made a. going to washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture as we fight factory fires claimed the lives of one hundred twelve begged to live as she workers for making clothing for wal-mart other american retail stores and while these fires were tragedies the mainstream media has barely said of the time america owned up to its support of slave labor and your slave labor practices also even though we already knew it republicans in florida have admitted trying to suppress democratic votes in the sunshine state what does this admission mean for the voter suppression efforts

nationwide and will anything change in future elections and america is literally falling apart as our infrastructure continues to decay after years of neglect when will congress wake up and provide the infrastructure funding that is sorely needed for the well being not only of our nation but the of the american economy as well. you need to know this one of the most enduring miss we love here in america is that we ended our involvement was slavery after the civil war all our founders people like thomas jefferson who wrote all men are created equal in the declaration of independence but owned slaves himself were tarnished morally imperfect hypocrites in our modern era we tell ourselves we have risen above that we are pure we're no longer tainted by slavery if only it were true recent fires that killed over one

hundred workers and bangladeshis sweat shops making garments for wal-mart other american retailers show how we today are frankly more hypocritical and dishonest about slavery and was jefferson himself. as are those libertarians who argue that the bangladeshis were willing workers when poverty is so severe in their country that working chained into a fire trap factory is essential to survival itself to call the working conditions of much of the developing world anything less than slavery is to ignore the power relationships to keep workers behind fences blocks twenty four seven and often violent dormitories and the companies that string nets outside windows to reduce worker suicides it's to rationalize the role we play in this modern day version of slavery the same way eighteenth century u.s. slavery advocates and some modern day southern republicans argue the slaves slaves

at least had free housing food medical care as compensation for their labors as i point out in my book what would jefferson do although jefferson inherited land and slaves as a teenager when his father died and more including his wife's half sister sally hemings one of the wife's father died jefferson to slavery up front and personal and work much of his life to end it in april of seven hundred seventy jefferson was practicing law and defended a slave who was requesting his freedom place where the case was hold the netherland in his arguments on behalf of al jefferson said that under the law of nature all men are born free and every one comes into the world with the right of his own person which includes the liberty of moving and using it at his own will that year the year before seven hundred sixty nine as a legislator in virginia it written a bill to abolish the importation of slaves in that state it was unsuccessful and even brought down the wrath of many of his peers on him and his relative richard bland who jefferson had asked to introduce the proposed legislation in his seven

hundred seventy four booklet a summary view of the rights of british america jefferson attack king george the third for forcing slavery upon the colonies a charge that he repeated is first draft of the declaration of independence in seven hundred seventy six although it was deleted from the final draft in order to keep the representatives of south carolina georgia willing to sign that document. that same year jefferson tried to write into the constitution of the state of virginia a provision that would totally eliminate slavery starting in one thousand eight hundred and seven hundred seventy eighty presented it even more radical bill that would have abolished slavery altogether in virginia that year all these attempts failed he was successful in passing a virginia law that year preventing any more slaves from being imported into that state over the next several years jefferson would try again and again and again to end slavery but without success and aging and our threat it thomas jefferson wrote

with a quill pen in one thousand twenty letter to congressman john holmes about allowing missouri the missouri compromise allowing missouri to join the union as a slave state i regret that i am now to die in the belief that the useless sacrifice of themselves by the generation of seven hundred seventy six to acquire self-government and happiness of their country is to be thrown away by the unwise and on where the passions of their sons and that my only consolation is to be that i live not to weep over it if they would but this passionately weigh the blessings they will throw away against an abstract principle of slavery more likely to be affected by union than by it says they would pause before they perpetrate this act of suicide on themselves and of treason against the hopes of the world the founders and framers who thought they could take the wolf of slavery by the ears of dance with to adjust conclusions in their lifetimes were wrong but it wasn't for water trine and as jefferson predicted the six hundred twenty thousand americans

who died in the civil war paid the ultimate price of their failure as did hundred centuries of slaves. which brings us to today it's easy for us in this day and age to look back two hundred years ago condemned jefferson he used the cheap labor resource of his slaves to maintain his lifestyle and the consequence of his failure to abolish slavery was a bloody civil war followed by a hundred years of legal apartheid although he rationalized his slaveholding by keeping them in a style that exceeded that of most poor whites of the day both were grim but today's standards it was nonetheless a rationalization of slavery jefferson's lifestyle was made possible by slave labor there's no other way to say it recognizing that fact many americans are righteously indignant and quick to judge him harshly yet how many of us would willingly free our slaves i'm looking into

a camera filled with parts made in countries that use slave and prisoner labor you're watching me on t.v. or on a computer filled with parts made in those same countries are rationalization is that no companies in america make many of those components any longer it's just a rationalization and it's no less hypocritical than jefferson's i'm sitting here wearing clothes made by modern day slaves and probably so are you i'm lit by studio lights assembled in countries where workers who try to organize are imprisoned as are many of the lights in your home we rationalize all the products of distant slaves we use after all we don't have to look into their faces like jefferson did but it's still just a rationalization the stark reality is that we in america didn't just slavery we simply x. ordered it and it's so much more comfortable for us to criticize jefferson his peers for agonizing over but still using slave labor two hundred years ago and we don't have to look into the faces of today's slaves who are toiling and dying at

this very moment to sustain our lifestyle. now for more on wal-mart's ties to the factory fire in bangladesh and this whole issue of slave labor i'm joined by scott no of executive director the workers' rights concert so welcome thank you very glad to have you with us noam chomsky pointed out that the slogan relatively official slogan of the republican party during the lincoln era when it was the anti-slavery party was given quote we were against chattel slavery and wage slavery free people do not rent themselves to others and quote what happened to americans understanding that chattel slavery the the jefferson owned the slave and wage slavery what were seen in bangladesh were for a long time in america viewed as such the same thing well unfortunately this notion that if you have a job you shouldn't have lucky to have the job and not complain about your wages and working conditions has become a widespread notion in our era and it serves to rationalize extraordinarily abusive

labor practices particularly by u.s. multinational corporations like wal-mart and gap overseas where they now make virtually all of their clothing and other goods so what's wal-mart says that this was a rogue supplier of the that was supply and you know that was running this factory . do you buy it and doesn't really even matter first of all it doesn't because what we know for certain wal-mart does not deny this of their clothes were being made by the workers at that factory and however those clothes came to be their will mark is responsible for protecting the rights and the safety of the workers who made their clothes this they failed abjectly to do and they cannot solve their problem by retroactively blaming a rogue supplier but it is important to note they have knowledge and admit that they were there of their own volition using that factory in two thousand and eleven they've just decided now to claim that's at some unspecified time they stopped using the factory and the fact that their goods were still being produced there is the product of an action by a rogue supplier but this is

a company whose foundational corporate principle is cost reduction through. minute control over supply chain logistics and production information so it's a little hard to swallow the claim from wal-mart that they have so little control over their supply chain that they do not even know when a given day which factories are making their clothing and this is also a company i believe it was congressman alan grayson yesterday said that wal-mart is the largest recipient of of government aid in the country you know that they pay such low wages that people who work at wal-mart can't afford to live if they buy everything at wal-mart even and they're among the largest users in the united states of food stamps and medicare services because we're all you know wal-mart is successfully externalizing the costs of their labor isn't this like dancing around the edges of of this wage slavery the we talked to abraham lincoln talked about we see two sides of one coin we see wal-mart's abuse of labor practices here in the united states where they keep wages to

a bare minimum which imposes burdens on the government among other implications and of course we see wal-mart ruthlessly suppressing any attempt by workers to act collectively to organize and improve wages and conditions then we see the other side of the coin wal-mart's massive global supply chain tens of thousands of factories around the world employing millions of workers under conditions that can in many cases fairly be described as near slavery workers working for pennies an hour in bangladesh eighteen cents an hour with absolute disregard for workplace safety and with vicious repression of any attempt by workers to speak out complain about conditions and push for change you know so what do we do do we need a global bill workers' bill of rights or is this something that domestically you know we can outlaw the sale of products made with slave labor there will certainly be the united states could have a very different kind of trade policy from the one that it has and we have a trade policy that is designed to facilitate the free flow of goods and capital

without much regard for what that means for workers either here or overseas and that could change unfortunately of course are to. policy has been moving for years in the opposite direction less regulation less protection for workers in the environment one thing we do know that moves corporations like wal-mart and gap and that source from bangladesh is reputational pressure which is to say they understand that their corporate reputation and brand image can be damaged by being associated with sweatshop goods with sweatshop labor practices and so if activists can succeed in educating the public about these conditions about horrific events like the one that took place in the flyer on saturday evening that can generate some impetus for change what we're doing right here informing the people scott thank you so much great to have you with us scott. after the break the cat's out of the bag and florida's republican officials own up to their efforts to suppress the votes of thousands of democratic voters in that state with the news is out that we've seen the last of the grand old parties attempts to rid our elections and take

away our right to vote. here as mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that we americans call a donor. i'm sorry i'm just a guy here's an awful lot of what you. are you know what my tears. want to give us a feature is a liberal and a chris. can you believe it's. going to hurt you to distract us from what you and i should care about because there are profit driven industry that sensationalistic garbage because of breaking news i'm having martin and we're going to break that.

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 realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harkin welcome to the big picture.

and screw news last night we told you about several high ranking republican party officials in florida have admitted that their efforts to prevent so-called voter fraud were actually intended to suppress democratic votes now various groups are responding to the not so shocking news numbers of the florida branch of the african-american ministers leadership council released a statement saying they were appalled but not surprised by the news elderly harris pastor in jacksonville said there is a reason african-americans stood in line for hours and of our six we knew that these early voting and voter registration restrictions were meant to keep us away from the polls but we've come too far and fought too hard to let anyone take away our vote again. so now that the not so secret secret is out in florida it would prompt

a republican party to abandon voter suppression and election rigging efforts in two thousand and sixteen obeah joining me now as did deirdre mccann now president of the league of women voters of florida and catherine cullison gonzalez senior attorney and director of voter protection at the advancement project and welcome to you both i think it was an evening good evening catherine actually for both of you but let me start with you catherine is this news all that shocking that republicans are finally admitting that yeah we were just trying to suppress the vote no the evidence has been there all along so you know we've seen already analysis of the two point four million votes that were caused that were cast during early voting we know that it was caught and we know that it caused extremely long lines for many people in florida and disproportionately african-americans as the minister said and latinos and the elderly and you know working families i was there i saw it it was atrocious and you know it's obviously done for a reason who would cut back early voting and make all of these other changes if it

were to manipulate the vote in one way or another and. what did you see down in florida going on and and what is it i mean this is in a way this is this goes back to the one nine hundred eighty one paul why rick was the republican who was you know helping run the reagan campaign and he was saying you know our leverage in the election quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down for a bit of quote from you know so it's been some time and they've been doing this is this really amped up this year this voter suppression efforts where you know time it's interesting because of course everybody remembers the year two thousand in florida and after that we actually saw some really market progress in our state we saw the beginning of early voting we saw new machinery that was reliable we saw the beginning of a paper trail so we had a lot of advances forward and restored public confidence. then year ago we saw the h.b. thirteen fifty five which was a terrible bill which we believe they knew would suppress the vote and we afford it

in the courts and of course it is particularly disturbing and frankly completely unacceptable that we are hearing from those that have been heavily involved in the g.o.p. that this was. part of an orchestrated effort we did also learn in a deposition in our lawsuit from an attorney for the g.o.p. party that they were they were the designers of the law but that aside we in florida are trying very hard now to move forward it's time to put these election embarrassments and dysfunctions behind us and we were pushing hard for a bipartisan independent panel to up with some good recommendations as happened back in two thousand and move this state forward out of the election embarrassment that we continually seem to find ourselves in katherine this is not something

that's just limited to florida the supreme court in bush v gore as i recall ruled that there is no a numerated right to vote for president of states we don't have a constitutional right to vote is there some you know that as a consequence of that is there any challenge the commune made out law outside of the fairly narrow ones of discrimination against a particular group because of gender rooms. and if so are there any efforts in that direction yes certainly so and it points to the need for a constitutional right to vote in our country and advancement project is leading that effort is going to be put in ramping it up in two thousand and thirteen as moving forward so we're in favor of election reforms not only in florida but across the country and with an enumerated constitutional right to vote we will make it so that our country doesn't have thirteen thousand different counties running elections so that politicians like governor scott. manipulate the voting rights of people of color and of women and other folks who have obviously been suffering from

for election policies in florida that is designed to suppress the vote to limit voting rights and so a constitutional right to vote would take away the sting of bush v gore and make it very clear that we need uniform federal standards that apply equally to our most fundamental rights as american can that be done by lawmakers by congress or does that require a moment of the constitution it requires an amendment to the constitution and so it comes from the people it could be done in florida by ballot initiative and that's another initiative that we're supporting. the right to have a constitutional right to vote in florida just to clarify once and for all that these are our highest principles they're not something that can be manipulated with different practices election from election we're also very much in favor of the continued enforcement of the voting rights act that before the supreme court early next year we're participating in that litigation and watching very closely what the supreme court will do with the voting rights act because the league of women voters litigation the litigation that we brought against the purges in florida and many of

these most egregious voting rights violations have been stopped by the voting rights act it's sort of a battle back and forth but this is not the time for the supreme court to be taking away your most powerful instrument. very real possibility that they will do which is that it is but it is not the time to be doing it. do you do you expect i mean you saw a very optimistic here in florida we're going to move forward no you know we've been through this dark. you know we've we've you know we know what's going on but do you really think the governor scott is going to back down i mean he's got this abysmal popularity rating or approval rating and yet he is still saying for example he's not going to take medicaid money for the state because he doesn't want to help fund obamacare and therefore he's just going to let poor people die in the state of florida you know why is it not a giant leap to think that he would also. continue his election rigging efforts. well if i could move the perspective possibly from the governor to our legislature

we are hearing more positive sounds that they are this year we have salute new leadership now in place and they have spoken just in these very early few days of just picking up you know there there are a throne they're talking the talk that we like to hear which is greater ethics election read or saying that what we saw in florida this election was not acceptable that the long lines and the delays in counting the votes so that's a first step unfortunately they are not in a position are the senate president and our house speaker to appoint an independent bipartisan commission as only the governor as we haven't given up on the governor it will be a it will require the people of florida to stand up and say this is unacceptable we do not want to be a national embarrassment over and over and voting and so we are encouraging people

to call the governor's office and let them know that we are hoping and really demanding that we have an independent bipartisan task force take a look at how we can move the election problems behind us but it's not going to be an easy battle we are seeing very promising signs in our legislature and that's positive and the biggest and the greatest news was the turnout we saw in our state which frankly was thrilling and seems like it might have been a reactive from what we're hearing from a lot of people as we felt like you were going to try and take away our right to vote so damn it we're showing up in bigger numbers than ever. catherine we just we just have a behalf a minute or so love is is there a on the ballot or is there going to be on the ballot in florida a constitutional right to vote for that state or for any other states as are their efforts to put these into the his into states who are looking into it on a national level and also in florida and other states so we think it's a very import. time in history and you know as you said the american people have not taken voter suppression lying down and so we can make

a change right now as president obama said we need to fix that and now is the time to do it. katherine thank you both very much for being. it's the good the bad of the very very quickly honestly ugly good tom ricks how dare someone go on fox news and bash that network at least that's what network executives and production staff were saying yesterday after rick's a pulitzer prize winning journalist the last of that network coverage of the benghazi consulate attacks take a look. i think that generally was hyped by this network especially and that now

that the him pain is over and i think he's backing off a little bit they're not going to stop susan rice from being secretary of state when i see this focus on what was essentially a small fire fight i think number one i've covered a lot of parts it's impossible to figure out what happens with them sometimes i think that. she is going to be political clearly because fox was operating as a we know the republican party all right tom ricks thanks very much for joining us today you're welcome. that sort of. rick's interview was supposed to be four minutes long but he was cut off after speaking what can only be described as the truth kudos to you tom ricks for calling out fox news and their flow of unfair and unbalanced misinformation the bad virginia attorney general ken cuccinelli everyone's favorite far right attorney general is added again this time cuccinelli went to w m a l radio in virginia and suggested that i said. obama stole the election and one of the radio shows argued that president obama couldn't possibly

win a state that had voter suppression was a blaze agreed to take a list. these to be a way for people to be able to report this stuff and have a look to i mean just across the country we're hearing so many stories in and people can talk about it but nothing seems to be done in fact in these states where voter id is required toto id photo id voter photo id obama lost every one of those states he can't win in a state where photo id is required so clearly there's something going on out there and until there is a way to have something done about it where when you report it you know it's going to be looked into the other side just says oh well you know those are you just for losers and that's sort of thing. to get your low that with me you're preaching with me now we get we got. you completely first president obama actually did win four states with photo i.d. laws in effect these people live in a total bubble but look at the irony here republicans put voter suppression idea

was in place to help rig the election for mitt romney and yet they're now accusing president obama of the very same thing they were trying to do it reveal what is wrong and the very very ugly mark tone. you know see a leader in hungary's far right job market job at a political party go see call for the hunger in government to compile a list of jews who could pose potential national security risks surprisingly the request and the thousands and he issued an apology saying he was only referring to citizens with dual is really hungry and so this and ship at appalling request comes in the wake of the turmoil in the middle east fighting between israelis and palestinians needless to say these comments sound very nuts yes they're very clear . coming up. america's highways are filled with potholes our bridges are collapsing our sewer systems and electrical grids are down right and when will lawmakers in

washington realize that investing in america's aging infrastructure is crucial for the success or wellbeing of our nation. you you.

do go for you. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear see some other part of it and realize everything is. hard welcome to the big picture.