big picture i'm tom hartman coming up in this half hour last week wal-mart workers made all lot of noise staging the first ever strike in the retail giants history now a confidential corporate melb chamber of the having impose shows that workers may have the upper hand in this labor struggle more in just a moment and later in the eyes daily take how have thirty years of failed trade policies given foreign investors an opening to take over our nation's education system the answer coming up.

in the most of the rest of the news in recent weeks we've seen an unprecedented labor strikes against the world's largest private retailer wal-mart it started with a walkout among wal-mart supply chain workers and turned into a strike by wal-mart's retail workers in a dozen cities across the nation last week workers threaten to hold actions on black friday at the end of november if wal-mart doesn't agree to stop retaliating against employees who speak out about poor working conditions and now we know that this strike has the attention of wal-mart executives according to a leaked corporate memo obtained by the obvious impose that was sent around to wal-mart's salaried employees only managers are instructed to act with caution when confronting striking workers for fifty years wal-mart has stifled any sort of union activity but this latest memo is on usually cautious telling managers not to violate their were. his rights to organize and not to discipline employees who are

engaged in walk outs or sit ins memo also cautions men managers from threatening intimidating or even spying on workers who are trying to organize it does however instruct managers to give workers facts opinions and personal experiences with labor organizing in an effort to discourage union activity so given the strikes in the recent week and now this leaked corporate memo who has the upper hand in the fledgling labor dispute the black friday looming at the end of next month for the latest i'm joined by josh eidelson labor reporter and contributor and contributing writer to salon and in these times josh welcome back thank you tom what do you make of this memo is wal-mart getting softer intimidated or is it just you know the time has come for the workers. i think it's too soon to say that i think it shows one of two things either it shows well we're going a paper trail in the room and that they're brought before the labor board they have

this memo which says that they tell their managers to follow the law or it could genuinely show the company in being more cautious than they have in the past about retaliation at least for now and if they are being more cautious that's likely not because of the law the law has been there for a long time it's because by taking this industrial action going out on strike workers have brought much more attention both from the media and from other workers around the country to what happens next where is your town getting when it was just a group of workers at one store confronting their manager was much easier for wal-mart how has wal-mart managed to suppress union organizing for over fifteen years and what is changing that that is christmas cracker the most dramatic example is in canada where workers want to union election and wal-mart shut down the entire store they've also allegedly implemented personality tests to screen employees before hiring them to avoid people who might act up to be in the eyes of the

company they hold captive audience meetings where they force workers to listen to why they shouldn't be involved in the union and wal-mart has repeatedly been accused of illegally firing in discriminating against people for their union actions so what's different now about that. well woods different is that for the first time in fifty years we have workers at multiple stores actually out on strike in the us in nantes a result in part of the courage of workers in the supply chain over the past few months elsewhere when i'm straight can impart very effective organizing by this group are well known since two thousand and eleven that i think was so effective in part because it was really situated in the individual stores having leaders not just fly to arkansas but talk to their coworkers and confront their local managers acting like a union even though they don't have one did our wal-mart's this this organization that has emerged within wal-mart did it spontaneously arise in the grassroots was seen in by the f l c i o or some other union is due to come about as

a result of the occupy movement or to come from it's an organization that's closely tied to the united feeding commercial workers union a union that's been tabling with warmer for a long time but the effect they've had is quite distinct from previous efforts by the u. of c. w. and other unions as recently as the mid two thousand you have c.w. attempted an effort that had some of the same design but didn't get close to this kind of traction of actually getting workers to the point where hundred sixty felt the courage and the sense of solidarity to actually walk off the job what if wal-mart doesn't squash these people like bugs like they've done in the past metaphorically of course. aren't they say you know maybe they're just trying to do this to protect themselves legally but aren't they also. in a isn't isn't this going to grow. i think the big questions over the next month one is how many people these two hundred sixty workers can mobilize among their

coworkers the other is does wonder try to snuff this out with a dramatic show of force even if it's a legal or illegal are concerned that if they retaliate it will inflame more protest and bring them more negative attention that's what we don't know it won't hurt me not have decided the instant question you know neither josh eidelson thanks so much for being with us josh thank you very much tom now for the flip side of the story i want to bring in neil asprey an entrepreneur and host of truth for america and author of the book conscientious equity you know walk of time thanks for having me back and to have you physically in the studio here with us and it's good what's wrong with democracy in the workplace and nothing at all and that's just it they don't have the votes you know you get one point four million wal-mart workers in the united states and with the most pro union president in ministration that we've ever had in this country and with all the outside influences trying to come down on wal-mart why can't they get the votes is because by and large the wal-mart workers

are happy with the way things are going like you said when you started the show the largest private employer in the world two point two million employees around the world i was just down in mexico city last week a little story and i'm working on a sustainability project with a manufacturing company i own in sacramento and wal-mart wants to use this equipment that we have to feed the poor to feed the poor in mexico in this letting it all the way into what about the poor in america i mean it wal-mart workers cannot if they if they do all their shopping at wal-mart on their own wages they can't live. well i mean they're obviously doing something right while i am with all our workers are the largest consumers of food stamps because they're living in poverty this is a free country people can go and work wherever they want to but why do they keep their employees why doesn't the unions get the food to unionize if anybody so when happy they're keeping their their employees because we're in the middle of a depression they're keeping their employees because the good jobs have gone overseas because of insane trade policies they're keeping their employees because

of a thirty year war on working people they're keeping their employees because wages have been flat for instance since the reagan administration reaganomics has devastated working people and people are stuck i am a mere wal-mart greeter there they're happy to have a job and i agree with you the obama economy has been devastated and the bush economy in the middle of the obama reagan economy and that's where we got to create jobs in this country better jobs what i would like to see wal-mart do and i think that you and i can agree on this one thing is buying more american products so now we're seeing what all those original i mean i remember you know why argue that one thousand nine hundred two yeah i remember the first wal-mart open in atlanta georgia not a big side across the top i said made in usa that's right you know but but you know he died his family now you know basically owns that it takes the average wal-mart worker earning around eight dollars an eighty cents an hour which is their apparently their average wage. seventy six million weeks forty hour weeks seventy six million weeks to earn as much wealth as one of the wal-mart errors

what's wrong with it but then but then why not beat up any other american company like one that went to beat up mcdonald's i mean why not beat up you know you know this is just a fundamental most is a fundamental american question is it appropriate that one person is worth what has twenty seven billion dollars and and the workers for that person are making eight dollars an eighty cents an hour no it's not acceptable i think that we need to create wealth in this country but we don't create wealth in this country by beating up successful businesses if we're going to. what do you mean by intreating up what you're doing right now and he was saying as an event is going to get a better this will company let's face it two point two million jobs aren't they doing something right in this country why don't we create the environment where more of those wal-mart workers can go at their clothes or own business no deal that you're absolutely right they're very successful if your criteria for success is a corporation that has generated twenty seven billion dollars for jim walton and

roughly equal amounts for his five siblings on the other hand if your criteria for success is a broad and strong american middle class like we had in the fifty's sixty's and seventy's when the top tax rate was was you know seventy four percent then no wal-mart's been a complete idiot but there were wiping out entire communities small businesses that want to use to pay good but tom are you going to beat up nancy pelosi because of her wealth are you going to beat up john kerry because of i mean when i think that there's a reasonable question to be as which is the question the republican teddy roosevelt was asking which is what point is enough. well i know well let's just somebody have a billion dollars that's two million let's take a liability list of twenty seven billion the it was released today that between taxes and chartable contributions he gives fifty five percent of his income oh nonsense oh absolutely absolutely so you'll find that a lot of these people are some of our biggest chartable contributors as well and you have to also make that statement. ok they. will leave you with less deal is great to see you thanks for dropping thank you elizabeth thank you.

it's the good the bad of the very very ugly the good the american people on saturday around a thousand americans laid down on a beach in san francisco and spelled out the words dump citizens united a spectacular protest which is the latest in a long line of protests across america ever since the supreme court's citizens united decision twenty ten fred new show a san francisco paddy who organized the protest told reporters quote the twenty ten supreme court ruling on citizens united rampal lot america's founding principles swamps our democracy in corporate cash and needs to be overturned and brought this commission in the protesters who showed up on saturday know that corporations are not people and money is not speech it's time we overturn citizens united got our

voices back go to move to amend dot org the bad rudy giuliani the former republican mayor of new york city was on c.n.n. starting point this morning and he was asked about mitt romney's handling of the libyan embassy attack situation and republican attacks against president obama over a supposed cover up giuliani told soledad o'brien that he thought the administration may be trying to cover something up but he couldn't substantiate his claims and later an interview on fox so called news giuliani said that mitt romney should absolutely be exploiting the. libya situation for political gain regardless of whether or not there's a cover up again here's giuliani urging republicans to exploit his word not mine an american tragedy yes mr noun verb nine eleven knows a lot about exploiting tragedies and the very very ugly janice elaine lane is the president of the central mississippi tea party and in an interview of the jackson free press lane said i'm really going to have to say i'm going to set you back here probably the biggest turn we ever made was when women got the right to vote plain

went on to say our country might have been better off if it was still just men voting and those comments were no lane finish the interview by saying i'd much rather have a male boss than a female boss double minded you could ever trust that there's lane self-loading feelings for her own gender aside she wants to take america back to the days when only white male property owners had a say in the american democracy that is very very. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so. you think you understand it and then you glimpse something

else you hear or see some other part of it and realized everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture. here is mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing. that we americans call i don't know. i'm sorry i missed the guys here is an awful lot but you sir are you know what that is my terror cells. want to wish to defeat terrorism be on the ball and the crew. can you believe that it's. going to look at you distracts us from what you and i should care about because their profit driven industry that sells of facials to garbage because that breaking

news i'm abby martin and we're going to break that. so soon as you know you know and sometimes you know you don't know and sometimes is the virus on theaters as everything you know is wrong and going to go wrong if you're going to hear your right. to make. sure. you go is. former republican governor of wisconsin tommy thompson is locked in a tight battle with democrat tammy baldwin for that state senate seat and thompson didn't get any help from his son this week during a brunch of events on sunday with the can ocean county republican party thompson's son jason thompson went full on birth are telling brunch goers that they have a chance to send the president back to kenya take a look. we've. seen it doesn't know yet.

or kenya you get that or kenya tommy thompson responded to his son's comment saying that he quote said something he should not have any apologizes so if you thought the birth as in those who believe president obama is a secret muslim are going away anytime soon and everything you know is wrong joining me now is dr jerome corsi senior staff writer at world net daily and author of several books including the great oil conspiracy how the u.s. government hid the nazi discovery of abiotic oil from the american people jerry dr corsi welcome welcome to the program great to see you again tom good to see you thank you bob what do the american people need to know about the ring that the president obama wears well i started investigating this about last july song i looked at pictures of obama for you know a long time and suddenly one of the pictures when he was

a columbia picture with his grandparents sitting in front of central park i realize he was wearing a wedding ring ring as a gold and then as left town i was wedding ring finger and that's when i started investigating it i came to see the pictures of obama all the way back to occidental had this ring and then in the past week or two since new photographs got released by the new yorker it was clear it was the same ring obama used when he married michelle and i put it out on the internet islamic experts began saying to be this has all on it and all of that he was recognized as having the first part of the prayer of the shah in arabic script engraved on the ring which i had no idea when i started to investigate it it was fascinating i looked at snopes dot com which debunks conspiracy theories and they said that they can solve a bunch of islamic scholars they've got a close up picture of the ring and they said it's just it's just

a jiggly pattern it's nothing islamic about it is snopes in on the conspiracy as well i have no idea we don't know it's so says probably for. also i mean that's chris no see the qualification surprising are all i can tell you is the experts we've consulted and it's all a great deal of it so many the particularly the picture in the you showed there of the ring as shown by huffington post and twenty ten which was the picture of the ring used in the obama wedding. that seems to be the picture for us that the islamic experts are saying says it has the there is no god but i'll lock instruction on a jury jury given all the questions that have been raised about president obama's religion the majority of republicans a majority people watch fox news think he's a muslim why would he be so bold as to wear ring that basically says islam.

well tom i don't know i mean you know again the one course i always regret it in take it high road was the mind reading course i mean it could have solved a lot of problems all i know is that obama has been wearing this ring now for thirty years and wore it even at harvard when i found the harvard law review satire issue they made a point to harvard students that obama refused to answer questions about that's wrong i mean maybe it has some personal significance to him from family heirloom i mean the truth is i don't know i just reporting that it's possible jerry that this is like his signal to the rest of the jihad us that he's with them and and he's like the he's the secret agent now in the white house or tommy getting in speculation i don't know i mean if it if the ring truly have isn't that what's implicit in in what you're suggesting no i'm saying i'm suggesting that if you read carefully what i've written i've said from the beginning that the ring raises a lot of issues all of our readers thought to begin with it oh it why would he wear

a wedding ring when he wasn't married that's how the question originally started that's why i published a series of articles of july it was until just recently when this is corruption was read that the issue got raises was does it doesn't lom prohibit men from wearing gold you know no in fact that's not the case in indonesia it's fairly common and maybe it's saudi arabia it's stricter but there's a lot of so you think he might have learned this when he was in indonesia being indoctrinated as a muslim well i don't know i mean i know he was he was trained as in islamic in the arm for years he was in indonesia as a child of course as ages six to ten. and he professes to be a christian today as i say i don't know what's in obama's heart. the ring is a bit at this point something that to me is if you know if the jury if he is a secret muslim at what point does he just well i guess we're completely out of time jerry chorusing thanks for being with us tonight usher time any time

appreciate. something tells me that as long as president obama wins election or reelection the birth there's aren't going anywhere. crazy alert tropical storm john looks a lot like oh well a over the years local television is produced hundreds of bloopers and blunders from onscreen breakdowns to reporters getting photo bombed with this latest blunder really takes the cake dan poe a weatherman on the local fox affiliate in salt lake city was describing tropical storm john over the weekend and how it would affect your top that's when it became quite clear the graphics team hadn't really paid attention to what their work really looked like take a look. it was hot now we have gone now this is this is a tropical storm and you say damn why are you showing me this because john's going

to move north the more he should from john left over the spin the storm itself will turn into a depression nothing really to worry about as far as wind goes but watch where the precipitation will go some of will head up towards the west some of that will towards the east. i guess you could say all our warm water and churning in the pacific ocean is making john a little too excited. you know there is a big problem when foreign investors are buying up schools here in the united states they instead of we the people can educate our young people yet that's exactly what's happening as alyssa alyssa figaro reports over alter net wealthy foreign investors are taking advantage of our immigration laws by investing

millions in charter schools you see there's this thing called the immigrant investor program a particular type of visa which gives green cards to foreign investors as long as they invest at least a million dollars in the u.s. economy and create at least ten full time jobs so the business choice to invest in private for profit charter schools so far just chinese investors as spent thirty million dollars buying charter schools and just florida alone and according to a new report from miami today they plan to invest nearly one hundred million dollars next year think about that foreign investors buying the rights to teach american students with guaranteed profits from our tax dollars this is because we buy more from the rest of the world than we sell to them it's the predicted consequence of our bizarre free trade policies that lead to a trade deficit of eight hundred billion dollars every year that's eight hundred

billion dollars more that ends up in the hands of foreign investors who have to spend that money somehow so they end up spending that to buy our commons like our schools. of course buying for profit schools is the new business model for more and more billionaire investors here in the united states as well we've seen a slew of hollywood movies come out recently bankrolled by billionaires praising the for profit school model the most recent one won't back down flopped at the box office but expect the hollywood investments in private education to continue republican lawmakers are doing the work of these investors and chopping away at our public school system to eventually replace it with a private school system for example of florida republican governor rick scott plans to double charter school enrollment in his state over the next six years and in chicago one of the main reasons the teachers union went on strike was because of meralco manuals plans to open sixteen new charter schools in the city that would be staffed with low wage non-unionized teachers but there but there is

a here's the main thing you need to know about for profit schools they don't offer any better results than public schools and they cost more as a two thousand and nine study from stanford showed more than half of all charter schools examined did not offer any better educational results than public schools despite costing parents a lot more money in fact thirty seven percent of the charter schools examined offer significantly worse learning results than the public counterparts but the billionaires and the foreign investors don't care about learning results they care about profits and it's a very lucrative industry because education is recession proof the state is a large consumer of the product of the product and there's no shortage of kids who need to be schooled that's a pretty solid business model and it's why more and more investors are getting into the game including foreign. but lost in all this talk about money is the talk of

what this does to our nation what are the consequences for our democracy if the next generation of american kids are educated by foreign investors we're already seeing what happens in our media when it's partly in owned by foreign investors ever heard of the name prince al waleed bin talal no well use this really rich saudi prince who offered rudy giuliani a huge donation for new york city after nine eleven that giuliani famously turned down in the prince then went on to help fund the so-called nine eleven mosque in downtown manhattan it think fox so-called news to be all over that right wrong because prince al waleed bin talal just so happens to be the second largest share of voting stock in news corp which owns fox or called news so for all you fox so-called news viewers who think you're receiving fair and balanced coverage of news you're actually getting your news from a saudi prince and now we want to turn our schools over to these same sort of investors we can't let this happen the education of our citizens is the lynch pin

of our democracy it would be national suicide to outsource that linchpin to the highest for a bit or be a chinese saudi or canadian educating our young people should be left up to we americans to we the people through our government via our commons it should not be left up to a handful of billionaires some at home some abroad who are mostly just trying to make a buck but may also have some interest in what's covered in the news and taught in our schools it's time to stand up to the privatization of our schools now. and that's the way it is tonight monday october fifteenth two thousand and twelve for more information any of the stories we covered this is our website so tom arbonne dot com free speech dot org and archie dot com and if you missed any of tonight's show you can now watch it on hulu at hulu dot com slash it should also check out our two you tube channels roland so thom hartmann dot com you can also

find there all the different ways you can send us your feedback and don't forget democracy begins with you get out there get active occupy something tag your it. culture is the same island and bears my maiden name and i seriously am a real mysterious again we are told the global economy risk getting back into recession just three years our polling out of the previous four growth is slowing and. me please leave.

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