welcome back to the big picture i'm tom arbonne coming up in this half hour six heirs to the wal-mart fortune control more money than the bottom thirty percent of our nation and the bush tax cuts have only helped adding have only added to their fortune but unlike the waltons most americans haven't benefited at all from the ex would be better off today if they'd never been created also in a small town in illinois and more americans are falling victim to bain capital's love of outsourcing why are workers pleading to mitt romney for health is there even the slightest chance that he'll listen or will he let more americans become unemployed and the supreme court ruled in citizens united the corporations are

people in the money is speech more or less so if corporations are people a should be allowed to marry just like you and me right i'll explain in tonight's daily to. me jim alice and together plus three other family members they own roughly ninety three billion dollars in wealth why because they all have the same last name walt they're all heirs to the wal-mart fortune and they are the richest family in america occupying rankings twelve through fifteen on the forbes four hundred richest americans list they are evil people they can't help it that their dad built up an enormous fortune many more actually philanthropist what they really are is a symptom of something really wrong in our nation's current tax system because back in two thousand and seven a study by the center wage and employment dynamics found that the wal-mart heirs again just six people own more wealth than one hundred million other americans

combined basically the bottom thirty percent of the nation think about that six people only more well than one hundred million other people expect those sort of numbers in developing clipped. craddick banana republics but in america then the financial panic hit in the bush great recession began in two thousand and seven between two thousand and seven and two thousand and ten our economy tanked jobs and investments were lost and a lot of people were feeling the pain median family wealth in america dropped nearly forty percent even the wealth of the forbes four hundred richest americans took a sixteen percent it but what about the walton theirs their wealth shot up twenty two percent they made money during the recession so much so that in two thousand and seven they they owned more wealth than the bottom thirty percent of americans combined and today they own more wealth than the bottom forty percent of americans combined that's six people who own more wealth than forty percent of the nation combined and one reason why the wal-mart heirs of a mess such an unbelievable fortune even during

a recession is thanks to this guy george w. bush not only do they cut income taxes for the wealthiest americans like the wall there is starting back in two thousand and one the also cut the instate the estate tax the inheritance tax mean the waltons can continue collecting and then passing their enormous fortunes on without being taxed between two thousand and one and two thousand and ten the estate tax was phased out dropping from fifty five percent of bill clinton to eventually zero in two thousand and ten and guess who is lobbying for eliminating the estate tax altogether the walton family and even though today the estate tax is back up to a more reasonable thirty five percent still only applies to the richest of the rich fewer than one percent of americans and it's far lower than the fifty five percent rate under president bill clinton but republicans are still trying to eliminate it all together as part of their push to extend the bush tax cuts for people like the waltons again at the end of the year so ten years after bush gave us his tax cuts in our economy when the tank while people like the walmart errors made unbelievable

fortunes can we conclude that they didn't work at least they didn't work to create prosperity for ninety nine percent of americans or might we be today a sump. else if the bush tax cuts had never happened or the reagan tax cuts for that now joining me now is dean baker co-founder and co-director of the center for economic and policy research and author of the book the end of loser liberalism making markets progressive among many other brilliant books dean welcome back thanks for me good to have you with us where would we be without the bush tax cuts will you really have to ask what the counter factual would be because if he remembers task cuts took effect two thousand and one two thousand and two recession the stock market crash put the economy actually into a fairly severe recession those tax cuts actually helped to bring this out of the recession the best way to do it i mean you could have done other things you could've had tax cuts that weren't so oriented towards high end earners you would have and you could you argue that bernie sanders suggestion that everybody get three hundred dollars cash was the biggest piece of this this or at least wasn't

during a speech and you could argue that the straight face now is by far the small ram is a good thing it just wasn't that big i mean you could have made the thousand dollars for every one that might have been better way to go i'm not in favor of tax cuts for rich people but the point is that you had to do something it was good to do something to stimulate the economy so the question is ok if we didn't have the taxes we just sat there and done nothing i think no doubt that recession been even longer and harder but could have done something better sure we could have had infrastructure spending we could have had a more you know the bernie sanders times five or whatever there are other things we could have done to stimulate the economy so you have to be careful so what would we have done had we not had the tax cuts and the answer is nothing or problem better off of the tax cuts although at the end of at the end of two thousand george bush in fact in his first inaugural address he said we are going to over the next decade pay off one hundred percent of the american debt that's available to be paid off you know president clinton was saying that too is was silly silly thing to say it was utterly absurd i mean anyone who looked at the economy at that time should have

known as absurd unfortunately just about everyone who did look at the economy people like alan greenspan larry summers go down the list of policy makers they were saying that it was campaign for were sort of sitting there saying must. often people other economists are going this is nuts they're worrying about what are we going to do we pay off the debt how will the fed do monetary policy i'm serious alan greenspan had people at the fed yet it was not he was utterly nuts you know they wasted our money so so had there i'm curious what you think might have happened had you know reagan drop the top tax rate from seventy four percent down to fifty percent and then down to twelve all without a twenty eight percent and raise the capital gains rate up to twenty eight percent famously saying do you think that a millionaire in a bus driver should you know should the millionaire pay a lower tax rate to remember that phrase well it was a good speech to get was yeah had the reagan tax cuts never happened how would it how would america be good here's the irony both of them by chance came into office in a recession you know so reagan came in i should say came in in

a recession but it took place shortly after he came in office and really the fed's doing and the test could help us help to get a sound so again it's not that we needed the tax cut there were other things we could have done it didn't have to be oriented so much towards wealthy people but if you go we're back in one thousand nine hundred eighty two we're in a severe recession and there are no tax cuts we've gotten out of it but i think of it in radio as doing kind of all of the above i mean he borrowed almost three trillion dollars almost two trillion dollars out of the one trillion dollars. in tax rates you could turn them into temporary tax cuts i mean that would have gone and saw the recessions you could have had the tax cuts go into effect eighty one eighty two eighty three or in the case of president bush you know two thousand and one two thousand and two two thousand and three and then phase down a perfectly reasonable thing to do do you think our economy is headed for a double dip recession you know we have these people out there who you know you know they make a career out of seeing double dip double dip double dip and somehow you know they're going to be doing it's a world dead it doesn't seem to discredit them you know it takes a lot to go into recession because you know it to be crude about this but economies

want to grow i mean that's the basic story they generally grow with productivity growth it takes a lot to throw us into a double dip recession and i think for the most part what people are doing who are saying this they're misreading. the numbers we had a very very good winter i don't want to overplay it but we had a better than trend winter for the simple reason that we had good weather so people went on board cars they went to dinner so we had a lot of economic activity in the winter that we want ordinarily have because people are paying for heating bills well because they weren't paying for heating bills and also people want to go and shop when it's below zero and there's a foot of snow on the ground you know at least where we're flat behavioral yeah yeah you know it's very simple you know you can see in the data so you know he was clear that we got the numbers for december january february those were much better than trend because the unusually good weather but what that meant was you bowing that from the spring so if you bought a car in january don't go and buy another one april may so people are really misreading those numbers so when you look at them carefully you go ok we had better than trend growth in the winter worse than trying to the spring we're coming back

if you look at numbers like the last two or three weeks and unemployment insurance claims are down quite a bit housing has been doing very good actually in recent recent months so i thought i would be shocked if we could have a double dip recession it seems to me that the republicans have been doing everything they can to block any kind of legislation that might be stimulative and in fact they've been you know they dialed back on employment from ninety nine weeks to seventy four weeks and most of that is heading between now and november is it possible that there could be you know just a softer spot than there should be between now and the elections well you know i don't know the republican thought processes but clearly they've been taking doing everything if i were trying to be words i'd be doing what they were doing and today i'm trying to see if it came a days messed up whether or not he testified yesterday or today they were braiding him saying you better not do anything to spur the economy between now and the election and you just go that actually is his job he's supposed to try and spread the economy when ever as opposed to you know he's mandated two things inflation and

there's no story on inflation we've got the debt the inflation numbers just came out of zero you know so so there's no problem you could you could create where we have a. an issue with inflation so he doesn't have to worry about inflation why does a focus on unemployment there were the white house akins great question i think he's intimidated by the republicans you know if you go back his own writings back when it's a professor he was saying central banks in a situation should be very aggressive in trying to boost growth very hard to say what he's doing to aggressively there was a interesting piece in today's financial times about how the i.m.f. has just come out and said europe is on the edge of a deflation you know economists speak for depression or something close to it i mean that that's that direction is it is it not is this is this you know code for a great depression and and is this the consequence of this these austerity programs that are going on in europe well it's certainly very well could be i mean europe's been pursuing absolutely no the policies i mean they're insisting you have you know

a structure where the central bank the germany really is the villain here germany in the european central bank they're insisting on austerity from you know from from greece from spain from italy and it's self perpetuating this is really simple you go ok we're going to have the government not buy stuff who's going to buy and splays and you just want to strangle as people just go what is your theory who is there you know is all the way around milton friedman but they know me don't you want to i don't know i'm friedman i know if there is reason it's not that nutty you know it's a you don't there's not a story you could tell where you know businesses are going to go oh great i'm go on invest a lot we just the government just laid off a million workers that doesn't make sense you know business is don't think that way they they hire workers they invest when they see demand when you cut the demand they cut back their investment i guess i guess that we can thank laugh for and and stephen moore you know supplies by a very young and so far as you can get anything coherent from there i mean it really is mind boggling because there wreaking so much havoc there destroying a continent for you know for nothing now on the flip side of that france is

reducing the ins with the retirement age reducing the number of hours that are worked raising the minimum wage and french by. just went negative which is actually a super positive thing and those people are paying for interest a lot of the money that is going to those farms so france is like you know if interest rates are any indication one of the healthiest countries in the world and they just went socialist. it sure should be in the point about reducing our it's really important this is something people forget their heads right now we're actually suffering because we're too rich in france is dealing with a very reasonable way we're producing everything we need to get all these people sitting around nothing to do while we all work was kind of an obvious thing when we have the demand when we actually need things to be done great work people work more but the problem is right now there's nothing for them to do so well said dean baker thanks so much appreciate you. coming up is mitt romney mitt romney has been hit hard for his record of being capital for the company's record outsourcing job after

job overseas well it turns out bain capital still sending jobs overseas leaving americans unemployed is the nail in the coffin for the romney campaign. me fifty feet if. the. elite.

wealthy british style. that's not on the tireless. markets why not come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with max cause or for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into cars a report on r g. c.

a the best the rest the news outsourcing continues to be all the rage on the campaign trail as president obama continues to hammer mitt romney or bain capital's record of outsourcing thousands of jobs overseas sweep the obama campaign released this said. i'm barack obama and i approve this message oh beautiful for

spacious oh right. or her. as romney tries to explain his history of bain capital to recover from president obama's recent attacks it appears the company he helped to create is still outsourcing jobs today since saddam set of technologies a company owned by bain capital is transferring all of its illinois based operations to china and right now in freeport illinois american workers are training the chinese workers who will replace them these same workers are pleading with net romney to help save their jobs of being outsourced like so many others so

what's the current situation situation was and is there any chance romney will use his influence with bain to prevent more americans from losing their jobs joining me now is josh eidelson journalist and contributor was salon dot com josh welcome. thank you tom thanks for joining us what's the history of since out of technologies . so this is a company that in some sense was created by being capital by pulling divisions out of other companies like texas instruments putting them together calling it since two thousand and six and federal filings reveal that virtually every year since two thousand and six the u.s. share of the workforce that's inside a has decreased so offshoring is an annual tradition it's an saga ever since bain capital brought it together so tell me the story of these workers coming to mitt romney on bended knee so there are one hundred seventy workers there many of them have been there long before the names and saw that was on some of been

there for decades they do manufacturing work creating sensors for cars and workers have come forward many of them wrote a letter to romney they've held public events and their message is you created this company this is your baby it has taken control of these divisions it's created this company and year after year it sends the jobs away now it's our jobs some of them are in their fifty's people who want to work those last ten years before they retire and are about to be out on the street because of this race to the bottom and so their message to romney is speak up for us one of the workers said repeatedly even if you don't create any jobs just stop these jobs are being taken away stop your company that you created from sending our jobs out of the country that's their appeal to him and they've been echoed in friendlier terms by two republican congressmen locally and now by the entire city council in freeport monday night

which is said to romney come visit check out what's happening under this romney economic model and then do something to help these workers charged this is a story made for television i mean this is the just absolutely perfect story why is it that the that the national corporate media is now all over this thing. i think there's been less attention to this because what's going on and know romney is no longer the c.e.o. odor etc there's been this litigation back and forth which it seems to be politically effective for the obama folks but this litigation back and forth about exactly when he left the company and also because there is so much evidence of offshoring when romney was at the company that that that has been the stuff of attack ads and so these workers because their offshoring is were recent they haven't gotten that kind of attention but in their feet in the view of the workers

i talked to this is still over all of the story and it's certainly a story about an american economy in which this kind of behavior is still incentivized by companies well and in the context of that you know one thousand nine hundred two was the election where george herbert walker bush and bill clinton both took the side of nafta calf to shaft. and ross perot came out and said no to guys you know look at these charts and tables and things and giant sucking sound to the south and what twenty percent of americans went with ross perot even though as vice presidential candidate was like who am i why am i here it seems that anybody who had been in any kind of major corporate position in america over the last few decades since this major turn american foreign policy or trade policy would be stuck with the same problem romney is is this you know what are your thoughts on that is this a fair hit on him. i think it's a fair handle of him but there are fair hits he can make on obama also there's an

irony here because romney's response is to talk about trumped up accusations for example it's a linda the substantive charge you can make against obama on trade would be to hit him from the left to head humid for example the trans-pacific partnership which is potentially nafta on steroids could become a permanent global trade deal or to hit him on the people who are on his jobs council like g.e. a major outsourcing offshoring company romney hasn't been doing that because it romney has his own constraints that that stopped him from coming after him from the left and so instead he makes these silly attacks it's fascinating josh thanks so much for being with us tonight. thank you you know no matter how hard he tries to spin it mitt romney helped create a company that to this day is outsourcing jobs overseas and leaving americans unemployed if he helps on so many jobs overseas as just the c.e.o. of a corporation imagine what he'll do as president of the united states. it's

the good the bad in the very very hip when i had. the good r t then at work on what you're watching our television show every night at nine pm eastern time is the most watched news source on you tube that's according to a pew research study finding that party tops the likes of fox news the b.b.c. a.b.c. news even the a.p. with more than eight percent of total news viewership on you tube and mainstream media fails us alternative news has an opening archie has taken advantage of it well down the bat tea party congressman sean duffy he's not the biggest fan of talking to constituents and believes that holding one town hall meeting a year to meet with voters it's plenty at least that's what he told one constituent yesterday as he was leaving a meeting in wausau wisconsin take

a look. ok. look . like no. big guardsman sean duffy the most inaccessible. congressman tough tough word to say in america and the very very ugly bryan fischer the head of the american family association one of the radio call president obama a string thought with the mindset of a juvenile delinquent it was. you have a lawless president this guy plays jim he reminds me of

a juvenile delinquent is really what he reminds me of he's like a street thug where there are no laws there are no rules that apply to him he feels like he could do whatever he wants he can take whatever he wants he can ignore whatever he wants really he has the mindset of a juvenile delinquent he is destroying america he is dismantling the structure of america is dismantling and destroying american values and he seems to be taking a perverse delight in doing so just like juvenile delinquents just destroy stuff just for the sheer pleasure of destruction we all know the calling the president a street thug is a dog whistle a white racists and then the bryan fischer has never shied away from and pushing marriage equality is tantamount to destroying american values and bryan fischer has no american values and that's very very ugly.

thanks to the supreme court and their citizens united decision corporations in america are considered people but it didn't used to be like this the first modern corporations began forming around the eight hundred seventy s. eight hundred eighty s. and after realizing the power of these corporations had on society and the danger they pose to our democracy congress passed the tillman act in one thousand and seven which outlawed corporations from donating to politicians. but fast forward a century and corporations are now donating to politicians or at least helping political campaigns without any limits because the supreme court decided to blow up the sensibility of the tillman act and replace it with this mind boggling idea that corporations are people and money isn't property and speech should know and of corporations are people and we follow that logic to its final conclusion that corporations should be allowed to marry right well king county in the state of

washington the county the seattle's in follow the citizens united logic and showed how absurd it is they issued a marriage license for a living breathing woman to marry an inanimate all powerful corporation in a beautiful and heartfelt wedding ceremony in king county washington ms angela maree vocal married corporate person a washington state corporation the wedding ceremony was attended by roughly one hundred guests and was presided over by a united methodist minister and pastor rich lange who presided over a brilliant ceremony that was also a brilliant political theater pastor lang told the crowd that for angela dear sweet victim of corporate propaganda she has been swept up in a love that knows no boundaries nor limits nor moral concerns lange went on to say that we gather knowing that the love that binds them together will end in the grief and tragedy of angela's mortal death even as corporate person lives on marrying

again and again with the adoration and support of shareholders worldwide and finally at the end of the ceremony pastor lang close by saying in celebration of this merger let us reach deep into our pocketbooks and take out that symbol of that it which is most sacred and holy of all let us show the benevolent power of our corporate lords and master by taking out a one dollar bill. you know when our constitution was written the word person meant a living and breathing human bein over time the supreme court has expanded the definition of person to include inanimate non-living economy destroying and it's how at times sociopathic and downright evil corporations over time we've witnessed the current corruption of our american democracy and a shift to a corporate oligarchy where we've lost much of our control over american politics to corporations with a lot of the power and control the corporations have in america grows so much that we're left with the post citizens united logic that

a year the living breathing human being can marry the likes of walmart or exxon mobil it's time we restored sanity to america and brought the word person back to the vision of our founding fathers the corporations were not people and money certainly was not speech go to move to amend or to help them redefine marriage as between two living and breathing human beings. and that's it for tonight's big picture don't forget democracy begins with you your it. download the official anti up location join the phone oh i pod touch from the i.q. jumps to. one child's life on the go. video on demand all teasing minefield comes and already says feeds now in the palm

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