a lot of jargon in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture. should we keep investing in billionaires at the expense of education and is the purpose of the second amendment to help americans protect themselves from an oppressive government all that more in tonight's big picture rubble and watch out the next time you go out for dinner because your waiter or waitress might have the flu and be coughing all over your food because they're not allowed to take sick days should we really be patronizing restaurants that would rather have sick employees than provide health care and many of us buy into the common myths about happiness but by doing so we often end up

feeling like something's wrong and that we're destined to always be unhappy what can we do to avoid these happiness myths and live happier and more fulfilling the law let's check into that and it's conversations great lines. it's friday you ready to rumble joining me for tonight's big picture rumble our sherrilyn harley limbaugh former senior counsel with the senate judiciary committee and four former spokesperson for the r n c glad to have you with us sam bennett president c.e.o. the women's campaign forum and these she should run foundation great to have you back sam and marc harrold libertarian commentator and author of the book observations of white noise an acid test for the first amendment good to have you mark back let's start out with the second school shooting in actually it's not the second it's another this time it happened in california where a troubled student walked into a science class and shot two people before surrendering his weapon to the teacher

this happened at the same time that the that the vice president was on the television networks talking about gun control these are be the last shooting in newtown connecticut. and i have to say want to shooting a school shooting interrupts the vice president speaking to the press on a school shooting you know that you've got a problem i mean there's there's some serious evidence of a problem the n.r.a. was actually gung ho in favor of gun control back in the one nine hundred seventy s. in fact they made their first statements in favor of gun control the week after the black panthers officially announced their presence and showed up with guns and said we have a second member right this was in the in the press today so what's what's the deal here who's who's really pushing this and words are going sure well i think we're after sandy hook we're saying that families parents we're all very concerned about what's happening with the school shootings and i know i've seen even at my

daughter's school there's more information about lockdown who is allowed in and you know how are they going to handle this type of situation and i think what the n.r.a. n.r.a. is is sort of wants to push is they have evidence that when these shooters they go to schools because they know that people aren't armed there because the appearance of pretty much everywhere in america this is true other than walking into a jail with the police so the problem i have is when we just say blanket statement there needs to be armed guards at every school you know you have to take into consideration when you have a big country stringer's even bring down your ass fix it but you know there are a lot of schools in d.c. that do have metal to attack terrorists that do have armed guards so there should be local but i think it really is you look at some other voices in your say of the n.r.a. wrote the original gun control legislation in one nine hundred thirty five to stop

the machine gun battles the n.r.a. wrote back and they wrote in the one nine hundred sixty s. the legislation that actually was in one nine hundred forty s. the provided for police departments to approve concealed. permits. what's what happened in between is the big question and i'll tell you what i come from the state pennsylvania that has the most the highest rates of gun ownership in the country and some more hunters than any other state and country and the thing i wonder about a lot of gun manufacturers in pennsylvania i have to feel that in america right where we put business first right it seems to me we've put the rights of gun manufacturers in the profits of gun manufacturers in front of everything i have to believe that there's a direct connection between this sort of pushback on reasonable gun control and the interest and profits of gun manufacturers and it almost seems to me like tom that in the wake of these school shootings what's going on is the gun lobby is going well we've got a problem here but let's see if we can push as hard as we can to get as much as we

can with all these folks were putting this crazy legislation martyrs there's reporting today that it was in the mid ninety's that the donations to the n.r.a. from the big gun manufacturers overwhelmed those of the members and basically since that time the n.r.a. has been a front group for the manufacturers part of that time was a membership organization and since that time they've been taking the position no limits whatsoever on any guns of any kind clips bullets anything isn't this an example of you know what was once a reasonable civic organization being captured by corporate america no i don't think so you're talking about you're blaming the supply you're acting surprised the supply and you want to do something because there's the supply the reason is because there's a demand there's four million members of the n.r.a. and eighteen days ago one hundred thousand new members every gun out there there's three hundred thirty million people in the united states and that's about and that's fine these people have the political clout they have but you know this thing about i've got no political clout if you are about your money in the last election

is going to they were the least effective of all the right wing but you're going to see if we want to go back to the seventy's you're going to see joe biden be in charge of this task force just in two thousand and eight railing against obama and say he's going to take his guns out he's not going to let people take a. it's the problem nobody's talking about taking anybody's guns that's exactly right and that's why should i help it well i know you there are some people governor shocking about you guys oh no there are people talking about that why do you think all is going to solve this the laws are being broken across the border was a no school zone this was a shotgun wait let's be clear the most important and simplest piece of legislation we need to introduce is that people can't have automatic weapons or they can kill lots of people within. thirty four you know yeah but that's and we got rid of machine guns you know we did that nine hundred thirty five we got rid of machine guns and they want a way for generate we did have a ban on assault weapons which were ex-pirate in two thousand and four it was out of years but those that were had sort of i took us two generations to get the machine guns out of our society is that why didn't we renew it if it works so well

why didn't we want which was president. of the times you say you cannot accept that or excuse a batters have missed well they do have clout but they're not they're not just going on as there are americans i don't want out of this is the people that don't like guns don't like the people who like their way to our to guns i must supporter of sportsmen and sportswomen i don't have a problem with that what i have a problem with is is basically gun manufacturers getting to quote i'm sorry rick this system one of the most powerful lobbies i'm sorry tom in washington people look for that money they get their signals the republicans very often republicans get their signals from the n.r.a. and they push legislation that way yeah so let's not kid ourselves what's going on again i think the problem here is and it's and it's a parallel so you threw out some issues we're talking about tonight is the interest of business going over the interest of ordinary citizens have it with holding apropos of this why not simply say you know we started back up back in the twenty's

when cars started becoming really really popular we were having a problem people were dying in car crashes and so we stop signs and red green and yellow lights and you know rules for the road and we started registering vehicles and from the manufacturer. just struction requiring insurance i came along about thirty years later and and requiring proof of proficiency for operators we did that because a car could kill somebody guns are made to kill people why not do just the simple same thing surely well i mean what are we talking about people who register people have to you have graduated every gun should be raster in minutes right yeah i'm not even suggested it to me but i mean we have a process and i say we're all guns guns guns let's let's say that every gun you know has had a serial number has to be registered you have to have liability insurance those kids who were killed in sandy hook if somebody had killed them with a car the car insurance company write a geico would be paying a liability policy a million bucks a person but doesn't kill with

a gun here's the insurance here's the problem is that even if we take steps to go down that process there is still a hole under war old of illegal guns and those guns also are still used to kill nobody is going to go where you know i've never going to shows an underworld of cars that are sold illegally right into world of everything. we do the best in him but we do the best but when i'm a yang is that there is no there is no good fix for this time and i thought i was coming up with these blanket you know we've got to come over to those lengths. the right way i guess everybody's on the record about this so let's go out to taxes republican scream and holler about the deficit they should look at. as a democratic governor jerry brown now has a balanced budget and will run a surplus next year after inheriting a twenty six billion dollars deficit from republican governor arnold schwarzenegger and why because the citizens voted for

a tax increase on the rich proposition thirty his new budget includes increased investments in education should we look into doing something like this i mean it's like a word for california the word for it looks just like the surplus bill clinton built when he modified taxes during his presidency and what was the what was the result a record surplus why is it mark that democrats can balance budgets and slow the growth of spending and republicans can't but it's not exactly what happened here schwartz negra came into a state that was in disarray a lot of that had to do with the energy situation and enron but the problem here is first of all there's had nothing to do with taxes the tag no it had an accident you had it would have to fire in a supermajority to pass income tax and first of all this first of all there is all taking income as a say on of who's rich on a national level even a state level in different parts of california just because somebody has a good year and makes income does not make them wealthy problem here is this is the same thing you're trying the government want you to blame the rich but you won't blame the government bottom line here is it should be a flat tax a fair tax some sort of consumption driven tax and he has wasted all that is

wal-mart greeter not a good example for you but you don't you think that people who are very successful should pay more and they shouldn't they should pay on hype amounts of money but they sure you have a look at america from the one nine hundred thirty s. to the one nine hundred eighty s. when we were the most successful when i had a fair amount of business success in the seventy's and i was painting of tax rates in the forty's and fifty percent range and it was fine i mean america was doing well with those tax rates and we did not have these exploding budget deficits and then reagan came along and blew the top of the california is this great example you know california has a lot of other problems they have record business is leaving california going to other more small business friendly states like texas i mean everybody knows about the ex that is just. small business owners leaving california i don't go to yeah they figure i've never heard it yet but i know there are and there are several small there are many small businesses that have left california because they find it very unfriendly to do business in california have gone to states like texas then

that bad out the fellow employee rather like ours is generating results for as it were no union i'm not i disagree actually or that since the several are judged on our world it's been four years to qana me in the whole world sure you may be losing a few businesses but the ones that come in no i'm sorry that's not a game is it is it is fairly gentlemen there are several studies done by texas public policy foundation where they have showed texas made on many many small businesses have left california and of god to other friendlier small business states like nevada california arizona of talk about the issue that's going on which is when we have a government that does its job which is to make sure that its bills get paid and it looks to have no correct in washington but in california and we had it under bill clinton administration and i'm not speaking as a democrat or republican but as a business woman if you have sources of income in citizens how much money does

a person need if they're earning twenty million dollars a year why not tax more and you have to bail it out on that point we'll come back we will survive to argue another day in fact in the coming up more and tonight's big picture robert with a very. good take three. three. three. three. three. three broke video for your media project. free video dog r.t. dot com you. whether you dive from high or to the depths. catch the power of the wind or drift

in the beauty of the currents. the well prepared is a must and if you're lucky enough. you'll never forget your experience we only need some a screen that's going to be heaven. in the flight see up close and below the ice on our team.

let's. go back to the big picture rival joining me tonight are cheryl and harlan limbaugh carly limbaugh sam bennett and marc harrold let's get back to it let's talk health care a new study by the national institutes of health looks into the health results in the seventeen most developed nations in the world the u.s.

ranks near the bottom of the list in several important indicators teen pregnancies as twenty's infant mortality heart lung disease disability rates obvious sides with life expectancy we rank dead last among the seventeen nations on average a man in the us lives for fewer years than a man and switzerland trends are getting worse and by the way those other sixteen are those other seventeen countries they all pay about half of what we do on a per capita basis for health care in the united states is the time to look for a single payer system surely we all know that americans are happy the joke is you know when you're flying back from europe you know that you're on american flight because americans are had so you think we need to be going after the hard for certain i'm trying to i'm just saying that we know we need to walk more we need to exercise more we need to stop eating fast food this is really a persistent care system no i think it's the way americans live we have the way we eat yes we could walk more but guess what i have lived in those european countries for many years the countries are smaller they have better public transportation

systems people walk they ride bikes we live in a completely different country geographically in size and we never you see these studies comparing it to europe it really annoys me because you are comparing i think apples and oranges but this wasn't just europe i mean this seventeen developed countries this includes australia brazil but sam you're couldn't disagree more my dad was the house mr duke university medical system been around the medical business for a while i think the biggest difference here is the american american health care system is based on reactive health. instead of proactive healthcare relative to other systems when my first husband moved we lived in england for a while and i had my two little girls i was visited by the visiting nurse about five days after i arrived there because i was going to be there about six weeks and she wanted to check on the health of the girls' pro-actively in america you're never going to see a nurse until you go into the hospital when i dated a fever in singapore when i lived in singapore growing up my mom brought me to the

hospital didn't know i had fever and the doctor yelled at her and said i would have done a house visit on her so i would contend big difference pro i just or is this real oh americans are sedentary and they basically choose to be unhealthy by the choices that they make it's bottom line people in america have the right to choose to be unhealthy that's why we can soda bans and whatever else bottom line here is do i think it's the health care system no i mean i think the idea is our health care system less are more reactive than proactive maybe the market should bear that out people demand that of their health care private companies and they'll respond to the market like anything else so ok. a question from michele bachmann has some secrets she doesn't want getting out alex cites wall that salon reports that five former staffers on bachmann's presidential campaign are still waiting to get paid for their work despite the campaign wrapping up nearly a year ago bachmann's national field coordinator put it peter waldron bachmann has more than two million dollars still in her campaign account but she's refusing to pay the five thousand dollars she owes to her former staffers and if they all agree

to sign a non-disclosure agreement that prevents them from talking about any an ethic this is a quote a verbatim quote unethical immoral or criminal activity and quote what they may have witnessed on the campaign trail so the question is what happened behind the scenes of the michele bachmann for president campaign that she's desperately trying to keep secret was it a it was revealed she's been a hypnotic trance for the better part of five years oh yes your time is from a christian right you know you have the times tonight is someone hypnotize you because so matter what yes q you give the same answer. well you have a child so someone put you under a trance tonight would you give me the same answer no matter what question i put to you or she's been compiling her own and american list. how many of you suspect of your being an american what i would say what i would say is that the news media should do a penetrating exposé and take a look i wish they would i wish the american media would take

a great look at the views of the people in congress and find out are they pro america or anti america i think or see so coincidentally short of the stock prices of all age p.v. manufacturing drug manufacturers around september of two thousand and eleven i will tell you that i had a mother last night come up to me here in tampa florida after the debate she told me that her little daughter took that took that vaccine that injection and she suffered from mental retardation thereafter. to cover it up mark my understanding is we have to pick one of these i'll go with or you can come up with your own i think she switches their swings at a lot of pitches in the dirt you know i don't know what she's doing half the time i'll go with b. because i've been called an american on twitter and so i guess i remember who said that so maybe she's got a list going ok. i choose not of the above i'm sorry i'm not i wouldn't vote for michelle my organization would endorse or but i think of ninety percent of what she's dealt with is just outright sexism. that she's the victim of

a yes indeed that's very interesting yes sure none of the bob this well you know i don't i have no idea what's going on but i think as a lawyer you know if you want to get someone to sign a nondisclosure agreement you should do that in the beginning you know the house waiting to. see kind of the logic behind that and that's and that's we're wondering you know why for five thousand dollars why would she risk such but i saw such a lot i mean this is now what eighteen months almost two years ago it's a long time to be holding people's money here i'm wondering if maybe her. has been is having an affair with rick perry could it be that that's terrible on so that is a bad idea and. that i sit with each year thank god note. or thank you but you're starting to take it down.

season is upon us it's a nasty one this year you probably know of a handful of people who've already contracted the bug in what the center for disease control is calling the worst flu season in ten years what's worse is that corporate america is multiplying the harmful effects of this flu season by not offering workers paid sick time off according to a recent survey by the food chain workers alliance nearly eighty percent of food workers say they don't receive paid sick leave and more than a half say that without those benefits they're forced to come to work when they're sick for many nurses around the country who don't have paid sick leave and other hospital employees as well they have to hide their illnesses or risk not being able to pay the rent that month on healthcare. but typically sent home and can't return to work for seventy two hours after their last symptom goes away and since the days of not collecting a paycheck can put a serious dent in the family's finances many nurses and other hospital employees

just top themselves up on sudafed for days desperately trying to cover up the symptoms no one wants sick people preparing food for them at a restaurant or caring for them in hospitals especially during the flu season but that's exactly what's happening because corporate america is sucking every last penny of profit they can out of their workers flat lining their wages in the face of increased productivity or busting up their unions corner cutting workplace safety regulations and now cutting time off opportunities for the flu one reason they can get away with this is that there are no federal protections for sick workers here in the united states our country is the only developed nation in the entire world that doesn't guarantee paid sick leave to our workers and now we all have to suffer the consequences of this corporate greed in two thousand and nine the american journal of public health found that as many as five million more

people were sickened by the h one n one flu as a direct result of a lack of access to paid sick leave who knows how many more people will be sick and this year but now some are fighting back. the group restaurant opportunities center united or rock united are so united has launched a campaign targeting one of the larger corporate abusers of workers' rights when it comes to paid sick leave darden restaurants which controls more than one thousand nine hundred restaurants including chains like red lobster and olive garden employees over one hundred sixty eight thousand employees there's a brilliant new web app. hi my name is pamela.

i mean. what do you do this. let's go. right. i have you know what yes yes yes. it's.

it's also worth noting the darden earned a profit of a half billion dollars last year and its c.e.o. raked in a not too shabby eight and a half million presumably he gets paid time off when he's sick by the way once again profits and executive paychecks outweigh the public good corporate america isn't going to suddenly find it in their hearts to treat their workers better which is why we need to pass federal laws guaranteeing basic paid sick leave to all american workers. but until then maybe we can push him in the right direction by taking action with our wallets and pocket it's free go out to a restaurant we're going to go out this weekend or whatever before you go out call the restaurant just ask a simple question you guys get paid sick leave to your workers i mean you know whether it's your server or somebody making the food in the back you want them

sneeze on your food just ask if they don't then during a flu season like this it's more than likely someone at that restaurant is trying to cover up an illness which you may well carry home so both for moral and for very practical health threes makes a lot of sense eat somewhere else let's start rewarding businesses that treat their employees right and then actually care about their health but avoid those that put greed ahead of the health of the rest of us after all who wants to go into a restaurant hungry and come out feeling maybe the opposite well it takes a day typically or so afterwards but because you picked up the flu it's just it's a very simple process to ask the restaurant to call the restaurant. frankly but in particular our restaurants call them up and so do you offer paid sick leave if you do i'll show up if not i want. coming up what if you get the perfect job or find that special someone but for some reason here's the lot happy with your life is

there something wrong with you or you just fall for society's common myths about happiness. asked that question tonight's conversation group.

let me let me respond i would not let me ask you a question. here i missed that word is what we have in the bank we have our knives out. here.