well i'm john berman in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture yesterday a man walked up to the greek parliament building in athens and shot himself in the head the latest consequence of trickle down austerity measures choking the greek nation so the republicans are ready to bring the same trickle down austerity to the united states the pain and suffering follow suit here also kids in america have been eating twinkies since nineteen thirty people running that corporations and manufacturers the twenty's might just have broken the law story of c.e.o.

greed at the twenty factory and what it means for american capitalism in general and finally the koch funded american legislative exchange council alec may have met its match coming up how one campaign is having success cutting off the flow of corporate money out. you need to know this the banks there's an technocrats pushing trickle down austerity in greece now have a lot on their hands on wednesday a seventy seven year old retired pharmacist walked up to the greek parliament building and shot himself in the head to protest the crippling austerity measures that are ripping apart that nation and and left a suicide note we'll get into that in just a minute but as suicide prompted thousands of greeks to take to the streets in central athens in fresh new protests against trickle down austerity since trickle

down austerity began increase suicide rates have jumped up forty percent so not only is trickle down austerity bad economically it's bad morally as well yet it's just the thing that the republican budget written by multimillionaire congressman paul ryan wants to bring to the united states of america and if republicans win big in november and are able to carry out their trickle down austerity agenda and we can we can expect more suicides here in the united states as well here's the bigger picture back in two thousand and two the b.b.c. reported on the science of the relationship between political decisions and suicides with a headline b.b.c. headline more suicides under conservative rule this is the friggin b.b.c. it's not polemic it's stop political it's straight up science the article opens the suicide rate increases under conservative governments research suggests look at the study look at virtually the entire twentieth century started one thousand one right

through ninety ninety eight and both the u.k. and australia we looked at all these various prime ministers with governments in both countries were to actually did impact the suicide rate the u.k. raised it and droughts in australia periodic droughts wipe out family farms in australia raise the suicide rate in that country so as the b.b.c. reported quote after adjusting for these factors the figures clearly showed the highest rates of suicide occurred when both conservative state and federal governments were in power. they also look at what happened with the liberal labor party their version of our democratic party when that party was in power what happened then the conclusion reported by the b.b.c. conversely the lowest rates occurred on state and federal governments were both labor they were able to pretty tightly pinpoint the numbers in fact here's how the b.b.c. reported it when the conservatives ruled the state and federal governments then were seventeen percent more likely to commit suicide than when the labor party was in power women were forty percent more likely to kill themselves. why would that be

the b.b.c. side of the researchers saying conservative rule traditionally implies a less interventionist and more market oriented policy and labor rule this may make people feel more detached from society conservatives also make the rich richer the poor per and you know we we've seen in numerous studies are all around the world that increases suicide rates any quality the b.b.c. ended their article with these two very honest characteristically british lunt paragraphs overall they say the figures suggest that thirty five thousand people even on this is the b.b.c. would not have died had the conservatives not been in power equivalent to one suicide for every day of the twentieth century or two for every day that the conservatives ruled the u.k. conservative party refused to comment on the research the arab spring you'll recall began with a very public suicide of a street vendor in tunisia soon that government was in egypt and libya now in

athens a seventy seven year old retired pharmacist left his daughter the suicide note in which he compared the banks to yours who kicked out the democratically elected prime minister agrees with the greeks who collaborated with the nazis during world war two he pointed out the banks are stealing people's pensions are the cause and are so scary the same way republicans have work to destroy medicare and social security in the united states for generations he wrote the occupation government is for it literally annihilated any possibility for my survival depended on a decent pension which i personally paid for thirty five years without any state support his my age does not give me the possibility for a dynamic reaction like picking up a kalashnikov i see no other solution than the decent and before i start searching in the garbage for food which happened only a few hundred yards from the parliament building and setting up a new round of protests against this whole conservative austerity program meanwhile here in the us last year the c.d.c. reported on

a us study of most of the twentieth century it sounds. suicide rates more than doubled during economic disasters like the last republican great depression bloomberg noted the study's lead author and economist at the c.d.c. is saying economic problems can impact how people feel about themselves and their futures as well as their relationships with families and friends it's truly tragic that it takes suicides to show us how destructive trickledown conservative austerity programs are and it's tragic that it's taken a second republican great depression to wake up americans to the need for a strong social safety net we have our repeat of the great depression is bonus army right now the occupied and suicides are up as more and more people are being thrown out of their houses by bankers are being denied health coverage by for profit health insurance. underlying all of this is massive wealth inequality in the united states currently at levels that we haven't seen since the one nine hundred twenty s. right before the last republican great depression and when you look at any kind of social ills and suicide rates the crime rates the drug abuse wealth inequality

amplifies that wealth inequality is like a disease in the national economy it's a disease caused by these same trickle down austerity measures that have been pushed on the greeks and are being pushed now in the united states the republican house of representatives joining me now for more about the effects of wealth inequality and how it's destroying the gravel economy and chuck collatz senior scholar at the institute policy studies and co-author of the coeditor of the website any quality dot org and author of the book ninety nine on how wealth inequality is wrecking the world and what we can do about it great book chuck thanks tom good to be with you welcome to the program this is this is marvelous what's your take on what's coming out of greece right now well i think you you know i think that the this expansion of austerity is is waking people up i mean we're going to see it here we're not broke and people know that there's plenty of wealth out there that we're living in an unequal society and yet paul ryan budget the house budget is like it's the blueprint for funneling more wealth to the one

percent so how did. are there parallels and conserves low draw parallels between us in greece and say i had the greeks they were living beyond their means we're living beyond our means we've got these big budget deficits. are their wealth i think they're in a way it's a mania factored crisis if we don't have interest i don't know so much about greece i think that the i know that the revenue system in greece is not function very well for quite a while yet they don't have the rich we do have a tax system we have attempted to tax our rich over the last fifty years it's the share of taxes paid by that one percent just keeps going down down down there are more global companies that are gaming the system and moving their taxes or pretending that their profits are and offshore so they're not paying taxes here. so we're not there's substantial wealth and income out there it could be invested in the things that we're cutting right now so so what's the situation in the united states of wealth inequality well i think since the first gilded age

a hundred years ago we're now at this the zenith really of extreme inequality since world war two and it as you were saying in your in your talk it's really undermines everything we hold the or whether it's our public health. opportunity for kids the stability of the economy even the people who care about market capitalism should care about these extreme inequalities because it's distorting. the functioning of the market so it really matters you know people say oh i don't care about how rich the rich are well guess what that actually affects the quality of all of our lives you're familiar with richard wilkerson and kate tickets were yeah absolutely i mean inequality makes the sick and it makes us unhappy so it's really quite remarkable what's the endgame of these people pushing this i call it trickle down austerity because it really ties back to the reagan trickle down theory. and if anybody else is calling that a lot of it that mean. what's the end game are they don't well you know at

a certain point there's sort of this inequality death spiral where the a segment of the one percent i call them the rule breakers the game change their game riggers keep changing the rules to benefit themselves at the expense of the ninety nine percent but it starts to backfire even for the one percent you know when wealth concentrates as it has i think the two thousand and eight economic meltdown was a little window into what happens when you have these extreme wealth inequalities that that sixty percent of the population's real wages are stagnant or falling and their real buying power has eroded and then the very rich are speculating and gambling in the economy basically it takes us to the brink of economic instability . and there was a. a report from the center for american progress i think a couple days ago that the return on investment lobby for the oil industry is smart four thousand percent some some massive amount and in the banking industry it was

over it was a five figure it was a twelve or seventeen thousand person. you know and then they asked the question which oracle has your i arrange of enter your for a one way or geo wonders. to what extent is the fact that the supreme court in a whole series of decisions over the last century has brought us the best government money can buy to what extent is that responsible for this inequality and and what solutions are yeah well it's a huge part of that inequality death spiral the wealthy get more power they use their power to influence the political process change the rules of the economy so they get more wealth and power that undermines the quality of life for the ninety nine percent so that spiral just keeps getting worse and the key is to intervene in it and really the only main meaningful interventions directly address this concentration of wealth and power taxing inherited wealth taxing high incomes breaking up the banks the six mega banks that now they're not only too big to fail

they're too big to save their share of the economy's grown since two thousand and eight so we have to kind of look at more bolder interventions that they'd get at the underlying concentration of wealth and power the last time this happened i mean the sherman act was eight hundred eighty one the progressive income tax was one nine hundred thirteen i was two generations apart are are you. are you hopeful in the thirty seconds we have left or are you hopeful that we can pull this off in the next couple of years or is this going to be a multi generational struggle like it was breaking of the last killing you know i guess i don't think we have a lot of a time i mean i think that we have a climate crisis and other factors that mean we sort of have to wake up fast i think the good news is people are waking up people are starting to see that these inequalities really do touch their lives and that they're. we can't wait for our leaders to sort of wake up fast enough that it's going to really die but it's a little movements that make it was made a challenge thanks so much right to see christie taking to end the massive wealth inequality in america and the suicides that will come along with it we all need to

work to expose the socially destructive nature of trickle down austerity programs like those being pushed by paul ryan and mitt romney. next with the company facing bankruptcy you won't believe what the manufacturers of one iconic american treat did to screw over their workers full story coming up next. wealthy british scientists are. sometimes the type of. market why not. come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike's concert for

a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into cons a report on our t.v. .

workers who make twenties somewhat eons are screwed the corruption of american capitalism by reaganomics deregulation i'm full display at hostess brands companies according to a court filing reported on by dow jones hostess may have violated bankruptcy laws

by looting in its corporate treasury to pay back it is a massive bonuses just before their company went bankrupt apparently knowing that the company was about to go under the twinkie makers paid out all the company's remaining cash to top executives like c.e.o. brian driscoll who were out for the three hundred percent salary increase to two and a half million parts are bankrupting his country his company at the same time hostess demanded its workers take drastic pay and benefit cuts and reneged on its obligations to fund retirees and sions. so isn't this what the regulated capitalism is all about instead of running a business in the best interest of the workers the community or even the business itself it's become all about running a business like a personal a.t.m. machine for a handful of fat cat executives how can a condom he survive if this is how corporate capitalism behaves joining me now for more on this is david cay johnston investigative reporter with reuters an author of numerous best selling books david welcome. thank you for having me including

a free lunch which was showing on the screen rather than on david the story of hostess is an anomaly or at let me ask this as a question is this an anomaly or is this business as usual in corporate america well we don't we have heard the creditor side of the story today perhaps the law does have provisions that if insiders and mr pistole the former c.e.o. would be an insider take excessive amounts of money out within the year of a filing bankruptcy they can be forced to give that back that's why the creditors are raising that they clearly think something is amiss but hostess is part of a pattern that we're seeing of a company's problems are being blamed on the unions this is a company that was put together with the number of unions at a lot of different plants and management to go around and try to organize in such a way that they could get coordinated plans on the different players and it's also a company the demographics of this country are not working so well for so it may

have problems well beyond its union contracts one how has the role of the corporation changed since reagan. well you know actually discussed back later earlier than right in one thousand seventy one the new york times magazine great liberal newspaper that i used to work for granted the piece by milton friedman in which he argued that the only duty the corporate officer had was to the shareholders and sole duty was to them so you could work your whole life for the company a community could tax itself and undertake all sorts of things that benefit a particular company vendors can set up their entire factories to benefit a company but the only person who has any rights at all and for humans of us ronald reagan's you were shareholders who can of course put him out of a company in a matter of seconds and this has fundamentally changed the country and taken away the idea that there is any social contract you know friedman used to say to people

that we are not suspect a. we are somewhat several hundred million people who just share the chain geography and that's an awful terrible way to try and create stability and long term will be you know it's individual ism and greed run amok how have laws how is congress you know. facilitated this transformation. if there are so many things congress is not of and that the news media has done such a poor job of reporting on. it that have reduced the rights of workers think about this this argument that we should be individuals so the anti-union moves you're seeing all over the country reflect this idea you know tom hartman sally smith newly minted kindergarten teacher has to go negotiate with a multibillion dollar state government or a corporation over how much they should be paid when the other side has experts has lawyers has years of experience that's not a market that's nothing but

a system by which to push down wages and allow the people who are buying labor to pay less than what the real market will be when you have unions you have information on the other side and the opportunity to create a more level playing field and then there's there's also. throw this out is this the change in tax code that allowed corporations to start compensating c.e.o.'s with stock which changed their fundamental commitment to what they were doing and that's when we saw this stuff explode through the roof and by the way if the interests of shareholders are aligned with c.e.o.'s the market overall even with the dividends is below where it was in two thousand how come c.e.o. pay is so much from you so there you go very david cay johnston brilliant thank you so much for being with us and a cute but how is this is accused in screwing over it's workers is a moral crime or possibly a legal crime unfortunately it's the type of crime that rarely is punished. in

today's post reagan economy. but now for some good news the organization color of change may have figured out a way to fight back against the koch funded corporatocracy known as the american legislative exchange council alec alex is behind several right wing laws being passed in republican controlled state legislatures around the nation from limiting collective bargaining rights in wisconsin to privatizing prisons in ohio to new voter id laws in a slew of other states on wednesday in response to alec written voter i.d. laws group color of change with the help of several democratic lawmakers announced a boycott against corporations that donate to alec that includes corporations like coke and see ok kayo c.-h. like the brothers coke coca-cola and wal-mart which according to john nichols of the nation magazine played an important role in writing the so-called stand your ground or shoot first that led to the death of trayvon martin down in florida

wal-mart is the biggest gun retailer america course just five hours after the breakout was called for coke gold releasing a statement saying the coca-cola company is elected to discontinue its membership with the american legislative exchange council alec our involvement with alec was focused on efforts to oppose discriminatory food and beverage taxes not on issues that had no direct bearing on our business law and are however continues to blair plans to continue its relationship its membership with alec so how might this sort of grassroots activism be a model to standing up to the corporate power that is hijacking our democracy here to offer some answers to that is rashad robinson executive director of color of change rashad welcome to the program thanks for having me thanks for joining us first off what benefits do the corporation get from working with alec joining now giving alec money. well in many ways i think of benefit is that alex alex works

behind the scenes so you don't oftentimes see alex fingerprints on the legislation that becomes laws and states around the country and so our craft piece of legislation and works with legislators at the state level to push those laws through i'm often times the laws that are there are crafted and developed in can partner ship with corporations that help them with their go to market their strategies of making more money and so corporations can have a relationship with alec and legislators to have a relationship with alec and alex these behind the scenes and there's been research in the work to sort of push an amplify these policies around the country and so what we've done is we're pulling back the mask on alec and helping americans all around the country who who have been outraged in and inspired to act as they've heard about the trayvon martin story and folks who have known for a while about the discriminatory voter idealise and help them to understand how these bills have actually become law and the organization in d.c.

who's behind it being the american legislative exchange council back to the american legislative exchange council yes and and the cooperation that allowed our to do the work they get to do so coca-cola has no thanks i understand that the pepsi companies are also build. wal-mart is saying no no we are putting words in their mouths. or apparently is it just so big they don't they don't care about losing a few customers are they they have basically monopolized markets they run our competition out of business so they don't they don't care. well we actually haven't publicly escalated i'm on wal-mart or any other country the only company that we've actually called out publicly at this point has been coca-cola and so a number of corporations have been discussed and talked about but we've we've had behind the scenes conversations with about fifteen major public facing corporations that every single day try to market their products or sell their services to the

black community and we've we've come to them with the simple message that you can't come for black folks money during the day and try to support laws that take away our vote by night and as we've learned about the trayvon martin story it's also taking away our life and and to the extent that over the next couple of weeks we're going to be highlighting more corporations that have played a role in ensuring that our kids is big and strong and able to do this work around the country will be asked leaning on more corporations giving our members the ability to make their voices heard and ensuring that no corporation gets to partner with our without being a public conversation with the folks who purchase their products is there any new legislation. to be pushing down the road particularly alarms you or is this a response to his her in the past. this is only a response of the past which is part of their ongoing agenda not only is it supporting you know discriminatory voter id laws or or supporting mandatory minimum

sentencing or or some of the work that they've done around immigration law you know alec has had his hand had its hand in so many pieces of legislation which hurts communities around this country and puts folks in harm's way and to the extent that our community is working every day to have an empowered voice in our democracy to be able to make sure their voices are heard the idea that allocates according to laws which you know in some places are you know makes it it makes it possible for you to vote with the gun lysis but not vote with a student id these are the type of things that alec is behind and for coca-cola or for any of the corporations to align themselves with that they can't have it both ways they can say we're just aligning with this small piece of alec and so we're holding them accountable and we're shining a light very very well that we should thank you so much for being with us today thank you for having me once corporations know that there are consequences to meddling in our democracy then maybe we'll start mining your own business go to color of change or find out more about campaigns you can get involved.

pretty easy alerts snakes on a plane no really a pilot in canberra australia was making a cargo run when he noticed he had an unexpected passenger onboard as make like this from you see right here that's right just like out of a scene from the infamous snakes on a plane movie the snake crawled out from under the cockpit dashboard and begins all over pilot grade lenora outs. landing. trolling to knowledge which is. drawn. day after realizing that the snake was on his plane blennerhassett radio to the local air traffic control tower told him i'm going to add the return i got a snake on board the plane spotting a snake crawl all over his body he stayed calm and collected and managed to land

the plane successfully was called in to catch the snake but had no luck so with ortiz a snake may have escaped on landing no word yet if authorities have called in samuel l. jackson to help catch the snake snake. after the break mitt romney resorts to lying about president obama should be too surprising what is surprising is that the media goes right along with so have a republican speaker about a way to win in november live all the way to the white house. 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 don't have time for is a big issue.