it's friday you ready to rumble joining me for tonight's big picture rumble are marc harrold libertarian commentator and author storage that train union organizer and author and vince colony's senior on line editor with the daily caller thank you all for joining us tonight we just had a long conversation with three distinguished gentlemen about the filibuster of course is that. i never thought i'd see the day when the whole country was talking about the filibuster most people didn't even know what it was until just a few months ago or weeks ago but for the last few years but here we have more filibusters during mitch mcconnell's six years running the senate then from the day that he came into office going all the way back to the end of world war one world war one and and. and these are filibusters of like really good legislation like you

know the the house passed a bill that said that that you would think democrats and republicans would support that said that when companies outsource right now they get a tax break when companies you know move literally move a factory bain capital did this is a couple weeks ago tore a factory down in the midwest moved it to china rebuild it there literally the same factory that when they do that right now they get a tax break took away that tax break and said but we will give a tax break to companies if they take their factories overseas and bring them back to the united states who would love that you can filibuster by the republicans in the senate what's going on vince out how did this happen how did it happen well it is a part of the government and it is something that both democrats and republicans have been loaned a lot and you've seen it but you've also seen on the other side now your d.c. democrats calling for filibuster reform but republicans did when they were it was in the minority yet in the minority. in the majority in the senate they did call for this filibuster reform and you had even then and you had iowa senator you had

sent then senator obama even standing there on that on the senate. for saying that this would be an affront to america you're talking about when when the nuclear option was threatened over the appointment of it was sam alito to the supreme court right and and you know that was one moment in time it was not a serious attention for a little above the rest of their it was a threat to you know vote for this guy and i'm going to have you listen to any we're going to preach and out of this current if you listen to any of the speeches that these democrats gave it's very clear that it's very clear that they're saying a change from the filibuster is truly a threat to democracy so now that is a show about is that it takes two thirds or two thirds vote sixty percent sixty percent vote sixty out of one hundred votes to even discuss anything and democracy by definition is anything over fifty percent you know you have that i think that speech but i am telling you this is what democrats have said and. at any rate we're in a position now where i think the filibuster reform is worth looking at but not this

if you're and if you're a democrat and you're doing this because you see political gain out of it and not just a principle the day will come when republicans obviously things will have it yesterday and you'll be put in a position where there's going to be an accelerated acceleration of the ability for legislation to be pushed in the senate because of the way the filibuster of the reform and for conservatives you often look at government go well and acceleration of government no matter what side of the aisle you're on is not a good thing so while you could be an acceleration as during the reagan years of you know taking apart. our free public education system taking apart our labor unions i mean that was an acceleration of government but we didn't seem to like that stuart a filibuster the way it is it's ridiculous it's an affront to our democracy. it stopped the employee free choice act we would have we passed the employee free choice act by thirty votes in the house we would have passed it in the senate if when it got to the senate. senator byrd and kennedy. we

had fifty four votes to pass it. sixty votes for cloture but we couldn't get senator byrd and senator kennedy to the floor at the same time and nobody had to go to the floor and hold forth on why they were opposed to workers haven't the right to form unions and this is happened over and over and over again so for many of us progressives not just union people the question is how do you enact progressive legislation. when you've got to get sixty votes in the senate where forty senators representing seventeen percent of the population of america can stop anything definite say dead in its tracks and they can do it four times it's now just one vote on cloture. and cloture isn't the only thing that they can philip exactly so it gets insane mark at what point do we where they and they and

they can get they can do it by telephone call skis or send an e-mail or text message in fact i was astounded to discover today that a lot of a lot of these filibusters are actually done by by by e-mail or somebody will even just simply say to the leader i know that another senator objects to this i'm not going to tell you good and so you know it's not only a solid filibuster it's a it's an anonymous filibuster and as long as a senator confirms that he knows that another senator wants to filibuster than the fill about at least this is how mitch mcconnell was running for the last six years mark harry reid told me that in the six years that lyndon johnson held his job as senate majority leader he dealt there and this was a tumultuous time in american history this was you know prior to his becoming vice president was at the during the period brown v board come down i mean there was a lot of stuff going on and during those six years he had to deal with the one filibuster there were three hundred ninety filibusters in the last in the last

congress you know what nobody likes the filibuster until they're in power and they get to use it part of this is why does no one have other than sam alito his nomination one of the democrats even threatened filibusters at anything close to what's done in one member the other appointments where they threaten that i don't know that they actually went through and used it but it's a tool that both parties have used in the past i think we can agree on that that one part of the problem here is and this and you can raise the specter of a filibuster threat in order to stop legislation without even take using the fillable i understand how that pledge that i've had from looking at this from a partisan perspective you know i remembered. emma crowds i don't remember you know read the history books democrats using using the filibuster of the threat of filibuster to stop the equivalent of civil rights legislation in the twenty's in the thirty's in the forty's well in the in the teens in the ots in the twentieth century thurmond as a dixiecrat exactly nine hundred forty eight walk out. but you know it. but here is the here's

a chart of the use of the filibuster just nine hundred sixty five right i mean you know there are different different variations on it motions filed votes and cloture and cloture actually been invoked. it seems to me like this is really screwing up democracy small d democracy. throughout the partisan politics except for the fact that i can't throw out the partisan politics because i i don't know of a time when democrats have have committed this kind of abuse against democratic process so part of it is you can't throw out the i understand what you mean by throughout the partisan politics and look at this thing but you can't because hyper partisan politics is one of the reasons we have this this is the rule the reason that it's become this technical back and forth with the you know the roberts rules of order and they're looking for any way to get around majority rule because these people don't represent you they don't represent me they represent their party first the constituency has to party first so this hyper partisanship when it all cost is going to be there i actually thought the filibuster was in the constitution until maybe law school i really did i thought cloture was there to i think the lawsuit

that was mentioned earlier that is tough on several fronts but you know if you want to get rid of this it's going to take a lot to tell you the truth i think it's such a split issue would probably get filibustered if they tried to change it by legislation that would but you know i think both parties have used it i think it's a pragmatic tool but i think hyper partisanship is what drives us to use these petty techniques that would take the issue in my frame are i say what's happened is that the country is ready to move forward that we've had thirty five years of stagnant wages we've had the erosion of the middle class we've had poor people who can't climb out of out of the lower its lowest rungs of socio economic ladder and and the average american wants to move forward judging by how they voted in twelve how they voted in a way how they voted in zero six i think oh ten was. a tea party. situation but the country wants to move forward but they can't

and because of the filibuster well and speaking of this i mean block. it doesn't just happen in the senate it also happens in the house of representatives on day one of the republican house we saw a really interesting dynamic here the right wing majority blocked an attempt by democrats to pass the simple voting act or twenty thirteen which would have simply said that any federal election state election officials have to offer ten days of early voting simple stuff in other words people will not have long lines they get plenty of days to vote republicans defeated those pretty much a party line vote. why why this i'm not really sure of their reasoning i can see i couldn't i could take a guess and i think it has something to do with a couple things one i always kind of been curious as to why democrats are always the ones who are on the side of longer and longer voting edges interesting how the ideological party lines break i think the i think the reason it's we've got the

paul weyrich so i don't know if you've got it you've played it before me before but i think that you know it's probably a symptom of the fact that democratic the way the democratic voting machine war as opposed to the republican side is that democrats often need to you have produced better grassroots get out the vote efforts and get people who otherwise wouldn't be predisposed to go to the polls to get there so they need more time so they can get these people to you know. a while go an election would have respectfully laughed at that because the republican get out the vote effort that up until the last including the last couple of years but in particular for the last thirty years has been centered in midwestern largely christian fundamentalist christian churches and it's every bit as powerful as the democratic get us out effort through the through i think the other side though is the money side the federal government required the states to fund these fifteen days of election workers and the states would have to take on the funds and the federal government or are you can't afford democracy

that's what it's about this is this is paul weyrich one of the co-founders of the heritage foundation the american legislative exchange council areas lend it out to a group of republican by the way at this time he was the adviser to the reagan campaign. how many of our quests have what i call. wrong good government they want everybody to vote i don't want everybody to vote elections are not won by a majority of people they never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. leveraging the elections quite candidly. owning oculus. so you know it's just there it is seriously here it's pretty clear and it's only republican governors who are pushing to say no to early but it is not a republican legislators. to look at the context this place in the context of of trying to frustrate get out the vote operation trying to

frustrate voter registration or frustrate same day voter registration trying to frustrate every effort to get as many people to vote as possible to just take issue with my friend here in this situation for democrats is we represent working folks and working folks need to get off the job to go vote you know this whole thing of tuesday as election year is kind of crazy. and to make it a national holiday working people at seven am. are either getting their kids to school this is this is a fairly absurd argument this is i mean. actually the most his argument has been made at all that we don't have a book we're going to we're going to leave it vince you have in the last year more on to more of tonight's big picture rubble coming up after the break.

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watch on t.v. anytime anywhere. but . ft. six in. the gate. welcome back to the big picture rubble joining me tonight are marc harrold story

a cuff and vince colonies let's get back to it. take a listen to this outrageous comment bill o'reilly made on his show last. thirty five percent of why in populations asian right and asian people are not liberal you know by nature that they're usually more industrious and hardworking but they did for. me after setting aside the racism which is rather difficult to do basically bill o'reilly is calling liberals lazy so what he and other conservatives think makes a hardworking american this. that good because i work three jobs and i can like i contribute you work three jobs. we have uniquely american and management and if you're not doing that. at two americans really need to do we're going to. have

a republican so. you're not lazy broads who was there work for. stir irit wonder why kids don't do their homework mom and dad are no more i mean it's more than half of all american kids come home to an empty house that's right and that's not the case in one thousand nine hundred if that is not the case nine hundred eighty when reagan came in on it it's ridiculous and it's really hard to set aside the obvious racism involved here but you know in my neighborhood i live in tacoma park and. and when i go for a job because i've got an early morning flight at four o'clock there's a latino woman with two kids taking them to daycare so she can get to a job at five o'clock in the morning to tell me that's lazy i found that for my kids immigrant working class immigrant kids are good role models because they're used to working well and that and that that raises a whole fascinating sociological anthropological sociological analysis it's called

the immigrant syndrome and it's completely regardless of race that people the first generation of immigrants to any country tend to do much better than people who have lived in that country and it's just it's just like hey i'm here and this is my chance and and there's a whole psychology associated with that but that has nothing to do with this but i think it is i think it's an important point though the fear of failure breeds success i mean this is like this is true probably in any of our careers by the way or just as you go through life every when you're faced with failure you often become more productive you become you push for success so to say that immigrants are often in a position where they need to push for success is a good thing what we have here is you want everybody you want to do away with a social safety net is everybody was terrified no no well here's the larger point gene if you believe what you're saying i want to do you believe the social safety net has an impact on that on working psychology yes absolutely ok so when i and i think what it does is it produces entrepreneurs i know as an unfair myself i've started seven businesses now in life that if i didn't know that if i slipped and

fell i could be i could rely on food stamps or unemployment benefits or welfare or something i probably. wouldn't have done it so you and i and you can see it's absolute correlation in other countries that when they get national health care for example in canada did you leave province by province as provinces got national health care for their ship went up because people felt like they could tell their employer who was their only source of health care to go screw themselves you know take this job and shove it i'm going to start my own business so your argument is an interesting one i think is that with a social safety net in your in your in your case a progressive state with a big social safety net you have a greater capacity to take on larger risk is that the government ok i mean it's an interesting one i think and i think it's worth investigating fassbinder about a fundamental belief is for consumers and i think in this case o'reilly who declares himself as an independent by the way. is trying to make a case that people who are an immigrant status like you mentioned are often trying to be self-sufficient and that's an ethos that conservatives in body. you know well

i mean is that this lazy liberty and i don't understand how this came about when when you know it's going to kill us it's ridiculous i mean the the reason one of the reasons we we're in this economic crisis is that we had you know three decades of stagnant wages and first dad took on a second half and then mom took on a full time job and then took on a second half time job all across the board and they took on credit card debt and i think you're in their car and they are going to mortgage the house and then it all blew up and you're missing an argument in this case for like traditional families i mean you're making an argument that the family structure needs to be restored i have no problem whatsoever with traditional families i think that it is good for children to have two parents to have a two parent household and it's good for children to have more dad to come here and we have we have just thirty seconds to wrap this up let me toss it to you mark you

know this is wrong to make a comment like this if it's wrong and it was pundits we can find statistics to bear out whatever we need. but the bottom line here is what you're doing is you're assigning want to mutable characteristic to an individual whether it's their race their religion their gender whatever it is and decide because when you talk about how somebody right how can you talk about how somebody's vote you talk about how they think and what you're doing here is you're equating all people with that immutable characteristic and sort of taking them away as individuals this is a bad comment into wrong comment i know what he's trying to say and there may be statistics to back anything up you torture statistics a long enough they'll say whatever you want but the bottom line here is i think this is a wrong comment and the thought behind it is very wrong ok last question quick fire with the debt ceiling debate all the rage in washington some people are suggesting that one way to avoid defaulting on our national debt is to make is to take the platinum coin option basically a treasury department a platinum coin with a face value of one trillion dollars and theoretically that would eliminate the debt ceiling debate and all the bickering in congress so if some of this actually happened whose face should be put on the one trillion dollar platinum coin.

i would have to say obama obviously why you're not going to say david and charles koch and i would definitely have to say obama because look you know with the unfunded liabilities in medicare and social security our real debt is around seventy trillion dollars ok your question dr king martin luther king he did as much to change this country's any individual and he kept the country at peace at a time when the country was ready to blow up and he showed as much personal courage ok mark we go mark you're first i would say ron paul or reagan because i think they deserve a coin but they certainly don't want this one i don't know what ambassador art rooney he needs a coin if for no other reason that he's on the steelers ok thank you all for being with us vince stewart. much and he will be right there.

let's say you're in your twenty's and just starting out in life and one day an insurance salesman walks up to your doorstep totus briefcase wearing a cheap suit and a flashy tie rings the doorbell smiles like a televangelist and says i got a deal for you he's pushing a brand new insurance plan he calls a life time disaster insurance and he says for the rest of your life you'll be covered whether you're a teenager in your twenty's in your thirty's whatever age he goes on to say this is surance protect you against any kind of disaster if you're disabled in a car accident or a mommy or you get shot or sick or any other sort of horror this insurance policy will kick in if you're permanently disabled kick in and cover all of your medical expenses your rent your food and pretty much everything else in the time you're

injured till the day you die even if you live to one hundred you look at him skeptically but unfazed he continues not only will this is your his plan cover you but it also covers your spouse and your kids something terrible happens to you if it does your spouse your children will be covered cared for as part of this insurance plan and if something happens any of them their medical bills and the cost of feeding clothing and housing them will be covered to forever not only that it continues if you have a child with a birth defect god forbid that requires lifelong care this insurance plan will cover all the medical expenses and all the cost of living expenses for your child from birth to death even if your kid lives to ninety and you are long gone since it sounds too good to be true and insurance plan that covers you your spouse and your kids for life against disasters including living expenses and even if it's all true it would have to cost a fortune right. you're about to ask the salesman the important question well how

much does it cost five hundred bucks a month thousand two thousand and then it dawns on you don't need this insurance plan. because you already happened. it's called social security. a third of all social security payments are not to retired people they're good people who've experienced disasters you and every other american from birth to death already happened and the best part about it is completely free even if you're just getting out of school and have never worked a day in your life and thus never paid a penny in payroll taxes you still have this vital insurance you're entitled to from more moment you're born until the day you die which is why we call it an entitlement but now the bad news there are people in america today who want to take that insurance policy away from you and give it to their billionaire buddies on wall street back into eisenhower's day we would refer to these people as stupid

just as eisenhower did but today these people run the republican party people like paul ryan and john boehner marco rubio and eric cantor even worse retired political hacks like cat food commissioners alan simpson and erskine bowles two guys now charge forty thousand dollars an hour in speaking fees are pushing hard to kill social security by handing it off to wall street even though social security or maybe because social security is sitting on a two point seven trillion dollars surplus fortunately their efforts to cover privatized social security so far are not working according to a new poll by the pew research center americans thirty to forty nine by margin of fifty two to thirty five percent believe preserving social security insurance is more important than reducing reducing the deficit and we should note social security has nothing to do with the deficit and younger americans share that sentiment by

a margin of forty eight to forty one percent americans from eighteen to twenty nine believe preserving social security is more important than deficit reduction and once again social security's got nothing to do with the deficit. but don't expect the polls to slow down the republicans and the cat food commissioners if they can whip up enough phony fear and convince enough younger americans that their retirement is in jeopardy and they might even succeed in turning over social security instruments to wall street because that's the ultimate goal here instead of free lifetime disaster insurance guaranteed by our government conservatives want wall street to own social security's two point seven trillion dollars banks like lloyd blankfein and jamie diamond are throwing at the chance to get their grubby hands on those trillions and go buck wild in the market with skimming billions off the top and feeds it once wall street gets their hands on social security assurances then you actually will be meeting insurance salesmen and cheap suits

hustling the very same disaster insurance plan that you have right now for free. this time they'll charge you lots of money the fear mongering over social security insurance led mostly by extremely rich people who have no need for it is the biggest scam being run right now on the american people spread the word. and that's the way it is tonight friday january fourth twenty fifty for more information check out our website thom hartmann dot com free speech dot org or to dot com through dot com slash the big picture and don't forget democracy begins when you get out there get active your occupy so see you next week.

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