the law joe marvin in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture cord in a new polls the approval ratings of those senators who voted against the mansion to me gun background check bill last month are sinking fast is the tide turning against the n.r.a. and its ots in congress as our guest in tonight's lone liberal rumble just a moment also today is a may day holiday of workers and laborers the world over what are unions doing to fight back against the age of austerity discuss this and more in a special may day edition of a bigger picture panel at the bottom of the hour and it's been over two years since the poker shima nuclear disaster but a second crisis may be on its way sooner than you think i'll tell you why it's

still a take. you need to know this the poll numbers of the senators who voted against closing the gun show loophole on background checks last month are dropping and dropping fast according to a new study released earlier this week by the democratic leaning group public policy polling voters in states like arizona alaska and new hampshire are turning against their n.r.a. beholden representatives jeff flake the junior republican senator from arizona has seen his popularity numbers drop to thirty two percent since taking office in january and nineteen point loss more than half of those arizona polled said that they were less likely to vote for flake in the future because he opposed the background check bill meanwhile asked senator lisa murkowski is approval rating has dropped sixteen points to forty six percent since february a sharp drop from her previous fifty. four percent positive rating another study

concluded conducted by the public policy polling group found that new hampshire senator kelly a speaker at last fall's republican convention often considered one of the g.o.p.'s rising stars now has a forty six percent approval rating down fifteen points from that group's last poll in october but is anyone really surprised by these numbers ninety percent of americans support expanded background checks for gun purchases the gun bill didn't fail because it was unpopular but becomes because republicans and a handful of red state democrats cared more about campaign cash and gun manufacturers than they cared about the interests of the people who voted them into office now those same voters are fighting back yesterday erica lafferty the daughter of sandy hook elementary school principal dawn hochsprung hochsprung confronted kelly at a town hall meeting in warren new hampshire. that they are the.

owners and stores. in the. well. i'm just wondering right. there. in the. advocacy groups are joining in and as well today the progressive change campaign committee announced a new fifty thousand dollars campaign to push retiring nebraska senator max baucus one of the democrats who voted against the mansion to neutral to approve background checks the next time that measure comes to a vote the senate over the weekend joe mansion the co architect of last month's failed compromise bill so that he had his colleague pat toomey the republican are gearing up for another background check battle with senators poll numbers slipping away day by day is the writing on the wall spelled victory this time let's rubble.

joining me for tonight's alone liberal rummel our patrick hedger policy analyst for freedom works and cameron survey research associate and government studies at the heritage foundation joan great to see you both here and i think you heard my set up first of all patrick are you surprised at all by these numbers only you know i look at what's happening here and i think there's a lot of media gaming going on because if you look at the poll numbers for jeff flake in particular who's a very principled guy in our book in freedom works we measure a lot of economic public policy issues in his thirteen years as a congressman and now a senator he's got a ninety eight percent lifetime score with us and there's been a lot of accusations that he's flip flop on this issue and i you know i'm not an expert on gun policy but i will say that i'm a guy that prides myself on knowing the facts and the fact is that jeff flake came out in favor of expanded background checks under the grassley amendment. and that he thought that was more adequately suited to the kind of the crisis that we're facing right now and not necessarily what he like what he said what

a lot of words and justifying his will and since congress there's lots of words every about all sorts of different things but i mean i would defer to my colleague here from the heritage foundation on it. well we've talked before about look let's let's look at the votes i don't know if you've got to see the votes the most popular in this whole gun bill the mansion to me big gun bill the most popular and by about bipartisan lee supported bills were those put forth by the republicans the least popular do you know at least two least popular ones where the the assault weapon ban and the expanded or the shrinking of the magazine size limiting on the magazines none of this is a load out the vote this vote was a vote on closing the gun show loophole basically and saying if you're adjudicated crazy and violent if you are a criminal if you are on the if you're a terrorist we're not going to let you buy a gun and you know in if you walk into

a gun store into a real gun store or actually do the background check it takes a minute to have to punch the information into the f.b.i. database of bounces right back and they're just saying you had to get a gun shows and in fact there was a huge loophole by need to find gun shows as a place where there's more than seventy five vendors so i mean you know that there's going to be all kinds of small gun shows that are still going to slip through this thing now this wasn't good enough for these people well no look you you have to you have to look at the current system that we have and i've said this time and time again that there's a it's a flawed system it is not perfect and why not prosecute and bring to justice those people that at that you know sell to straw purchasers and all that because the obama administration you know there is no no that is illegal for the federal government to bust straw purchasers that was the whole basis of fast furious the arizona state law says that if you go and you buy fifty eight k. forty seven. and say you have to sort of this is for my own personal use that as soon as you walk out the door within one minute you can change your mind and decide

to resell those there was a law jan brewer put that law on the books and that's why the federal government couldn't bust those people and had to follow them down to mexico but what you didn't oh no the first yassin furious no that has nothing to do it was actually actually happened during the bush administration the guns were given by the obama administration and you know they were even if we are going to happen if they were following purchasers i'm going to be under the machine gun show big bill under that big bill would be if you'd be federally prosecuted within twenty four hours you didn't report yourself to the attorney general how long did it take for the attorney general to figure out world these guns work that actually killed people were trying to follow them but the but let us let us not turn this into an argument about fast and furious because that's going to take as of a completely different direction james inhofe and frank lucas the senator and state representative were both republicans were oklahoma have sponsored a bill that would forbid the administration from buying. more

ammunition over a six month period because alex jones came up with this theory that the government you know goes for about a billion bullets a year i mean we've got wars going on and yet every single police agency in the country you know every police officer is required to recertify you've got to basically go through a billion bullets a year no big deal and the government buys them and dog to get good prices alex jones turns this into a oh my god look at their stock piling you know we're not stockpiled we've always been buying this money and somehow this this whack job conspiracy theory has turned into a piece of legislation from jim inhofe and frank lucas patrick what why why would these people put their reputations on the line like this as the republican party only lasted no i don't think that's the case i mean i tend to see where you're coming from i think the conspiracy theories that are attached. so this can be a little bit farfetched i mean i have to admit when i first saw some of the reports

about the quantity of ammo those being purchased i was alarmed myself i mean we don't need we don't need all that we don't need the government a hell of a lot of hobson a lot of guns almost certainly and i agree you know so i looked at the numbers a little bit of a bit of a numbers guy mean if you look at it this is kind of these contracts are kind of just designed to be spread out over five years so if you look at the maximum number of bullets used per year be about ninety million bullets so that's about if you break it down between one hundred thousand officers that fall under this d.h.s.s. it's about nine hundred rounds per officer which seems a little bit more reasonable when you spread that over the course of a year i think the main point the kind legislation trying to curb these massive purchases which is more about fiscal responsibility meets them up right now is a moment in our prices are pretty big these days as the federal government need to be spending all this money no doubt about it but this is all tumble as you said you said why don't we just keep buying all the bullets we've always been been buying right as the government is paying for the shirt then you would agree with this bill because it says if you if you continue to buy at the rates you did prior to obama

who would just as soon have bullets disappear from the market and put country and factors out of business then you're fine then you agree with me because that's what the bill says if you buy at those rates prior to that so try to hoffa's prior to that i just thought obama administration would that would like obama wants to take away ammunition no the governor no prior if you if the government if the department of family or the department of homeland security continues to buy at the rate they did prior to the bush administration everything is fine right and part of the bush administration i'm sorry excuse me the obama in this area and to assert that it calls for a g.a.o. to do analysis of rates of both we've expanded our department of homeland security here than it was under post two thousand it certainly was i mean i'm not a fan of that but it is important is now there are always here it is has a larger quality. created after two thousand and one but the thing is i'm not necessarily opposed to senators keeping tabs on what's going on in the executive

administration and if this is if this is a good idea the senate's going to vote it up it's it had ideas in the senate a station usually expensive right now we're right here as deficit it's very sad i think checks and balances are really good i was here when i was out of their loans i would be laughing so hard it was all over. themselves exorbitant prices on ammo which as a recreational shooter i'm sure you can can appreciate tell you why i don't appreciate the two the two box limit right but any last month bernie sanders and told his fellow senators that they should focus less on budget cuts and more on rebuilding the middle class. here's a clip of those. who cannot talk about how you proceed with deficit reduction you cannot say that it's ok to cut social security or medicare or medicaid or nutrition programs. when the middle class of this country is disappearing poverty is extremely high while at the same time the wealthiest people in largest corporations are doing phenomenally well any serious ok just here's

a question this was on democratic underground what sort of person thinks there's nothing wrong with asking the folks task of teaching our children take a twenty percent cut on a fifty thousand dollar annual salary but the next thing is a terrible idea to ask millionaires to pay an additional three percent more in taxes which are the positions of virtually all the republicans all across the country i don't get what i look you want to frame this is rebuilding the middle class the middle class was not built by a feeding them from an trough what we've got right now the deficit would assert redundantly it was a priority of deficit reduction are on the highway or enticing drive deficit reduction is it that's the side effect of what we want to do we want to get the boot of the government boot off the neck of the private economy we're dealing with one point seven five trillion dollars worth of compliance costs with rules in the federal register eighty one thousand pages of rules in the federal register that you and i have to comply with and we probably most likely violated one of those three day i'm going. to six thousand dollars inflation that decreases the buying

power the middle class for the essential goods that affects them much more than it does the and we behave more on fighting the federal debt and most of these federal agencies that you love get per year you know we got to do some about this debt tom yeah it would be a fine idea to do something about the details raise taxes on the people you talk about in the saddle if you were a prize lone liberal rubble after the break let me let me i want to know what let me ask you a question. here on this network as we're having a debate every night. do you think this is just a bad thing there's a game here in this race we're being i don't mean to talk about the name and. you know some. if you see a story that seems so silly 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 tom harpur 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 about what you say are you know what that is my peers. want you to listen to featuring a liberal chris. you're totally out of the. you know the corporate media distracts 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 that.

all go back joining me for tonight's along liberal or patrick cameron seward let's get back to it unknown group is sending out well actually before i set this up let me set it up properly the reason john mccain didn't run against al gore in two thousand when george w. bush did john mccain was on a winning streak and if he had won south carolina he would have beat george every bush but in south carolina apparently karl rove engineer a push poll john mccain has a dark skinned daughter a daughter that they adopted from bangladesh and the photos she looks like she could be black and so there was a push poll that was run in south carolina the week before the prime. mary and became was way ahead in the primary this said if you knew that john mccain had an out of wedlock daughter with a black woman would you still vote for him and they made sure that those pictures

got the newspapers and suddenly mccain dropped six eight points george w. bush became the nominee and went on to become president that same kind of thing in the exact same state is happening right now push poll happening would you vote for elizabeth colbert busch if you knew that she'd had an abortion ever had abortion would you know would you vote for her if you know she was caught running up to begin to charge you know would you vote for her if you judge held in contempt of divorce but never have stuff that never happened what about the stuff that really did happen what if we had to push poll says what if i told her mark sanford has been resting for the criminal offense of trespass and or facing contempt of court charges a for do it is divorce cities or a disappeared for a week levy no one to run the good the governor the governor of south carolina or that he hid out in argentina they have wild sex with his mistress and why do even his staff about his whereabouts of it you know maybe we should do something but that but that would be a push pull that would be a true poll of what is going on in south carolina to either of you have a clue your camera you know i but i like how you set that up though you know the

problem is we here in d.c. kind of get stuck in a bubble of we know everything about every candidate you know but the average american doesn't do huge massive amounts of in-depth research and while i say no no i'm not. well that you know it be nice you know everything about every candidate you know and well you know i would say educate yourself you know if you can you argue this why why have i never heard of this kind of push pull happened in a democratic primary to have any examples but i've heard of it i don't have any examples i have but i have heard of it happening on i wish i had brought my tinfoil hat today tom but look this is there's a lot to talk about him and know that this is the this is the kind of you know the typical tactic that's been going on in the media and the democratic party it's just let's not make this campaign a campaign of. let's make this a personality contest between the two candidates and look this is really ugly if this is happening which i don't know if it's been confirmed and if this is happening it's sad it's ugly but at the end of the day the only way we're going to

be able to curb things like this are to tackle that pesky first amendment and i'm pretty sure miss caldera bush's brother would have a problem with us going after the first of all i you know i think he is going to have so much fun with this he already yeah i think this is going to backfire on the he's all he's already having a lot of fun with this and good for him he's entitled to do so but there's nothing that we can really do about this unfortunate sadness that this personality campaign has come to be moving along in the national review reported today that ted cruz is considering a presidential run in two thousand and sixteen this is the guy who said the communists are taking over harvard law school that shari'a law is a huge problem in the united states the best my knowledge is not what. harvard law is leading you to being taken over by communists is too old for things let me tell you don't get it really well oh but he said it and that george soros is trying to destroy the game of golf i mean you know the conspiracy there let's compare that with this from the republican platform of one nine hundred fifty six this is

literally word for word this is right out of the republican platform the federal minimum wage has been raised for more than two million workers social security has been extended to an additional ten million workers in the benefits for six million the protection of unemployment insurance has been brought to four million additional workers there have been increased workman's compensation benefits for longshoreman and arbor workers increased retirement benefits for railroad employees and wage increases and improved welfare and pension plans for federal employees time got a graph of the of the one nine hundred fifty six young republicans nobody has seen this i mean this on the screen oh yeah it's very near the back again greater job opportunity less time because of strikes increased union membership i mean this you know vote republican this is young republicans labor to fifty six what's happened to the republican party have they gone crazy. no certainly not i just think you know we've got to stop quoting the major two political parties from the one nine hundred fifty s. you're going to dig into what the democrats are saying and find a lot of stuff we don't like either oh yeah that was it that was democrat it's

a great idea r.d. a racist party yeah exactly so i think it's kind of ridiculous to pull what's coming from the parties and then i think the deficit i'm glad he's gone so now what's happened to the republican party we're not even there the stars on the on the logo of. tom i told you i haven't brought my tinfoil hat today come on we can't get into a series of debates on it but i don't feel so proud like i do you know this is the systemic star you know normally we have the american the american story and this is this is the go where there's horns in his ears in this chinny chin chin and this is really proud to say i'm just really proud to say that the republican party is being repopulated by these new fresh faces and we're seeing guys like ted cruz who is a minority american being considered for the republican ticket in two thousand and sixteen other words i think he's going to get a library because his last name sounds his no i think he stands on principle and he's shown that in the senate he's in there for a couple of mine or anyone else's money or he doesn't weigh very secure american americans cuban american ok that's i think that's great i think that's a positive step forward and i think that shows the kind of power of the grassroots republican party that's kind of emerges that we're repopulating the party with

these new principled faces there it's great i'm really happy i got i love i love that ted cruz he said he knows the constitution he stands on it he stands on it against you know the readership that you're constantly bombarding them let alone you know the dems on the other side of the aisle i'm just looking forward to seeing ted cruz and rand paul running against each other thing is going to be a real show for the republican nomination i think ted cruz rand paul. versus hillary clinton elizabeth warren ticket with the bass and all about the absolutely fascinating the constitution would be it would be nice if they're all of course putting up a prostitution a conservative with a good record is in the wavering on the issues to get what you want to see what you would have there. with that kind of with that kind of a race what we just posited would be to go back to the economic stuff we were talking about before it would be to republicans who are saying basically no government spending no government and let's let this go that was the last

government what i said up and we see the result of it in your sixty five second operation any big heart i mean. it's only disastrous we're austerities all but i'll guarantee there's a public forum which you know it's there and here and i live here is prior to the financial crisis austerity is a bit of disaster for europe and they haven't been able to do that austerity you have been looking at your own business have you versus democrats who are actually saying you know let's build america i don't know what our security you're talking about the smallest european government last time say hello storm or a communist country the question is always lets get back to the basics so we can build america we can build america the way it is with everyone drowning in debt drowning in taxes. have a good jobs that yes i agree let's run the private sector build our you know union membership cuts not take the money out of this so that people can have regular wages and the real job creators the consumers the people who spend one hundred percent of what they make they can rebuild as i'd rather people have decent wages

and a job that exists in these imaginary jobs you're talking about thirty dollars an hour away you're going to agree to disagree ok well i guess we'll have patrick cameron thank you thanks to appreciate it. crazy alert watch out the frankenfish is invading central park no this is not a plot out of some science fiction b. movie the northern snakehead an invasion an invasive species from east asia is a real threat to the new york city parks ecosystem the snakehead an apex predator famous for its ability to walk and land and survive out of water for hours at. time has been spotted other new york boroughs but now official suspect is a suspect the worse it is found a home in the heart of manhattan the mitten like bees feeds on other fish and

breeds faster than any other local species invasion of one could become a ferocious swarm in a matter of months anglers love the fish for its to beaches fighting abilities but park administrators want them out urging new yorkers to capture contain or kill any snakeheads they thought let's hope the police locate them to wall street. it's the good the bad in the very very a wrist star and lee the good anti-smoking campaign according to a new study from the center on disease control youth education programs on the negative health effects of cigarettes play a long will determine whether or not it will pick up smoking later on in the research which pulled together findings from one hundred thirty four different

studies from across the globe traced the behavior of kids starting at the ages of five through eight who developed smoking habits after never previously smokey the researchers found that over time those children exposed to anti smoking programs were significantly less likely than their peers to use cigarettes again although most of the studies used in the c.d.c.'s research were from the us the research as a whole represents some of the most comprehensive evidence yet of the positive impact of cigarette education knowledge is power. the bad michelle balkan during a tuesday appearance on fox news conservative pundit michelle malkin the last of the attorney general eric holder for worrying about the phantom epidemic of hate crimes against muslims. the first instinct of the justice department after that event. no not to name jihad islamic jihad as the enemy and threat to public safety in america but no no no he talked about these phantom threats of hate crime

epidemics that have never happened. actually in michelle hate crimes against muslims are a huge problem in the united states according to the southern poverty law center the past three years have seen me a spike in reported anti muslim violence since the nine eleven attacks there were one hundred sixty reported attacks in two thousand and ten hundred fifty seventy five and considering the amount of islamophobia pumped out of fox news in recent weeks is numbers are likely to grow even higher it's too bad fox so-called news is more interested in fanning the flames and covering real threats to american citizens and the very very ugly brick centrality the c.m.c. reporter when i wanted his trademark rants yesterday dismissed the sequester cuts and unemployment as irrelevant. there's general agreement this will reduce g.d.p. growth i want to map points and result in five hundred thousand to seven hundred thousand fewer jobs now i guess you know what steve why is it so important if you

want to put those people lower growth policies that say still is i'm employees. if you remember this is the guy who many credit with kicking off the tea party movement with his big anti obama rant back in two thousand and nine make no mistake about it this is the cold solo's part of tea party thing that is very very. coming up today is made a workers and activists from all over the world gathered to celebrate labour's achievements and demand social justice with the wealth gap widening and union membership here in the united states at its lowest in decades may day is as important now as ever after the break i'll talk to tonight's bigger picture panelists about the future of the labor movement and what workers are doing right now to fight. bad it's the one percent.

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 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 to the bottom line there is still a lot of snow out here a good place for snowball fight. d.c. it is going to pretty incredible day there and even record snowfall throughout much of it might still be a slog through drug listens to the urgency here except. a little worse if you're going to. the white house or the. radio guy for

a minute. because you never seen anything like this i'm told. is it possible to navigate the economy with all the details and to stick in misinformation and media hype will keep you up to date by decoding the mainstream status if in your mind. today is made a also known as international workers day

a celebration of the international labor movement all across the world from tokyo to visit to zimbabwe from germany to bangladesh workers took to the streets today to stand up for labor and there are rallies right here in the u.s. and cities like los angeles detroit and even montpelier vermont while workers here in america and across the globe have made great strides since the very first made a celebration was held there are still a very long way to go in the fight for workers' rights so tonight we bring you a special bigger picture discussion on labor in america our panel tonight our bill spriggs chief economist for the f.l. c.i.a.o. here and executive director working america and stuart a letter and union organizer who is by the way.