way out of the bush great recession and you have analysis by the center of budget policy priorities shows that food assistance has cut the number of american households living in extreme poverty which is less than two dollars. day in half

and their food stamps have cut the number of children living in extreme poverty from two point eight million to one point four million. sorry to interrupt you hust a do with the politicization of the legal aliens they are able to get around this food stamp ruled by if you have a child born to let you leave the elections and we can who are talking to that was the immigration policy another time and i'm just curious as a republican who thinks we should cut food stamps why do you hate children will tell me i don't hate children at all i think you know that as a father especially as you so right about what you want i just received an e-mail today that said the apartment of agriculture actually oversees the food stamp apartment and says that more americans are receiving food stamps than ever before the raid to so many prisoners were americans and because we got the bush great recession well i don't know if that's the case but what i think they could take a lesson from another division of department of agriculture that also oversees the parks and wildlife where they say they're encouraging americans not to feed the

wild animals because they'll become dependent on these handouts and there's a lesson bear there usually is so you're saying they don't feed the poor children because the well that's an example of a little medicine example of the lack of compassion. towards the poor but also just a lack of economic knowledge about what food stamps do there should be more people on it right now because it's one of the best stimulus programs that are out there you know if you give people money to go to the grocery store and buy food in the grocery store puts more so i want to back here's the numbers for a dollar spent on food stamps to get a dollar seventy three cents back in the economy unemployment insurance dollars spent it's a dollar sixty for infrastructure dollars think it's a dollar fifty nine all these are things that republicans oppose on the other hand the three things that republicans support capital gains cuts you spend a dollar you get thirty seven cents back corporate tax cuts the senate all you get thirty cents back bush tax cuts spend a dollar get twenty nine cents and the source for all this is movie. which is not

like you know not radical left wing i mean this is moody's for goodness the food stamps the food issue would be much better served in the private sector and to do that would be well i'll tell you you could churches you have organizations you can have mosques who are willing to help their local community feels like do you agree with this idea people hungry kids on my show up at companies and on my list of leaders be things that i'd like to see the government spend less on food stamps at the very bottom and i i i do have a problem with any any campaign platform that says we should cut welfare for poor people before we cut welfare for rich people and i you know i don't like i mean you know you want you want talk about credits we should take away let's take away green tax credits for we cut food stamps that's one person. it's likely the only thing i want to read it yet let it literally go energy subsidies before i mean i found a food stamps was was a one time republicans on public assistance myself as a kid and i like to eat it i like eating but i see a lot of a lot of corporate welfare that i'd like to see cut first to be completely honest

there is no record of wealth or it's a little unfair to put corporate welfare on the same level as you know i would say about this is that we have to stem cells of us not smaller explained i don't remember explain it well let's let's get on the citizens united here it looks like the plutocrats want to hijack our democracy this blows my mind the largest corporate lobbying organization in the nation maybe in the world the u.s. chamber of commerce is is targeting two democrats right now one of them sure of brown already spending money on the campaign here eight months out and they say that they plan to spend fifty million dollars to defeat democrats specifically to defeat democrats. more than a dozen senate seats more than thirty house seats that they've already targeted and she's to be a crime and this is in one thousand and seven and so many act was passed to make this illegal and the supreme court has overturned this how can it be a good thing for our democracy to have corporate interests deciding who our candidates are you know or are having such a large influence. as you said sam low information voters people who just pay

attention the last few weeks before the campaign and watch what we're already seeing the effects of it because in two thousand and ten when it was the first election after citizens united over three hundred million dollars and outside corporate spending went into that and it elected one of the most corporate friendly house of representatives are seeing now after fifteen months of the republican party being in control the house the voters are fed up with it if you look at the polls that whether it's the war on unions the war on women or whatever you want to choose overwhelmingly overwhelming talking about i don't think i have to struggle to get it to explain my point there is one of saying is this is the way we used to have a system and people said that it helps incumbents and favors incumbents well now we have a system that favors wealthy people and the as you said you could have kratz are going to spend lots of money to protect their interests you know the american people don't want the republicans this was an egalitarian paradise before so this is united no the united states problems yeah i don't know and i don't think this but it they talk about the fact that this kind of spending used to be illegal as is

any sort of argument in the alien and sedition act me free speech illegal you know i mean that was a great that was that was seventeen eighty nine i'm going to say tonight and as it is years away and it was limited to automatically expire on march sixth one thousand nine hundred because they knew that so you'd have a kind of crazy things united if it was you know we have a congress and i want to vote there are you well you know i think citizens united was pretty close to saying i want to pay don't think more corporate money in our elections is a good thing you know what i've been watching the g.o.p. primary and i think it's lasted as long as it has we're going to see much about the candidates we have because of higher campaign spending and to be completely honest i think your guy's going to have a much better chance in two thousand so we'll see if you think that it's a good thing that we have a political system where the only reason the new gingrich is still in the race is because he's got a billionaire the only reason i'm excited over it is he's got i don't think if you have big problems plutocrats i don't think that campaign repealing citizens united is a solve for. but it would have taken the maximum amount that anybody could you but

i got very good at it this is campaign spending is not the only way that people who have their wealth through the romance between big government and big business that is not the only way that they can get things escalate is that it has gotten so right is so high ok i agree but i mean if you look at if you look at lobbying laws that we have in place i mean we have we have a lot of things that are supposedly in place to limit the influence of money in politics that i don't think they work i think that wants the wants you have the money in the hands of the few which let's be honest a lot of these companies get it through corporate you know crony capitalism i think wants wants it's reached that point it doesn't matter whether you have citizen solicitor not i don't well i don't think it's in a world created david worse we're screwed i mean it's just that's a tough thing so i'm going to take issue with this gentleman who said the people don't want republicans in the house i mean when they do the arbiter of what the people are just looking i'm just looking at the polls in the way things seem to be going i mean if you look at those who said it was the force it was your whole story

on what we're seeing in wisconsin what we're seeing in ohio when you have got the summer already the lowest it's ever been in place is that a unique event or i think so if it's the lowest in history that doesn't look. so so you referenced the supreme court need and you said the the supreme court hearing or the supreme court ruling was tight it was a five four decision these guys were not elected and there's nothing in the constitution that says that they actually have the power to overturn laws made by congress is not time for us to at the very least amend the constitution and say corporations are people and money is property and not speech and since the supreme court has been on this tear for almost a hundred years and no legislature and no president has ever been supportive of it well i mean again if the problem is that the supreme court is an elected i don't see how repealing citizens united or legislating around it solves the problem that you're going to nine people nine people who are an elected in concert for life how they end up there the last word on so many. in this country and i don't understand

how the last word on cost. they took out of themselves nato through the right. to be saying that allowing corporations to spend this money will give rise to corruption i think it's very clear that. after the break after a decade of two failed wars in the middle east one conservatives want to take us to war with iraq coming up.

and then. comes the big.

on the back of the rubble our panel david selig sam sacks mike riggs let's get back to it the drumbeat for war in iran is starting to get deafening mitt romney wrote an op ed this week in the washington post in which he explicitly said that iran was

building a nuclear weapon and was speeding down that course all sixteen us intelligence agencies contradict that say that that is not the case and in response to this the extra rector of mossad efraim halevy came out and said that romney was making the problem worse that romney was wrong and us are israel's former intelligence chief meyer doug on who just retired like biassed year said the exact same thing if he didn't in fact he said nuclear iran is not an existential threat they are not suicidal they want the bomb for defensive purposes and if they got it it wouldn't be an accidental threat to israel this is the intelligence director of israel no intelligence agency in the united states has said that iran is trying to build a bomb fact they've all said you know they're not they're pushing a lot of uranium they haven't even begun the process of putting or even having the pieces put together are we seeing the same sort of propaganda the little girl. i don't think so i think what we have right now is

a very serious problem that's about to come to fruition it's ironic that we're only looking at a few republicans rather than the commander in chief here he has been engaging in nothing but military adventurism and it makes you wonder why he's just days slapped down the republicans for talking too much about war i mean this is definitely not the best situation in the world and nobody really wants iran to have nuclear weapon i guess another issue is whether or not we have a right to tell you whether they should be able to have nuclear weapons not nobody's thinking about the next step ok we launch a military attack on iran are we in iraq what happens next this isn't this isn't even iraq this isn't afghanistan this is a developed nation that we can quickly with one errant bomb drop radicalize the whole population we have a much bigger problem on our i guess a ridiculous argument ok let's i want to get my stuff and this is what i mean i'm pretty tough on all this stuff and i agree with david but we've seen lots of military adventurism from obama and i don't honestly believe that challenging

republicans on warmongering is anything but a political stunt i think if he had reason to he do it i don't think there's any reluctance on the part some democrats or republicans to keep our nose out of the rest of the world's business i also do think that nuclear weapons are an existential threat but i think they've been existential threats since we bombed to russia and nagasaki and. i have no desire personally to send anybody off to another war so when gorbachev and reagan agreed to take nukes to zero. we missed an opportunity to bring that one out ok last question quick for. the right wing media machine scandal machine just spit out its latest non-story the one thousand nine hundred videos of a young barack obama introducing professor derrick bell to a rally to give an african-american woman professor tenure and since professor bell is an african-american and this video proves that barack obama is indeed a radical just as sean hannity. ok anyhow so if president obama is a radical for having a black professor and what other past president might have hogged their way into

radicalism a george w. bush clearly seen here hugging his way into islamic fundamentalism with the saudi prince we've even had a nice sweet kiss on the lips ronald reagan seen here hugging his way into being a communist sympathizer with grover shot or thomas jefferson who knew and worked with louis the sixteenth and most likely had his way to be coming to french. i'm going to go with none of the above the most radical move when obama the president of general electric and gave them that sweetheart tax abatement that was much worse than any of these times he had been in charge of us jobs thing i'm not as much worried about the hug had he done the terrorist fishbone with professor bell then i would have been outrage well this was a terrorist was it depends on how you look at it or who's looking at it i suppose it's what i actually just find it bad enough that he's a neo liberal technocrat i don't really care who he spoke to president obama i find

i have a problem i don't think they thought of lad only it was a you know no nortec knocker c.i.i. my problem is not that he hugged derrick bell it sways running the country right now i don't care about alinsky i don't care about reverend wright i don't care about their i care about right now so as opposed to the joe part yeah i hear oh ok yeah so my clients are is that it would be jimmy carter who was caught hugging really nelson and thus must be a pro pock radical right which god there you are you i'm with i think it's time for us to reexamine those laws david sam mike thank you all for thank you very much for having me thomas a real pleasure of seeing these opulent artsy security if you richard.

a free yell about wanting to be free from the government you really need to understand exactly what freedom means case in point fifty six year old mary brown of florida mary is a small business owner and the lead plaintiff any case challenging the constitutionality of president obama's health reform law the affordable care act also known as obamacare mary herself doesn't have health insurance according to her lawyer doesn't want it doesn't want to have to provide her employees with it and in her words doesn't want the government to tell her she has to have it to mary brown that's what freedom is but is that really freedom according to court records mary brown and her husband were forced to file for bankruptcy last fall thanks in part to thousands of dollars in unpaid medical bills a burden that comes with trying to survive in america without medical insurance in fact unpaid medical bills sixty percent of all bankruptcies in america today

something that doesn't happen in any other developed nation in the world. because the rest of the developed world knows that if you don't have health insurance. then you're not really free if you can't stand on that base think about it for a second are you free if you're sick and you can't get medical care are you free if you're broken wiped out because of medical bills you know that's not freedom and that's why progressives in america want universal single payer health care it's so the basic requirement that basic requirement for free good health is guaranteed to everyone and that's why president obama passed the affordable care act which will give virtually all americans access to affordable health insurance which currently fifty three million americans don't have access to and bus are really free and that's why the story of mary brown is so ironic she doesn't realize that the government is actually trying to give her freedom not take it away she believes in

the idea of freedom promoted by the republican party the freedom only means freedom from the government perhaps perhaps summed up best by rick perry last year in this next video discovered by andrew breitbart and his team you'll see ogletree playing an extended version of the one nine hundred ninety one protester in one of his lectures in two thousand and eleven at harvard university let's watch this open up your hearts and your minds are the words. in the president says that was not the right clip my apologies fredo but in any case rick perry was talking about you know freedom from taxation right freedom from taxation that means you're free to keep all your money and when the government starved of revenue you're also free to drive on crumbling roads and collapsing bridges you're free to put out your own house fires as if you know firefighters

you're free to catch your own criminals since they'll be no cops you're free to defend the nation on your own sense of you know military you're free to fend for yourself when you grow older since they'll be no social security or medicare so that sort of freedom you want. freedom for graduation that means you're free to breathe polluted air and contaminated water you're free to eat beef laced with eco lion poison spend your free to let your kids play with ploys doused in leather is that really what freedom means in america or freedom from litigation that means you're free to have the wrong arm amputated and not have the right to sue your free from having any recourse when an oil rig explodes killing your loved one or ruining your thriving tourism business you're free from having a chance to save your home and livelihood after some banks cons you into an exploding mortgage essentially means you're free to get screwed by corporations and as libertarian ron paul suggested you're free to die alone in the gutter. this

whole idea of thank you thank you thank you thank you saying society should just let him. know who. coincidentally paul's own campaign manager in two thousand and eight it's all about the new account snyder was free to die when he contract in ammonia ron paul doesn't give his employees health insurance so snyder racked up four hundred thousand dollars in hospital bills before finally dying and leaving his family stuck with his medical bills and i'm not the freedom for libertarians and lovers of iran but frankly i don't think most americans consider that freedom and this understanding of freedom that has been promoted by the republican party because it translates in a massive profits for their campaign donors millionaires billionaires banks toure's oil barons and for profit health insurance c.e.o.'s is ruining the country for example the us chamber of commerce is already in the process of spending millions of dollars to take down democratic senators and members of congress and replace

them with republican corporate shills you're not free when you're elections are determined by corporate front groups president franklin roosevelt as well as other presidents from both parties in history including white eisenhower and teddy roosevelt both republicans have a very different definition of free it is one nine hundred thirty six speech before the democratic national convention president roosevelt quoted an old english judge who. necessitous men are not free. that means if you're in need of the basic essentials to survive you're not free whether married brown realized or not she's not free if she doesn't have health care. if you're not free if you don't have a job and no prospects are you not free if you don't have enough money to feed your children you're not free if you don't have a roof over your head clothes to dress yourself or heat in the winter only when these basic essential for providing for all americans free and chase their dreams

free to invent and build free to act it was based on this understanding of freedom the president roosevelt introduced a second bill of rights in the one nine hundred forty four state of the union address those rights include the right to a useful and profitable job the right to earn enough the to earn enough for a decent living enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation the right to everything for every farmer raise and sell his products the right of every businessman to be free from monopolies the right of every family to a decent home the right to adequate medical care the right to adequate protection from economic fears of old age sickness accident and unemployment and the right to a good education as roosevelt understood it these rights guaranteed security and only when we were secure are we free unfortunately president roosevelt died before you could fight for and pass

a second bill of rights and today freedom is under attack by corporate powers and misinformed voters like mary brown who believe that the united states is better off with corporations running everything instead of the government of we the people making choices for ourselves we have to ask ourselves as americans if we really do aspire to live in a society based on selfishness and corporate rule because that's where we're headed no longer are we our brother's keeper and no longer are we that we society that provided a quality standard of living to a vast middle class more than thirty years ago if we want that back then we have to reclaim the word freedom and kick the corporations out of the temple of government . that's it for the big picture tonight remember that monday my radio show will be live from three to six pm eastern time on free speech t.v. and radio stations across the nation and around the world and. when you show up get out there to add to your.

welcome to the big.

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you.