in. ireland. oh i'm so hard on washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture according to the australian deputy prime minister the biggest threat to the global economy is the republican party of the united states so are the republicans is the republican party the most dangerous force in the world that ask our panel in tonight's big picture rubble and americans pay millions of dollars per year for so-called upgrades to our infrastructure but those upgrades never come out of the nation's utility companies

get away with playing fast and loose with your hard earned money last david cay johnston in tonight's conversations of great minds and in today's daily take our the corporate elite in this country working to stop progressive's and turning america back into well. it's friday are you ready to rumble joining me for tonight's big picture rumble our friend just get chambers editor and publisher of red alert politics the reverend de alexander bullock president of the rainbow push detroit chapter and laughlin mark a investigative reporter with the heritage foundation let's get started taxes are in the news been romney did a twenty year dump only he didn't actually put out his tax returns and study just said i'm going to tell you about them you can take my word for it but what he did reveal is that in his current tax returns he for last year he's not taking adoption

for a one point six or seven or whatever his million dollar donation he gave to the church which keeps his income tax above thirteen percent although next he can file an amended return and drive it back down but this year political career at the same time we discover that across the united states all. fifty states poor people pay more than rich people here's some examples in florida the top one percent the state taxes the top one percent pays two point one percent the bottom twenty percent pays thirteen point five percent in illinois the top one percent pays with four point one percent the bottom twenty percent pays thirteen percent in nevada the top one percent pays one point six percent the bottom twenty percent pays eight point nine percent in taxes the top one percent pays three percent the bottom twenty percent pays twelve point two percent we have two tax codes in the united states anybody who's working by the by the sweat of their brow by their mind or their muscles pays a thirty six percent top income tax rate anybody who makes money by moving money

around like mitt romney a base basically tax rate for banks there's pays a maximum fifteen percent rate which is why he's only been thirteen percent isn't this fundamentally immoral francesca well first of all going back to the mitt romney comment you know mitt romney paid way more than his fair share in taxes he paid nearly twenty percent in taxes and that's a way far above and beyond the claim he's on he's claiming thirteen percent on average over the last twenty years i believe there is a twenty last year was thirteen percent he said that he had never paid below thirteen percent in taxes and that over the twenty years he actually paid fourteen point one percent in taxes now the last year it was that he had paid the twenty percent in taxes it was in the house with her but that's without the deduction for his church so you think claiming he is not claiming that the dollar he has three years to file an amended return and say oops i forgot to give me that money back and i get back what it's been it's not fair to attack mitt romney for something that he hasn't done he did not i'm going to attack on mitt romney other than i

think it's a hustle i think you know he's trying to keep it above thirty percent because it would actually dropped twelve point two percent if you took that or not he paid twenty percent in taxes which is far above and beyond his fair share barack obama wants americans to pay for rich people to pay more sort of their share if you know the it was more than what he's required to pay if it is. surgeons in this town who are saving people's lives making one hundred fifty two hundred thousand dollars you're paying thirty six percent why should mitt romney pay twenty percent of his twenty million dollars you know what to do exactly right i mean this is completely ludicrous it's immoral this country right now we're seeing the rich getting richer poor getting poorer and no roof for the rich no floor for the poor and in indeed there's a war on the middle class and the working man and woman mitt romney and the poor and mitt romney needs to pay his fair share there's no reason why in all fifty states in the land of the free and home of the brave you have poor people actually pay more of their fair share having a higher tax burden on the state level while at the same time someone who is

supposed to be running for president who is supposed to be representing everybody is just out of touch with the complete reality that folks on the local level of the average citizen who is hard working of the people that make this country great are the ones actually carry more than their fair share this is not right so so. the morality of this rather than the economics of this isn't that is not a moral issue here where we do it by the way ronald reagan pointed this out in one thousand nine hundred eighty six i believe it was when he finally got the top tax rate maybe was ninety three to get the top tax rate down to twenty eight percent and he raised the capital gains rate up to twenty eight percent so they were the same so romney would have paid the same as a guy work and you know as the surgeon in the hospital on the street and he said we've got to get the clips someplace but i can't player now but he said is it is it fair that a millionaire pays less in taxes than a bus driver i think that's crazy well i think the state tax issue that you

mentioned is important one because we're not talking about just income taxes here we're talking about host of different taxes and a lot of those taxes disproportionately affect lower income people things like taxes on tobacco taxes lot of the axis on everything pretty much everything going by absolutely rational policy to make sure that there aren't these new. deductions that people who can afford tremendously expensive accountants can take advantage of or are you in favor of doing away with the capital gains tax you know i'm in favor of so you think people who make money with money are the blessid few among us who should get a special lower tax rate than those of us who actually work for a little any time they draw income from those capital gains they're paying income taxes on you know at a small fifteen percent rate you terror cells and six cents out of the pool and pays a maximum fifteen percent income tax rate on her investments but if you work for a living you can pay up to thirty six percent somehow that doesn't seem fair at the end of the scene on the one hand you've got people who make money by moving money

around and then on the other hand you've got the forty seven percent of these are just people who want to job and who want a house because you want to ease the burden shouldn't you be asking the pay the same tax rate as everybody else but you're using paris hilton as an example or logically no or any no i'm saying but to use a hollywood star or whatever as an example versus those people who are creating jobs the job creators are the people that they're selling the hires people with that money is already a job she's got a bottle or she's got a waiter she's got a wife describe the dalai lama and she's hiring people isn't that what we want out of america's rich people she would still hire people even if shoes paint a thirty six percent income tax rate she's got millions but i wish i could she hire as many people if she left course you are good she's standing she has lent you the losable income she has less money to hire people and she was going to use i did i wanted to talk about that immorality i honestly find it outrageous almost to say that mitt romney is not a moral when this is the guy who we're just talking about who gave thirty percent

of his income to the church to during the night decide mitt romney other than that i think he's he's you know plain plain number games with his tax returns for last year for political purposes but i'm not calling him a moral i'm calling the system immoral i'm saying shouldn't we be changing the system well should we go back to what ronald reagan said on. and they have a millionaires pay the same tax rate as opposed to i think we should reform the tax system and that there should be a fair tax or if so you know laughlin is not in favor of doing away with a capital gains tax he wants to keep a special rate on multimillionaires what about you but i don't think that's exactly what a lot inside but i absolutely believe in some sort of in tax reform i think that republicans and democrats would agree on the sense that we need to have to make money with money pay a lower tax top tax rate than people who make money working but i agree with what laughlin said about how those people are paying taxes in other areas after they make that money they're paying income tax they're paying zero and every time so you're still in favor of keeping capital gains that i am in favor of reforming the

tax code period ok last comment on this topic and you know i think the tax code should be fair it is not fair for people who make money moving money to have a lower tax burden than people who do hard work people who are in manufacturing industries and the poor and so we must just really cut past and sift out the small takes and put this country back on the path to greatness and it begins with the quality in the tax code ok i'm with you on that the biggest threat to the entire global economy according to the the number two and the prime minister the deputy prime minister and the prime minister of australia is the republican party in the united states watch this. maybe we don't have it ok well i can tell you the australian prime minister oh here it is great there we go let's be blunt but he knowledge the biggest threat to the world's biggest economy. crisis of tycho

a pop of the republican pox despite president obama's strong if it's the national interest was held hostage by the rise of the extreme tea party wing of the republican party. and they can be few cities more alarming in public policy than a political. which was genuinely prepared to see the government called the united states default on its obligations in the war to disprove a political point so yesterday chuck schumer was quoted as saying it came on the presence of that he's been talking in the back rooms to a bunch of republican senators who are saying we're looking for if mitt romney loses we're looking forward to get rid of the tea party crazies and stop all this nonsense of going back to actually legislating is the contemporary republican party captured by the koch brothers in the tea party is it the most dangerous force in the world absolutely i mean they have the country confuse we're trying to figure

out of the president is a muslim was he born in this country does he have a birth certificate we need change in trade policy well we need to beef up american business we need to put americans back to work the tea party has america confuse and then to distance political philosophy that says you know will sink the ship you know just to shame the captain while i'm on that ship i mean there are a lot of people on that ship and so you're going to sink the ship just the same the captain i mean this is what's wrong this this this culture of divisive this politics of difference this obstruction this politics this is not the america that i hope to be and so to hear that that's refreshing we need to move past this kind of party culture where you think you know australia did tremendously well in the current economic downturn compared to most other advanced countries a socialist country well the i.m.f. said it was in no small part due to due to the tremendously small amount of debt compared to g.d.p. in australia twenty five thirty percent roughly i will save that was an imperative

for other advanced countries to get that under control so that's fine but our government is twenty percent of our g.d.p. australia's government is almost fifty percent of g beside the point what i'm saying is that when they are already says we need to under control not raise the debt limit above wherever it's at sixteen seventeen trillion for a country that has benefited from a true. well you want to change that i would say should. i be talking about what the tea party wants what the tea party is shooting for what this guy is criticizing his country do you just act with just a minute he loved it's all yours francesca thirty second isn't it that strongly disingenuous to derive the division of politics in america while slamming the tea party and i don't think that it's fair for but that is what happened and i don't think that it's fair for you know us to say oh well the deputy prime minister of australia says that that's a threat so that somehow it's right we need to know is that he's a major progressive the prime minister is a major progressive that's like saying that center for american progress thinks republicans are a threat so therefore they're a threat

a lot of liberals as it really is doing really great they're not crashing right now they're run by progressives you know that right before that though they were written by conservatives when they were ran by conservatives the conservatives say the same thing of barack obama oh he's a major threat whatever so we're going to say here i mean like republicans will say that of democrats progressives will say that of conservatives that's really what we're talking about your rubble right after the break. download the official publication so choose your language stream quality and enjoy your favorite. t.v. is not required to watch on t.v. all you need is your mobile device watch on t.v. any time and the.

wealthy british signs on. time. martin. 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 in to cons a report on our.

welcome back to the big picture rubble joining me are francesca chambers editor and publisher of regular politics the reverend dee alexander bullock president of rainbow push detroit's chapter and laughlin mark a investigative reporter with the air at its foundation let's get back to it paul ryan spoke to members of the a.a.r.p. today in new orleans and let's just say didn't get the best reception take a look. the first step. to a stronger medicare is to repeal obamacare because it represents the worst of both worlds. and that wasn't the only one a booed over and over and over and people walked out and finally he just walked off

the thank you or out of here and they were booing him on the way out so you know it has been by by proposing. some years ago that social security be privatized be turned over to social security and more recently having passed through the house of representatives two budgets the suggested that medicare should be voucher arised as paul ryan just devastated the republican but let me start with you log on we i mean the a.a.r.p. it should be noted makes more money if health care premiums go up so the notion that they that they have the best interests of the interim embers don't just don't realize that the a p is basically an insurance salesman they don't get the i won't use the members of regurgitating what leadership tells them quite clearly the a.a.r.p. as an organization does not have the best interests of the american health care system at heart and i should also note that there is that about the a.a.r.p. this is about paul ryan getting booed when he said we need to and obamacare at a paul added a r.p.

event we have mostly retired people yes so it was an iraqi up lawyers who were members of an organization that benefits from obamacare booming obamacare being repealed that doesn't strike me as particularly surprising you know good for him that he actually went in there and said what he thought and didn't change his message based on the audience he obviously knew that that wasn't a popular message with that audience and he said it in a way unlike every romney who talks to millionaires differently than he talks to no you know that's not what i'm saying at all and i don't think that's comparable but what i am saying is that there are a lot of politicians who will say one thing in front of one audience and say something else and from another audience to gain favor and paul ryan went in there and stay consistent with his message and i think that's important because if he had it we'd be sitting here talking about all paul ryan is a phony you're you know you're really. oh i agree with you in this that's a good point and in this modern day and age of everything from flip phones to sell camera you know cell phone cameras and whatnot it's pretty hard to be the kind of the old fashioned kind of politician who would say one thing to one group and you can't do that anymore but the root of all of this is that it i mean we can. take

this moment and elevate it and say well paul ryan is a man of integrity now because he doesn't flip flop insists he's consistent consistently out of touch you know that that's what that's what this proves i mean and so it's great to see that just when you think the american people don't know window blew it they blew it the appropriate time. romney and ryan have declared war on the middle class they have declared war on working americans they have declared war on people who make this country great and this just is just another nail in the coffin keep it coming around here i have declared war on the people that make this country great is if i remember right it was obama who said that you didn't build that he was the one who declared he said here i don't have all read between that we didn't. say i didn't say i think if anything we declared war and he looked at me it's very very president barack hussein obama the first african-american president of united states of america and we look at the agenda of romney and ryan that want

to see what middle class one is obviously for equity and the tax code one is obviously for making sure that people have access to health care and the other is just for the rich getting richer no roof for the rich no fuel for the poor we must at some point in this country decide that we're going to strengthen the safety net and stop american citizens from falling through the cracks that's president obama so laughlin you you look like you are about to jump on my feet i don't i don't like questioning the motives of people people policies you know i think republicans democrats both think they have policies that they feel are best for the country i don't you know i don't think anyone's out for. this isn't some massive you know the republican party is not just out there to. to screw over the middle class and poor people like you know there's an ideology. that goes back to our writing on a napkin anyone's motives of paul ryan and mitt romney or anyone else i think doesn't have a place in civilized political debate but what about impugning the reality i mean i

think that you certainly do you identify any country in the history of the world that has ever cut its way to prosperity cut its way to cross but i mean this is the republican agenda let's you know and in fact in twenty five states that have been laid off employees and what you've seen in those twenty five states those republican states to be twenty four states is you have seen their g.d.p. go down their unemployment go up whereas in the twenty five republican or democratic states where they've actually invested more and raised taxes and spent more money you've actually seen g.d.p. go up and unemployment go down there will be cuts that have to happen to some government services it's inevitable simply raise you know the tax revenue to cover our soul let's close some of our seven hundred military base ok well that's that's certainly a position valid position to take my point is simply that the cuts will have to take place significant cuts so we can do that now when we could while. the other bill clinton aspiration we had a surplus george bush's first state of the union address he spent about six minutes

of that talking about how he was going to pay off one hundred percent of all the debt in america that was. about how the president was going to trim half off the debt my point isn't to blame this on one number so if you're not going to do it i don't even think it's barack obama's fault i think this is a systemic widespread problem surely getting to reagan and i and the point is simply that we cannot continue on this trajectory so accepting that the decision is whether we make cuts smaller cuts in services now or larger cuts in services later we raise taxes on rich people and then there are versions rich people do not have enough money to cover the mass not even the deficit let alone the national debt right now actually if you if you know thirty seven percent of our federal and. used to come from corporations now it's eleven percent we used to have a top tax rate of ninety one percent now it's thirty six percent and for rich people it's only fifteen percent when that top tax rate was ninety one percent in the thirty's the forty's the fifty's the sixty's and the seventy's we had the for

the first time in the history of the united states four consecutive decades where g.d.p. grew more than three point two percent a year it had never happened before ever in the united states and it's only happened in two or three countries ever in the history of the world as soon as that as soon as reagan drop that top tax rate all of a sudden was hot money hey let's gamble and everybody and we when we moved into a bubble economy and thirty years of reaganomics has devastated america you can look back or you can look forward to point is looking forward i'm saying trying to my vision again i'm very good at that where you have to. be to repartition against reaganomics i mean it is always interesting of people want to talk about cuts but these are not the people being cut i mean the people who are going to be affected by these cuts this small government this fiscal accountability are the poor are low income americans are working class americans so you could fire you you could police for instance in in michigan you take fifty percent of the lighting out of the city of detroit you take now literally live right you take ninety five of the lighting

out of city of highland park in the name of fiscal responsibility but somehow the suburban areas the influence areas they have police they have fire they have lice and so the cuts don't cut equally right and this is what we're going back to i mean with the romney and ryan agenda this this this this tea party led republican party is bad for the country and we must stop this movement at all costs well and it's not just that i mean there's a systemic issue here that has been going on for at least thirty years of a lot of a commute right track way back before that but for instance francesca in in chicago in the chicago school system the entire chicago school system spends a little over eight thousand dollars per student per year in the average of the. around chicago it's twenty three thousand dollars per year how can that be right in america the richest nation in the world well you're not going to convince me that chicago who needs to spend more money per student you know i mean if they did that they could take that money and how you did it pays off that the suburbs get it what

they should do in chicago is that exactly what rahm emanuel tried to do and i never thought i'd be hearing myself say that but they need to increase the merit based pay they need to you know. what i'm saying to yeah and then they were right it is beneath the streets first several days trying to try to there that. maybe a little bit maybe a little bit but but my point families actually baby strollers. my point being the teachers really tried to go against that and all they were really asking for was to hold them more accountable what the teachers were asking for was was was a school system where one third of the schools don't have libraries to have all have library with it's like two rounds of these hurdles for massive raises that they didn't deserve considering that kids are legally the only really only reason that they could go on strike legally was for salaries so that's what they put out but that was not the issue the issue was and they were very clear about this and so was romantically both sides admitted that this is not about salaries what this is

about is the fact that you've got fifteen thousand six hundred kids in the chicago school system who are homeless and in that and then it this school system is serving millions of kids over a million kids there are there were only seven hundred counselors i mean not enough to there's over eight hundred schools in the system and the issue is just part of it but it was a big part of it they literally would not stop the strike because they weren't getting the salary they was let's talk about the salary that the two top performing school systems in the world are singapore and denmark now what are these two countries have in common singapore is a dictator city state i've been there you literally you chew gum and spit on the sidewalk you go to jail in the in the taxis the taxi driver has the. the last one i was in had a little bit when he hit a certain speed his literally a little bell went off in his car so he'd back off on the speed because they will they will stop you if you're speeding beats you up and put you in jail singapore is a dictatorship and and denmark is like the most liberal hippy country in the whole

world you know and they've got you know pot colonies and. what do these two countries have in common what they have in common is that in both those countries they are the two countries where teachers are the most highly paid in the world in both those countries it's very hard to become a teacher and teachers make as much as physicians the only countries in the world where teachers think as much as doctors and they get the best educational outcomes should we learn something from them you could learn something from the experience of the states should save the cities around the country you know the chicago teachers made average seventy one thousand dollars before better actually starting pay for teachers or a fifty one thousand no you have in the median income in the united states is forty six thousand and it takes six years to become a teacher to be eligible in a school system a psychology you're telling me that only one thousand dollars is the second highest average of any city in the country paying teachers and chicago outcomes are random they are potential spending eight thousand dollars per student and they get fifteen

thousand homeless kids and their schools are so many they're spending eight thousand dollars per student and seventy one thousand dollars per teacher again second highest i mean is there a little bit of so you think the teachers should be in a race to the bottom with no i put it wal-mart greeter is a resource allocation reallocation is in order if students are being so neglected and teachers are making as much as they are and students are still there and that's the right that's their systemic problems when you start talking about education and if you have homeless students have students who don't have glasses students whose parents don't have employment image of students who live in communities that are impoverished blight everywhere drugs limited fire limited police i mean that affects their outcome in the classroom and you know i really tire of people try. to shackle teachers with with the burden for failing students as if students don't come from a context and so we must expand our view and we talk about how to help every student make it how to level the playing field one yes we need to have an equitable

spending you can't spend eight thousand dollars per pupil in one district twenty three thousand another in this in this is a national problem you go to the urban area you know it's you know seven thousand eight thousand per pupil you go to suburban areas it's fourteen it's fifteen is twenty. one we need to level the playing field terms of what we are investing in economically but then we also must stabilise the link to neighborhoods that these students living in. will come back and continue the conversation more rubble right after the break. pretty free. free. free free. free. free. free.

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