she is a spiritual leader and activists and a friend of oprah she's now running but congress but a general belief in miracles help leader to the u.s. capitol marianne williamson will tell us why and ben stein america's a columnist and political body man says the turmoil and dysfunction in washington from both sides of the aisle is no laughing matter it is all next politicking with larry king. i followed taking on larry king and joining me is the spiritual activist lecturer a bestselling author and now a candidate for the u.s. house of representatives marianne williamson she made her announcement in beverly

hills this past sunday running as an independent she'll run against a lifelong congressman henry waxman he's been there for thirty eight years why mary . well i think there's a new conversation that americans are having about our country and about life and about the world and this conversation is saturating so many corners of our society but it hasn't been able to crash through the ramparts of the of the political system and so the thoughts that dominate our our politics today are calcified thought forms they don't allow in the kind of thinking that is necessary to move us forward and so what we have is a diminishing democratic french fries and i think that it's going to be people coming from outside the two parties the two parties certainly have their role to play but i think what we need now is the voices of the american people unfiltered by the kind of chuckle that the two parties have so i have so what what what is your platform. well my platform has to do with what i see is the main issue

underlying all the other issues people i talk to are concerned about the environment we're concerned about the corruption of our food supply we're concerned about income inequality we're concerned about mass incarceration rates child poverty and so forth but there's an issue that underlies all that the cancer underlying all the cancer and that has to do with the fact that we've become a legalized corrupted system the money that influences our politics those with financial leverage are able to wield political influence so much disproportionately to what the average citizen can now wield that we've really become a government of the people by the people for the people dismantled and we've become a government of a few of the people by a few of the people and for a few of the people between the money and the politicized gerrymandering what we've got is a crisis of democracy itself how do you change that though you have a supreme court ruling that said corporations are people and they can give any amount they wish to and labor unions and the congress will get those funds how do you how do you change that well the founders did not create the supreme court to

lord over us the american people can still override citizens united with a constitutional amendment that won't be easy but it took an amendment to abolish slavery it took an amendment to give women suffrage it will take a constitutional amendment to get the money out of politics to pave the way for real public funding of our political campaigns there is a group and american anti corruption act so there are into our measures that we can take but we need to get this conversation going about a constitutional amendment nothing less will ultimately suffice you said that you big government has laws does want to get this right using its laws did at the little center what do you mean. well by ethical center i believe that the ethical center that it's lost is that there are some things more important than money as long as you have a sure your organizing principle is economic short term economic gain as it is in a corporation that's fine with a nice or within certain per views of business functioning but that should not be

your bottom line in running a country because without ethics that means you're never going to say well what about the health of a child what about the health of the environment what about the health of people so it as long as you're putting economic values in front of humanitarian values you have lost your ethical center and i believe government which in so many cases has become handmaidens because of the corrupt influence of money government has become handmade into the same corporate order that does have that a moral perspective and instead we need a humanitarian perspective to be advocated for by our government that's what we have come to expect in this country and over the last few decades we don't expect it anymore we expect the government in way too many cases we have seen it side with those who would put money before the good and the welfare of the american people are you running against someone who would support everything you just said he is always voted the environment them he's always voted for health care he is

a standout liberal in the congress he represents a very liberal district which pretty much backs everything you just said. that is very true and congressman waxman deserves a lot of appreciation and respect and when it comes to issues absolutely most of the time i would be absolutely with him in fact the only major issue i can think of where we disagree is that i do not believe that we should be using nuclear energy for domestic purposes at all other than that you're right but you know what larry congressman waxman knows a lot of things because he's been in congress for thirty eight years but i feel i know a lot of things because i haven't been in congress for thirty eight years i understand the value in any system of institutional memory but there's also great value in fresh ideas and i believe that the house of representatives it's called the people's house exposed to the house of what's happening now and i believe that there's a larger perspective not just on specific issues but on the larger conversation that americans are trying to have in europe to have within politics that i feel i i

can contribute this way and i don't think that's going to come from the status quo even the best of the status quo which certainly congressman waxman is and you know marion as a very intelligent bright woman you're up against that here. running is an independent against someone who so well founded in his district and has been there for so long you know you've got a long road to hoe here launcher well what meaningful. effort in life is easy and i think that while you know when it comes to the democratic party and the republican party and all of that they have institutional power but there's something even stronger than that and that's people power so i think that you know it's up to the people of my district and the people around the country who might want to contribute to this campaign to decide it's you know it's not supposed to it's best to be one person one vote not one dollar one vote so people represented by institutional power in the money that it brings and all of that that's good but it's a contest and i think that if my if my campaign resonates with enough people that

they are going to be responding to the campaign itself not as a rejection of congressman waxman but as a as a statement of a feeling that what is necessary in this country right now is a new conversation a new conversation more is required and that's what this campaign stands for but you're going to need money to run to rogers of course i'm going to need money and i hope the people will send me money but i think that when you talk about the institutional power that other candidates will have basically what that represents is not only groups that have already come together in support of a particular candidate but also the money that is provided by political parties you know if everybody who believes in the values that i stand for in my campaign no matter where they live in the united states since me five dollars then i will be able to be competitive in this race and i believe that the power of the ideas is the most powerful factor of all the dishes this is beverly hills in rural.

malibu venice santa monica brentwood. the pacific palisades all the way down through some else a good ole manhattan beach. all the way down to rancho palace verities up to paying a can you're paying a canyon and calabashes i mean it's a big district and it's an exciting district you know i think california when you talk about a district like this in california some of the most creative people in our country . if any. districts should be represented by the most cutting edge a new kind of thinking it should be this one and i don't want to just go to congress to represent the interests of the people of this district i want to represent the consciousness of the people of this district america needs to get going it we've been like in a stupor and i think the majority of us realize that when it comes to the functioning of our government and how and the democratic franchise we are going in a wrong direction and we need a new conversation to start and out of that conversation a new political force field and that's what i hope this campaign will be i hope that we will win and if we win that will be even more of an opportunity to spread

the platform of these ideas so that independent candidates and other democrats or republicans running on these ideas will be running throughout the country we need to do this in you consider quickly. you want to wish there was a united states a new cabinet post the united states department of peace what would the department do. while that is a bill that is already being sponsored currently by barbara lee and others in the house of representatives right now a cabinet level department of peace would be in the executive branch of the government and it would give the opportunity for the president to receive console regarding nonviolent problem solving options to both domestic and international conflict and what this department would do and probably two or three percent of what is currently our defense budget is scour the country for the best practices having to do with the articulation and the practice of nonviolence options we can't just wait till violence erupts larry and continue to build prison more prisons and bomb more people we have to dismantle we have to dismantle the beginning roots of

of violence you know president franklin roosevelt wrote that we need to do more than end war we need to end the beginnings of all wars and a lot of the wars that are externalized on our streets and around our world begin with wars inside people begin with economic conditions and social conditions that make people so desperate that it is reasonable to assume. i'm that desperate behavior will result so we need a far more holistic far more expanded conversation about the roots of violence and the president should receive that information that's why it's important that a department and peace building be part of the executive branch of the government and me very close to oprah winfrey who felt we had you on when she had a whole radio slew of stars you all one of them do you expect her to endorse you i don't have an expectation of anything from anyone i received a lovely letter from her on a personal level what she will do publicly of course is is her own decision and i

respect whatever she decides i'm so grateful for what she has done for me already in no i'm not. you know i would never presume or expect but i'm very very grateful for her friendship i can tell you that i would imagine you support marriage equality the legalization of marijuana immigration reform absolutely in fact now that it often law. i remember talking on your program about marriage equality years ago actually so yes a forth that i'm sorry didn't mean to interrupt we only have limited time that thin line between national security and privacy where you stand we certainly have threats to our national security is another thin line in. well i think it's probably not as thin as our government is making it appear i'm very concerned about the n.s.a. surveillance i'm very concerned about what i consider to be an egregious overreach

of the government into our privacy private lives and i need a lot absolutely skeptical in a healthy way about just a blanket current launch permission given to this government at any time you know once she said well what are we going to do with that when does that ever end because when are they ever going to say oh we're safe now so no i would be taking a very skeptical and very vigilant eye on governor on issues of privacy because to me an issue of my privacy and knowing that my government is not looking into everything i do everything i read that is part of my security you know there are a lot of security issues not just invading armies you know anything that is this constant chipping away at our democratic freedoms to me that is a threat to democracy every bit as much as a as the idea of an army that might invade our shores so let's be real can be was in as well as was out we'll be following it closely. thank you very good

marian marianne williamson running for congress. yes we'll be following this race very closely coming up next the other go funny guy ben stein very serious funny guy who says america is in trouble we'll be right but. we're not psyched to active camps at the time where patients are forced back in the months after a mouse or strike never turned world's attention to the place that some jobs go a lot of hearts minds. i know c.n.n. m s n b c news have taken some slightly but the fact is i admire their commitment to cover all sides of the story just in case one of them happens to be accurate.

that was funny but it's close and for the troops and might think. it's because one whole attention and the mainstream media works side by side the joke is actually on here. and our teen years we have a different brain. because the news of the world just is not this funny i'm not laughing dammit i'm not how. you guys talk to the jokes i will hand over the stuff that i've got. couldn't take three. three. three.

for your media project. watching politicking with larry king joining me from washington is the actor writer lawyer and commentator on political and economic issues also would be a friend ben stein then was by the way also a speechwriter for both presidents richard nixon and gerald ford what do you think of marianne williamson les you must have an awful lot of free time and it's a an exercise in futility would be putting it mildly and but i will say i woke up this morning in a kind of a bad mood and her her she'll greatly improve my mood because it was one of the funniest things i've ever seen on t.v. and i think the line which i'm just approximating here that i'm not just running to approach people i'm running to approach their consciousness is one of the funniest

things i've ever heard in my life what the hell does that mean what's the difference in people in their consciousness i mean what you talking about all right here we go ben you said earlier this week that people need to fix obamacare you said it's rooted we're never going to get rid of it so the thing now is to make it better you think that will happen oh yeah i think i'll get the kinks out of it i'm not and i'm not at all mad at the administration i'm miss sebelius or anybody about the problems with the sign up i mean and there are a lot of problems i find signing up with a.o.l. many days and a.o.l. has been in business for a long long time so i don't blame them about that i think they'll make it better and i think it was needed it doesn't have to have been in exactly this form but as you and i have discussed. president nixon my former boss sent out the first message asking for universal health care in america in one hundred seventy three and i wrote the verse from before i wrote the message and i wholeheartedly agree with it

so i think you'll get fixed and i think it'll be fine i mean i would have done it the way better but it'll be fine. what do you think of as. kathleen kathleen sebelius she's fine i mean i have no i don't problem there whatsoever my problems with what's going on in the country right now larry do not have to do with obamacare my worry is about the fact that we have on the one side a giant group of people one entitlement on the other side a giant group of people who want low taxes and they're both getting their way right down and the gap between them is measured in the deficit and that is a very very large number and it's getting very very much larger very very quickly and that is a real problem and i problems i think is an even larger problem is that the meat axe approach of the sequester as taken a meat cleaver i should say approach the sequester has taken to use bite out of our military readiness military readiness is the number one issue for americans now and always. what did the shutdown what effect did it have i don't think it had much

effect except it made people down there in america think that the government is incompetent but i don't think it had much effect i mean it as it's been reported over and over again only a very small percentage of the government was in fact shut down but i can tell you that the sequester does have an effect i'm in touch on a continuing basis for people in the military say they're not getting the goods and services that they're getting before the sequester and that the shutdown affected them a little bit more just a little bit more i'm very concerned about that larry we face a very dangerous world there's no other country out there to rescue us if for example iran invaded saudi arabia and north korea invaded south korea the same day there's nobody out there to help us so we've got to be in and we're shirking our responsibilities by pretending that the military readiness is not important what happened in this country what caused all this discord this incredible division i remember when the senators argued but they respected each other that was in this

malice and hate well well well well what way to say larry i mean first of all there was obviously a great deal more malice and hatred before the civil war but i think we had a golden era in the fifty's where people were very respectful towards one another i think there was a golden era in the forty's and people were respectful towards each other let's remember there was incredible bitterness during watergate but even then i think people are more respectful i think what we're seeing is a real tearing apart of the country at the seams because so many hard working middle class people are very very angry and the money being taken away from them and being given to people when they see is shiftless and incompetent and lazy and they're angry about that and i don't think people realize that the great majority of money the government is things and spending is on and is on social security medicare interest on the debt with by the way comes back to the government just.

cycle back the government defense defense pensions civil service pensions i don't think people really understand that it's not just going to pay welfare queens as i think around gregg used to call them it's going for our purposes that the great majority of americans understand and appreciate you have singled out your i love you ben because you're always. we can never target you i can't say you're a right wing conservative unless you're right you have your thoughts and you express them single and effectively you recently single out president george w. bush's tax cuts and president obama's spending for the current numbers. are cast on both by houses well well you know it's interesting president clinton put us in good financial shape good physical shape there's no doubt about it he did that and then president bush and i love very much and i think is a wonderful man and did it and then the wars and didn't even more i mean as a community sample is there's a man on t.v.

a very very famous successful man named bill maher i've been on the show a couple times he's been credited very well he's been incredibly rude to me but the i went when we when we started very various efforts against governments in the middle east he said we're going to solve this problem by having a tax cut and he said as a joke and it was a good bet as a damn good joke that the answer to every problem in the bush administration was a tax cut and that was not the right answer we sometimes need a tax increase and similarly the answer preference as obama is throw money at the problem that isn't always the answer either president obama wants to throw money at the education problem that's not the answer we have the highest spending per capita in the country here in the district of columbia and some of the lowest achievement scores in the country in this you can colombia some major something needs to be done in this country that doesn't involve throwing money at the can come from i give you an example which probably nobody else on your show is ever going to talk

about we have in this country a great number of this underclass african-american young people they are in terrible trouble their interactions with the criminal justice system are wildly more frequent than those of middle class african-americans or whites of any social class their scores on tests in the school system are terrifying there are so. no parent and sense of single parenthood is terrifying what are we going to do about that that's a whole giant part of the american population that is just collapsing as a social an addict what are we going to do about that president obama is not doing anything about it at all and i don't think anyone even knows what to do about it look i think the smartest person i know in the whole country is warren buffett i've often talked to him about this even warren buffett doesn't know what to do about it but something's got to be done about it what do you make of the performance in general of john boehner. he tried his best i think he said it very well when he

said where he's trying to her i think either he or someone else said well said well we're trying to herd cats i think he has the impossible job of dealing with the tea party caucus within the republican party and i don't know what he's going to do about it but i think he did a fine job and i admire him very very much i learned a great great deal and i admire mitch mcconnell very very much and i admired the general leadership of the republican party very much but some of the tea party people just don't get it what about ted cruz i like him very much and the fact i'm having dinner with ted cruz tonight so i'm i'm i i will if he asks me anything i will tell him straightforwardly that i think what we need in this country is not spending cuts but tax increases on wealthy people but if he i doubt if you ask me frankly and but if he does it will tell him do you think is hurting your party. i'm not sure i think he stood up for what he believed in and i think that's

a good thing and an impressive and admirable thing and i think it's i think it's fine i think it's fine but i don't think it going to do us any lasting good or any lasting harm but it gosh i wish we could get together the people and say look we're behaving very responsibly as a nation and as a people we have absolutely got to raise taxes on well to do people we've got to have taxes on middle class people to do something like fifty percent of americans don't pay any tax they've got to have some skin in the game we got to have tax increases and we've got to have entitlement cuts but the entitlement cuts are going to be small and the tax increases are going to have to be large the comparisons of cruz to senator mccarthy are unfair in europe oh my god what ted cruz is not even while the comparable to senator mccarthy senator mccarthy by the way was a very interesting character and kind of a nut case but cruz is not not even remotely to be compared with senator mccarthy i mean it's interesting you're bringing that up larry because in beverly hills where

we both live i have heard that brought up repeatedly is not the do of the car the car there was a character assassin and not that nice a guy although i liked him in some ways but ted cruz is trying to do his best for the people this country's a fine man how do you assess overall barack obama. i think overall i'd he's be well during to me i mean it is bewildering to me that he made such gigantic mistakes in an arab spring it's bewildering to me that if you saw the cover up of benghazi which was really a disgraceful cover up that i hope haunts mrs clinton for a long long time it's be weltering to me that he made so many mistakes in the creation of obamacare but i think that will turn out alright i don't really dislike him i mean i think he's i know lots and lots of republicans hate him and dislike him i don't really dislike him and i think considering the disadvantages of his upbringing absent father absent mother he's done fantastically well and in many

ways i admired him a great deal. chris christie i don't know what to make of him i mean i i think if he was as if if chris christie looked like george w. bush he would be our next president but i think the fact that he's so goofy looking is going to have a big impact on his ability to be president is i mean he's a smart guy is a cable guy he speaks his mind but he's just a looks like a big goofball looking ahead to two thousand and sixteen first though we can't get in anyone's head you think hillary will run i think she will run and i think she will win and. as i say i think she has a lot to answer for about benghazi i think she has a lot to answer for him an arab spring but i think overall she's a capable woman she was with me yale law school so the old school tied behind us and and i wish her well. and finally been on the general picture i know you so well

i don't know your answer to this optimistic or pessimistic about america yeah oh i'm optimistic i think over the long run we will triumph i think we have made incredible progress in this country look when i was a child larry. roughly twelve years younger than you are eleven years younger than you this whole country where i grew up i grew up in the south was rigidly segregated by race and that's all changed in americans of every ethnicity and every sex have opportunities that were not dreamt of so i think we're still on that path think we're still on the path towards greater and greater opportunities and i think this is a great wonderful country will get better and better then come home we'll have lunch i would love that ben stein one of my favorite people thank you ben thank you and thanks earlier to marianne williamson i want to hear from you join the conversation on my facebook page and share your thoughts on twitter by tweeting

king's things and the politicking hashtag that's all for politicking with larry. i'm. i'm. trying. to. bang. on about my. family's pick for politics the last. two. days. big fuss but. everybody will be doing the job did you know the price is the only industry specifically mention of the constitution and. that's because

a free and open press is critical to our democracy trek all those years. ago. in fact the single biggest threat facing our nation today is the corporate takeover of our government and our prior several we've been hijacked by handful of powerful transnational corporations that will profit by destroying what our polity harbors once built up my job market and on this show we reveal the big picture of what's actually going on in the world if we go beyond identifying the problem to try rational debate and real discussion critical issues facing our defunct ever feel ready to join the movement then welcome it.

has no there i marinate and this is boom bust here are some of the stories we're tracking for you today. crowdfunding is coming to wall street will a new s.e.c. rule democratize the capital markets or is just sixpack about you muppet ties a new brand of sell side marionette buys and we dig into the five hundred page rule and speak with copper in austin fit to flush out the pros and the cons an occupy wall street activists alexis goldstein talks with more off about a new bill in the house which overturns a key section of dodd frank you won't want to miss it and you might not be a fan of it but citigroup they sure are and they should be seen as how they're lobbying for the two percent of it to finally mr zuckerberg sorry but twitter now tops facebook as teens and most important social media tool.