belongs on our own in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture. chicago residents took to the streets wednesday to protest that city's plan to close fifty four schools and they stop mayor rahm emanuel before it's too late last night half a tonio coming up in just a moment also the republicans have created a political death star and its target is the middle class we'll talk to the nation magazine reporter leaves the rights of new attack machine and what progress is can do to fight back and later in the show is a your take my take live segment your chance to call in and ask a question or make a comment live on the air.

you need to know this last week chicago announced a plan to close fifty four cities public schools and when you see residents are fighting back opening up a new front in the battle line for our comments on wednesday thousands of activists union leaders and everyday chicagoans marched on city hall to protest the school shut down over one hundred were arrested and taken into police custody the protests are given new attention to the fight over chicago's public schools but the storm has been brewing there for some time last fall the chicago teachers union organize a citywide strike in the wake of failed contract negotiations that strike was the first in twenty five years and drew national headlines at the height of the presidential election for the union however the contract struggle was more than an election cycle talking point it was an important piece of a larger campaign to stop city officials from the straw in the public school system

last week's closure announcement suggests that their worst nightmare. it's coming true grain of the city closing down the supposedly failing fifty four schools is necessary to consolidate an expensive public education network and reinvest in new technologies for students but wednesday's protesters see it differently they claim that the closures won't do anything to help poor students and they're outraged by the implicit racism of the city's plan the bulk of the students affected are black or latino above all the protesters fear that chicago will become the next testing ground for the corporatization of america's public schools and their fears are warranted this past month alabama started a voucher program in new jersey governor chris christie himself a former lobbyist for the education reform movement announced a state takeover of camden city schools to prepare them for privatization the chicago fight is about more than just chicago and schools it's about local

communities and protecting their commons from predatory capitalism it's a question of democracy here to talk more about the battle for chicago schools as mike happen tony attorney and host of ring of fire radio my cabin tell you welcome back and you're going to great to have you with us so what how did you get into this mess and what do you make of all this well roma manual is simply recycling the same suggestions the same arguments that have methodically been focused and debated and put forward and developed really by the jeb bush right wing privatization crowd that's what this is all about it doesn't it doesn't even have to do with money tom the american education system according to them there is talking point is this system's failing because teachers have become lazy they become protected we have unions that allow bad teachers to continue teaching schools teaching in school and there's nothing we can do about bad teachers that's one of the talking points the

other talking point is that it is really work. i have a dog whistle talking point and that is that it's only the marginal teachers it's the minority and marginal teachers who are able to succeed in this system and they could never succeed in a privatized system with a competitive vallance your school system so all of this has been well developed we're just now seeing it for the first time this in the last couple years in chicago since rahm emanuel became boss in the truest sense is there any any evidence that those talking points that you just laid out which i think probably most americans can recite by now they've been they've been preaching this stuff for decades that they're true. it's just the opposite is true i mean all you have to do is look at it look internationally at urbanized countries and take a look at their public schools they outperform our very best private schools tom it's a kind of an interesting argument you know here you have we're saying we need better teachers that we need more teachers we need qualified teachers at the same time

worse we're saying that we're saying that we should cut teacher's salary we're telling them they're lazy we're telling they have too many benefits we're telling that they need to double up on the numbers of people that they teach in classroom we publicly humiliate them in the same breath these these boneheads say well let's let's attract more teachers who is going to move into that profession right now you already have a an attrition rate in that profession that it's higher than any other college degree profile profession so this is this has nothing to do with money there you hear this every time a municipality says they need to find money it does it's not about money it's about breaking unions it's about privatizing education changing the nature of education like they're doing in chicago where they closed down schools were eighty seven percent of the black students were most affected by the shutdowns well so what happens when chicagoans wake up one morning and discover that their newly

privatized. schools and such a good being on the local school board are showing up to talk to the local school board that their newly privatized school is owned by a corporation based in texas or singapore or china well they wake up and they say how could we have been so stupid how would how did we not think that this school board elections in our community were important why did we not think that they were important were we have seen this developing for the last ten years couple of things tome one thing you've had the privatization crowd moving in we didn't even recognize it in florida it started happening all over florida what you were probably talking about i know i was talking about on my show we also saw the anti intellectuals moving into a board of education positions where we had to teach creationism we had to teach the global global climate change was real this was a grassroots effort that we have sat back and allowed to happen unfortunately now

the privatization crowd is heavily in charge in big air in big urban areas in chicago has to live with that when they start seeing their education system privatized to the point to where only wealthy kids can get a good education so let me get this right when when you know one of the one of the traditional republican strategies a scenes has the it because they don't like government doing things they want to open up spaces for their crony capitalists to do things has been to hire incompetent people brownie running theme you know yeah let's put a horse judge in charge of fame and and then when fema fails they go see him fails time to bring in halliburton and in fact they did bring and heller they brought in the private security system down there in in new orleans you know and blackwater so are you suggesting that this is the same thing only writ large that

in school boards all across the nation. right wingers got themselves elected to those school boards that over the course of the last couple of decades have been systematically basically destroying their own schools dialing back on their schools cutting out good in the central programs making their schools fail and now of the schools are failing they're saying hey let's bring in an acme corporation to run this tell me it's not speculation we've been watching this i've been reporting on this story for years and and i know you have it's big but what we've been reporting you see we've been reporting the stories about about the anti intellectuals of the folks in texas who wanted to say that if we teach evolution we also must teach creationism we must teach that climate change is just a theory so we were focused on that that's primarily what i was focused on but now when you do a look back it's those very same people that showed up on the school boards that

were part of the privatization crowd they did the same thing to with the prison administrations all the state by state it's been a very methodical there's nothing you know tinfoil hat about it they simply had a plan as usual their plan was ahead of progressive and they executed it elizabeth warren made an interesting point about schools and housing values she was speaking at berkeley back in two thousand and eight to take a look at this. big five point increase in third grade reading scores between two side by side municipalities and the boston suburbs that are other warrants matched for access to public transportation sized houses they mention for every sidewalks crime rates racial composition everything you want to look at five points and third grade reading scores turned into tens of thousands of dollars of difference in housing prices parents are pining schools. to create

one out of san diego study out of san diego where they were having parents to prep for. somewhere that by parents would rather live near a toxic dump them in a place where they thought the schools were underperforming where they are so public schools are not only a major and important part of the commons but they actually change the value of neighborhoods what's going to happen in the chicago neighborhoods when the schools are gone. well i mean is you know you have the well couple things going to have no one is you're going to have the you know the corporations that are going to come in and say it's an opportunity to build a school somewhere else it's an opportunity to detract from from that neighborhood but i think i think to me the problem the problem is that we're we're missing these things as they're happening right now we're you and i are talking about this story this story has been developing a long long time it started the day of rama manual went to chicago and we started seeing the same crowd if you look at the crowd who were who is advising you know

rahm emanuel on what to do next on an issue like this it's the same crowd that's vising rick scott in florida there is no difference there are no party lines here there's nothing there's nothing unique about rahm emanuel simply because he's a democrat he's simply a corporatist just like rick scott is we sometimes miss the story we've become blind because because of party alliances and party allegiance and but what if you take a look at where this all comes from this does not come simply from republicans. and it doesn't come from partisans i mean you've got bill gates on why exactly exactly ok we just have about a minute left i have a quick question new documents show that adam lanza had books on autism and a certificate from the n.r.a. and a book a handbook with the from the n.r.a. along with just an incredible amount of other ammunition and weapons thoughts on whether this is going to die this whole newtown issue the way the n.r.a.

predicts it will or will or if well no it won't die if we don't allow it to dive for example what i'm doing as a series of town hall meetings going to washington d.c. baltimore next week to do a series of town hall meetings about the need to stop gun violence in this country it is obama got it right when he said this will only succeed on changing things if america is outraged we have to keep them out right. it's our job to do that. you know i think you're absolutely right and it's it's going to be it's going to be a big one but it might happen tony thanks for being with us thank you. great to see coming up after the break the republican party has built a secret army of lobbyists and donors and it's using that secret army to take over our country you know not where the tinfoil hat will talk with leaf on about the nights later the right this is the latest attempt to hijack our democracy just a more.

oh. please eat eat eat eat eat eat. eat eat eat. to meet.

potentially deadly blizzard taking aim for the northeast it's expected to hit starting 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 patrie down the line there's still a lot of snow out here a good place for snowball fight. jason it is going to pretty incredible day there and even record snowfall throughout much of it might still be slugged three driving lessons some emergency vehicles lurk substance.

to the best of the rest of the news even when the right is down there never really out in a new report published in the nation magazine leave as unveiled a vast network of donors lobbying groups and media outlets working to push right wing policies. corporate backed and wash with money is multi-part attack machine has coordinated some of the right's most effective legislative efforts in the past few years it's the new face conservative activism and has already fundamentally altered how our democracy functions can be stopped can even be outed here to talk about is peace and what progress is can do to counter the right's new weapon is leaf boarding fellow with the investigative fund at the nation institute and author of the book the machine a field guide to the resurgent right we fought welcome back nice to see you tom great to have you here in the studio with me here so give us the the elevator speech here on this article the summary of the of the article well

when president obama elevated voters out of it president obama to the white house in two thousand and eight conservative planners had a freak out moment and they started concentrating their resources their political investments in the states this group the state policy network coordinates conservative think tanks in all fifty states they now have fifty nine affiliates and they're basically a p.r. firm for alec so the very fact the american legislative exchange council where the lobby is republican legislators get together and push push out corporate friendly legislation that's right so some of this is partisan some of it's ideological and another aspect is simply corporate lobbying but it's all under this kind of veneer of this you know free market conservative ideology and they're very aggressive hired over one hundred journalists and just. last couple of years to create policy papers to push out. these ideas in the media and they've been affective even though

president obama again won a general election and won big we're seeing on the state level. a hard turn to the right so in every state i mean one of the things i noticed was you pointed out in your article that most local newspapers are understaffed. people who work there are underpaid overworked and so these folks are responding to that well in a very very very conscious of this big shift and that in the media and in two thousand and nine the state policy network formed helped form a new group called the franklin center and the franklin center has gone out recruiting these journalists explicitly saying your newspapers downsizing you but we've got a job for you and they hired these journalists to produce very conservative leaning news items and they offer it to free are offered for free to newspapers all over the country so they basically offer a syndication service that covers state level media and the so the state level media gets the free content and they get to make sure that it's right wing freak

our corporate friendly shall we say i mean some of the stuff is fairly fringy they have media items constantly questioning obama's birth certificate some of the other there's other conspiracy theories but other of other news items from the franklin center are more about you know teachers are paid too much we need to cut their pension we need to take away their organizing rights that sort of thing it's it's remarkable it's. and this is also their it's setting up a local think tank state state by state think tanks tell us about that's right and several states in louisiana they set up a new one just in the last couple years called the pelican institute but in other places they took existing state think tanks the mackinaw center in michigan. some specific research center in california and. they've expanded them they've added huge new grants to hire some of these reporters to hire more political operatives to really expand their operations and put more pressure on the state legislatures

and the state governors who is the. well you know i talked to the state policy network and they said today that you know their people have no coordinated agenda but if you look at the last four years and i listened to some of their kind of strategy meetings they're clearly going after after unions they're talking about consolidating power by and acting with these voter id laws going after acorn this kind of pave the way before james o'keefe and really just even the gerrymandering issue that these kind of absurdly drawn congressional districts these state think tanks are defending them saying no this is this is part of this is part of our state now you can't change these borders well and in fact you know democrats across the country running for the house of representatives got one point three million more votes than republicans did in the last election you would think that they would control the house of representatives they don't the republicans do because of the jury mandarin that you just described and that was all done in all driven at

the state level of the isn't this really the brilliant strategy and this is kind of howard dean's fifty state strategy this is a good idea howard dean strategy except with tens of millions more dollars they simply have more resources and of course liberals have attempted this strategy on the state level but just to a much smaller degree of there's this there's talk about investing in think tanks and political infrastructure in texas so you know eventually one day that will be a blue state but it really pales in comparison to the state policy network because they've they are have think tanks and in hawaii alaska and they're growing so quickly i mean some of these budgets have tripled in size in michigan if you look at the really dramatic changes there their little array of think tanks and organizing institutes have five times as many research as much of a budget than their counterparts on the left. there's a group called progress michigan which is a liberal group and the mackinaw and americans for prosperity michigan you compare those numbers they're not even close to right and i would think that from the point

of view of conservative billionaire or a corporation you know the newly empowered i guess with citizens united they can give money to one of these kind of groups if they put in five million and then they get a law passed that says hey we're now right to work for less state that corporation might make back ten million or twenty million of their billion or might make a huge tax cut to the return on investment is really part of the issue here i have a few anecdotes in the article online school companies have worked very closely with this network to push these virtual charter school bills you see a lot of the oil and gas companies working with the state think tanks to pass or to prevent new regulations on fracking and to kind of oppose what the e.p.a. is trying to do but the broader picture here at least with the unions is that you have so many large corporations working with this network and at the end of the day they didn't they would they want to get rid of their unions or they would not like to be organized so the you know a few minutes ago i said who are they is there i mean back twenty thirty years ago

we could say ok richard mellon scaife is a huge donor joseph coors is it you know their names are on the heritage foundation the koch brothers you know they were they were proud of who they were and here's the money that we gave in there were just a few of these large is there a clear they now are is the become the business roundtable the hundred largest corporations in america that still kind of a mystery the koch brothers do finance this network and they have had fundraisers go out and help them fundraise so they clearly have a connection but there's a normalization and i believe alexandria called donors trust that has basically acted as a funnel to provide about ninety five percent of the at least the franklin sanders funds and they as the donors trust organization doesn't disclose any of their donors so they're kind of a proxy that keeps all of the. secret that being said it's very likely that it's a lot of the same type of koch brothers donors you know they have this twice annual meeting for people get together and bundle money for the conservative movement at

large but look at the day we don't know we don't know and so we don't know what their interests are you mention privatizing education in these these virtual online charter schools and things like that we just did a piece about the privatization of schools in chicago and you know which is run by a democratic mayor is this is that are is privatizing of education charter schools is this on their agenda is this part of what the role of these groups this is a big part of their agenda and this might actually kind of key in with their anti-union. goals because these charges. they're not very welcoming to teachers unions but we saw this in two thousand and ten two thousand and eleven when a new crop of tea party governors were elected we saw virtual school companies connections academy k. twelve and working very closely with the state think tanks to create kind of a groundswell or at least the appearance of a groundswell of support for these policies you know average american i've never

met anyone who says we want more online charters but they were able to create the kind of appearance of that with with organizing rallies and state capitals were saying you know our state has a budget problem wouldn't be easier if we could just shift all the kids instead of from a brick and mortar school to just having them take classes from a for profit company at home so it's a compelling argument to state legislators looking to cut to trim fat from the budget but is that a good long term solution for education in this country no probably not. thanks so much for being with islam. crazy alert everyone likes a little fun when they're on the job but the lead iron pigs a minor league baseball team based in lehigh pennsylvania are bringing streaming

entertainment to a whole new level they're installing p controlled video game systems in their stadiums urinals to play the game user simply have to guide their stream from side to side check out this instructional video. arrests since. it's curious. to each. of. us. gentlemen start your role is in more crazy

news. even before republicans austerity measures took a fact one out of six children in our nation was already impacted by unemployment according to a new study from first focus on the urban institute at least six point two million children have at least one unemployed parent and a staggering twelve point one million kids live in homes with a parent who is under employed last year the average weekly unemployment benefit was only two hundred ninety nine dollars in the sequester cuts that amount by almost ten percent so families who are already struggling to survive are now finding it even harder as the think progress blog points out having an unemployed parent can have long term consequences for children these kids will likely have lower math scores for attendance records and will more likely be will be more likely to fall into poverty later later in life children are our future and that's more than just a cliche it's the truth there are many reasons why we need to put

a stop to the republican addiction to austerity and the devastating effect it is having on our children should be reason number one. coming up the phone lines are now open for our your take my take it live segment so if you want a chance to ask a question live on the big picture give us a call to a two and i know for twenty one thirty four we'll be talking with you after the birth. of. a mission. critical free school or church free range

free free. stude tide free. download free broadcast quality video for your media projects a free media dog r.t. dot com. coming into the future. join thousands of gadget gurus walk into the mobile world congress in barcelona where research and handset makers try to get their groove back. and software super chargers hope to spin previous successes fourth presses jandek turns up the heat on google and despite a new twist on infotainment it's not just fun and games often overlooked video engine spring football is streaming conferences to the palm of your hands and there's a new player in town looking to show that to isn't that better than one going to see a day here on. the central coast. wealthy british style. that's

not on my list for. the. markets why not. come to find out what's really happening to the global economy with max concert for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to kaiser report on our let me let me read one wouldn't let me ask you a question from. here on this network is what we're having a debate we have our knives out. we need to get this right it's a bad thing never get here in a situation where being i don't agree to talk about your name and where.