well i'm joe marvin in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture the presidential election is quickly becoming a contest between president obama and his band the board room billionaires so in the face of a billion dollar flood of corporate money how can we still have our voices heard in the upcoming election also i do report shows that credit card companies have about one point one million new credit card for people with bad credit just in december of last year conservatives are wall street really want to cause another economic

disaster for americans that and more it but i'd slow liberal ruggles but first more than six weeks after shooting seventeen year old trayvon martin the streets of sanford florida george zimmerman is finally in police custody facing second degree murder charge as seen in the special prosecutor in the case angela corey how the press conference saying this. today we filed an information charging soon george zimmerman with murder in the second degree i can't use has been issued for his arrest with the filing of that information in the issuance of the cape if you will have a right to appear in front of a magistrate in seminole county but then twenty four hours of his arrest and thus formal prosecution will begin so now will finally get a chance to review the evidence and zimmerman will have his day in court but the question still remains what took so long and had there not been a public outcry would george zimmerman still be a free man today and perhaps most importantly the shoot first laws written by

corporations like in this case well martin the n.r.a. and then wandered through right we think tanks like the american legislative exchange council so they prevent law enforcement from doing their job michael bloomberg the mayor of america's largest city has some thoughts on this exact issue too. it's now clear that these laws have undermined the integrity of the justice system and done real harm to public safety they have some confusion in police departments about when to make arrests they have made it more difficult for prosecutors to bring charges in cases of deadly violence and these stand your ground states have seen a major increase in so-called justifiable homicides these laws have not only made arc have not made our country safer they have made us less safe look at what's happened in three major states during compare comparable periods before and after stand your ground laws passed before stand your ground law became was became law in

kind of florida the state average twelve cases of justifiable homicide per year since the law was passed the average has been thirty six three times higher priest stand your ground george average seven justifiable homicides a year since an acting stand your ground the average has been fourteen here twice as many and texas averaged twenty six justifiable homicides a year before passing a stand your ground law since the law passed the average has been forty five per year he's right and these radical shoot first laws need a lot more scrutiny for now at least the community has a chance to heal as the judicial process begins right more on this topic later in the show but first let's move on to a story that affects all of us frankly far more than the fate of george zimmerman.

you know this with rick santorum out of the race it's time for the right wing millionaires and billionaires and their super pacs to rally behind mitt romney within hours of santorum suspending his campaign his chief donor multimillionaire banks to foster friess told politico he is ready to jump aboard the romney bandwagon the last few months freeze pretty much single handedly kept the santorum campaign afloat with one point seven million dollars in donations to the santorum super pac but now as freeze told politico got some plans as to how i might be able to help bottom line is i'm going to be very supportive of romney for he's also said he may be donating to karl rove's super pac and that's pledged three hundred million dollars to defeat president obama in november meanwhile the one guy still left of the republican race aside from ron paul who hasn't yet won a single state is newt gingrich and he likely won't be around much longer either

beginners campaign bounced a five hundred dollars check in utah and submitted paperwork to be on the utah primary ballot salt lake tribune is reporting that the deadbeat gingrich campaign isn't returning calls from the state after the bounced check actually be a sign again bridges top billionaire donor chinese casino site who sheldon adelson might be ready to shift his treasure chest to the romney team as well the billionaires against the sitting president brought to you by the supreme court's citizens united decision so in the face of a billion dollar tidal wave of corporate money how do we the people still have our voices heard in the upcoming election well it begins with grassroots activism and organizing and this week all across the nation people are organizing in homes churches and community centers in a bid to take back america it's called the ninety nine percent spring joining me now for more on the ninety nine percent spring is just in ruben executive director

of move on dot org justin welcome. hi tom thanks for joining us tell us about the ninety nine percent spring tour well ninety nine percent spring is this is really an amazing effort by hundreds of organizations around the country who are united by the idea that. the unbelievable levels of inequality in our economy and in our democracy are our huge problem and that we need to confront them directly and that nonviolent direct action is one of the most powerful tools we have to call attention to these injustices and put a stop to them really kind of inspired by the bravery of folks we saw last year in wisconsin and in occupy wall street who totally changed the conversation in america . the and this is really the idea here is can we put even more people in motion to do even more of that this year you starting with this effort. you know i finish

your thought i'm sorry i was going that way and so i'm kind of the first step is to start this week by training tens of thousands of people across the country in the history and practice of nonviolent direct action but actually a great the you talked about the issues broadly on a more specific level what are the issues that you're going to be addressing with this not sure. well the training begins with really looking at how the one percent have rigged the rules in their favor. and how that that has led to many of the problems that we face today and look at how skyrocketing inequality over the last thirty years has has led to so many families in america falling behind and having a harder harder time making ends meet in a democracy where our voices are as you just pointed out in the last two are just

being completely drowned out it was a huge problem before citizens united and since citizens united it's gotten a lot worse so. the training has a kind of a bunch of content about just telling that story through the lens of what our each community has actually experience what people's lived experiences have been what the actual challenges facing our families are and then linking them up together to see how there's sort of a broader story here. but in terms of concrete issues you know the thing about this training is it's really there's so many organizations that are part of it so you have people who are focused on foreclosures people who are focused on these corporations that are polluting our air and water people who are sort of progress on job creation and. you know up to and including folks who were working for you know justice for trayvon and to stop racial profiling who see both commonality in our issues as well as the idea that we can train together and use nonviolent direct

action to call attention to all of these places where the ninety nine percent is being left behind it really is quite remarkable i also do a three hour radio show every day as you know and today i had a bunch of people call into the program who seem to share this one saying that they were today with the prosecutor in florida who is a republican appointee or a republican i guess and very tight with rick scott the republican governor that her office leaps for five hours in advance of the six pm. press release that she was going to be indicting george zimmerman tonight and it basically blew up what was the signature opening event of president obama's campaign that he had twenty patriotic millionaires today at the white house and then they went to a to a community center i guess a right not a community center a headstart center and to promote the buffett rule to talk about inequality in the united states and to talk about you know this this reading of the game by the one

percent that we've been talking about and you know some people didn't think that that was it just a coincidence without getting into the conspiracy theory aspect of that the larger question is given the kind of singular focus of our media that story of the day how do we how do we break through and the and and so so very often the media not really focusing on these issues inequality isn't being that discussed that much anymore how do we break through that. well i think what i think what we're doing is taking a page from what we saw last year and have seen throughout our history which is that even in a media environment that is largely kind of rigged against regular folks in the one nine percent that we can use. kind of the moral clarity and power of nonviolent peaceful direct action to to change the conversation and to directly confront the folks who are responsible and you know occupy wall street was really

one of the main inspirations for this effort. and they you know that was a bunch of predominately young folks who i think most people thought they were crazy and they went in and they were able to to make income inequality. a major issue of conversation in america in a way that the efforts of move on and lots of other organizations have really failed to do it for a long time and i think you know we and we've seen that throughout our history that this kind of direct action even going back to the civil rights movement before that how the power of the clarity and a power to. to to inspire folks and to to create a moral crisis for the people who are behind our problems and the institutions who are you know who hold all the power and are creating these problems and i think that's what we see in the last year that tool still works and we need a lot more of it and we need a lot more of us who are going out and basically peacefully and with

a lot of moral clarity raising how to put a spotlight on these issues and just want to say that folks can find these training . get involved at the ninety nine spring dot com and i hope everybody watching will do that is that the ninety's nine spring the pentagon brawl over group that will bond out organism or dissipating with and yeah that's that's the web site the kind of a clearing house website for all of us. that's absolutely great justin thanks so much for joining us yeah thank you from as always for all of your great work i really appreciate what you're doing just to rip billionaires can spend all the money they want now on our elections but they still only have one vote and there are a lot more of us and there are of them so get active and get organized go to the ninety nine spring ninety nine spring and spring dot com for more information coming up tonight's lone liberal rubble.

and. we just put a picture of the need for those like nine years old like the people the truth. i mean get a. rap and hip hop music and. it was yesterday. i'm very proud of the world with its place. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so bleak 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 don't know i'm sorry welcome to the big picture.

it was here you ready to rumble joining me for today's long liberal rubble is our long conservative out of sight like the editor in chief of that right daily dot com we're thrilled to have you with us out of it here george zimmerman is now a police custody facing facing second degree murder charges we can kind of now leave it to the courts i guess to figure out his fate and who did what all that kind of stuff but. from everything i've been able to see the reason why this guy was not held from day one is because of this stand your ground shoot first law in florida and with that law as mayor bloomberg pointed out in the earlier clip that i had we're over its past we see justified exploding which is presumably an unintended consequence i don't think that that when the n.r.a. and wal-mart put this thing together that they thought oh you know let's have more

good people but that's what's happened this law was written by lobbyists for the america's largest retail operation largest employer wal-mart and the national rifle association a. lobbyist for the gun manufacturers industry was one hundred through the koch brothers american legislative exchange council handed off to republican mostly republican some democrats makers in states around the country and then voted into law is that any way to make a. well you know i think it's not entirely fair to just point the finger at at that but we see with our in this case in many instances many laws come about because of this type of thought on both sides of the aisle. because of this type of the need here is you have a group that's formed by people that are interested in getting certain types of laws passed in this case every wal-mart wants to stay in your current use alec. in

the same way that democratic groups use labor unions to get favorable lawyer wants but my concern is you know what a labor union does that they're pretty upfront about it you know they would want to be for lobbying for card check you know every arse and alec you know one of the radar for almost thirty years. and now they're taken off their website all the information about them was a push i would assume as a career come from here but i think it's also a relatively new argument about this and what stuff we are has always been in the past and i guess i haven't might be going to think of them i begin certain you know speaking as either as a progressive or even as a a goldwater or eisenhower conservative republican. why do we have corporations writing our laws and i would say there's something that we can agree is a bad thing i don't mind corporations writing laws they'll be more than i want a labor union writing a lot of any other special interest group writing a law but to say that they slowly wrote this law and the government didn't have

a role in this is to forget that part that the legislature did indeed take up the you know the politicians if you want to point fingers at anyone i would worry too much when alec i would look at the politicians that cotton bed with that song with alex that you have a one to one ratio so you get you have alec meeting you got five hundred two hundred fifty politicians who show up going to two hundred fifty lobbyist show up and they vote together on whether or not a law is a good law if it gets a majority then those politicians take it back to their state introduce it as seems crazy to me well you know they can take it back but the state you know it comes down to the politicians again they have the choice they risk their. main thing is the voters if they don't think it's the voters they're out of office well that's another thing is brand new and why hasn't anyone been looking into this before you know i think is it's a good look what happened and yeah. i disagree i think it's incompetence on the

part of our media but you know i think in the broad principle maybe we are going to rule president obama held the event today with the millionaires and secretaries they call us as patriotic millionaires twenty guys who make more than a million dollars a year and they all are saying go ahead tax my income after their first million dollars here's what the president had to say. about the first president to call for this idea of airports go do that for sure some years ago one of my predecessors traveled across the country pushing for the same concept. he gave a speech where he talked about a letter he received from a wealthy executive who paid lower tax rates than a secretary and wanted to come to washington and tell congress why that was wrong that wild eyed socialist tax psyching class warrior was rattled right now and in fact here he is. it's a letter from a man out here in the country an executive who's earning in six figures will above one hundred thousand dollars a year he wrote me in support of the tax plan because he said

i am legally able to take advantage of the present tax code nothing dishonest doing what the law prescribes and wind up paying a smaller salary than my secretary gets or gamete paying a small and started paying a smaller tax than my secretary pace. so anyhow that's ronald reagan one here's another from reagan the war earlier but if we're going to close the hundred of new taxes will that allow some of the truly wealthy to avoid a their there is. in series of those who were understandable but in brandy's they sometimes made it impossible for millionaires to make a bus driver was being presented as sound in minutes praise you going to billion euro to pay more in taxes than the bus driver or the waves. and the people on the

crowds you know more so what's wrong with progressive taxation and what's changed with the republican party that ronald reagan is now a wild eyed socialist engaging in class warfare. well ok i wouldn't go back far to say that but you know i think it's funny that here we are having a debate that seems to come up you know just as it was video showed people thirty years ago which is you know what the figure of a billionaire they're not paying them off and they need to pay their fair share you have the spot that will come up buffett himself calls for it says that he needs to be taxed more. i'm not sure if you're aware of this but he's currently fighting a. company is fighting the government on the i pad but they are all nearly a billion dollars i said but he doesn't want to pay yeah he does not want to pay that well what he's saying is that legally he doesn't have to the law he seems change the law but if someone's going to get the lawn changed and someone wants

their name on that wall don't you think that person should set the example no i think that if if if you know i've run a business i you know the show is part of my business we you know we license the show so on a t.v. show. i write books and that runs through the business and i take advantage of every tax loophole i can find i mean that's just that's what you do at the same time i would say you know i don't use any agree just once i mean i use stuff like you know i can deduct my rent but you know it's there but. i would think that any any business i mean if nothing else the michigan supreme court one hundred thirty five decided this in. earlier than that in dodger v ford as i recall one horse before you know and the conclusion was a business has to do what a business has to do it has to do with a lot of them bought off and say it's changed the law it's going to do you see any inconsistency well i commend you for taking advantage of these tax loopholes you're proving the point which is that the people calling for these for these raising of

the taxes on themselves will tell imperil the contributor they want less well that's a little sober no it's not they point to a problem when they say if you only taxed us more then we would be rid of whatever this was you know i can't i can't claim for you could they contribute more voluntarily why must the i.r.s. hold the gun to a strong as a total straw man argument it's what we're talking about here is you know mitt romney's got you know money stashed in the caymans he's got how many stations was bank accounts he made you know something over twenty million dollars he paid thirteen point nine percent taxes and yet a teacher in wisconsin pays more taxes more a higher rate of income tax and mitt romney made on twenty three million dollars well that's the flaw of the tax system so it's going to put until that point. people that are calling for this should be setting the example everyone knows that this tax system does not include proceeding voluntarily is not setting an example changing a law is saying i'm going to make you

a classic way to think about this for a second thirty years ago we saw that clip of reagan he's calling for that to be changed now thirty years later we've had various parties and in out of the oval office various parties and in our congress and yet the law remains the same well it doesn't it doesn't i mean before reagan came into office the top tax rate on millionaires and billionaires was seventy four percent he took it to twenty eight percent but then the ratings are still going up pointed at the fair share of the economy i don't think it is any earlier today the rate the romney campaign has asked a campaign on a conference call about whether or not romney supported the lilly ledbetter fair pay act which basically says that women if they're doing the exact same job as a man in the exact same company in the same circumstances have to get an equivalent pay and here's the here's the question. i still come from starting with how to give but i had you know do governor romney support those who like it or are

family get back. would get back to you that this is a two thousand and nine law and you know how does somebody who wants to be president have to think long and hard maybe for days about whether they support equal pay for women for the same job you know it's two thousand and twelve and it's funny that we even have to have this conversation about something sad actually you know are you a liberal a libertarian but aside from that you know so you think the government should mandate the pay levels that no i don't think the government should be in the it that i think that people should be paid for what they're for what they do but you think the government should mandate that people of different genders should be paid the same. the lilly ledbetter act currently says that women have access to go after the government. the government channelers and and courts yes and through all the returns like yet but they can use the government as a tool to close that gap. today have you i'm certainly ok with them you know

doing whatever it is they please if they want to go and prosecute employer but they believe they were paid unfairly the next up for the court to decide what isn't but isn't defining the rules what libertarians call big government the rule here is just saying that if you think you have a claim that you can go to court it's not saying immediately they're guilty and boss must hate you right but today we did see that. this is ironic the obama white house pays males eighty percent higher than they pay their female voice they do for the exact same work the exact same work there was a report was in the washington free beacon and male employees on average makes only one thousand dollars of the white house female sixty i've seen the report so i can't really comment it's if so i'm i'm guessing that they will be reacting with a last question point for santorum as it leaves behind an endless amount of

ammunition for the obama campaign to use against mitt romney take a look at this as someone who is who doesn't have a core he's been on both sides of almost every single issue. in the past ten years or to give me a little different reason stay with what we have instead of taking the risk of what may be the. it's a sketch community for the future he presented the blueprint for a carrot advocated for exactly what obama care if he's uniquely disqualified he is the worst republican in the contrary to put up against barack obama. amazing so how long will rick santorum take to endorse and who knows i think it will be a few days he will use a politician he's going to come out of the saw on top of being on top i want to support the public my guess is he will do it the day after that until after he loses the pennsylvania primary he's going to drag it out and that would be his last opportunity i would want and so we'll see that i'm pretty major myself i'm sure

about it. coming up after the break despite twenty five straight months of private sector job creation america's economic recovery has been an unusual and an equal one what's behind the unusual recovery and what can be done to improve the state a labor in our country. see a story that seems so. think you understand it and then something else and here's

some other part of it and realized everything is ok. i'm sorry welcome to the big picture. mr.