blog jobs are going to washington d.c. and here is what's coming up tonight on the big picture. which pencils ready for doing a crash course in economics want to go on coming up in just a moment and should john boehner and eric cantor dress more like dale earnhardt jr jr corporations are dominating our elections like never before with forcing them to reveal their donors like nascar drivers do keep them honest and later in the show your take my take a live segment your chance to call in and ask a question or make a comment why.

you need to know this let's talk about how economies work i mean about how they really work what drives economies what makes them work and economy in a way is a giant interlocking circle with all kinds of pieces that go to it but let's start at the most important point and there's demand in their supply and let's begin with the demand there are two things that make up demand and one of those two things is made up of two things these two things that make up demand our paychecks money in people's pockets and needs or desires now needs when you think of you know like housing people at the spend money on housing food people that spend money on food but there's certain kinds of housing or food that them i like better or more than others and so you know that they will choose that but they have to have the paycheck they have to have the money. to be able to buy things to create that vacuum in the marketplace that we call demand or that pressure in the market

postponed you want the metaphor to work so you got some money you got a paycheck you have desires an end needs so you take that money and you go to the store and you buy something and with your money that store takes that money and pays the salary of the clerks the people working at the store they have to reach out to the wholesalers to the people who you know they're buying the buy the stuff from the stocks their shelves they have to buy things from their manufacturers who manufactured whatever the product was that you bought at the store. they have to bend and those manufacturers have to go back to the raw materials that they use to make the stuff like the mines if you know if you alternately are buying a car at some point that started out as iron ore so they had to go back the miners each step along the way from the spending money at the store to the clerks to the wholesalers to the manufacturers to the miners and lawyers each step along the way

other people were getting jobs as a consequence of your having bought some something and other people having bought so so the economy grows out of that first purchase now multiply that times millions and that's that's demand demand is most that is the most important thing because without all three of these things without the things that make up demand without the need or the desire and without the paycheck you have no economic activity and a supplier can stimulate demand in some ways it can kind of create a certain amount of demand for example steve jobs you know so so i got an idea for a new thing we're going to call it by phone as in those call. you know if people didn't have the ability to actually become demand i'm using demand in the context that economists use it not just the normal language which means literally they have the money to buy so you know steve jobs at the price of the i phone at twenty

thousand dollars we wouldn't have i phones all this so no pay or if we were in a horrible recession depression and nobody had paychecks there were no want to plan insurance nobody would have i phones so without a paycheck without the ability to pay for something combined with either the need or desire you don't have to manage without demand it doesn't matter what you supply this is why so the whole this whole concept of supply side economics when when the reagan administration rolled this thing out the one nine hundred eighty s. as a rationale for saying we've got to cut taxes for the really rich people we've got to redo our economic policies of the really rich people benefit and you know this stuff will trickle down eventually took the and they literally used that phrase trickle down economics a little trickle down everybody else and it was just crazy i mean it was a rationalization for going back to eighteenth century european economic models of basically peonage of you know serfdom so who

are the real job creators they're not the rich people they're the people who buy things because everything starts when somebody buys something. so you are the job creators if you're a consumer. and when the job creators the consumers can't buy things because they lose their wages their entire jobs then you've got a really serious problem this is called a demand collapse when the demand for things in an economy falls apart when people no longer want things or need things which is rare or can't afford things which is what happens when you have a depression. if you can't walk in the store and buy something if you don't walk into the store and buy something the store can't pay their clerk if and then the clerk can't you know use that money and buy things they can't pay their wholesalers they can't pay their manufacturers or the wholesalers can't pay the manufacturers

manufacturers can't pay the miners of the lawyers or whoever produce the raw material for the stuff and what echoes all the way up that chain from the fact that you no longer have the money to buy something all along that chain at each stage the clerk the stores the wholesalers that in the manufactures every stage somebody has to be laid off and the entire economy begins to spiral into a crash. now in the one nine hundred thirty s. everybody in america understood this this was conventional wisdom and the reason that they knew this was because we had never as a country prior to one nine hundred thirty five we had never gone more than fifteen years without a stark market crash literally from seven hundred eighty seven in one nine hundred thirty five as good income we've never gone more than fifteen years without a major banking crash and a major stock market crash or national so everybody understood it was called the

business cycle everybody understood it nobody had a good solution for it there had been all these debates this was what hamilton was trying to do back in the days when hamilton was fighting with jefferson and george washington's cabinet about creating the national bank it was stopping the business cycle and stopping the damage of the business cycle that zachary taylor ran on when he said he was going to blow up the second national bank and he did it was an attempt to put the country on the gold standard off the gold standard the greenback the lincoln i mean we had all these different schemes all along the way to try and even out the business cycle so that when people stopped buying things it wouldn't echo down until we just spiraled into this crash nothing worked nine hundred thirty five john maynard keynes and economists says to f.d.r. . there's a really simple solution to this you put a stabilizer into the economy the way the stabilizer works is you get somebody

who's got a job they they have needs and desires and the ability to buy things ok the economy is working they can go to the store and sort of buy from the wholesaler the ultimate can buy the manufacturer manufactured everything's fine but what happens when they lose their job when the business cycle fails what happens when when capitalism fails or can't it doesn't really fail it hits a pothole in the road and what happens of course is that it falls off the edge so what keynes said is instead of saying to that person sorry you can't buy anything and we're just going to let you collapse and the rest of the economy collapse with it which is what has been happening every fifteen years every generation since george washington he said instead we're going to take government money which we're going to borrow during the bad times we're in take this government money and we're going to put people back to work they can be digging holes they can be planting trees they can be doing productive things building roads building bridges but now they have a paycheck so they can resume their job their role as the job creators so they the

end these people whether they're on government benefits see a dollar's a dollar doesn't matter work comes from dollars ago whether they're taking their money from a government paycheck or whether they're taking the money from a corporate paycheck the economy doesn't care so when they take that dollar into a store to buy something now the store owner can pay his clerk and he has to buy something from the wholesaler the wholesaler can buy pay the people are stocking the boxes the whole so as to buy the man in the hat manufacturer the manufacturer can pay the people who are putting things together and guess what even though this person has somewhat diminished ability to create demand because they're not making his money as much money as they were before they still have the ability to get their needs or their desires met because they still have some money in their pocket so the demand cycle is not broken the demand cycle not being broken means that that spiral has a floor to it. now of course what this means is that the government is going to run up debt doing this during bad times but if the government succeeds in breaking the

spiral down demand is still happening through the marketplace people go back to work because the wholesaler now needs employees the manufacturer now needs employees in the store and his employees people go back to work and now instead of taking money from the government a form of unemployment compensation they're paying money to the government a form of taxes and then you have a boom time you have high high employment low unemployment this is the story of the clinton administration it wasn't some magical government policy it was high levels of employment the generated a surplus so then the government can pay back the debt that it incurred when it was saving us from the business cycle this is how we solve this problem and this is the reason the government debt has been continuously rising since reagan and it is reaganomics with the so with the one exception of a couple of years there with clinton and that is because we've been pursuing for thirty two years this insanity called supply side economics and it's left the true

job creators with the workers the consumers and the dust even george bush knew this is why not eleven he said go out and buy something and instead all that money from increased productivity has gone into the hands of the romney level rich who put it in a swiss bank accounts taking it out of that virtuous cycle. we need to discard reaganomics and return to keynesian economics the economic system that for the first time in the two hundred nearly forty year history this country for a forty fifty year period kept us from having a major crash or a major banking crisis that solved the problem of the business cycle when you return to that and the how do you do that really simple raise the minimum wage to a living wage it would be ten dollars and twenty five cents an hour right now if we use the one nine hundred sixty eight standard increase trade union is ation penalize so-called free trade put a semi permeable membrane around the country bring our jobs back home as germany

has done as china has done it with taiwan south korea japan and increase government spending when we were in the downward spiral and then you know raise taxes where they were in the upward spiral it's really simple and what that does is it evens out those business cycles so that when when that pothole gets hit by capitalism or the pothole gets hit that their government spends filling it in we can get through it and on the other side capitalism can work again it really i mean franklin roosevelt said his job was to save capitalism from itself he did it. after the break the supreme court's twenty ten citizens united decision to give corporations free rein to manipulate elections by paying his time we took money out of politics one petitioner in the white house words petition board thinks that making lawmakers display donor names on their suits will do the trick if they're going to really work as cross and peterson just.

let me let me i want to know we're going to let me ask you a question from. here on this network is what we're having the pain we have our knives out if. the truth is this time to spend staying there again you're in a situation where b. and i don't even talk about the surveillance we. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lengthly 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 trying hard welcome to the big picture.

here is mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that we americans call a dog and. i'm sorry i'm just a guy who cares an awful lot of you sir are a fool you know what that is my other terrorist cells in your neighborhood all want to keep us safe to feature isn't the only liberal the christian religion is. your beliefs about it but. you know for you to distract us from what you and i should care about because they're profit driven industry that sells a sensationalistic garbage he calls it breaking news i'm happy martin and we're going to break this that it's. looking good every day doc in the field that we won't find it here if you're looking for relevant stories unique perspective from tom my skin's starts now.

in the best of the rest of the news should lawmakers be required to display the names of their donors on their bodies like nascar drivers do i support of this idea for years now is the sole focus of chapter six of my book rebooting the american dream eleven ways to rebuild our country in fact the title the chapter is make members of congress where nascar patches and now one petition are on the white house's message board has posted a new online petition calling for exactly that and he has good reason to the two thousand and twelve presidential election was the most expensive in history occurred in the center for responsive politics total spending or all races reached approximately six billion dollars outside groups those groups not technically

affiliated with the candidates official campaign accounted for a billion of all expenses even scarier many of these groups funneled an unknown amounts of money into so-called shadow money organizations that don't have to report their real figures to the federal election commission it could even be foreign governments could have been osama bin laden throughout american history big business is used its economic might to manipulate the political process to its advantage but with the supreme court's twenty ten decision in citizens united versus federal election commission the corporatocracy won its greatest victory the supreme court struck down centuries of legislation and ushered in a new era of unfettered corporate interference in our democratic commons when you take money out of politics and restore integrity to the election process what's the best way to do that joining me now is austin peterson director of production of freedom works and editor of the libertarian republic dot com hey austin top bottom

line our democracy. he has been hijacked by billionaires and transnationals this is a dead serious issue this is we are looking at something like a like a monarchy rather than a democracy not good right so we're talking about the specific issue is this petition that was brought up to the white house was that we would have you know corporate sponsors would be put labeled on the congressman's outfit and they're wearing and when you sent me this topic earlier today i was like no this is ridiculous is stupid then you know what i thought about it today and i actually i changed my mind you know what i absolutely support it but only on one circumstance if you're going to dress these people up and make them look like nast drivers the nascar drivers these congressmen we've got to be able to make sure that we can watch them crash into each other. about israel around them right that's the only way that's the only way that i would support something like this bill but here's the deal here's this is the serious issue here. we're we're corrupting our political process we've got i mean the building that i do my radio show from has about it's just two blocks from capitol hill from the capitol offices from the

heart you know office building and every day i see a member of congress going in or out they rent these rooms for a few hours a day where they can because they can't do it from federal property where they you know on average most members of the house and senate have to spend between three and six hours a day dialing for dollars right that's insane you know good people are being driven from politics for this is you know i know republicans who hate this i know democrats who hate this this is not working and yet in in your libertarian world this is exactly how it should be right well the problem is is that if big corporation that if libertarianism supports big corporations then why don't big corporations support libertarianism so take a look at the president you will take the liberals koch ran for president momentary and he did well he didn't last and so let's take a look at his house every other liberty that here take a look at the presidential debates tom i am worried about the corporate influence as well and if you look at the two thousand and twelve presidential debates who was it sponsored by big corporations and heizer bush howard buffett the cobra fund southwest airlines big corporations what's your alternative all my problem here is

that these corporations are the ones who are deciding who. who are the ones who we get to hear from the presidential debates are probably the only thing that the american people actually pay attention to in regards to politics most people don't pay attention to politics so even if you put things the patches on their chest they're not watching c.-span anyway so we have a crisis of democracy here i do believe that we have a crisis of democracy and we do have too much corporate influence but if you look at libertarians they're not supporting libertarians are supporting republicans and democrats are supporting those because those are the people who have the power right as you guys are on the i.e.e.e. guys are like us greens you know you're libertarian the outside through our oxygen thing is that libertarians want to give power we want to take over the government and leave you alone yeah right that's why corporations don't support libertarianism and that's the real problem you have to understand we are the voice of the people the folks populi the libertarians the populist libertarians we believe we believe that corporations should have the right to spend what they want to spend but the right to the transparency to know where the money is coming from so you want big government to be sure that every dollar that corporations spend on politics is

publicly announced how is big government going to if the only thing the government did was to record where it where donations came from that it wouldn't be a big government and that would be the only thing that i might support government doing actually not water utilities not welfare and social security so then then we get the second problem which is a problem inherent a libertarian perspective on capitalism and that if you ever play monopoly of course ok what's the goal of monopoly monopoly is to crowd out your opponents and by as much as you can it's to end up with one person owning everything as much as you can write well no the game ends when one person owns everything ok. but it's a game yeah it's a game but it's also a game that reflects the you know the reality of monopoly in the united states the one nine hundred twenty s. one one grace what's her name came up with the idea for the game and she was a georgia state and she was following henry george's economic principles i commend them to you what do we do about monopoly what do we do you just give a list of organizations these are massive corporations so much power that they could wipe out any individual congressmen like

a bug well as they can. small biz well here's the thing we haven't we do have a monopoly we have monopolies in our political system and we have some things that are natural monopolies that occur in the marketplace so if you have to have different approaches to the different kinds of monopolies right now we have a monopoly on the use of force that's taken by a government which i think you support we have a monopoly on our monetary system that's that's the corporatist federal reserve i think you should take a look at that and change your opinion on the federal reserve i think we all libertarians and liberals should work together to fight this corporate entity and i we also have monopolies in the marketplace natural monopolies so when you talk about monopolies you have to ration natural monopolies or things like there's only one water pipe coming in for example exactly exactly that's that's not a marketplace monopoly that's the commons but you'd have competition in places like that and i would say that that we don't want a competition but take a look at microsoft for example where you know we really want to go up and we call when i close off a monopoly and we said that because they included internet explorer in with their browser in with their p.c.'s that this was some sort of monopoly but what we didn't get what we didn't understand was that by breaking up microsoft we gave advantages

to other companies that were unfair advantages in the marketplace so taking a look at microsoft we didn't actually get any benefit from breaking it up we had a monopoly but never did that but it wasn't a still they're still well in their browser with where they are but it's not a requisite you don't have to do it and you can choose other browsers but we didn't get any sort of benefit i wouldn't have and they would know you for the benefit is that you could choose of the browser but why would microsoft have their way they'd say the operating system only works with the internet so if you could end a monopoly right now if you could in any monopoly right now which is the biggest monopoly today and i would only monopoly on force i would have a monopoly on force because that's the one well that's going on that's the most dangerous government right and i would there are areas where there are areas like the you know increasing police power in the united states increasing militarization of the world right you and i agree on president assassinating drought with people with drones unilaterally certainly but that all that said right i'm frankly also concerned that that's a monopoly and a monopoly on force where every two years you and i can go to the ballot box and say we're going to change the guy running this thing. the corporations when when we

end up with two or three companies who own our foods who over eighty percent of our food supply for corporations that own over ninety percent of our media five corporate four corporations that own most of our major manufacturing in the usa so depending on sector you look at individual sectors but we now have these functional menai these every industry listen tom you're this is consistent are valid good for democracy you're right your concerns are absolutely valid but you have to understand that when big business and big corporations get in bed together they pass laws and regulations to screw the little guy and there's no way for them to compete against what becomes these monopolies because they're all the more reason why says he's a nine hundred sucks well i disagree i disagree as a citizen he said but i have monopolies and if i had to fight a monopoly i would fight the monopoly that forces me not the one that i choose because i choose what media i choose what food i have you don't force me to eat you don't forces me actually do forget me to pay taxes i ology forces they don't and i can assure all they have or some parties that you can choose you that's not true i

can grow and i don't actually hours i can go on my own backyard or not a lot of people have backyards not a lot of people live in climates where you can grow but you have to give people freedom of choice freedom of choice and you have a man as well absolutely well i'm all in favor of freedom of choice of government and that's why we have elections every two years we have freedom of choice what we don't have is freedom of choice in the marketplace because you guys are saying hands off if we have a regulator with some government then why can't third party candidates get into these debates that are run by corporations because we have first past the post winner take all actions and we should right and it is so we should of course we should talk about things like instead of voting on proportional representation absolutely that's a whole other topic right and so we'll save that for the next guy thank you so peterson. just. the. good the bad in the very very cavalier honestly i'll gladly go out and when parents

. far right loves to tell us that almost all of it is a deviation from the natural order of the world but two danish penguins are proving them wrong as i speak her the right word is the officials one pair of male emperor penguins have tried for years to raise their own little penguin one point practicing their parenting skills on a dead fish or a particularly troublesome female penguin abandon one of her eggs zoo by ologist decided it was time to let their famous same sex couple try their chick raisins skills their first child hatch late last year that's been seen since so far somewhere rick santorum has exploded and i could we have the bat for you to our public schools earth day is the perfect day to learn all about wonderful things fossil fuels have done for us utah public schools apparently think so they've teamed up with that states or oil and gas industry really. big corporations in the state to sponsor a contest encouraging students to design posters celebrating the economic impact of

the fossil fuel industry great timing guys earlier this month science magazine published a study warning that global temperatures are at their highest in four thousand years global warming is a colossal threat to global security but the fossil fuel industry cares about one thing and one thing on profits if that means polluting our school system with science denying propaganda the soviet utah's public system a public school system should be sure. and very very ugly but the lincoln journal west virginia is no stranger to racial controversy but an editorial published this week in a local paper and linking county's local newspaper displays a level of bigotry in comprehensible by almost any standard to civilize be the anonymous call titled white is right uses explicit racial epithets and calls for the execution the murder of blacks gays italians and athletics make

matters worse. some residents have expressed support for that columns hateful views . read. very we'll say for sure you do agree with us you get rid of the. police and. put the link in journal has the right to print whatever it wants but there's really no editorial justification for publishing this particular column doing so it just reinforces and normalizes the worst sorts of hate speech it's a paper we're so concerned about shedding light on racism why didn't they just publish an editorial telling readers about the offensive piece the whole situation is very clear. coming up our phone lines are now open for your take my take it live segment so if you want to chance to ask a question live on the big picture give me a call at two zero two nine zero four twenty one thirty four and maybe i'll be talking with you after the first.

you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so for langley you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harvey welcome to the big picture. of potentially deadly blizzard taking aim for the northeast it's expected to hit stunning in a few hours from new york to maine we have team coverage of the storm. but

what we're watching is the very heavy snow moving into boston proper earlier today it was very sticky you can see it start to become much more cattery down here the bottom line there's still a lot of snow out here a good place for snowball fight the fire. season it is kind of pretty incredible day there and even record snowfall throughout what's been like nobody's luxury driving alyssum urgency here larry exceptions. the worst year for those things. white house to give it to a radio guy and call it a veil of minestrone cause they all want to watch quote for a good cause you've never seen anything like good times roll.