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 tax cuts for the 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 take. jim alice and raul 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 their 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 kleptocratic 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 in 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 there's their wealth shot up twenty two percent they made money during the recession so much so that in two thousand and seven they owe 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. as one 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 in two thousand and ten the estate tax was phased out dropping from fifty five percent or 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 altogether 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. 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 someplace else if the bush tax cut had never happened or the reagan tax cuts for that matter 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 conner factual would be because if he remembers telescopes took effect two thousand and one two thousand and two we were session the stock market crash put the economy actually into a fairly severe recession those tax cuts actually helped to bring us out of the recession were the best way to do it i mean you could have done other things you could have had tax cuts that weren't so we're going to towards high end earners you wanted 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 this period so you could argue that the straight face no it was by far the small ram is a good thing it just wasn't that big of you could have made a thousand dollars for everyone that might have been there way to go by. 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 even longer 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 to as was it was silly silly thing to say it was utterly absurd i mean anyone who looked at the economy at that time should have known it was 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 myself and people other economists are going this is nuts they're worried 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 yeah it was not it 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 always on 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 remember that it's raised what 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 into office and really the fed's doing and the tennis could help of that help to get a sound so again it's not that we need. the tax cut there were other things we could have done it didn't have to be oriented so much towards wealthy people if you go we're back in one thousand nine hundred one one thousand nine hundred 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 or almost two trillion dollars out of the one trillion dollars yet we cooked them in summer and tax rates you could turn them into temporary tax cuts i mean that would have got us out the recession so 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 face down a perfectly reasonable thing to do do you think our economy is headed for a double dip recession you know i 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 that 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 out and bought cars they went out had dinner so we had a lot of economic activity in the winter that we won't ordinarily have because

people are paying for heating bills well because they won't pay 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 borrowing that from the spring so if you bought a car in january don't go and buy another one in 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. so i thought i'd be shocked if we 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 transfer the economy when ever there is supposed to you know he's mandated with two things inflation and on one there's no story on inflation we've got the debt the inflation numbers just came out zero you know so so there's no problem you could you could create where we have an issue with inflation so he doesn't have to worry about inflation what is the focus on unemployment there were the white house look and great question i think he's intimidated by the republicans you know if you go back his own writings back on is a professor he was saying central banks in this 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'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 not 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 a place and you just want stranglers people just go what is your theory who is there you know is on the way around milton friedman but they don't know me don't you want i don't know him friedman i don't feel it 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 out invest a lot we just the government just laid off a million workers that doesn't make sense you know businesses don't think that way they they hire workers they invest when they see demand and when you cut the demand they cut back and smile i guess i guess that we can thank laugh for and and stephen moore you know supplies by a very young man so far as you can get anything coherent from there i mean it really is mind boggling because they're 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 bonds just went negative which is actually a super positive thing there is people are paying for interest or a lot of money there is going to the farm 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 should not be

a clue to us it sure should be in the point about reducing hours really important this is something people forget their heads right now we're actually suffering because we're too rich and 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 less 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 for experiment appreciate it. coming up is mitt romney who mitt romney's 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 this the nail in the coffin for the romney campaign. download the official ante up location tool on phone oh i pod touch from the i choose ops to. watch on t.v.

life on the go. video on demand on tease mine gold coast's an r.s.s. feeds now in the palm of your. question on the dot com wealthy british science. that's not on the title. market why not. run the. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike stronger for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to kaiser report on our.

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

beautiful for spacious oh right. or for. god. 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 cited 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 are 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 more americans who are losing their jobs joining me now is josh eidelson journalist and contributor with salon dot com josh welcome thank you tom thanks for joining us what's the history of sense 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 sot it 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 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 charge this is a story made for television i mean this is the this is just an 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 now 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 damning evidence of offshoring when romney was at the company that that that has been the stuff of attack ads and so these workers because they're offshoring is more. they haven't gotten their kind of attention but in their feet in the view of the workers i

talked to this is still over 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 get. and ross perot came out and said you guys you know look at these charts and tables and things and giant sucking sound of the south and what twenty percent of americans went with ross perot even though his vice presidential candidate was like who am i why am i here it seems that 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 head on him but there are fair heads he could make 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 to 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 send 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 of the very very hip when i have. the good r t the network of 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 r.t. 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 open r.t. has taken advantage of it. the better 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 plenty at least that's what he told one constituent

yesterday as he was leaving a meeting in wausau wisconsin take a look. around . like. big congressman 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 take a listen. 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's 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 well no they're 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 could pose to our democracy congress passed the tillman act in one thousand nine hundred 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 i think

corporations should be allowed to marry right well king county in the state of washington the county to 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 brilliant political theater pastor lange 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 lang 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 tao 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 were corporations were not people and money certainly was not speech go to move to amend oregon health or 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 sort of. wealthy british style some time to time with. the. markets why not

come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike's concert for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into cars a report on our. morning news today violence is once again fled up the front and these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. the giant corporations are old today.

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