coming up on our t. the supreme court takes on a case that may change future u.s. elections republican party donors suing to have limits on campaign donations removed possibly opening the door to even more unlimited money in our elections the latest on this major case ahead and while the government shutdown continues congress remains in deadlock again today president obama said he will not negotiate on the debt limit with harsh words for republicans on capitol hill more on the shutdown coming out. and at the national mall many are gathering at a rally in support of immigration reform they demand forward momentum on a reform bill that will help the nation's millions of undocumented immigrants take we'll take a look at that rally later in today's show. it's

tuesday october eighth four pm in washington d.c. i'm sam sacks and you're watching our team and we begin with the supreme court which is beginning its new term with a case that could further open the door to unlimited money in american elections the cases mccutcheon versus the federal elections commission with mccutcheon arguing that limits on how much an individual can spend in total donating to political campaigns every two years is a restriction on his first amendment rights to free speech currently the f.e.c. regulates just how much money can be directly handed over to political candidates every two years you can only give at most twenty six hundred dollars to any one political candidate and you can only give at most thirty two thousand four hundred dollars to anyone national party committed limits also exist on aggregate contributions let me an individual from donating more than forty eight thousand six

hundred dollars to the totality of candidates here she supports and seventy four thousand so. hundred dollars to the totality of party committees that he or she supports that means the federal elections commission limits what a ninja individual can spend every two years contributing directly to elections to one hundred twenty three thousand dollars two hundred one hundred twenty three thousand two hundred dollars that is the important number right there and the issue that the supreme court is taking up as sean mccutcheon in alabama businessman and frequent republican party donor our use that he should be able to spend as much money as he likes donating to as many candidates as he likes during the election season again mccutcheon isn't challenging the base limit you can give to one candidate which is a total of twenty six hundred dollars but the limit he can give to all candidates a national committees of one hundred twenty three thousand two hundred dollars over the conservative supreme court justices in this case who've been growing more and more skeptical of any sort of limits on money in elections could rule on the case

far more broadly and strike down those twenty six hundred dollar individual limits to that's because senate minority leader mitch mcconnell's lawyer who is also making or oral arguments in front of the supreme court today wants to strike down all limits on all campaign contributions and as we saw in two thousand and ten citizens united decision the high court hasn't backed away from taking a narrow court case and issuing a much broader ruling with significant changes to current electoral law so how might all of this shaped out and what are the political implications of this mccutcheon case i'm joined in studio here by liz kennedy counsel for the most and from massachusetts by dr jill stein the two thousand and twelve green party presidential candidate dr side i'll get with you in just a moment talk about kind of the political implications here liz but i want to start with you and talk about this court case where does it fit in and kind of the series of election law court cases we've recently heard by the supreme court and what

direction might the court be leaning here sure sampai well this is a very. poor an issue for folks to understand but it is also somewhat complicated or can be the important thing to remember is that the supreme court has never struck down a federal contribution limit in fact the establishment of our current campaign finance jurisprudence the foundational case was buckley the last where in the court decided that spending limits put too much of a burden on core political speech and therefore spending limits and actual limit on an actual cap on how much anyone can spend in an election of their own money on their own independent speech they said that that could not be kept that was essentially the decision in citizens united saying that where justice kennedy found that independent spending wasn't corrupting which is something that we can come back to but however they have never cast doubt on the importance of contribution

limits guarding the financial relationships between big donors and their actual checks directly to candidates or their campaign committees or the political parties because the court does understand that those has understood that those kind of financial relationships are far more open to real corruption concerns moreover it is not the direct to political speech it is actually just association speech or being able when you contribute to someone else's campaign or to give someone money so that they can then fund their own speech that is less of a core political speech question and therefore the government has more power to regulate within that sphere. but the interesting thing here is now that citizens united it struck down the limits on you can't directly money took a hit but you can spend unlimited amount of money campaigning on behalf of the candidate with t.v. and radio ads and so forth so why would it matter much at this point if you go in

shrink down the end of it. that you can directly hand money to a candidate it absolutely would and this is a question that was debated in the court this morning but justice kagan made a very strong point saying if the court is now thinking that suddenly independent spend a tour is actually can be corrupting then they should recognize that the that the government ought to have power to put in place commonsense rules to protect our politics and our government from being captured by private economic power i mean that's really what we're talking about here and that's what the court has always recognized even when they cut back on our ability to have these particular rules they've understood that regulating in this sphere is important because otherwise what you see is a throwback to the robber baron era or even the watergate era watergate itself was premised on campaign contributions quid pro quo political favors you know the milk

industry easily very clearly it's in the record in the watergate legislature hearings you know gave money in order to get a price favor on milk subsidies so this is the kind of bad democracy that we don't want to go back to that exists too often elsewhere too much big money elsewhere but we need to maintain the kind of protections that we currently have don't you i want to bring up these two charts here now and they kind of show the breakdown in the individuals who met these contribution limits here the first is to contributions to individual candidates in the second is contributions to party committees and in both cases the individuals primarily donated to the republican party dr stein i want to bring you in on this now you have run for elections in this post the citizens united world you ran for president last year how difficult is it for parties and candidates who are now in corporate america's

good graces to compete now let alone if this mccutcheon case blows the doors off all contribution limits. you know. i think you know from the point of view of independent politics this makes it only much harder it goes from the frying pan into the fire. but that said you know it's it's very difficult right now it's been extremely difficult for a long time the key here is not so much what's happening to candidates i think is what's happening to the american people because as you know as alternative candidates are muzzled and silenced and kept out of the media kept off the ballot and basically blocked by this big money system and its many manifestations you know it's not just the candidates but it's voters who are losing because what we have what we're left with are two parties that are just different around the edges

people are extremely. you know angry isn't the word for it not only with the supreme court and with congress and with this dismantling of the protections of our campaign system that was put in place after watergate as liz alluded to people want those protections kept in place they want them improved. you know and are very happy with everything very unhappy with everything from the stalemate on the budget the shutdown the threatened. debt debacle with the default on the debt look at for example the trans-pacific partnership which is being rammed through the congress right now this is the kind of policies that we get because money in politics has basically won the day the foxes are not just you know running the chicken coop they're devouring the chickens at the same time and the american people are paying the price one out of two in poverty thirty nine

million students in debt we saw the studies out of. recently out of i believe stanford. or berkeley actually showing that ninety five percent of all economic increases all income benefits since the disaster of two thousand and seven have gone to the one percent let me say that again ninety five percent of all benefits have gone to the one percent and if you look at the economy as a whole the top one percent has command of fifty percent of the wealth in the resources while the bottom fifty percent has access to one percent ones were wrong with this picture money and the economic and political elite are basically ruling the day but the american people are not being fooled and i think that's what's hopeful is that we need to exert pressure on the supreme court on congress in our elections and out in the street you know fundamentally that's how

we're going to get out of this mess because i think you brought up an interesting point there dr star and i want to get your opinion here on this too is that the way the american people view money in politics in two thousand and eleven we saw the occupy movement highlight this problem money in politics we see growing distrust of politicians in the corrupting influences you just talked about dr stein and yet the supreme court appears to be going in the office of direction we had citizens united and now the possibility possibilities in this mccutcheon case first you doctor sort of how do you explain this disconnect. yeah well i think they are logically responding to their masters and by they i mean particularly congress the white house you know who makes the appointments to the supreme court the supreme court responds to them and also to public pressure and we've seen the supreme court turn around we saw it in brown versus board of education in the one nine hundred fifty s. where the supreme court reversed itself after supporting segregation for four decades

of the supreme court suddenly began to support integration in the schools you know i think what we're seeing in the supreme court and in our elected officials are basically a reflection of the power of intensely concentrated economic and political power in the hands of the one percent which is why we've got to fight this in every way possible you know i think it's important for people to weigh in with the supreme court with their congressmen and women and with the president that this is unacceptable that we cannot dismantle these protections in the same way that it is unacceptable to be holding the budget and the full faith and credit of the united states of america hostage here and what's basically an extortion game being played by the top one percent which only burglars broke in on this issue but the between the disconnect between what the american people view money and politics now the supreme court seems to be ruling in these cases well sam i think that is a very good point and i really want to respond to the doctor sign and thank her for

raising so many important points because we do see eight in ten americans saying that large campaign contributions are blocking important necessary progress on critical issues that we face in this country issues about upward mobility and more you know addressing our economic inequality issues such as addressing climate change or cutting health care costs and so the real issue here is the way in which the money in our elections actually plays out in our policy six in ten americans thinking that their elected represent. it is are more responsive to their big donors and to voters or the public interest that is simply not a situation for a healthy democracy so what i would say is the supreme court obviously was pretty court's role is to you know interpret the constitution and to determine what applying various balancing tasks make sure that that constitutional rights are protected that's critically important the first amendment is

a pillar of our you know structure of who we are as a people and yet it is currently actually being just beyond the beyond it's real true meaning is the what we would say about the current interpretation because what they're not understanding is the first amendment rights of the people who are being drowned out of the system justice ginsburg actually made this right means we've got wealthy people getting more first amendment rights than people who don't quite have them for but we have to move on the next topic was kind of the culture for demas thanks so much for joining me it's a pleasure dr stein you're going to stick around here as i move on to our next story which of course is this government shutdown now in its second week and it isn't any closer reopening or finding a way to raise the debt limit in the next nine days this morning president obama called speaker of the house john boehner to according to boehner is office remind the speaker that he won't negotiate over raising the debt limit today the president faces the media in a news conference and here's what he had to say the american people do not get to

demand a ransom for doing their jobs. if you don't get a chance to call your bank and say i'm not going to pay my mortgage this month unless you've brought a new car and an x. box. if you're a negotiation is around buying somebody's house you don't get to say well let's talk about the price i'm going to pay and if you don't give me the price then i'm going to burn down your house meanwhile c.n.n. has proposed a few different scenarios for ending the shutdown debate take a look. kicking the bums out or three in a steel cage death match ok so number three is a joke but immediately it's the most desired outcome because i'd pay to watch that or a dr stone want to bring you back into this you're watching all this unfold safely from massachusetts there what's your take on what you're seeing on capitol hill right now. you know this is like the run up to the fiscal cliff which created this you know incredible crisis and the sense of doom and gloom so

that when congress and the president. settled that crisis by making the bush tax cuts permanent. and getting rid of the estate tax for example doing a whole lot of favors to the one percent you know it didn't look so bad because it looked like oh gee at least we didn't go over that cliff in a sense you know this is one can't help but suspect the suspect that that's what's going on now as well that this is the creation of a crisis atmosphere wall street and you know the one percent or corporate sponsors all of them they're not going to allow the meltdown of the international economy and the stock market and all the rest the financial infrastructure of the economy and their profits it's highly unlikely that they would allow that to take place in the same way they would not allow you know the the initial bailouts in two thousand

and seven there was a big movement to stop them but wall street you know kicked in with a lobbying effort that had never been seen before and stop that the odds are they will not allow that fiscal disaster to happen but it's very convenient because it creates a smokescreen in which to create fundamentally the you know the the bargain the grand bargain that the president has been talking about for at least the last four years whereby he makes he cuts a deal in which social security and medicare get taken down substantially and he looks like a hero because he averted this desperate. you know fiscal. all melt down with the with the budget fault right well i think well i think you're touching on something that's not getting as much attention in this debate between shutdowns and

elements and that's austerity at this point it's all but guaranteed that any deal to reform the government will include austerity spending cuts the sequester the president talked about today have democrats have already caved on this issue why have both parties signed on to this economic agenda that's proving to be pretty harmful to working people in europe and on a state level across the country it's horrific and the academic basis for it which was a paper out of harvard. this reinhart wrote off debate paper that justified. drastic measures to shrink the budget deficit that was proven to be wrong it was a fallacious study that was shown by a graduate student at the university of massachusetts out in in am hers that looked at the numbers and found that there were major errors in the excel program that was calculating this so even that one study on which they were basing these drastic draconian cuts all over the world it was proven wrong but still they are just you

know they're in lockstep they're committed to this dismantling of the remnants of the new deal in the great society and all that this is part of what happens what justice louis brandeis referred to when he talked about we have a choice between a democracy or vast concentrations of wealth and what i referred to before about the top one percent having fifty percent of all the wealth in the nation it's like you have one hundred people in the room and one hundred loaves of bread one person has fifty loaves of bread and the fifty scrawny asst most malnourished people in the room all get to share one loaf of bread that's what the economy looks like today in the united states and it's only getting worse the concept. and says of that very. unfair economy is tremendous power of the economic elite which is in bed with the political elite in both of the

political parties the two major political parties and they are silent alternative voices why because when the american people hear those alternative voices it's their own voices that they are hearing and they will support them we've seen that before so you know this is a completely logical system in which greed and. avarice are are just running wild running rampant over our economy and our political system it's altogether reflected in that case before the supreme court and with the changes around citizens united as well so it's really important for us to come together across many issues and stand up for people peace in the planet there are so powerful who are survey were for a short a time there dr jill stein the two thousand and twelve green party presidential candidate that is so much great to be with you think. so while the shutdown turns

on its effects are being felt all around the country from hundreds of thousands of workers waiting for a paycheck to cancer patients waiting for treatment to vacationing families waiting for the parks and museums to open but there are some for stranger consequences of the shutdown that couldn't have been predicted prior to last week archies period boring has more. the government shutdown have got in the way of many tourists and visitors ability to view some of the best sights and d.c. but some refuse to let a good crisis go to waste being out of work and legally not even allowed to check their e-mails some furloughed workers are finding they have actual time on their hands where there is demand there will be supply and many bars and restaurants are offering shutdown specials all around town you can find extended happy hours and free drinks for federal employees but ranges shut down special comes with an exemption they're giving out free pizza for government workers but the chef and charge of all taj goes says on twitter that members of congress are not eligible so

they can get it together and some special time and so popular that government workers great a shutdown of their own they were there was offering free patties to their furlough that they're giving out over fifteen thousand burgers the company had to discontinue the deal so after the furloughed workers take advantage of food and beverage specials what they do next well the notorious dating web site sugar daddy claims the government shutdown has increased its sign up by fifty per cent but this isn't the only place for load workers are looking for hookups greg was the fee is popular to here are a few of the ads we found the first one comes from a twenty three year old for a lower he's six feet tall and finds the shutdown boring even as he's a cool dude just looking for a chill friend but if you're looking for something a little more exciting we found them to fit attractive white guy who's home bored looking for some and as a fun and then cranks craig's list speak that. no strings attached he was not

talking about the national security agency and if there's any question about that he also included this lovely picture of himself to show that he's not letting the shut down shut his game and down and for those who prefer to stay home by themselves vibrators dot com as just the special for you but the first game for a lower is out of this the old down as well they are giving away two hundred free of vibrators a day to government employees they already mailed out over eight hundred and they sold out today end of twenty one minutes but this is the tip of all the deals going around for furloughed employees and the city of the most erect a monument parian boring party. moving on earlier this year the senate passed a comprehensive immigration reform plan but it's gone nowhere in the house and today with congress focused on shutdowns and debt limits immigration reform or want to make sure their cause the eleven million undocumented immigrants in america hasn't been forgotten that's why today they rallied on the national mall just

moments ago multiple lawmakers including congressman keith ellison charlie rangle and. as well as luis gutierrez were arrested at the rally megan lopez was there earlier here's her report but we are officially and weak. the government shutdown lawmakers just a little bit away from here on capitol hill are still arguing to get even a temporary spending bill passed and this is coming on a time when we're still very close to a default as a result of the debt limit were supposed to reach that in just a few days here but in terms of the national mall every museum here is one of those as a result of that partial government shutdown however that doesn't mean of the mall is completely out of commission behind me is an immigration rally where thousands of people are supposed to be gathering today to tell congress that in the middle of this budget battle and in the middle of this debt crisis there is still an

overarching issue that needs to be discussed and that is immigration reform for the eleven million undocumented people that are currently living in this country in this country is supposed to be about democracy we have eleven million people with no rights my rights are no different than their rights when their rights are under attack so are mine since it is being called a national day of dignity and respect for immigration reform over one hundred fifty cities are expecting to hear or see the some type of rally or crowds have going on to say what you see behind me and the fear is the physical manifestation of that need for immigration reform now i had a chance today to speak to a number of people here at the rally and they told me why they. pro-tax is different from all the other friends have all the other rallies that we've seen in the past we have been waiting for the immigration reform for a long time and nothing happened their government always have some o. the priorities and i think that this time that we eleven million of people who seem

. to need to be legally in this country under fourteen to be come see this is what they're like everybody else people are hoping that this is the last bullying. we know this. lives with drive to do it one more time rally organizers expression tens of thousands of people to show up at the end of ration rally today only a fraction of that actually did end up turning out about a thousand people i know but some members of congress did stop by including congresswoman nancy pelosi and also d.c. mayor vincent gray we strongly support immigration reform and we've tried to demonstrate that by our actions in the city. refusing to you know enforce and implementing what we call secure communities the immigration reform is a good boy brought a difference for me personally obviously my parents are immigrants it's something that i understand personally but we've got an issue here in our country about a broken immigration system for years we've got

a lot of people here that came in here but now we have to resolve the issue to make sure that that we keep families together but also take appreciation for the fact that a lot of the work really hard especially in my part of the country so we are just a couple of blocks away from capitol hill and thousands of people once again are gathered to say the now is the time for comprehensive immigration reform it's not time to talk about it it's time to do it but it's up to the members in congress to decide how to go forward with immigration reform in washington meghan lopez r.t. and that is it for now for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com forward slash hard to america check out our website r t dot com force last year sh . you can follow me on twitter sam sachs we'll see you right back here at five pm so.

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