blogs are going to washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture everyone's talking about breaking up the big banks the too big to fail banks just in time we broke up big telecom as well talk about that and more in tonight's big picture rumble also. santorum super ticket have taken down romney tell you why not tonight's daily take and you all those stories christians fed to lions nero the butcher but that any of that actually happened last canada mosses and its conversations great lines.

you need to know this mexico's congress passed a landmark billed thursday that will dismantle that country's powerful telecom and television monopolies under the new regulations the state will have the power to break up any company that controls more than fifty percent of either the television or the telecom industry's recent years mexico's telecommunications and television industries have consolidated under two companies america movil and televisa american immobile owned by the way by the way is owned by carlos slim the world's richest man the result has been predictably disastrous for mexican consumers higher prices and poor service accompanied the rise of the telco. things are that different frankly here in the united states telecom industry is essentially a doowop only of eighteen t. and verizon the quality of american cell phone service lags far behind the rest of the developed world and the prices are a lot higher time warner and comcast dominate the cable t.v. and internet markets are from customers just as little bang for their buck but

here's the thing a lot needed to break up a big telco and big cable the sherman antitrust act out of the books since eight hundred ninety the government just isn't in force in it and hasn't since ronald reagan's second year of office isn't it time we started using it again let's rumble . it's friday you ready to rumble joining me for tonight's big picture rumble our marc harrold libertarian commentator attorney and author case steiger managing editor of the raw story and adam bitly editor in chief of net right daily welcome to all of you for joining us i just you know i just set this thing up with the mexico thing isn't it time for us to start enforcing the sherman antitrust act mark not across the board what we want or not well what we've seen in the enforcement of that act is we've seen that it's another tool for crony capitalism to get in there and to pick winners and losers never been applied unitary roosevelt broke the standard oil into twenty nine get well that was what i was using that would be

actually howard taft to finish the job he was a republican as was he was he was and they broke standard oil into twenty nine companies and everybody's equity went up all kinds of small companies popped up out all over the place particularly in pennsylvania started out and it was a good thing when we broke up a t.n.t. when richard nixon began the breakup of a t.n.t. that ended during the reagan administration it stockholder equity tripled it we may have seen some power as positive outcome in the past of putting these artificial legal restraints into the marketplace but by and large using the and i sure as sherman antitrust act has had disasters all to another calm context and i think if you see here what you'll see is you'll see the government picking winners and losing losers using it as a tool. favor their friends and and go against their enemies if you had an absolutely uniform and forstmann of it may have some positive results possibly but you'll never see that it's a monster of a bill and if you go out and start using it i think the results will be bad for the free market not a good kept small businesses function in america for seventy years yeah when i think what is interesting about the mexico bell is that it allows for greater

foreign investment so you may impact the american companies moving into the mexican market which would be really interesting and it also allows. carlos slim himself is not that opposed to this bill because he in exchange will get sort of a trade in expanding into different market sort of. things like comcast paper planes was not all that billionaire on foot is the crony capitalism i mean i think it's interesting obviously the devil is in the details and i think you know like you are saying it all and how these things are important and you know it we haven't seen. administration be particularly tough although they have taken on trust cases . so it's been a joke i mean you know when reagan proclaimed that he was no longer basically going to enforce it he kicked off that mergers and acquisition mania created michael milken and mitt romney and all these billionaires who came about because they were

just basically jamming companies together and it's. what you know monopoly in the gale monopoly you always end up with one person winning and everybody else losing that's the inevitable basis of capitalism call marx identified it and while i disagree with his suggestions for solving the problem i think is a balance as was accurate what do we do with this this flaw that's built into capitalism of the tendency toward monopolies ok well first off i wouldn't say having over fifty percent of market shares. so it's because of an op would be one hundred percent so yeah but how could how can any new entrant any small entrant into a market compete with somebody else fifty percent of market share easy because there's another percent fifty. and out there to grab you could look at this in the sense that you know people like you said this was a poor service is being offered there was a lot of complaints against a company competition should be springing up left and right to compete against us they haven't had these is because these because it's people like this monopolists dominate markets they crush it it's like it was

a monopoly it's just it just wasn't monopoly we're talking of the company that did not have a hundred percent market share which you would need first to beat the monopoly standard second there was still room for competition to come about instead of government so that it is force in this situation but i think i think you could make the argument that this falls into the category of natural monopolies i mean there's only there's a limited number of cellphone towers there's a limited number of airwaves sure it's all public infrastructure sure i mean in europe in france right now for thirty thirty five dollars a month according to new york times you get one hundred twenty channels of cable you get unlimited cell phone service you get unlimited data on your cell phone and you get. free calls to twenty seven countries or twenty nine countries or whatever it is and the reason why the reason why is because all of that infrastructure stuff all the towers no matter who builds the towers they have to read it to any company it wants to so there's dozens of companies competing with each other because they're making use of the of the natural monopoly the structure would be a reasonable idea to the point that you're trying to make and how easy is that for

a company to actually enter the market and compete on the same level as i think other companies and i think i'd agree with you that it is really tough to compete against major media company if you know there are things to change as technology changes but we've seen that you know the big companies tend to buy up those little companies that they're fixed or simply incorporate their products into our latest version of our browser or operating system and the company is dead mark well you get into this idea i mean that idea where you have to all share the towers and say what's great for competition but it's forced competition is a monopoly analogy which i know i understand but like adam was saying somebody has to win and then when you get into. it was to get what you're talking about is that i'm a consumer what the government's jumping in at some point in the game and saying wait a minute somebody has to forsake adams talking about nobody had a hundred percent so you talk about the government coming in at some point the game of monopoly being wait a minute one person is too far ahead so we got to bring this person up and if you have a link to the roosevelt was using my goodness they're going to have more losers and nobody will ever win i mean you're just going to have too much forced competition

or whatever you call it he rose odiously wins the game monopoly teddy roosevelt was saying anything in excess of ten percent that's why he broke standard oil in twenty nine companies when they broke up eighty they broke into six companies six operating companies so that would be what eighteen percent no twelve twelve or thirteen percent times six percent i do that so as to eleven percent of the marketplace the government could jump in and stop their success i just don't agree with that what if someone came about and said the top ten radio hosts that are on the heavy hundred list they have to give up their air time that are that you have to be ready for your time is very time we did where your show where you go after the show for you going to take over like it's twenty minutes here. this morning we're going to take the time to fire at the right to have. a segue great right after the house approved a bill to avoid a government shutdown speaker boehner set the stage for another showdown between dems and the g.o.p. at his weekly press conference baier indicated the republicans would again demand spending cuts in exchange for raising the nation's debt ceiling which is set to hit

in may so he told the huffington post dollar for dollar this seems crazy to me. adam this is when the debt ceiling is raised all it does is authorize the president to write a check to pay the bills that john boehner already appropriated so it's simply saying yes you may know you executive branch may pay the bills that we congress have already run up so why is better running around with a gun to his own head or actually to obama said our metaphysic metaphorically speaking well first of all gathered there isn't even a debt ceiling right now it was suspended so there's not a point that they're just going to hit and they have to to want. stories are saying it would all well what they say it is that on the teens the debt ceiling that was suspended has to be reset so at that point they'll have to come up with were they setting this what are we paying for how are we doing this i would be surprised if they punt this again and keep kicking the can down the road you're not going to see this dollar for dollar and this is what boehner has asked for every time and i

think that's the problem the american people are just tired of this thing over and over again it's the same story it's a different day they keep doing this over and over again and each time the republicans take a little bit more of a head and a little bit more of a head and i it just seems as if they're not really learning from the past by it because they keep doing this over and over again you know they got one point eight trillion dollars the first time around obama they shrank our economy by that much to keep unemployment high so that people would blame obama and then with the sequence duration they got one point two trillion i mean we're we're pushing over we're pushing three trillion dollars here that they've sucked out of the economy to make the economy bad so people will be upset with the with the president yet and i think that they're pushing that strategy as much as they possibly can the problem is the american public is sort of tired of it and they just want congress to be grownups and write a budget and pass a budget but they're just not seeing it in and the american people are just really sick of it and and i think you know these these this strategy can be effective if

they want government spending but as you're seeing with the question are the programs that that want to be saved get saved military assistance has already been saved you know their pet programs are saved and unfortunately and what that means is that people who don't have enough money to lobby or enough political clout typically are the ones who are the ones who you know this is because the sky is falling center and this is just bad leadership it's a coming compensate problem is that both parties do it cried wolf problem here you know what i mean i guess you could go out but you have to remember these house these house represent of the congress and they have to run every two years a lot of them got in there a couple years back and saying we're going to cuts. spending and this is one way you can say you do it i'm going to cut spending and we're going to do this and i don't care the consequences this become real tactically after memory as a senator president obama voted against raising the debt ceiling to this becoming a tactical move that both parties use whoever's in power to try to make the other party look bad to try to make the other. man ever held the debt ceiling hostage but they but individual democrats did vote against anybody that will making

proclamations but there's a difference between making a sickly called if you would do this you're just unpatriotic that's the worst thing you can do you know democrats did hold us feelings hostage well cap and balance plan was passed in the summer of two thousand and eleven and it went to the senate failed it never went anywhere democrats did not pass that plan instead pushed the debate all the way up to the to the breaking point the night before when we get the sequester deal so that there is a little bit of history where there is some brinksmanship from both sides didn't run congress that they had senate they didn't even bring it all the no they didn't have the senate at that point in time and they only had the business when you love democrats again it was dead already but democrats only had the senate for the first thirteen you know eleven weeks and after that scott brown got put in and then the order is good but the republicans. but i think that anything you always identify this by party because it's a republican democrat thing is a two party problem as well some incumbency more of tonight's big picture rubble after the break.

let me let me i want to know what let me ask you a question. here on this network is what we're having the debate we have i know you see. the truth is this is just a bad thing to get here in this race we're being i don't want me to talk about the name and. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so silly you think you understand. and then you glimpse something else here sees some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm sorry welcome to the big picture.

here is mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that we americans call a dollar. i'm sorry i'm just a guy who cares an awful lot of money you sir are a fool you know what that is my peers. doesn't want to listen to futurism the only liberal the christian. usually the voters. you know the corporate media distracts us from what you and i should care about because their profit driven industry that sells of sensationalistic garbage he calls it breaking news i'm happy martin and we're going to break that. looking for every dollar up in the field that we won't find it here if you're looking for relevant stories unique perspective from tom my scans and starts.

back to the big picture rubble joining me tonight marc harrold kay steiger adam bradley let's get back to it according to the third quarter two thousand and twelve federal reserve flow of funds or board so you total total u.s. household net worth is a staggering sixty four point eight trillion dollars we have a lot of money forty percent of that by the way twenty six trillion rests in the hands of the top one percent of americans eighty. percent of all that worth is in the hands of the top ten percent of americans and if you assume a five percent annual return on assets which is actually pretty good right now but assuming that the average annual increase in u.s. household net worth alone is three point two trillion a year enough to pay for almost all the federal budget bottom line here america is if you're worried you're rich so isn't it time every time one of these guys comes

out and says oh i can't afford a broker's boco we're just. kidding we're not broke america is a rich country. i think i think you're right i mean we saw a report from brookings this week that said income inequality is actually becoming permanent we are sort of entrenching ourselves in this era in which economic mobility isn't what it was so should we roll back the reagan tax cuts you know i mean that's a bad call and i think it's not a bad idea actually we have a lot of people who you know just can't get it you know that economic mobility of great america and the one nine hundred fifty s. just simply doesn't exist anymore for a lot of people i think it's really so adam in the nine hundred fifty s. sixty's and seventy's the top tax rate was ninety one percent in sixty four l.b.j. actually close enough loopholes when he dropped down to seventy four percent that it actually taxes went up on rich people as kennedy had campaigned on and it was

seventy four percent when reagan came in office rolling back the reagan tax tax cuts would take the top rate back up to seventy four percent now people are going to pay any of that until they've made about three million dollars a year why don't we do that if i thought we had a prosperous country for forty years. to sit here and say that the government has the right to just seize a certain amount of cash they do it's going to. article one section eight i'm not disagreeing with what the constitution says but i'm saying that to believe that we can just at whim just keep moving this up that because you were successful the government deserved to take extra from you and. even more your success is is is increasing within your roger in the comment was in your own budget they cannot spend within their own restrictions that they supposedly sat on themselves for forty years why should they then be given the light is it to go off so well this time we are there we know that it was slowing it up we spent this movie was

screwing it up adam is a way to take a look at american history look at the last hundred twenty years whenever the top tax rate is below fifty percent so rich people can get hot money and gamble with it they're generally fairly lousy investors and they gamble like crazy and you get bubbles in bursts and whenever the top tax rate is above fifty percent you have decades literally decades of prosperity because if it is the money is no longer leads people are lousy investors to government is even worse with there with by taking that no we that is not a not so that is nothing like legal market we just have one minute in effect to carry it out no i don't think so i think the rich should pay their fair share and their fair share is the same percentage as everybody else think about the constitution actually this is about. how the wall is the same as mitt romney how about the concept of equal protection this is discrimination against the rich oh ok . you know it's pretty sad and there is that everything that idea that you know. poor people actually give a greater percentage of their income to charity then of rich people there is and there you have a greater percentage in taxes sales tax income tax states have the same fica taxes

absolutely it's an account of fair game when you look at it marc harrold case tiger at a butler thank you all for being thank you thank you. granger of court today and bloomberg businessweek former twenty twelve republican presidential candidates rick santorum and newt gingrich were very close to forming a unity ticket back in february two thousand and twelve in an effort to collect it . knock mitt romney out of nomination contention after santorum claimed the iowa caucuses and three other primaries in early february the talk of forming that unity ticket reached its peak job john brabender in terms chief strategist told bloomberg business week that everybody thought there was an opportunity it would send shock

waves through the establishment and the romney campaign but the talks over the take a broke down when neither candidate could agree over which one of them would be at the top of that eventual spicket of our political system provided for third fourth or fifth parties santorum and gingrich could have simply run on another party ticket and republican leaning voters would have had more choices every generation or so it seems that an american presidential candidate or run on a third party ticket they always lose and they rarely even advance their own interests because they split the votes from the side that they're on charles koch ran as a libertarian ross perot invented the reform party to run ralph nader put up with the greens not a member got anywhere that's because in the united states we use what's called first past the post winner take all election systems but that wouldn't have been the case if we had instant runoff voting also known as i.r.b. or proportional representation in ited states is one of only

a handful of developed countries in the world that doesn't have proportional representation and if those few nations that don't have proportional representation two of them australia and new zealand have instituted instant runoff vote. we don't have it because we're one of the world's oldest democracies and our constitution was written back in seventy seven james madison seven hundred eighty eight when he was trying to sell it had this horrible realisation madison realized that we were the first real democracy of major significance since rome and that our democracy was in reality an experiment you also realize that we first. as the post winner take all actions you could have a democracy if there were only two parties so fifty one percent of the vote could win that's democratic majority but you couldn't have a real small d democracy in a small our republic with more than two parties with three parties thirty four percent of the vote could run the country the four parties it could be twenty six

percent of up to five parties twenty one percent that's why in federalist number ten madison bade us not to form political parties what he called factions madison wrote it maybe could include that a pure democracy by which i mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens who assemble administer the government in person can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction it wasn't until madison was long dead that englishman john stuart mill proposed and basically invented the idea of proportional representation is around eighty and sixty or whichever party got for example nine percent of that party would then get nine percent of the seats of parliament to put their people into or thirty percent or sixty percent whatever the voters wanted they go proportional representation is the reason why there are so many political parties in germany or israel or france or japan and a host of other developed nations under proportional representation the voices of

all the people are heard because it not only allows for but actually promotes multiple political parties there are two ways we can accomplish this democratic ideal of more than just two political parties here in the united states two ways we can do it here in america right now the first is to have the states change the way they apportion votes to congress in the senate and arguably we could do it with a giant constitutional amendment this can all be done at the state level. proportional representation also known as fair voting is the phrase it's been used increasingly united states actually has a long history in our elections over one hundred cities and counties across our country today use some form of fair voting your proportional representation to fill various alike the offices fair vote or as one of the leading organizations in the fight to bring proportional representation to the halls of congress in the sun to make this happen nationwide in our national elections that organization also

advocates strongly for instant runoff voting or ranked. in our current system of voting also known as a plurality voting system three political parties is a crowd our current two party system discourages new candidates from entering the fray and suppresses new ideas and ascending and descending opinions however instant run of voting creates that democratic ideal of majority rule and voter choice in the run of voting r.v. allows voters to rank candidates in order preference as my first choice this is my second choice this is my third choice that kind of thing so if a candidate receives a majority of first choices that candidate gets elected but if nobody has a clear majority of votes in the first count a series of run offs begin although everybody's already voted using the voter's preferences as indicated on their ballot the candidate who gets the fewest first place votes is eliminated the balancer all the ballots are all then recounted and

if you voted for the guy who got the least number of votes your second choice gets counted it instead. the weakest candidates are continuously eliminated as their voters ballots are added to the totals of their next choice until one candidate wins a majority of votes thanks ample of that election when instant voting would have worked wonders for america was the two thousand election between bush gore and nader back in two thousand i voted for ralph nader my wife louise voted for al gore the real reason bush took florida was because the u.s. supreme court stopped a statewide recount because jeb bush and katherine harris had illegally knocked about seventy thousand african-american voters off the rolls even before the polls opened but nonetheless ralph nader did get around seventy thousand votes in that election but what if i.r.b. had been in place under i r v if i lived in florida i actually live from lot of time which is why i felt it was safe to vote for nader if i lived in florida with i r v i could have voted for ralph nader is my first choice and al gore is my second

since they are had the fewest votes and lost my ballot were rolled over to become above a ballot or a vote for al gore just imagine all of the ralph nader votes that were cast across the country rolling over to votes for al gore surely gore would have won the election and the supreme court never could have stolen it from george bush right now instant runoff voting is used in more than three hundred communities across the country the largest in san francisco berkeley oakland california. and thanks to organizations like fair vote and the green party instant voting is becoming more and more popular across the united states but we need to take instant runoff voting and proportional representation national we need more choices and more voices in our elections it's time to leave behind our eighteenth century electoral system and step into the twenty first century. coming up how did martyrdom become such an important part of the christian experience and is the christian belief persecution

just a myth class canada bought since nights conversations with great. you

know sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lengthly you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realized everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm john 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 powdery down he said the bottom line there is still a lot of snow out here a good place for snowball fight. d.c. it is bennett pretty incredible day there and even record snowfall throughout much

of it like nobody's luxury driving listens to them urgency fear exceptions. the worst we're going to. wipe out of the radio a minute. i want. to give you never seen anything like this on telly. talking about the same story doesn't make it news no softball interviews no pop pieces tough questions.