both. of them. welcome back to the big picture i'm tom arbonne coming up in this half hour just hours after the obamacare decision house republicans voted to hold attorney general holder in contempt of congress is there any merit for that vote or was it just another political stunt from the right to try to embarrass and an embarrassment for the nation also the american middle class has taken

a beating over the last several years in some nations like china or the middle classes. that's behind the rise of the chinese middle class and should america be paying attention and there should never have been such a frenzy over the supreme court ruling today because obamacare should never have been a case before the court explain why in tonight's daily take. in the best of the us the news across the street from the supreme court republicans in the house of representatives voted to hold attorney general eric holder in contempt of congress for his refusal to release documents pertaining to an ongoing law enforcement investigation. and i'm off to a small time criminal and richest man in congress darrell issa isis been pushing this weird conspiracy theory that president obama and eric holder two black guys in the white house had hatched

a scheme to get white people in america so freaked out about gun violence by brown people that white people would cry out to have the second amendment overturned and everybody's guns taken away here's congressman tim walberg laying it out while interrogating holder. that this thing was has gone wrong which was set up to go wrong and frankly i believe was set up to go wrong in order to deal with second amendment liberties of of law abiding citizens and pushing into a perception that it was the problem of the second amendment as opposed to law enforcement and more importantly mr attorney general the oversight of an agency. a department of individual leaders in that apartment that have not been held accountable well with all due respect and i mean this with great respect the notion that this was an operation set up to do something to impinge upon the second amendment rights of my fellow citizens is absurd and here's darryl eyes restating.

fast and furious can be seen as nothing else but in fact a needless attack on our can our right to keep and bear arms because as you promote lawlessness with weapons knowingly you can reach no conclusion but that the american people will be asked again and again to give up the right to keep and bear arms because lawless individuals are using weapons ill gotten and here's the head of the n.r.a. wayne la pierre amplifying the message to his members it's all part it's all part of a massive obama conspiracy to deceive voters and hide its true intentions to destroy the second amendment in our country now it turns out the fast and furious program never was a program to send guns to mexico as fortune magazine reported yesterday it was instead a program to arrest what they call straw purchasers of guns these are people who go

into gun stores in arizona and buy dozens to hundreds of a k forty seven and then take them out of the parking lot resell them to mexican drug cartels and then carry them into mexico this is illegal but there's a loophole while under arizona law if you're buying guns like this they must be for your own use at the sort of buying things for myself but you can change your mind as you're walking out of the store into the parking lot and decide on the spur of the moment to resell them to a drug lord. fast and furious was an attempt to bust these straw purchasers these front men who were buying the guns and then handing them over to the drug gangs and the a.t.f. identified dozens of these people these straw purchasers and tried to get warrants to arrest them over and over over tried to get warrants to arrest them but the arizona law a law pushed by the n.r.a.

makes it totally legal to buy a one hundred eight k. forty seven's and by the way that was not an unusual purchase many of these straw purchases would literally go and buy a hundred in time for your own use and then while you're walking out to the parking lot change your mind and say oh i think i'll sell it to that guy the drug lords gun runner and so the a.t.f. was blocked in arresting people supplying guns to the mexican drug lords by the very laws that the n.r.a. and republicans put into place in the first place and although eric holder and others pointed this out over and over and over again to darrell i. didn't want to spoil eyes they didn't want to spoil a perfectly good conspiracy theory there's another element here the racial motivation behind this vote the fox so-called news driven conspiracy theory a two black guys in the white house trying to take away white people's guns wasn't lost on the congressional black caucus which protested the vote and announced yesterday that they would walk out from the vote when it happened today they were

joined by so many other democrats that in total one hundred nine members of congress refused to vote plain and simple today's vote in republican house of representatives is a sham and an embarrassment to our nation. in screwed news over the last ten years the average income for the bottom ninety percent of americans has actually fallen and while incomes have declined the price of everything from energy and food to healthcare and housing has gone up what does this mean it means that more and more americans every year are unable to enjoy a middle class lifestyle in the united states and are joining the ranks of the working poor meanwhile in china just the opposite seems to be happening cording to a new report by the china market research group the average annual disposable income for a chinese family has quadrupled over the last ten years and increased by ten fold since one thousand nine hundred eighty the average family of three is now taking

home nine thousand dollars now they might not sound like a lot compared to u.s. standards but the price of living is far less in china for example as c.n.n. reports the average city resident can afford to rent a seven hundred square foot apartment spend thirty five percent of their income on food and still put aside twenty percent in savings if you use credit cards and the typical cell phone bill is around only ten dollars a month or about twenty dollars a month for an i phone not to mention that in just three short years china is expected to surpass the united states as the world's largest economy but do these numbers really reflect a booming middle class in china and if so what exactly will that middle class look like ayman fingleton joins me now from japan he's an economics writer and author of the book in the jaws of the dragon and welcome. good to be with you thank you so much what is china doing right that the united states is doing wrong. well

that's a big big question but they're following the east asian system which would be difficult for the united states to to follow because for various reasons but they suppress consumption. and boost their savings rate. and the result is that they can invest very heavily in improving their productivity in manufacturing so yes the chinese consumer is doing well compared to ten years ago that consumption is still much lower than in the united states so why can't america get policies in place that or a five hour middle ones. well one big issue of course is trade which we've discussed before the the american trade policy is clearly undermining the american economy and of and the chinese have a very different trade policy they are frankly protectionist americans list.

and they are focused on making sure that their own industries employing their own beat will rise the productivity graph very rapidly so and china's not the only country that's doing this they're not the only country that's growing brazil's economy is white hot right now they just announced a tariff on imported electronic goods and foxconn the chinese company that makes i phones is now building a factory in brazil if i understand this correctly how many countries are out there doing intelligent trade policies and domestic growth policies versus countries like the united states that are shooting themselves in the foot. i would say virtually all rich countries apart from the english speaking countries are to some extent on this model. the some of the poorer countries you mentioned brazil is a good example they are also aware that they can reach the odds and of course throughout

east asia most of the countries that have had any success at all are on this model and the chinese middle class it is a true that the middle class is growing in china that they will surpass the united states and the size of their economy i mean they have a billion people we have three hundred ten million but still you know is that true and what does that mean. well i just came back from china i was in tianjin to give a speech about two weeks ago and i've never been to that city before i but i was astounded at the amount of construction there. but it's a bit on even the general level of sophistication there is not as high as an beijing or shanghai. the university i was speaking at still has one foot in the third world i would say of. the the facilities there were

a little bit behind but. they're certainly moving very rapidly. the growth rate in two thousand and eleven was what about nine percent it's going to be about eight percent probably this year and they say this is the big disaster because it's a slowdown well. they're moving very very rapidly by anybody else's standards and here in the united states you can take amtrak from here in d.c. up to new york and just pass mile after mile after mile of empty factories and and and just ruins it's an economic ruins if the middle class is growing in china middle classes tend to be associated with higher levels of consumption isn't that a good thing for the global economy. i suppose in the very long term. the the chinese are certainly. improving their own living

standards and. there isn't our no argument that this will eventually boost. imports from the united states and so on but it's taking a very long time and in the meantime as you say american industry has been devastated i don't think that people should be talking less about the the long term and more about the immediate sort of ten years ahead. that there is a need for the united states was saved from looking at it from the outside to rethink its policies yeah well said ayman fingleton thank you so much for being with us and my pleasure aside from what's going on in china the middle class is dying right here right now in the united states and it's pretty clear that thirty years of reaganomics and so-called free trade is not only ruined our nation's middle class it's also ruined our nation's standing in the global economy all

together. coming up while today's obamacare ruling will ensure health care for millions of americans and was one of the most historic and carefully watched supreme court rulings in decades it was frankly a ruling that never should have been i'll tell you why in tonight's daily take it it's not what you think. there hasn't been anything good on t.v. . it is to get the maximum political impact. before the source material is what helps keep journalism on us we. we want to present. something else.

more news today violence is once again flared up. these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. giant corporations rule today. i am.

it's thursday time to get geeky using your hands count to five with me. two three four behind you do it did you use your left hand or your right hand did you start with your thought. or your forefinger believe it or not the way we count using our hands varies dramatically from culture to culture and it also tells a lot about how culture can influence our functions of our brain for instance in

china most people count starting with a closed fist and use their index for finger first like this but most europeans while also starting with a close fist count with their thumb first like this and india they use their hands to count in finger segments and one hand can represent up to twenty different numbers. according to german researcher andrea bender and see card beller cultural diversity and finger counting has been overlooked for years they also say that by studying various finger counting methods we can understand better how our culture influences cognitive functions of the brain like doing math in our heads michael anderson a researcher at the university of maryland argues that the region of our brain that was originally responsible for drove our fingers thousands of years ago as over time been hard wired to also control how we grasp and understand numbers m.r.i. scans of showing that the brain regions that are associated with fingers sense are

also activated when we do tasks that involve numbers even if we're not using our hands to accomplish those tasks so now that we know that there's a clear link between our hands and numbers and understand the way we process numbers is influenced by how we figured out what impact of the wide variety of cultural figure counting techniques have to people in india think about numbers or do math differently than people in switzerland or in china researchers say it's possible in europe finger county methods are straightforward one finger up is equal to one count and the brain knows that immediately however in china for instance finger counting uses symbolic gestures for numbers larger than five symbolic gestures like those used by the chinese are more complex and require more brainpower to be learned and used therefore allowing users to do more complex math so what's the big picture here will some people always be smarter than others because of where they were born in the culture in which they were raised the german

researchers say no but they do say that if we practice and use different finger counting methods we can improve both our brains function and our ability to do math at our heads so next time use your fingers to count try to switch it up why you do it it just may make you smarter. just. it's the good the bad in the very very act good tell lead to coldly ugly the good chicago city council yesterday the city council voted forty three to two to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana those caught with fifteen grams or less of marijuana will now be issued a ticket currently there are a number of states and cities considering decriminalization of marijuana and fifteen states numerous cities including seattle and philadelphia have already

decriminalized with prison overcrowding at an all time high thanks in large part to minor drug offenses in the insane drug war the richard nixon started time america abandoned the failed war on drugs and finally came up with a drug policy that works and makes sense the bad guy. looks like the war on women has spread to the world of sports earlier this week during the famed window of wimbledon tennis tournament in england male tennis star giles' or is it giles simon said that he believes women tennis players should be paid less than men because watching male tennis players play is more attractive his phrase simon also went on to say that equal pay for men is quote something that doesn't work in sports. it's worth noting the tennis is the only professional sport in the world that offers equal pay for both male and female competitors women have come a long way in sports since title nine and despite what mr simon may think they deserve the same treatment and respect as men. and the very very ugly federal judge

robert incl florida governor rick scott can continue with his voter purge of thousands of eligible already and voters now at least that's what judge incl said yesterday incl rejected the justice department's request for a temporary order to suspend the voter purge and according to the a.p. made his decision based on highly questionable reasoning it also appears he ignored the federal law that says the voter purges of ineligible voters must be completed at least ninety days before a primary or general election once again we have a judge who is using judicial activism to give republicans in florida a huge victory and who is blatantly disregarding federal law and that is very very.

clear is my take on today's supreme court ruling in a sentence it never should have happened everything about today from fox and c.n.n. screwing up the ruling early on to the hours of punditry that followed to the competing speeches of mitt romney and president obama none of it should have happened none of it should have happened because our democracy settled this issue more than two years ago when after a year of debate excruciating debate i might add our elected members of congress passed obamacare with a majority in both the house and the senate and that law was signed by our elected president of the united states that's how our democracy works we elect people to write and pass laws and then we either keep electing them or elect someone else if we think that the laws that they're passing are bad laws. what happened today was

not an exercise in democracy it was an exercise in monarchy despite our democracy settling this issue here we all were today waiting to hear from the modern day or poles at delphi our news media our elected politicians and the tens of millions of americans who finally had some reprieve thanks to obamacare were forced to wait at the steps of the supreme court building where the nine elected justices would like kings and queens of old give their ultimate say on the trivial concerns of we the people what happened today reveals a deep flaw in our system of government a flaw that was created more than two hundred years ago in the early days of our nation the supreme court was actually a very boring place it was as the constitution says simply the final arbiter of legal disputes which at that time tend to be things like

a legal battle between two farmers who are arguing over who's dog ate whose chicken no i'm not making that up it was a real case the idea of the unelected supreme court having the power to strike down an entire law passed by an elected congress and signed by an elected president was unthinkable the idea that our early senators and representatives would have to wait outside the doors of the supreme court like michele bachmann orrin hatch did today waiting for the justices ruling on laws they passed out of congress was unheard of nowhere in the constitution does it say that the supreme court has the power to do this in fact article three section two says just the opposite it says the court has to operate under regulations established by congress there the third of the three equals. but in eighteen zero three in the case of marbury vs madison

everything changed that was when the high court assumed the power to strike down laws they call it judicial review thomas jefferson was the president at the time and he knew the consequences of this power grab by the supreme court he knew that it effectively turned our democracy into a monarchy that is stripped power from we the people and handed off to nine kings in black robes as jefferson wrote to john adams wife abigail adams in eighteen zero four the opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not not only for the absolves in their own sphere of action but for the legislature and executive also in their spheres would make the judiciary a despotic branch so what he's saying is if the supreme court decides that they can strike down laws they're not elected by anybody they become despots they become

kane's as jefferson wrote to virginia supreme court justice and patrick henry's father in law spencer roan in one nine hundred eighteen if the judiciary is the last resort in relation to the other departments of the of the government that indeed is our constitution a complete fellow day so a suicide pact the constitution on this hypothesis is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary jefferson knew that the job of the interim interpret in the constitution should not be with the supreme court instead it should be left up to us we the people the people themselves we do a by a like the representatives every two years who write and pass laws based on their understanding of the constitution and if we the people don't like our elected representatives our interpret in their constitution guess what happens we vote them out of office and we get new laws. as jefferson wrote in one thousand twenty three

still bitter about the supreme court's decision twenty years earlier this case of marbury and madison is continually cited by bench and bar as if it were subtle law the chief justice says there must be an alderman arbiter somewhere true there must but the ultimate arbiter is the people today's display on the steps of the supreme court was not the american vision by our founders and particularly not the american vision by the author of our declaration of independence thomas jefferson in writing that declaration jefferson struck the first major blow against monarchy against despotism only to see it creep back into america during his presidency in the form of the supreme court and still with us today yes the core probably did the right thing in upholding obamacare but as long as they have this power of

judicial review the power to strike down laws passed by the representatives that we the people put into place and who are answerable to we the people keep in mind the supreme court is not as long as they have that power and it's just a matter of time before they abuse that power just like the abuse that in two thousand and ten when the roberts court wiped out a century of campaign finance law in the united states or in two thousand when they decided in election another power for them that is not in the constitution health care for all is vital for our nation but restoring power into the hands of we the people and not keeping it concentrated in the hands of nine unelected kings and queens that's our biggest challenge. that's the big picture for tonight for more information on the stories we covered visit our website tom arbonne dot com free speech dot org and r.t. dot com also check out our two youtube channel there a link to thom hartmann dot com also it's on arbonne dot com check out all the

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