so on are going to washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture george zimmerman's face day judge today but his trial is just the first that america needs house and put on trial to shoot first laws that allowed zimmerman to walk around as a free man for six weeks after killing someone all that trial in just a moment also believe it or not there are plenty of american millionaires who want to pay their fair share in taxes to help our government and our economy oh and conservatives in washington separate and shame you group as he murders spending

hundreds of thousands of dollars in ads promoting paul ryan's trickle down austerity budget who's behind this group and what else should we know about it and other corporate front groups working to corrupt our democracy. you need to know this george zimmerman faced a judge today where he was given an arraignment date of may twenty ninth according to his lawyers they were and will plead not guilty to charges of second degree murder in the shooting death of seventeen year old trayvon martin in sanford florida so while zimmerman will finally get his day in court and a community can begin the healing process attention is now turning to the shoot first laws in florida and dozens of other states across the nation to give people like zimmerman legal cover when they shoot people led by new york mayor michael bloomberg and several organizations like the end of the c.p. national urban league and color of change are launching

a movement to have the koch brothers shoot first laws repealed it was right mayor michael bloomberg speaking out on this issue yesterday. it's now clear that these laws have undermined b 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 our have not made our country safer they have made us less safe as mayor bloomberg pointed out in a press conference on wednesday and as this chart shows states that have passed shoot first laws have seen a massive increase in so-called justifiable homicides making communities as he said less safe but doesn't this out and surprise the death of trayvon martin prove that these laws are dangerous to our communities and should be repealed you know offer

his take is now as very c.e.o. and host of the truth for america radio show and author of the book conscientious equity neil welcome hey tom thanks for having me back thanks for joining us the people have more coverage as shoot and kill others thanks to the stand your ground laws frankly than they do in iraq and more cover than a police officer in other words even if you were i wouldn't shoot somebody into these laws we wouldn't have to jump through as many hoops before we pull the trigger as a police officer would or a soldier in iraq or afghanistan is that fundamentally wrong well first of all tom the whole idea of stand your ground in the finning yourself in defending your families goes back to the bill of rights it goes back to the second amendment and it's already been adjudicated by the supreme court in one thousand nine hundred five as being constitutional so i mean the legal be something is constitutional as an egg of good law in this. you but ok let's talk about the unique case of florida

because we have these natural catastrophes called hurricanes here were all of a sudden families could be without their homes it happened in one thousand nine hundred two in homestead a short distance from where i'm sitting right now where phillies were huddled in the bri that once was their homes we had thugs in gangs and rapists roaming ruling the communities in hurting these families and taking from these families raping daughters and wives i mean it just was totally insane all of this were laws just took three it took three days for the federal troops to arrive over these people supposed to do for seventy two hour good for yourselves you should somebody on all of them selves neal all this law does is change the threshold under you know historically and if you can take it all the way back to british law if you want to take it back to magna carta you can historically you didn't you a civilian does not use deadly force unless there's no other option and the same is true by the way of police officers and of soldiers in iraq and afghanistan what these laws do is they say you can use deadly force when you have

a variety of other options you can run you can scream you can hit somebody over the head with it with a two by four or you can kill them out when you've got a variety of options like that you should by law be required to use the less lethal options before you kill somebody trayvon martin was was armed with a bag of skittles and a can of iced tea he did not represent a threat and george zimmerman should have at the very least in terms of whether there was a real threat and or not not have been in his face and done what the police officers. with the time i think that you're confusing him to condemning this law for the trayvon martin case and even the state of florida has said this is not stand your ground why would they filed a second degree murder charge if they thought was this would stand your ground let's not take this case and boy my heart goes out to the martin family it no parent should ever have to burry their child in my heart also goes out to the zimmerman's into this nation but the. courts will get this right if this is not stand your ground it will if the courts will say it wasn't but you're confusing

stand your ground with the trayvon martin case and i don't but here's what are their words that were my lead lawyer said should be both stand their ground and live versus stand your ground and die we should be able to stand our ground to protect their wife's and our daughter's peace because they're going to be rate and i want the law to be on the side of the good people who are trying to protect their property and to protect their families and if what is a law on this will put in the law just as equally just just as easily as i have some bug he says and i would well i'm not going to prejudge the case but george zimmerman's lawyer came out and said beasley was are referred to among lawyers as license to murder i was his for its license to murder and when he was asked a lot lee straight up under these laws can a person shoot first ask questions later and not be prosecuted is it possible to kill somebody not be prosecuted he said yes this is this is going to i mean.

you know obviously you know on the on a shoot to kill guy i mean i want to exhaust all options however if my life if my property if my life if my children are at risk it's unprovoked and it's forced upon them don't need my size of the law to feel you're going to hamley to spit the defend my belongings you guys are american and you will reduce your course this is our constitution neal we have to spend ourselves in this country that's what america was built upon neal it's you know it's not unconstitutional to five pounds of sugar either but it's not a good well it's a lousy analogy that doesn't do it killing people but this is this is about a. i mean what you are suggesting kid can is that i just know what can you eat as you keep it what you can't drag you know what i'm going to prevent my wife from getting raped i mean try to try to make the language is inflammatory as possible no but do you say shoot past tonally to kill death in front of tori nobody has to

tolerate violence in this country you don't need a shoot first law in order for people to defend themselves to stand there and i know that if you are confronted with deadly force you can use deadly force but if you're confronted with a bag of skittles and a can of iced tea you don't shoot first but tom but tom we don't know that because of these parties guys the facts about why this guy is good obviously not weeks but this is not about mob justice here let the courts work they will get it right i have every faith in the florida legal system i don't know the facts yet but the florida legal system is saying this is not texas is it a seventy percent increase in just a plateau homicides for two hundred percent increase arizona for all since these laws they were pushed out of the koch brothers alec have been passed i mean this is this is crazy georgia one hundred percent missouri hundred twenty two percent so i'm sure i'm justified. gov bush where this law was passed on to governor bush so this was a commonsense solution to crime and mentioned and anyone and he was

a go on this you know we're in a state that could have catastrophes and we have to live our citizens defend themselves if law enforcement cannot defend them seal it we are out of it will be for a long time the most popular governor in florida we got we got it we got to talk about it thank you neal thank you very much for dropping by ok thanks the web site has been wise to facilitate the movement to repeal shoot first was go to second chance on should first dot org to sign a petition calling on white that want to drop their support for these koch brothers promoted shoot first laws but there's a bigger picture here and it needs to be talked about and that's exactly who or what should be writing our laws i mean this is really a much larger issue frankly than whether somebody should be able to should you know whether the trayvon martin or george zimmerman or whatever the question is who makes our laws. you know you would think that the laws would be driven by

a process of public outcry in other words when the people say we we have a problem we need a legislative solution the legislators would react but there's no outcry for hey i want to shoot first it's not like you know it's just this country's been around two hundred twenty plus years two hundred thirty plus years it didn't just suddenly say you know chief we need we need the option to shoot first but walmart and the n.r.a. they very much wanted people to have the option to shoot first because you know if it's a justifiable homicide it's fewer lawsuits for all of our plants that's the biggest gun retailer in the united states and the n.r.a. that's the trade association the represents the gun manufacturers so it's diminishes their liability increases their sales so wal-mart n.r.a. on this council at the at the american legislative exchange council that puts together this law and then it gets passed off into through alec through the american legislative exchange council where you put the koch brothers funding is passed to one of these meetings where the legislators are sitting literally next to

lobbyists republican legislators state representatives and state senators status of women sitting next to lobbyists one on one the legislators pay one hundred bucks to be there and in the case of virginia the state paid over two hundred thousand dollars to send their legislators to these alley means and the lobbyists can pay anywhere from twenty thousand to one hundred thousand dollars to sit next to that legislators and they have equal votes and the republicans are the lobbyists equal votes a democratic congressman from wisconsin mark perkins paid his hundred bucks and went to alec mean he came back and told us the story. it gets at that meeting serious for a corporate lobbyist or legislators they get you to get a they have you write legislation they have task force interestingly are made up of half legislators and in fact industry lobbyists when you needed hold of majority votes from each group for something to add to the amps so you actually never get it

right the registration but every time the legislation the corporate support to yes this is not them ocracy that's not even a republic that's corruption what we have right now is a nation that has been captured and not just our nation our state legislators and legislatures as well which is the focus of alec has been captured by billionaires and lobbyists in addition to produce seen the the laws that are of benefit to the corporations an obvious these things are producing unintended consequences like the death of trayvon martin americans are right to be disgusted in our progress as are fighting back this month color of change and other organizations threaten a boycott against corporations who are alec members and immediately alec sponsors started dropping like flies today candy bar maker mars dropped alex ode to arizona's largest company arizona public services they join coca-cola pepsi into it kraft wendy's the gates foundation all have dropped their ties with alec alec calls the boycott intimidation campaign they released

a statement saying it's hiring job creation and real solutions that improve dialogue among political leaders is needed most now its mission has never been more important a mission of corruption democracy and that admission is to advance the interest of the one percent and the big corporations. both in the ballot box by pushing legislation that will disenfranchise millions of democratic voters and the economy by pushing legislation that repeals things like environmental laws screws public services sector employees unions gives legal cover to gun sellers alec has one of the biggest threats to our democracy frankly in my opinion and the fact that they're responding this to this boycott this way means that it's working so let's keep it up wake up your friends and neighbors and ask your politicians calling up which you say are you a member of alec do short of those things to take money from the koch brothers spread the word.

the official. called touch from the. month old. and this is for. the news today violence is once again flared up. these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. trying to corporations rule the day.

and it does the rest of the news the buffett rule has been no stranger to the news lately but it's the romney rule that might soon be getting

a lot of attention today in new hampshire president joe biden calling the phrase romney rule to draw a clear distinction between president obama's plans to make the super rich pay their fair share in taxes and mitt romney's opposition to taxing the rich his advice the vice president had to say. buffett rule says no one making more than a million dollars will pay a smaller share of their income taxes then middle class families to the rooney rule says that the very wealthy should keep every tax break and lupul they have and get additional new tax cuts every year that are worth more than what the average middle class family makes in a year and entire year but the vice president's words aren't anything new in fact it's the same argument that president franklin roosevelt made back in one nine hundred thirty six cyclists. one of them respectively boston mccarty upset us who believe that the benefits of them up repeatedly. and the willing.

to look. the other earth benefits go up through which broke the. bed a bit because it's not want to pay a. bad oh well that one group the president roosevelt was talking about who wants to pay their fair share of taxes and is in washington d.c. this week and they call the patriotic millionaires and one of them joins me right now from our new york studio but your shot and fell is here he's the founder of the shot and fell group l.l.c. richard welcome hi thanks for having me thanks for joining us you guys call yourselves patriotic millionaires what does that mean. well you know we're we're a group of citizens who are concerned about the country and we're patriots and we realize that the path we've been going down is one that's going to lead to devastation to the u.s. economy we look at what's going on in the country in the deficits and we we realize that people who are wealthy in this country need to do more and we look at thirty

years of driving taxes down on the wealthiest americans and realize it's not had any positive impact on the country or deficits of balloon and that the whole notion that by lowering taxes on the wealthiest americans are going to create jobs for the middle class and it's going to trickle down has been a complete and total failure you what do you think is behind the difference between wealthy people like yourself who seem to have a reasonable understanding of how this always works and are actually pushing for a tax increase and a very modest one of that by the way compared to the tax rates you know the forty's fifty's sixty's seventy's and wealthy people like grover norquist or the koch brothers who is fight who are fighting hard as they can to prevent any kind of tax increase. i can't really speak to what other people's motivations are i can only talk to what we believe and what we believe is that you know when you look at the ryan budget and you look at the alternative that the republicans are proposing it's devastating what is the real job creator in this country which is education you

know the the internet was invented by government research at darpa it was perfected at the n.c.s.a. at the university bill annoy through education money and grants of the government to speed it in and it created millions and millions of jobs and trillions of dollars in in wealth in this country and the idea that you're going to cut education further to give money to wealthy americans that are going to keep in their bank accounts that are going to serve a productive purpose is when we reject and the idea that you know mitt romney's five million dollars he made last year when he was on the campaign trail now isn't working that that lazy money deserves to be taxed less than the working working families hard earned money that they are in through their labors over hours an hours we reject that as well so. how do you think this is going to play out. politically. the this study show in the polls show that a majority of americans that a substantial majority of americans favor this proposal in fact

a majority of millionaires favor this proposal so you know most of most americans are patriotic and most americans want to see us live in a better country and support this so you know while the expectations are unfortunately that it may not pass but we're hopeful that people will call their congressmen call their senators call that call their elected officials and make them know that this is what they believe in and we hope that it will be a first step towards getting towards a more sensible policy in this country and so we're just trying to lend our voices and to basically you know undermine the myth that it's that the republican party is representing the wealthiest americans they're not they're representing a small or small portion of that group and we're trying to get that message out and hope to turn the tide on what's been you know thirty years of driving down taxes on the wealthy and they've seen over the over that period their taxes dropped by fifty percent but middle class families have seen their taxes stay the same or slightly go up and we're not asking for that because we really care more about the country

and i think wealthy americans like all americans have a lot at stake in seeing our society hold together see this country be successful and prosper and probably have more at stake and they need to realize that it's in their own self-interest to step up and say listen we'll pay a little more we want to see this country get back on track again richard you're a brave man a genuine patriot thank you so much for being with us tonight. thank you when it comes to taxing the rich franklin roosevelt was right nineteen thirty six and president obama and vice president biden are right in two thousand and twelve i will not leave this election is going to come down to a simple question should the wealthiest are paying their fair share in taxes again or should working people continue to shoulder the burden of trickle down austerity measures that have been dumped on a since reagan most americans it's a very easy answer unfortunately most americans voices are about to be drowned out by billions of dollars in corporate cash in this coming election thanks to the supreme court's citizens united decision so what do we the people need to know to

fight back heading into the election season. one of the best people to talk to on this issue is a man who's committed his life to activism and building grassroots movements in jones joins me now from our los angeles studio he's the author of the new book rebuild the dream and jones welcome back. glad to put be back and glad to be talking to you about the fact the book is now a bestseller and part of the reason is because what you're talking about we people know that we're getting screwed we that we know that our democracy can take away from us the middle class the american dream but we don't know what to do about it and i wrote the book you know having been a grassroots outsider who got a chance to spend six months as a white house insider before becoming an outsider again i got a three hundred sixty degree view of where we're misfiring as progressives and the big takeaway is you know l.b.j. did not lead the civil rights movement we got to quit waiting for the president to

lead the people's movement you need a good head of state like l.b.j. but you also have to have a movement in the streets to have to move that president on we've we've got a president who we need to reelect and make sure that he's not replaced by the tea party but we get it takes to sort of the power the power the president and the power of the people it's time for people stand up now are you concerned van about any kind of a rift developing and i'm in the middle of a lot of these e-mails flying around the various occupy groups and whatnot who are. i don't know we're concerned about establishment organizations the democratic party move on dot org whatever ninety nine spring versus being leader looks like that's a. singular virtue if there's no room for all of it. i think listen i'm going to say this here's what i learned we have to be as sophisticated as the system that we're trying to change and the big problem is that it's going to

take both kinds of approaches it's so important that we have occupy and other groups that are leaderless that can operate in that swarm like manner and that is important has to be respected and you also have to have other groups we're not going to be able to up twinkle and downs we call our way to freedom that's going to be important to have those general assemblies and to have that direct democracy but the other government i mean not the other but the existing govern still there and it's going to be there for a good long while you know the civil rights movement is a great example because you had a young group snick the student nonviolent coordinating committee and they occupied the large counters they occupied the buses they helped people mississippi occupy the voting booths and they were the young idealistic force that helped the power things but the civil rights movement was bigger than just those young occupiers

and you had in the played a role you had dr king a play a role you had many other kinds of groups and it was the diversity of approaches that have been truly got us to having a something close to a real democracy in america i think the movement of the ninety nine percent i write about this in my book is the civil rights movement it's big it's got a lot of forces in it and i think the occupiers are like snakes we need each other to be able to make the change we want to make and also you know i think about this whole idea we're not supposed to vote which i right now you cannot get here's a cruel truth about american democracy you cannot get everything it you want in the voting booth but in the voting booth you can lose everything you've got to lose everything you've got so unfortunately you've got to both vote and process and a movement they can go. vote and protest to get something done you've got to reelect the president and retake the house why so you can pick who you want to fight in december we've got two slices of flight november at the ballot booth and

there's a fight in december december is where the economic fights going to happen because you've got this lame duck congress the bush tax cuts or expiring and there could be a less than grand bargain in december that could decimate the middle class working class poor people so we've got a fight both in november politically to stop the tea party and then we've got a fight in december to stop a sellout by d.c. democrats on the economy that means you need to be multiplying approaches multiplying organizations not dividing and subtracting and reducing down to a single tactic when you're going to need many many and jones what's in your book and in your in your experience what is in the minute we have left what is the most important thing that somebody who's watching the show right now can do so well i think that we've got this great spring you have ninety nine percent spring

finally all the progressive organizations are working together people are afraid that these big groups like move on if they all say oh we're going to try to co-opt occupy the reverse has happened the spirit of occupy has co-opted all those groups and they're now acting in concert ninety nine percent spring is important development people are getting trained to do nonviolent civil disobedience preparing to fight the worst of the one percent. to direct action hopefully later through voting and they we're going to have to have a big fight about whether or not we're going to have a middle class in america we've got to win the political fight november and we've got to win the fight over the economy in december and go roaring into two thousand and thirteen this time we all come out of the ballot box the voting booth cheering we come out marching book is rebuild the dream the author van jones it is brilliant get it we did van thanks so much for being with us. thank you so by of all of our democracy the middle class frankly involved in it depends on you get involved you

can start by going to thought nine nine spring dot com and show up at a meeting in your neighborhood to help take back america. after the break a group called ending spending recently purchased three hundred seventy five thousand dollars worth of advertising to help promote paul ryan's trickle down austerity budget so who is behind this group or is it another front for the big business takeover of america.

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