markets why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike stronger the no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into cars a report on our. in .

the sky. the light will come down. so last year wires will be singing. and all right today we have a glimmer of hope and it comes from a part of the u.s. where a whole lot of people have just about given up in detroit michigan we've seen a place once a very successful completely switch gears and then a new title as one of the worst cities in america with an unemployment rate of about eleven percent it's not surprising that many people have left detroit for the suburbs and beyond they've left behind about ninety thousand vacant buildings lots and homes it's a saudi a daily reminder for locals that detroit is suffering every day. closures

continue flight to the suburbs which takes the tax base away from the city and there's more and more of that the decline in the school system. is making people leave the city and so there's no money here really an intern there are no jobs here. so there has been much good news out of the motor city recently but yesterday officials announced a plan that could help breathe life back into this former symbol of middle class strength michigan state university will be teaming up with the city to work on an urban farming initiative called the metro food plus innovation cluster its goals are to spark innovation in inner city agriculture specifically food energy and water systems that could help feed urban communities additionally the cluster plans on making use of abandoned spaces around detroit there are many of them and that could turn some of these blighted areas into a model for economic development none of the details of the plan of been laid out

yet but we do know that the university will be spending about one hundred million dollars over the next three years to develop the program we also know the university and city officials hope this initiative will give local farmers access to new technology encourage soil remediation and encourage more indoor growing through the development of new techniques and i see as president simon said in a press release quote unquote by two thousand and fifty food production will need to double using less water and energy than today we see this is a great opportunity to do good locally and connect globally and be on the additional food production some say that gardening and urban agriculture can create a much healthier environment for its city dwellers. in space and being a part of an ecosystem is something that gives the individual and the community the opportunity to be much greater than it is on its own. urban decay has replaced cars as the face of detroit but with this initiative could be a multi-faceted benefit for the city it will spur new agricultural technology

address the disastrous poverty rate in the city provide dennet tenants for abandoned buildings and also improve overall cooperation between food creators and distributors and to me the idea of a green make overs for the city of detroit is inspiring all the final product is far off the launching of this project is a true glimmer of hope. i want to talk now about the private sector industries in this country the food service industry we're talking chefs line cooks servers hostesses food runners dishwashers and anyone else involved in making it possible for people to eat out a group dedicated to the rights of food service employees called restaurant opportunity centers united is out with a scathing review of the treatment of food service workers if you work in a position where most of your money is earned in tips in most states you likely earned earned just two dollars and thirteen cents an hour that minimum wage for tipped workers has been frozen at that level for twenty one years and some states

do require the actual minimum wage to be paid the harsh treatment of restaurant workers is the subject of a book called behind the kitchen door what every diner should know about people who feed us. executive director of the restaurant opportunities center of new york and here is a little glimpse inside her findings. and joining us now is the author of the books. thanks so much for being on the show so rue let's talk about this for people who have never worked in restaurants people who simply eat in restaurants what do you think are some of the biggest

misconceptions out there. i think people just generally don't know what's happening behind the kitchen door and they don't know that the minimum wage workers has been frozen to thirteen they don't know that a lot of the country actually go towards paying workers' wages as opposed to being a supplement on top of wage they don't realize that most ninety percent of workers that we've surveyed don't have paid sick days which means that two thirds are cooking preparing and serving or who was sick. so i think part of what we're trying to do is just let diners know consumers know that there's a serious serious problem in the nation's largest workforce ten million workers work in the restaurant industry and it impacts all of us every time we eat out and i don't tell you this but you're speaking to a former waitress i've been a server at several different restaurants around the country so i've kind of gotten a firsthand look at myself and myself at what it's like i know in california we

actually did get minimum wage but everywhere else i work from chicago to d.c. to new york i'd often get a paycheck that said this is not a check you know everything i made was simply in tips but let me ask you i mean what do you think is the most appalling thing because for me you know you just sort of sign up because you know you're going to work fewer hours and make a lot of money and that you're going to deal with some of the other stuff that you were organization would call you know bad treatment. i mean i'm not sure what context you are for a lot of americans this is actually the way they support their families and so when you got the nation's largest industry with ten million workers actually the employer of seven of the ten lowest paid jobs in america and the two absolute lowest paid jobs in america lower than farm workers lower than all other workers you've got a situation where one industry because it's managed to exert incredible power over

congress is essentially proliferating the nation's lowest paid jobs and so you've got ten million workers working in poverty many of them people think these are people who've been through going on to college or high school students when if you look at the data it's actually mostly working adults with families a good quarter are single moms supporting families on these wages and their incredible poverty means a lot of times many of them are homeless in our experience we find that almost in every restaurant was at least one person who's homeless or on the teetering on the brink of homelessness because they can't pay the rent it also means that they are often sick not without paid sick days without health insurance these things impact the ten million workers on the families they impact diners all the time they eat out yeah that mailer that you made was it was pretty interesting because you showed and i can certainly say i've seen this firsthand people showing up to work because they don't show up to work they don't get paid they're sick they don't feel well their germs are probably going into the food that they have no other option i want

to put up on the screen so ruin your organization i know came up with a guide to america's worst restaurants for workers and i do want to put some of those up on the screen applebee's bennigan's cheesecake factory all of garden t.g.i. friday's i was surprised you know to see some of these are you know these are restaurants and most people know i was a little surprised to see ruth's chris steakhouse again i know that. when the restaurant is here we say front of the house versus back of the house the people who work in the front of the house are the servers are the. bill a lot of them don't have health insurance but a lot of them are walking out of the restaurant every night with three four hundred dollars in their pockets they're making seventy eighty thousand dollars a year and i'm sure that's probably not the case for the dishwashers. but i mean how can you i guess convince me here that some of these restaurants where the servers are making sixty thousand dollars a year and only working four days a week that these are really bad. i mean if you look at that data actually less than twenty percent about fifteen percent of workers across the country actually

make above thirteen dollars an hour so those workers that you're talking about that earn sixty thousand dollars a year are real real exception in a workforce of ten million people even in a fine dining steakhouse like ruth's chris you're going to have a lot of other people besides servers earning that low tech minimum wage of two thirteen you can have busters you're going to have a runner's you're going to have hope you're going to have lots of people earning very low wages believe it or not we have workers who worked in very fine dining restaurants only two hundred dollars a week also that sixty thousand dollar wage you're talking about of the reeds maybe in in new york or in l.a. that may be true there we have so many members some of whom are profiled in my book who work in fine dining restaurants in middle america and take home two or three hundred dollars a week so that particular worker the server who earns sixty thousand year is actually very very rare in this industry of ten million but majority of folks on the wage in fact if you look at the data folks on the minimum wage they're median

wage is eight ninety six below the poverty line for a family of three and so you've got an industry in which servers servers in particular not even the dishwashers who are less pay than servers servers in particular have wi times the poverty rate of the rest of the american workforce and they use food stamps at double the rate of numerical workforce meaning the people who bring food to our table can't afford to eat themselves just crazy a real quick we're almost out of time i wanted you to point out a couple chain restaurants are i saw five guys in a now these are restaurants that people work at that actually do treat their employees well give me give me two or three more that people should attend because they treat their workers fairly. those two are actually the only chain restaurants that we found to have had very good practices there are some other great restaurants that are well known that have good practices tom colicchio start top chef actually is a great employer and has several restaurants around the country that have craft in

the name that are good employers ilan hall who is from the gorbals who is actually a winner on top chef is has a restaurant called the girls nowadays a great employer but also lots of other smaller mom and pop restaurants around the country that are doing the right thing providing good wages and working conditions to their workers and if they can all chains and these multinational restaurant companies absolutely can as well right. we'll look forward to your book coming out it when is it coming out in the couple months on the twenty third team to highlight the issue of workers across the country are earning two dollars and. thank you so much for being on the show interesting stuff thank you. all right we got to take one more break but up next his tool time and it's going to put some gun at point to point out some gun loving hypocrites and on happy hour what it came hard ass and a unicorn and al qaeda have to do with one another we'll tell you.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lengthly 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 knew you don't know i'm tom harman welcome to the big

picture. wealthy british style. sometimes writing. markets why not come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike's cars or for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to kaiser report on our.

all right guys it's time to give out tonight's tool time award and it's going to a lobbying group that has helped cause and politicize an exaggerated crisis the national rifle association pressures a lot of politicians to ensure gun safety laws are as lax as possible one of the ways it does this is by giving lawmakers a score based on the way they vote so the group raised a few eyebrows when it said it was core legislators on today's resolution to hold eric holder in contempt of congress but the n.r.a. has decision to score the vote isn't too surprising that

a vendetta against the attorney general since the fast and furious story broke take a look at this and are a add. u.s. border patrol agent brian terry was forty years old when he was murdered by a mexican drug cartel after crime scene was at least one firearm deliberately allowed into mexico the united states justice to report. president obama recounted calls to president tell him to fire the recall paid for by the men and women of the national rifle association. so basically the n.r.a. claims holder knew the government was giving guns to the cartels and didn't stop it democrats counter that it was a routine operation gone awry due to poor oversight and a lack of resources and it's already general eric holder knew very little about it so republicans in the house have been investigating the scandal thousand oversight committees subpoenaed documents at the department refused to release them claiming

they pertain to on an ongoing criminal investigation we're getting the notion that holder lied about what he knew and when he knew about the operation and this was after president obama asserted executive privilege to keep them classified a move that ratcheted up the tension so this afternoon in a historic vote the house voted to hold eric holder in criminal and civil contempt of congress it was the first time that an attorney general has been has been held in contempt of congress but the majority of democrats didn't vote they actually walked out protesting they argued the documents house republicans wanted well holder was bound by law to keep them secret and the vote was characterized as a witch hunt by critics but here's something interesting seventeen democrats joined republicans why did they do this while some dems have speculated it's because holder is going after voter id laws which have been described as discriminatory but is probably for the same reason republicans are using brian terry's death as a political football and are a influence according to the republic report the gun lobby has already raised ten

million dollars for canned campaign contributions this election cycle and because they decided to score the vote a no might have cost representatives but what does this have anything to do with gun rights why have the n.r.a. gotten so trigger happy here well take a look at this. believe what this is about and why they won't release these papers is what fast and furious was about was a political attack on the second amendment the united states i believe these papers will show that they were doing everything to attack the second amendment and they got a hunting states are going to decide this election. that's right the n.r.a. and their supporters are just pushing the idea that holder is covering up an embarrassing mistake they believe that tired old conspiracy theory about big government obama coming to take your guns away but earlier this week fortune's catherine event talked to former a.t.f. officials involved in fast and furious and she concluded the a.t.f. did try to arrest the gun traffickers contradicting the previous narrative but

prosecutors felt laws were too weak to go ahead and why is that here's what eva had to say about the government trying to stop the two thousand weapons smuggled daily into mexico she said the a.t.f. is hauled in its effort to stop this flow no federal statute outlaws firearms trafficking so agents must build up cases using a patchwork of often toothless laws irony abound when it comes to the fast in the furious scandal but the ultimate irony is this republicans who support the n.r.a. in its attempts to weaken gun laws are lambasted a.t.f. agents for not seizing enough weapons ones that in this case prosecutors deemed to be illegal so thanks to the tireless efforts of the n.r.a. along foresman officials are basically powerless to stop the flow of guns into mexico yet according to them obama and eric holder allow the guns to be trafficked because of some nonexistent plot to repeal the second amendment and hypocrisy here

is a little of believable so for hampering law enforcement efforts while claiming they were purposely negligent as part of obama's plan to take guns away and for claiming eric holder is covering the mythical conspiracy up the n.r.a. wins tonight's tools i'm award. it is time now for happy hour and joining me tonight is our two web producer angie blake who was just on the show earlier and greg ross social commentator for a man on the street. d.c. dot com hey guys so you're doing a great job this week showing for a lot of. but i mean i want to you know my mother my mom she said the same thing and she has been watching oh well i know my mom said the same thing to you but i think she has to come on the show with just one stuff someone saying something about my mom. just that i read. you guys being here in honor of you both

wearing a rose colored shirts and salmon and pink drinks i want to start a way to start talking about something that i think most happy hours start off and that is by talking about kim kardashian and absolutely you've probably heard of a lawsuit that's going on against her take a look. came crashing on the ceiling or maybe not for a crime against passion but for casting a look alike in their commercials who bears to close the resemblance to reality stars in the lawsuit chemist claiming that well maybe intentionally used to look like an effort to trick the public into thinking that camera self is embarrassing the brand. ok there's actually two additional lawsuits against ones that aren't so much being talked about so i want to tell you guys about these and then we can talk about them their restraining orders that have been issued in west virginia one of them claims that kim her ex-husband kris humphries and humphries current girlfriend held the guy at the gunpoint forced him to watch the three of them having sex for

five hours in the hotel room and by the way that hotel room was filled with farm animals and a unicorn ok so that's one of them yes we'll also hear the other is someone who says that he stumbled upon the entire car gas and family at the ready for this an al qaeda training camp in a west virginia mountainside where they burned an american flag and where a concert was performed for all the terrorists that they came. that's fine with me that we got or with a shooter and had no it's if that guy says it was some guy in west virginia wants to say that what's your name what's a girl card at yeah yeah terrorists killer done i mean i thought the most shocking part was that there was a unicorn you know a lot of weird things in west virginia unocal going to be the worst i can't believe that fifteen twenty years into their business plan and they can't get a better location than west virginia at this point i mean you think they'd at least be allowed to count now you know people don't really want to go to west virginia so

yeah well i think it's a quiet i mean to be fair i think it was really more they were just all at a resort together because it was just look like an ok to drink and roughly in the same one story plane they have the mountainous fortification so that's good for them you know they're going to have a little bit more distance and also. if i was going to go after al qaida not that i've thought about this before but i was going to go. if i had to go through an army of west virginia and. i don't want to see mutants but. ok. i mean that would deter me a little bit i would think twice before you know trying to take on terrorists or two or whatever then let me just remind she's incredibly annoying and everyone gets sick whenever they see or how i want to know is that we it's a big day in washington and we talked earlier about health care about i just i really want to get this so crazy if you're on twitter as most of us throughout the day were on twitter you might have seen it quite

a bit of tweets from people who said after the ruling came down that because they were so angry at it they were going to move to canada let me put a couple of these up on the screen we have a couple tweet i'm moving to canada obviously the united states doesn't know what they're doing anymore this used to be a great country pretty sad i think we have another one. go to hold up free healthcare for everyone screw this commie country i'm moving to canada with me ok. do they not realize that canada was a republic i would never i mean maybe if they'll enjoy getting their free health care there but really that's the reason they're going to move to canada maybe we can take all of these idiots and then like a good chunk of west virginia we can trade canada for like rush or at least two thirds of the band and more sets first album maybe jagged little pill and not enough good acoustic reduced to two years ago no ryan adams you know absolutely no no young no i'd be happy with rush or at least i mean oh well you know two thousand

it was liberals want to move to canada because of w. getting elected now it's good to see that we've got some bipartisan agreement on treating canada's basically the job offer that like you think of whenever you have time then they want to leave because they don't agree with government health care and they want to go to a country where government health care well to be it is also number seventy five on stuff white people like to do so i can then yeah exactly no you never head authentic it's fantastic i said i did what would happen well if you would say you did it i would drive up to toronto right now so you have the right answer and then there's one more crazy story i mean there's a lot of crazy stories this one kind of sad and create and i don't know what i would do if i was in this position let's end on the south while ok so the only thing let me ask you what would you guess who is the olympic trials are going on and for the qualifying rounds for track and field to women and the olympic qualifying trials actually tied for third only three people can go and for the one

hundred one hundred yard dash one hundred meter dash one of the one of us they tied like literally photo finish everything take a look. in this time it can be broken one of two ways the obvious would be we'll have the two of them race each other it's a one hundred meter dash that's what they're competing for let them run one hundred meters if either of them says no i don't want to do that they'll decide it by virtue of a coin toss. so either they can redo the race or do a coin toss for an alum pick trial i mean for to go to the olympics if it's only for running one hundred yards so they don't have to go all the way to london to for like eight zero you see their dream dreams of going to the olympics whatever it's weird one of them can spend longer in a room with can car dash in there's your home or your they're made for t.v. there you go. that's true yeah maybe that maybe that i guess this is never happened before is that they had was a town in texas earlier this month who they decided to city council position with

rolling die so i mean politics sports teams use a little like this i don't even excuse me she was used i was going a little trying to we're going to let you go you know the rock paper scissors they can do it they don't do it she's she's cuniform she was easy it is high rises happy hours over things for drinking pink drinks and joining me to do so much serving i'm always fun and then that's going to do it for us for tonight show thanks so much for tuning in and make sure to come back tomorrow morning kelly from alter net will be on the show to discuss one clothing store being in hot water for its recess in the meantime don't forget to like you want to show on facebook follow us on twitter and subscribe to our few channels and yes what you can also want to see now on hulu coming up next is the news.

if. the fifty feet.

down like the official auntie application to i phone oh i pod touch from the i.q. stops to. lunch i'll teach life on the go. video on demand parties mind bold costs and r.s.s. feeds now in the palm of your. question on the t. dot com.