and welcome back to the big picture i'm sam sachs coming up in this half hour president obama has proposed an increase in the federal cigarette tax to help pay for early childhood education programs is taking from cigarette smokers to pay for preschool a good idea i think so and i'll debate it a little later and internet stilly take tom will tell us about giant agribusiness corporation monsanto and why it's time to wake up to their corporate buyout of our elected officials. so back in the summer of two thousand and eight world food prices skyrocketed million starved as the price of essential grains ballooned to making even daily bread an affordable there are food riots governments were destabilized around the world but here's the thing about all that the sudden increase in food prices wasn't caused by some malthusian population crisis. like the financial collapse that

struck in september of that year it was the result of reckless wall street speculation for most of the twentieth century tight regulation kept grain markets stable in profitable but when the government deregulated futures markets in one thousand nine hundred nine wall street financier's began gobbling up grain contracts and gambling on prices using highly complex derivatives the same point anshul instruments used to sell junk mortgages as great investments to workers' pensions and retirement funds its rampant speculation created artificial demand for grains which in turn artificially inflated food prices banks toure's essentially use the price of corn as their own personal poker chip. it goes without saying that more regulation is needed to prevent bubbles like the two thousand and eight crisis but really that's just the beginning the world economy is still reeling from what wall street did two thousand and eight both the food crisis and the financial

meltdown and cash strapped governments are pursuing harsh austerity measures while banker bonuses are higher than ever so isn't asking wall street to pay just a fraction of a percent in new taxes so that our economy can continue making necessary investments in infrastructure health care education and perhaps most importantly climate change the least we should ask from the bankers i'm joined now by janet redmond co-director for the sustainable energy in economy network at the institute for policy studies and karen ornstein international policy analyst at friends of the earth janet karen welcome to show things so you guys are proposing something called a robin hood tax so what exactly is that janet you have a robin hood tax otherwise known as a financial transactions tax or financial speculation tax but the tiny tiny tax on each day of swaps stocks futures other forms of derivative financial instruments that's making it a little bit less lucrative to make those kinds of trades but raising

a huge amount of money get us a tiny tiny tax so it hits the high frequency trades a lot but not general trades that you and i would be doing you mention those high frequency traders that some huge percentage of trades right now are done by robots and we solve the kind of dangerous effects of that back in two thousand and ten when there was that flash crash in one day. so aside from curbing bad behavior like that and this is what i talked about in the intro of the speculation i mean how much money are we talking about that could be raised. to help make those re investments that we need we're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars you know in this age of fiscal austerity we're constantly being told that everything has to be done by the private sector because you know the government is broke our government. u.k. what have you the truth is it's not we're not broke it's a question of political will we spend trillions to bail out the banks we spend trillions on wars that's public money we're saying use public money for public good and and tax the bad guys to pay for it the good guys ready to. drive me nuts when

people say well what about doing you know the private market involved with the private market sitting on trillions of dollars with the cash in the not doing anything with it and we can't just sit here and wait for them as the planet gets hotter as our bridges crumble as our education starts dropping drop and drop given what's driving this climate change crisis is this kind of relentless thirst for more and more profits whether it's taking the profits out of the ground in the form of oil or whatever is in wall street the perfect place to to start to try and recruit some of those calls back that's what we believe certainly that doesn't have to be willing to fossil fuels that we find the money to help solve the climate change crisis we need to be getting the money from where it's been concentrated it's got it's been concentrated in the financial sector probably because we've handed that over to them of course we believe the private sector should be part of solving the climate crisis but we think it needs to be the private sector moving to low carbon development in developing countries in particular in our own countries

not to say it should be corporate handouts of private money to the national companies to be doing you know massive energy trades exact cetera need to be pulling the money out of the financial sector to do actual work on the ground in the democratic sector put it where people you know people have decisions rather than a small you know boardrooms this is not a radical idea this is something that european nations are pursuing in this is also something that used to exist in the united states yeah we had a financial transaction tax for many decades from the early one nine hundred three the sixty's and actually some forty countries have had financial transaction tax and in fact eleven european european union countries just came together to create a regional financial transaction tax in france in particular. in their financial transaction tax is using a portion of the revenue specifically for climate. to confront climate change in developing countries from what i understand we we used to have the stocks you need to define the r.c.c. and other regulatory agencies and we. went well beyond finding those people and we

just kind of got rid of the tax and we haven't ever since and since then we've seen kind of this rise of bad behavior on wall street so as we're moving forward to try and implement something like this. the opposition i mean obviously it's coming from wall street but. just how severe is it how do we push back against the well of course there's opposition from wall street and again any time that there is a threat of taking the power of wall street investment firms corporations away they push back but we should also say that there are professionals in the financial sector who are for a financial transactions tax because the work that does to stabilize the economy and in fact there were fifty financial sector professionals who sent a letter to you and g. twenty leaders saying we want to financial transactions tax we want to as we want the kinds of regulation that make our economy more stable that make our job as people who are exchanging money. easier to do and clear to do in a way that actually makes that kind of profitable for everyone so in fact there are there are financial sector processor for it and you guys are getting out there and

you guys had a rally the other day this morning actually this morning yes sorry there was so this was actually in front of a ministerial meeting of heads of finance and environment industry is from we think about eleven countries we talked to five of the countries on their way in from developed countries who are meeting to talk about mobilizing the private sector to pay for climate change we were outside saying actually there's a lot of money in the public sector there's a lot of money in the financial sector that should be in public hands we'd like to see a robin hood tax pay for a climate change. in developing countries there were the wealthiest nation the world we should be able to do that janet karen thanks so much and keep up the good work thanks much. other news yesterday the house energy and commerce committee held a hearing on the. controversial keystone x.l. pipeline supporters and opponents of the toxic tar sands project stood their ground in testimony about the effects of completing the pipeline environmental advocacy groups like the national resources defense council warned of the many dangers

presented by the keystone x.l. pipeline and cited the recent tar sands oil spill in arkansas as a prime example of what could go wrong but an executive from trans canada inc the company behind keystone x.l. describe the so-called safety features of keystone and its potential role in north american energy independence the main purpose of the hearing was to consider implementing legislation which would force the federal government to approve the final construction of the pipeline and it appears that republicans have teamed up with lawmakers in canada to lobby washington to ok the plan congressman lee terry of nebraska said quote we need to cement our relationship with our best trading partner and friend in canada and secure our national security interests and energy interests by approving this pipeline. our relationship with canada shouldn't hinge on the obama administration allowing tarp toxic tar sands to be pumped through our communities and certainly shouldn't hinge on destroying our environment for oil

that we won't even benefit from the recent arkansas spill shows exactly what can happen to a community when the toxic sludge gets unleashed on the environment so we must stand together to prevent the contamination of even more communities and to protect our environment through in the fight at tar sands blockade dot org. now it's time for tonight's the good the bad in the very very heavy do madly ugly the good nancy zorn while the obama administration weighs approving the keystone x.l. pipeline as we just talked about zorn a seventy nine year old grandmother from oklahoma is taking direct action in the fight against climate change earlier this week she changed her cell to

a backhoe at an allen oklahoma keystone construction site and stopped work there until police removed her from the premises zoran says the time to take action against the fossil fuel giants is now quote i can no longer sit by idly while toxic tar sands are pumped down from canada and into our communities it is time to rise up and defend our home it is my hope that this one small action today will inspire many to protect this land and our water we all need to get active like nancy. now the bad riverview gun sales the east windsor connecticut gun shop that sold adam lanza's mother her weapon lost its firearms license license in december and a newly released a.t.f. report shows. well the store likely won't be able to sell guns for quite some time to the report the shop repeatedly flouted federal rules governing weapon sales selling guns to convicted felons and allowing customers to bring home guns before

they had completed background checks store security apparently wasn't good either police caught a twenty six year old self wins or man stealing a fifty caliber rifle from the store the day after the newtown shootings and to think that the n.r.a. is actively working today to roll back gun control regulations. and now the very very ugly machelp president north carolina made national headlines for all the wrong reasons last week when republicans in its state legislature proposed a bill that would have established a state religion in the tarheel state president say representative for north carolina is one hundred eighteenth district in a major sponsor of that controversial bill isn't doing anything to help resurrect the state's reputation an e-mail to one of her constituents president said that she doesn't support muslim lawmakers reciting their prayers before legislative sessions

because she quote doesn't condone terrorism. i don't know either supporting a state religion is bad enough but equating harmless prayers with al qaeda well that's just very very ugly. coming out one of the few bright spots in president obama's new two thousand and fourteen budget is a proposed tax increase on cigarettes to help pay for federally funded preschool programs but not everyone thinks this is such a great idea. and peterson why he doesn't want to help toddlers learn in just a moment.

let me let me i want to wouldn't let me ask you a point. here on this network is when we're having the debate we have our knives out. to the media to the scientists by staying there again here in this great way of being i don't want you to talk about surveillance. you know how 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 realize that everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm sorry welcome to the big picture

. the same story doesn't make it news. no puff pieces tough questions make it. worse for those. white house to give a. radio. minestrone profit. quote because you've never seen anything like good times roll.

and in other news buried in the obama budget that was released earlier this week is a provision that would increase the federal tax on cigarettes in order to pay for early childhood education programs the budget calls for a ninety four cents a pack on federal cigarette taxes which would raise roughly seventy eight billion dollars over the next ten years anti-smoking groups and education advocates are applauding the proposed tax hike but many say that the increased cigarette tax will ultimately hurt middle and lower income americans the portion of the population that contributes to the majority of cigarette purchases so is a slight tax increase worth it if it has the potential to help save the lives of millions of americans while helping to educate our future generations well for more on this let's bring in austin peterson director of production at freedom works welcome back to the show thanks for having us and so i'm i'm guessing you're against this for two reasons one of there's a tax and it and two it's a federal program to to help educate young people. so but

here's my argument this isn't just coming out of nowhere this isn't just bureaucrats saying oh we want more power here this is responding to a real problem in america and this is wealth inequality and a lack of equal opportunity among people we have higher income individuals who can afford to send their kids to preschool and we have moderate and low income individuals who can so so so all at the at the start of their lives you have two people who don't have the same opportunity to make it in america ok so the problem is that if you really do want to do these things then why would you want to tie that to a revenue stream that you're trying to kill so the problem here is that if you want to fund these early childhood education programs with a tax why are you doing with a tax that you say you want to have less of in the future because if the if the anti-smoking groups are working with the children's groups well the problem is that that in the future when people are smoking less there will be less revenue for these children so really i mean i think the way the plan would work is that eventually you would raise this funding you would go out and you would send more

low and. moderate income kids to preschool and there's been studies that show for every dollar invested in a kid's preschool education or getting a lemon dollars in economic activity that they're like so whatever money we lose from less people smoking or revenue coming in we're picking up there every revenue by people having better jobs people you know competing in the global economy better paying higher revenue than into the government seems like seems like it works well it doesn't really because the thing is that it doesn't actually reduce people smoking so the national bureau of economic research found that cigarette taxes reduced consumption only minimally and even if the tax was raised to one hundred percent it would on each pack it would only reduce smoking adult smoking by five percent so you actually are cutting back on smoking so if you're just trying to get a revenue source for children you will have one in the future because it's not going to stop people from smoking what you want but wait on what you are doing is like you said you are hurting those poor people who are paying twenty five percent of their income to pay for these programs and here's the thing what if those people

don't have any children they're not they're paying for someone else's child so why are you forcing those people to pay for the cost of someone else i think as a libertarian if you have a tax almost on that the tax should be put on the burden of the people who are receiving the benefit from the program so the people who send their children to those schools should have to pay the price of the cost of that rather than it to put it on another group moderate and low income people who already can't afford to send their kids to school should pay higher taxes to be able to send their kids to school no poor people should have to pay to send other poor people kid to school right that's what you're saying is that you should force one of them to people i don't know where i can we can deem and i do or say right so let's let's unpack of some of the things you said first off about the price of cigarettes and the effect on people smoking the city the city see did a study of this in fact c.d.c. director tom frieden said an increase in the president is the single most effective way to discourage kids from spoke of smoking he goes on and on but this chart shows that there's a pretty inverse relation between cigarette smoking and how many people do well the chart was just up a second ago. you see prices go up the smoking goes down and you see this. same

thing on ok so there's numbers showing that but also if you're saying that this warning courage people stop smoking then that kind of blows up the argument about the revenue stream there's all of these different issues that you have to look at this with and here's a here's something else think about this it creates a black market too so if you actually want to raise revenue the problem here is that think about this sixty percent of cigarettes that were sold in new york two thousand and six were smuggled in and if you're if you're trying to get more revenue if you increase taxes you're going to have a dead weight loss in this situation so if you look at the rate of tax hikes taxes of written risen on cigarettes hundred ninety percent since two thousand and six but the rate of smuggling has increased one hundred seventy percent so you're not really getting this tax benefit that you're trying to get i mean the numbers are out you're going to raise this amount of money to send this amount of kids to school which is going to have this amount of economic activity which will then go back and economy to then send more people kids to school i think the key here is just equal opportunity here we need to get all these kids whether they're for

moderate or low income people to have equal opportunity and i don't tax me bro don't tax you probably. want to say the big. tax is austin peterson thanks. and so they said it couldn't be done but there is finally something that both progressives and tea partiers are up in arms about together and that's monsanto progressives and tea partiers alike are furious over the past the passage of the months santo protection act which exempts the biotech giant from basically from the courts from judicial review last month this provision was slipped into a spending bill behind closed doors in congress and what it does is it it's a blame effort to shield months santo away from wall but

a new food and water watch report highlights even more ways monsanto has avoided regulatory scrutiny over the years according the report monsanto's board members have worked directly for the food and drug administration they've advised the department of agriculture and they've even served on president obama's committee for trade policy and negotiations monsanto has used these positions to influence public policy and opinion and pressure lawmakers into turning a blind eye to their monopolistic practices so isn't it time we said enough is enough and stopped monsanto from buying off our elected officials well that is the subject of tonight's daily take. while all eyes were glued on the supreme court this week in the hearing surrounding marriage equality americans were dealt a major blow by the other two branches of government on tuesday president obama signed into law a charter nine thirty three a continuing resolution appropriations bill that had been approved by congress both

the house and the senate just days earlier and while the bill sounds fairly innocuous by itself buried seventy eight pages into it was a provision that protects g.m.o. and biotech companies like monsanto from nearly all forms of judicial oversight despite calls for more than two hundred fifty thousand americans to veto the bill president obama went ahead and signed it anyway giving giant agribusiness companies like monsanto free rein to develop plants and sell all sorts of genetically modified crops despite a wide range of health and safety concerns surrounding them according to greenpeace international a provision in h.r. nine thirty three will affect only bar u.s. federal courts from being able to halt the sale or planting of genetically engineered crops even if they fail to be approved by the government's own weak approval process and no matter what the health or environmental consequences might be as you can imagine the passing of h.r.

nine thirty three has biotech companies like monsanto jumping for joy food democracy now an organization that campaigned against h.r. nine thirty three writes that since losing a court case in two thousand and ten to the center for food safety for the unlawful planting of g.m.o. sugar beets on santo and other biotech companies have been desperate to find a way around court mandated environmental impact statements required as a result of a u.s. district court's ruling so now monsanto is free to develop plant and sell all sorts of genetically modified foods without fear of being sued or prosecuted if they fail to abide by the federal government's health safety and environmental standards but just how did this teeny tiny provision get inserted into this big appropriations bill in the first place that's where missouri republican representative or senator excuse me roy blunt comes in. according to the new york daily news blunt helps to carefully craft the provisions language with the direct help of monsanto why would

he do that you might ask it could be because according the center for responsive politics senator blunt received nearly sixty five thousand dollars in campaign contributions monsanto between two thousand and eight and two thousand and twelve in fact blunt has been the largest republican recipient of funding for months and so in recent memory the good news here is that this provision that protects months and zero from judicial oversight expires after a year the bad news is that this little provision with a big impact is just a symptom of a much larger problem in america today right now any corporation with money to spend can team up with elected officials and slowly but surely tear away at our governmental protections it's really not even lobbying it's investing these companies will often make far more in profits than they spend on buying legislators like senator blunt it's an investment that has a measurable return investing in politicians it can be hugely profitable for generations corporations of flooded our democracy with mountains of corporate cash

by an offer alike that officials left and right and while lawmakers could be bought and sold in the past and it was particularly bad during the gilded age and the worrying twenty's the situation is far worse today than in the living memory of most americans earlier this week i had former congressman bob ney on the big picture in my interview with him we talked about the state of politics today and the corrosive effect that money has on our democracy congressman ney went to jail for his involvement with discreet washington lobbyist jack abrams but he told me his interactions with abrams off paled in comparison to what happens in washington today take a look. in fact the things that jack and i did eating sushi restaurant drinking with him going to scotland that's peanuts today i officially as a lobbyist can take you if you were congressman to alaska we can go honey i can have a three thousand dollar dinner and raise you one hundred thousand i can then take you some family and staffers to las vegas i can have

a four thousand dollars dinner i can raise your hundred fifty thousand dollars all of what i just said has happened in all of its legal wow and that's life and that's even far worse than what you inject it with yes and we did bad things and i don't deny that but this now has been caught a fight in the law this one right now lobbyists and corporations can raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for elected officials and thanks to our broken system it's all legal as a result corporations like monsanto are able to spend lots and lots of money work around the law put the lives of americans potentially at risk at least arguably all the name of making a profit when something as important as food or gun safety of the privacy of our phone calls can be corrupted by corporate cash you know something has to change right now in communities all across america americans are standing up and saying that money is not speech and corporations are not people it was yesterday the west

virginia house of delegates passed a resolution calling on congress to propose a constitutional amendment to overturn the disastrous citizens united ruling and to reduce the corrupted influence of money in politics is west virginia delegate to mansion told a local newspaper yesterday this is doing the only thing we know how to do when the supreme court bases a ruling on a constitutional principle this is what we've got to do is to change the constitution we can't continue to let corporate officials buy off our elected officials now is the time to say enough is enough and end this terrifying reign of money in politics go to move to amend or join the fight to stop the fire sale of our democracy.

wealthy british style. expert on. market. come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike's cars are there are no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into kaiser report. coming up.

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