i think. i would like to do. that you know the price is the only industry specifically mention in the constitution. that's because a free and open press is critical to our democracy. to make you know i'm tom and i'm this show we reveal the picture of what's actually going on and we go beyond identifying the truth rational debate real discussion critical issues facing the camera ready to join the movement and while they take. time same sex in for tom hartman in washington d.c. here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture. black friday is right around the corner which means that wal-mart is getting ready to offer american consumers

low prices on all their holiday needs but with those low prices come even lower wages and poor working conditions for wal-mart employees as wal-mart worn out its welcome in america. also lawmakers on capitol hill are preparing for yet another shut showdown excuse me this time over republicans blatant abuse of the filibuster are democrats finally willing to say you know it is enough and put an end to republican obstructionism. and there's only one surefire way to rebuild the middle class and to give power back to the people i'll tell you about it tonight's daily tag. so let's start tonight in arizona arizona has this law it's called the legal arizona workers act also known as the business the death penalty and it basically allows the state of arizona. to or vote the charter of any business that knowingly

hires undocumented workers you can get caught once and keep doing business but the second time you get caught you're shut down and you're given the corporate death penalty the law was passed in two thousand and seven it was upheld by the supreme court in two thousand and eleven now whether or not you think this sort of law is the best way to address immigration that's not focus on that issue instead let's focus on this idea of corporations being shut down when they break the law or operate against the community's interest because fundamentally that's what this law is saying in the case of arizona lawmakers believe that if a company is hiring undocumented workers and it's doing harm to the overall community and should be terminated but really you can insert any harm you want any crime or any business practice if it runs counter to the health of the community then why should it continue operating corporate death penalty laws like these have a long history at the local state and federal level thousands of corporations from

banks still oil companies have been put down for things like labor abuses market manipulation and for services this is been a standard practice throughout american history it's an understanding between the businessman and the city or the state you have the privilege of using our roads our education system our security our people whatever you need to conduct your business but you won't do it in a way that injures us or that weakens the community by now you've all probably heard of this story out of a wal-mart in canton ohio those are bins asking for food donations for thanksgiving food donations not for homeless shelters but instead for workers workers out that very wal-mart store who are in need during thanksgiving. way more than a thousand words have been spoken in this debate about whether or not wal-mart pays its workers enough but this picture of wal-mart management asking their employees to pitch in food to help feed other employees is worth a whole lot. walmart spokesman doug curtis criticism and said that it shows that

employees care about each other and the food is for those who had hardships come up some employees even say it's been helpful but wal-mart can't hide from the reality a reality that this picture puts into focus wal-mart harms the community yes they have cheap cheap prices but that's it they say they create jobs but those jobs are subsidized by taxpayers since an average employee only makes about fifteen thousand dollars a year they have to rely on food stamps and public health insurance programs to make ends meet and on average wal-mart workers receive nearly two thousand bucks in assistance from taxpayers every year and total across governments two point six billion dollars to subsidize wal-mart's low wages annually and most states across the country the number one employer who's workers rely on state health insurance programs is wal-mart now if wal-mart was a struggling business maybe this would be understandable it's not that it's owners

are billionaires occupying spots six through nine of the forbes four hundred richest americans list and in terms of revenue it makes more money than any other company in the entire world there's no excuse for the poverty wages but perhaps more injurious is what wal-mart does to once a vibrant local businesses in each community think of it as an economic weapon of mass destruction research on a wal-mart opening in chicago from the economic development quarterly found that the closer stores were to the new wal-mart the more likely they were to close down eventually about four miles away from the store roughly twenty four percent of small businesses closed out the closer you get those numbers go up and in some cases they're as high as sixty percent closures or once independents show independent stores pharmacies groceries are now just to modernize into departments inside wal-mart paying workers poverty wages and relying on the rest of us and occasionally their very own workers to make it work. so how is this not injurious

to the community given what wal-mart does to local businesses and their own employees why should wal-mart keep its corporate charter why should wal-mart be spared the corporate death penalty. all right joining me for tonight's big picture politics panel are marc harrold libertarian commentator attorney and author ben cohen editor of the daily banter and founder of banter media group and he knew some member of the national advisory council and project twenty one black leadership network and member of move on up dot org thank you all for joining me here let's get started you heard my rant off the top about wal-mart deserving of the corporate death penalty. what good does wal-mart serve the community really well wal-mart employees a lot of people obviously were in a debate that when you're talking about putting other companies out of business you may be talking about the surrounding area with their competitors and i understand that and i miss the small mom and pop shops too but they don't put everybody on

everything no i don't agree with you at all the market bears this out marketplace the people who decide to go there it provides goods and services you know you're talking about the fact that the sixth or ninth are very rich on the scale of the owners of wal-mart of course they are it's the largest employer it sells the most goods but you know what do they get the corporate death penalty they haven't broken any laws as far as i can tell i think obviously to let the government come in and pick winners and losers would be even more of a problem but you know this is a big issue with wal-mart it's been attacked from each side but no i don't agree with you that they should get the corporate you know death penalty or whatever it is the company is operating in they can't pay their workers enough to make a living they have to hit up other workers to fill those gaps so what are we really talking about in this kind of we need more context are we talking about somebody who works part time at wal-mart part time somewhere else and needs some extra food donations are we talking about some of you who are more an employer you make fifteen thousand dollars a year you can't live on fifteen thousand dollars you live on fifteen thousand but you're lumping the employees in i mean i really don't know the numbers i don't know if you're talking about somebody who works part time on time with

a range of how many jobs do you have to have to stay alive in america i mean this is the problem is the problem as you say that they're not breaking any laws that's a problem if they're not breaking any of those and then not paying their employees enough to eat that's a huge growth you're talking about a standard of living that doesn't have to do with bare systems of eating but obviously somebody working part time at wal-mart is not going to make a great deal of money because of what they bring to the marketplace it's it's just not that type of job i mean let me ask you this what would you pay what would you expect somebody working the cashier as a general question as a cashier at wal-mart what would your solution wage if they're working what would you do that you would have very much if you can wage how much is that way depends on the state you're in ok let me just generally to state like pennsylvania and i know this is this is that i mean this is not that's been worked out anything. well you know what a living wages would be in those individuals are going to want to government to answer these questions and jump in and play referee yeah that's the problem i know i was out today because we tried and we've let corporations try. here in their family and we have a huge poverty underclass here here with this is

a moronic that this story is happening this week there was a report that the largest increase in the job increases that we're seeing the two hundred thousand jobs that we saw added in the month of october most of those were higher wage jobs so what is that telling me that's telling me that skills and experience are leading the way as far as economic recoveries concerned so why is it that we're not focusing on making sure that these workers have the skills and the capabilities to demand more as opposed to forcing that down as a market that's not the way the economy would if the economy thrive as the new economy thrive is afoot. and these guys caught you know as these guys called me they call negotiate better wages they are beholden to corporations who can decide what they don't want but wait a minute this this is troubling because i'm not part of a union but yet able to negotiate a better wage while because i bring in certain markets. if you can't afford to go to the university so if you say if you don't have a whole lot of the loans and you look at that in the forty's and this is that this

is an issue that this is the reality here is that these people there are there are tons of people who have to work in the service sector and have to take these jobs we need to pay them enough so that they can be productive members of the economy but sticking on this topic there's this ruffle going on in washington they're trying to keep boeing plant there to to build the new seven seventy seven x. or whatever and they're offering boeing the biggest tax cut in the history of states like seven point eight billion dollars tax cut eight point seven billion dollars tax cut really they have to do those because they're competing with right to work states down in the south so this is all about creating a business friendly environment right why is it the only way to create business friendly environments is to screw over workers by not letting the mean eyes of paper over wages or bankrupt or stay. and bankrupt education dollars by luring corporations in with the tax cuts why are corporations understanding that to do business is a privilege this is this is easy i mean first of all this all goes to show that we need a flat tax with fair corporate taxes at the state level and that

a lower people pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes than you can have if you could have a fair tax but we definitely to make sure at the core you know at the individual level and corporations we all need to make sure we play putting some skin in the game because if that isn't the case i mean even mayor bloomberg who is not you know this is your bizarrely saying to fix this we need to have working with people they hire a fair tax there's no way a simplified tax system in this country to hear anything so what does it is when when do we have the right to say to corporations ok if you're going to be an american heart american work is right that you have to pay it in wages number one number two you have to pay your fair share of taxes and you can't ship out you can outsource to other countries and destroy america that is also into the south boeing is the source and some of the country by this i think this whole game of outsourcing right which is like given the economic system or the economic structure in this is it's a race to the bottom where everybody's outsourcing constantly and creating this

huge mass of people who have no skills you can't get jobs because this. is not nothing for them to do anymore right now it's you know you get wages and mark i want to bring you in on this this quick issue here wal-mart is extremely profitable boeing is extremely profitable at what point does that profit profitability compelled them to pay their workers more or does it doesn't ever do they just keep collecting more and more profits screw their workers to improve their product are going to have to bring in specialized skilled people and remember you're not you're talking boeing and wal-mart may be kind of apples and oranges as who works at boeing and the type of pay they get in wal-mart but also there are many people in wal-mart making more money your to your painting the broad brush of everyone at wal-mart makes the list but you also talk about the lower skilled job at wal-mart so again i think this is really out of context at this. but the lowest skilled job is now a permanent job unfortunately in this economy but we're out of we're out of time for this topic will be more tonight's big picture politics panel after the break.

and. i would rather ask questions to people in positions of power instead of speaking on their behalf and that's why you can find my show larry king now right here on our t.v. question more. play . live live.

live. cross talk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want. and welcome back to us and i just big picture politics panel with me are marc

harrold ben cohen he knew some let's get back to it let's talk about executive power ever since the president announced his fix to obamacare republicans are going nuts because they think that the president overstepped his authority by not working with congress here's a quote from tread franks he told the hill we're exploring options to try to somehow try to rein in this president's total disregard for the constitution. so this this is really funny to me considering when eight years of bush and probably the most expanded executive power we've ever seen in terms of war and torture and all this stuff then we have the obama administration which we've seen spying in this drone warfare not so much for mainstream republicans about abuse of executive power to rescind it from libertarian republicans but it does something about obamacare and now everybody starts freaking out here should we be more concerned about the war powers that have been expanded and why are we focusing on that more i agree with you but we should be concerned about it all look the war powers act in

the way that's been just totally disregarded the ninety day rules the fact that we've been at war for decades with no declaration but specific to the into the obamacare yes we should be worried i mean the legislature as especially the lower house as representative of the people should be outraged you know you pass a bill whatever you think of the bill i think all americans should be worried about this idea i see this as sort of a press conference that turns into an after the fact line item veto where you kind of just pass it nobody reads it you pass it both parties want to delay it and then the website then working on said the president well need of enforcing the law that's been passed and that lee comes down to the. executive branch doesn't enforce the law well in force the law as it's written it doesn't forcing the law is slightly different than just making some some quick fixes that aren't actually and that violate the constitution when he made that decision that he's not going to lay off on deporting dreamers do i think he violated the constitution do you think that's an abuse of executive power because i mean that's sort of what's going on where you have this law as in you have some wiggle room within the executive how to manage that well and i wasn't totally in favor of what he did with i think that

what if you talk to the now it's not but that has to do with prioritization of the monies he's been taking for congress and how much you can do this to me as a district the pace of the law. i'm not going to i don't want to talk about you know whether or not it was right or wrong but how he did it there's no question that it violates the constitution and. you know prosecutorial discretion i think is the actual term that's used that you're that you're talking about but here here's a major problem we have the legislative process is almost an afterthought in this country and so obamacare or the affordable care act as i should call it. exemplifies that to the nth degree because you have a bill that was passed like mark said nobody bothered to read it but on top of that you have these bands that are being put on it last minute haphazardly so now it makes the law even less even less efficient than originally intended because people aren't thinking of going to quit who's going to go to congress so he was supposed

to go to. law and then you know process in the congress in pretty much the history of the united states he's going to he's going to go to them to help fix the website because they will these guys will this is an over example of how ridiculous the public republican party has become when they're picking on a topic like this mention about you know there's no admit there's no talk about the charges no to say but they pick up they pick on him for. the website that you're going after picking on him for not letting people. keep their insurance plans he comes and says ok we'll make this strangely do that then you scream that this is an abusive how can anyone take the republican party seriously when it doing this is clearly a political guy i'm now this and i'm going to let it. go i don't want to fit i don't want the fin republicans out i don't think their methodology since october first have been very sound but i'm very concerned about this whole deal of unintended consequences this is very haphazard there's no process there's no going

to committee having discussions happening expert us on the implementation of the haphazard last go to the congress which is dominated by the tea party where the tea party controls the republican party they cannot be negotiated they cannot be brought to the table to discuss things rationally because they irrational because economic terrorists try to repair they've tried to repair you know nor. care at. the seams all this way by economic terrorism if they were at least authentic and genuine when it comes to these issues surveillance and drones then maybe they would have some water here when they're talking about is going over again let's move on there's according to a new report from the american friends services committee prisons in arizona as private prison prisoners in the arizona private prison complex are routinely denied medical care. they don't get mental health protections they're often told to just pray. look we've bashed private prisons

a lot. around here because there's something wrong with putting a profit motive when it comes to incarcerating people it leads to more stricter laws to throw more people in jail so that more profits get raped in and of course if you're providing the prisoners with medical care that's cutting into your profits which is the fundamental problem here isn't it. i think that there is a fundamental expectation that if we're going to have a prison system you have to provide medical care to it's a prison inmates and there isn't that make that more difficult when you would touch a profit motive to arrest them. i mean that's a moral hazard there's no question and you know so let's get rid of private prisons i don't know about that what's the best way to be where they are but we haven't you talking about absolutely i don't think that you necessarily have the government completely taken over maybe there needs to be a different methodology of all present we have known profits. interest here we are we can't fix the website and you we've just discussed have design was

a private company that's built a website that's exactly what's going on here we have what governments do duties they're outsourcing to private companies and they're mismanaging those duties that's exactly what's happening with obamacare and here are the companies are managed by kathleen sebelius and other people that have never run a business but but that's what i'm always because i mean it's like ok maybe we're picking our poison here but i'm always concerned about ok to have the government take over something this completely dysfunctional so go ahead and federalize it or it's already been federalized or mark for other prisons or bad ok i'm i'm for privatizing almost everything and i agree i will i will i will get absolutely you know everyone will say that's not very libertarian private prisons are bad both my law enforcement background and my my current job as an immigration attorney with many clients who deal with these private prisons small government aspect of this is not putting so many people in prison not having to mean a loss once you take custody of someone and responsibility of them the profit margin marginalizes these people and i say put fewer poor people in prison but the people you put in prison you decide they can't be on the street and you have

a law that criminalizes and you have to take responsibility i don't believe that should be out so do you believe it's the state's responsibility to do what i believe is the scope i mean no i don't believe that we should federalize all of it i mean the state has state prisoners federal government federal prisoners it has to come back to what law they violated but again when you have so many laws you put so many people in prison and we've seen alec we've seen three strikes laws we've seen truth and sentences these are all profit motives when you make a commodity out of a bed in the prison there is a profit motive to put people in that prison so that you believe in nationalized health care to where i don't believe in nationalized health care but it's not a no brainer that. and i believe in nationalized health care because i think people the military defense would go to hell share take a leave given how they are to my visitors but not giving health care to their citizens know that the prisoners and the soul the soldiers employ the prisoners can't get outside health care ok obviously we need fewer people in prisons that was actually pretty good though i think i got all that a pretty good point let me move on to the railway and before we move to the next topic i. have they're tired of wealth inequality the swiss are tired of the rich

getting richer the poor getting poorer so they want to do something about it they're going to vote on a measure that will limit the top executive pay to twelve to one ratio of their workers so the c.e.o. makes as much as twelve times to their worker and that's it you know here in the united states it's four hundred five hundred depending on what sector a thousand times more than their average worker when something like this be good in the united states which is one of the most unequal nations in the developed world and really what good is it for him to have these billionaires walking around who really aren't contributing bat much to economic activity in america me terrible idea obviously this is the puppet master this would be the government saying twelve no thirteen no fourteen this is a horrible idea now he knows what he needs to happen isn't as a problem that's not a free market but i would say no you shouldn't have some artificial if people are going it's the people who've been deciding it's not scary and stick with the government it's the people voting for so you can't say that anything that people would vote for is either a good idea or constitutionally you can imagine the history of this country some of

the things that people have voted for i mean no i would absolutely disagree about it but it's to do with a regular wealth in a court of say i mean do you not think that america when you get some you're picking winners and losers arbitrarily what where do we get twelve we would close we talk about you know we sometimes i'm going by the us come and i'm like i'm against that too i mean bribes and these types of subsidies anything what it what is your guy's putting on the table to do about wealth inequality without the good if the government can't play any role in lessening wealth inequality then are we supposed to do it the government is doing its job and we're not educating our children the generation they're told the generations are all. this started a new law it wasn't or it could just live once that there was a thousand cation and turned in to the profit motive in education as well so i mean then that becomes a gigantic meat on the system as well where you've got the rich can afford a rolls royce education and he's going to probably crumble opportunity is important but doing this at the back end that's equal outcome and that's left you talk about a slippery slope all the sudden you say what happens is the guy get capped is that

the can't get paid or he has to give it all to taxes in one hundred percent tax rate yeah you know yes the pay is already a start so now you're going to ensure what you get into this once you break that seal of getting into this but you have so many out of it whining that you don't have that many wants us out of our view where are you going to where you have twelve to one hundred years in the middle finger to the rich because next week we'll change it to six to one and then it'll be two to one and then you'll then you'll have just out comma come i mean we've been north korea right this is a bit of a slippery slope be going to exactly just because that's the problem ben it's a slippery slope i'm having with what you say about minimum wage as well as i once thought monday and wait that it's going to get harder and harder now and they're going to have a house baby version of inflation is i mean it hasn't risen with inflation because people don't want it in every way and you know you kind of live on the minimum wage in america and we could let each country choose what it wants to be but right now in america it's four hundred five hundred thousand to one which is obviously not good because when you have the very top wealthy elite class here they can't spend nearly as much money as

a poor working class here that depends on the economy depends on the spend money but i again i'm not for the crony capitalism that crony capitalism is not free it's not part of the free market but where did you get this idea that the billionaires don't bring anything do you think the company the board of directors hires people that don't bring a lot to the company i mean or so they have skin in the game and their share of saying is a billionaire doesn't purchase a billion pairs of pants he doesn't go out to dinner a billion times they pretty much spend the same amount on deeds as working people who would know what you don't you're not looking at the money put into investments that you put into the line where we were. there will be a school any risk right during the recess during the recession off to the question two thousand and eight the group is held on to several trillion dollars worth of cash which they didn't spend but a frightening amount of money that could have gone back into the economy they just didn't do it they being warned if you know your capital gang was what they wanted it to look at me unstable time this is my private business sense through times you

don't start taking risks right up to what they did is they wait until the government anyway and then with the types of students regulations you're talking about people will not want to take risk because it's less predictable and their risk is my reward it doesn't seem to have that's because of lack of immigration or if only you guys defended the billion working people at wal-mart with this bunch of vigor at the pentagon believe me i believe that i totally believe there should be the opportunity just not equal outcome determined by the government we've got here marc harrold ben cohen here in tucson thank you all for toure thanks sam coming up as world powers meet in geneva to discuss iran's nuclear program capitol hill is gearing up for a nuclear showdown of its own all things reach full meltdown the answer right after the break.

well. it's technology innovations all the developments from around russia. the future of coverage. i was the president and i think a society that case i'm sick corporation kind of convinced that to consume because you can do. the bank trying to get all that all about money and i'm actually sick for politicians writing the laws and regulations to tax corporate bankers. there's just too much is a society. that. that was a new alert animation scripts scare me a little illegal. there is breaking news tonight and we are continuing to follow

the breaking news nameplate alexander's family cry tears and so why it is great things other than their. own regard at a quarter of a wall around. there's a story made for a movie is playing out in real life. one of the new a little more than a life should be making news all the face others are like you know alone. her lead. a pleasure to have you with us here on t.v. today i roll researcher.

it's a classic. everybody told you it's a joke did you know the price is the only industry specifically mentioning the constitution should say that's because a free and open press is critical to our democracy schreck i'll focus. on. them again i'm sorry and on this show we reveal the.