vasily fix for a politician writing the laws and regulations to tax corporate bankers. there is just too much is a society. that. i think. everybody will be curious to know that you know the price is the only industry specifically mentioning the constitution. that's because a free and open press is critical to our democracy which help us. to make you know i'm sorry and i'm this show we reveal the picture of what's actually going. to go beyond identifying the truth rational debate real discussion critical issues facing them. ready to join the movement then 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. florida congressman trey ray del a big supporter of drug testing welfare recipients pled guilty to cocaine possession in washington today so what is he going to put forward a bill forcing every member of congress to take a drug test and talk about that and more in tonight's big picture rumble. also despite the messy rollout of healthcare dot gov obamacare is working pretty well at a state level but it won't be for too long not if alec gets its way more on the conservative groups latest sabotage scheme later on in the show. and is the republican party actually care about social issues or does it just use them to win elections we'll have the answer tonight's daily ted.

and we begin tonight on wall street where on tuesday j.p. morgan chase the nation's largest bank finally agreed to a thirteen billion dollars settlement with the justice department over its role in the two thousand and eight financial meltdown. on paper at least the settlement looks like a great deal of thirteen billion dollars fine is the largest handed to any u.s. corporation ever in fact it's almost three times as much as the four point five billion dollars fine b.p. paid after the two thousand and ten gulf oil spill but as we've learned on wall street on wall street things aren't always as they seem just as the triple a plus mortgage backed security that went up in smoke and so upon closer inspection this record settlement actually looks like just another wall street rip off that's because more than half of that thirteen billion dollars fine around seven billion dollars is entirely tax deductible in other words thanks to the settlement j.p. morgan gets a tax break remaining six billion will be split between

a two billion dollar non-tax the doctor will find in a four billion dollars payment to help struggling homeowners we'll see how much of that actually gets to those homeowners of course two billion dollars sure sounds like a lot to you and me but for a bank like j.p. morgan chase bank takes in twenty one billion dollars every year and holds over two trillion dollars in assets it's not going to hurt them too much in fact back in our back in october the bank announced it was setting aside twenty three billion dollars for litigation costs so in the end they made out pretty well factor in that whole tax deductible thing and it's hard to see this record breaking fine as anything more than a harsher than usual slap on the wrist but the numbers are only half the story the most damning thing of all of this settlement is that it doesn't even make j.p. morgan take responsibility for ripping off investors in screwing over homeowners remember for a second what j.p. morgan actually did. along with bear stearns in washington mutual the two banks

that purchased in two thousand and eight j.p. morgan knowingly sold off bad mortgages disguised as good mortgages to investors like fannie mae and freddie. freddie mac. as well as to every day mom and pop pension funds and while the economy hurdled towards collapse j.p. morgan was new in bear stearns got rich while everyone else got stuck with crap loans that were destined to go under as matt taibbi pointed out in a recent article for rolling stone j.p. morgan's mortgage program was little more than a knee labrat take on any madoff style ponzi scheme the banks continued to buy these mortgages and throw them into the great hamburger machine turning them into securities that would in turn be bought by everyone from pension funds to fannie and freddie and then they pushed sales even harder to relying upon the influx of new buyers of these securities to keep the value of the old securities stable this

is exactly what bernie madoff did using cash from new investors to pay off the old investors the justice department's record breaking settlement announced on tuesday doesn't say anything about this j.p. morgan will likely never have to take actual responsibility for its madoff esque ponzi scheme because the bank will never have to go to trial see that's the problem with our judicial system and too big to fail banks we never prosecute them we never take them to trial present evidence to the american people showing exactly how these banks defrauded them and then hang a big heavy guilty verdict around those banks neck senator elizabeth warren made this point recently during a committee hearing. i know there have been some landmark settlements but we face some very special issues with big financial institutions if they can break the law and drag in billions in profits and then turn around and settle paying out of those

profits they don't have much incentive to follow the law it's also the case there each time there's a settlement and not a trial it means that we didn't have those days and days and days of testimony about what those financial institutions had been up to their district attorneys and u.s. attorneys who are out there every day squeezing ordinary citizens on sometimes fairy thin grounds and taking them to trial in order to make an example as they put it i'm really concerned that too big to fail has become too big for trial that just seems wrong to me so instead of trials we just settle and the banks just lose a cut of their profits that they made dishonesty to begin with and all this is set up to happen again think about it if we can't get a trial out of one of history's biggest heists and what ten we get a trial on but trouble.

is joining me for tonight's big picture rumble are cameron stewart the program manager with the heritage foundation neil sirocco communications director with democracy for america major kloster legal fellow with the heritage foundation thank you all for joining me we gots to heritage foundation folks out here if we got our work cut out for a sail today ok so you guys a heard off the top what i was saying is anyone else bothered by this i mean yes this is a record breaking settlement no banker no business has ever been buying this much but ultimately another bank gets by without any trial people are going to be fully aware of what actually happened during the financial crash when are we going to get a trial here well andrea. we're talking about this on the way over here and you're good well no no we're talking about because often times and pointed out some going to steal his thunder a little bit here that oftentimes you know the justice department gets a second bite of the apple in the criminal in the criminal system so if there was

any criminal activity here believe me the justice department will take action but the issue needs to be pointed out that these were tax adoptable settlements were tax deductible as a business expense right just as if anyone were sued any company were sued civilly by one of the employees say for slipping and falling outside of the office building on some ice that would be tax deductible as well so it's no different here it's the same tax concept what we need to do maybe is change the tax code i think that's what you're implying i don't think but. i mean is this really going to. change and it is going to do it it's absolutely outrageous that banks could take a tax break out of build bilking the american people and more importantly you know i think the one saving grace out of anything that's come out of this settlement is that we can still take on criminal trials and what really needs to happen is we need to jail some of these bankers that put mom and dad out to dry and take some

real aggressive action this settlement is nonsense it's a big deal it looks like a big deal on paper it's not a big deal for j.p. morgan chase and we need to we need to do better work so does it bother you that we haven't really seen any of these kind of big time bankers go to jail or we haven't seen any trials of these big time for any of their actions leading up to the point i think that's a great question and i actually agree and certainly judge rakoff of the southern district of new york said i think it was last week or maybe the week before he said . there are all of these allegations of fraud going around and that's something that we can prosecute and he said if you listen to it it's not just the faceless corporation these are individuals who would have perpetrated this for. and judge rakoff said and i agree with him that. if you look at the allegations that many different agencies are making about fraud that these are good cases and that it's a failure of our justice system if an actual fraud for which there is documentation is not brought the civil case doesn't end the entire issue and if the obama

department of justice has the guts to do it they can and they are being honest they can have they're going to get the best solution so going there's the whole wide board thing that and i'm amazed by how many investigations are on j.p. morgan right now and yet the c.e.o. is treated like a demigod around here on the hill when he comes to the hill the street is the best businessmen around you would think members of congress got a lot of money always got a lot of money to work with that's exactly what's let's talk about congressman trey radel you know he was busted for cocaine. and stuff like that happens he's actually there's some he's got a story here i mean his mother died on his wedding reception in two thousand and nine you know this is humanity people go through these struggles but this is the same guy who doesn't see the same sort of humanity in working people and poor people who are on welfare benefits when he's asking that they should be drug tested here should he resign should he say i don't want my taxpayer funded paychecks anymore now that i've been busted with drugs oh i disagree i don't necessarily

think that that he ought to resign i think just because you've got some criminal conduct you you shouldn't have your right to say a member of congress but maybe you should take a paycheck anymore well look let me just say with respect to the issue of food stamps we're not going to. just because you have one of the proponents of the bill doing some something illegal if we have this sort of invalidate the sort of program based on the impropriety of the legislators we would be living in a state of nature i don't think anyone make you better argument we're just we're just saying that i always thought this whole thing about drug testing the poor was about demonizing the poor trying to show the reason why they're poor is they're on drugs we can't afford this stuff and we need to show that they're on drugs by drug test and then when really the only two percent i did up on drugs in florida which is far less than the six percent of the normal popular right look you and i know i don't even know why you're saying that because you and i have talked about this you and i both know the point of the welfare system in this country is to move toward self-sufficiency right it's to bridge the gap between poverty and self-sufficiency

my opinion is that a robust drug testing program kicking drugs is a good step toward self-sufficiency but it's not a real problem instead you're forcing these people to jump through hoops pay all these costs to go through it and it ended up costing a lot of money i mean there's little doubt that few people are more dependent on the federal government then members of congress who get their full paycheck from it so if we're going to require poor people to be drug tested or to get access to food stamps i don't see why we should be drug testing members of congress as well you know intimately what about it would be just about as effective to let's just point that out drug testing for folks in poverty has shown very little if any change to the efficacy of these programs because they're already truly only about one percent fraud rate in that if someone on welfare was caught smoking marijuana is that really the worst in the world that you know we're going to ruin their life take everything they had that was keeping food on the table as punishment i'm not saying that you threw out the word fraud i'm not saying you're you know defacto committing fraud because you're on drugs and receive food stamps i'm talking again about

moving from you know poverty to self-sufficiency you know bridging that gap let's hear some of which we're going to get to the next after the break here more big picture coming up after the break. well. science technology innovation all the least a melon minutes from around russia we've got the future covered. 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 r.t. question for. i think people. should have you with us here today i'm sure.

back to the big picture rumble with mayor cameron seward neil soroka and andrew kloster let's get back to it let's talk about virginia state senator creigh deeds pretty sad story he was stabbed by his son son then killed himself and creigh deeds is in good condition apparently today more developments of the story is that on monday gus deeds the name of creigh deeds is. he had a psychiatric exam under emergency custody order there weren't enough psychiatric beds to hold him he was released this happened the following day. as a result of austerity cuts in virginia take a look at this chart here actually says around the country not just in virginia between two thousand and two thousand and twelve nearly forty five hundred beds were lost across the country these are psychiatric beds in fifteen state mental hospitals are the been close are being considered for closure so this is what austerity is bringing us and when we think of budget cuts we normally think of

numbers on a spreadsheet we think of we think of what a desired to g.d.p. ratio is like sequester percentage but these numbers on a spreadsheet have actual consequences as we saw here and i think that's just lost in this debate and hopefully things like this bring that to the forefront of what the of what austerity is actually doing well sterrett isn't doing this but i would say yes there is a failure of you know the result of spending cuts that is they are a result of spending cuts but certainly you know not the word austerity you're throwing out austerity like it's a demonizing thing and throwing people out of bed between two i mean this is over the last few years i mean this is what it's there in called the eyes of the people who are doing as has the state of virginia said because of any sort of austerity where in acting there we're cutting these beds i mean they're cutting these beds and allocating funds elsewhere then the problem is i mean i agree with you this is a travesty this is a travesty the mental health care system is failing tons of people across the country and you know something needs to be true the link between government

spending on programs and the well being of society well you depends on you know government spending can go on and on and be ineffective and not help people this needs to be devolved to the lower on the state level or maybe to the community base level then yes and let's be clear here a lot of time some of these cuts are coming at the same time that governors in republican state legislators are advocating for caps cuts so in a lot of cases you have cuts being made to the social service system and in particular in this case to the mental health system and then money going in the pockets of the wealthiest in some of these states that's the problem and that's why exactly like you said. budgets are moral documents and when we're not taking care of our families and people that need mental health care. it really says something sad about our society we're seeing in europe andrew suicide rates spike and i mean europe's kind of ground zero of austerity here we had cameron in the u.k. so this is the age of austerity when he was elected. do you see the same sort of

negative consequences that i'm seeing as a result this austerity and what i think this story of creigh deeds perfectly illustrates here look i don't think that we can one to one match up fiscal responsibility with the kinds of decisions that are being being made in the specific programs that are being unsuccessful responsible like obviously we don't want to be wasting money we don't want to be giving huge subsidies to people who don't need it you have rampant fraud in program right but when we need to set targets of deficit targets and we're just slashing with it like the sequester is doing right now just slashing funding across the board how is that fiscally responsible well i mean if you take a look at the shutdown for example there are across the board cuts that are easily absorbed in many cases what's happening in europe is is is the result of not just austerity but they've had cultural malays for a long time so there are deeper problems they austerity is is just not it's not

a problem in and of itself but better choices need to be made we certainly need to take care of our mentally ill another possible fix is to remove some of the barriers in private ability to create hospitals to provide these services and we've seen a lot of hospitals having to shut down due to moral objections to parts of obamacare for example so there are lots of issues in play here privatization is there as well no i think it's more flexibility with that with the citing of how funds are spent in this in this realm but throughout this morning missouri executed joseph paul franklin his white supremacy real killer larry flynt. who killed twenty people over a period of four years this guy is a really bad dude but i'm wondering what to executing him really accomplish here look according to amnesty international twenty one countries carried out executions in two thousand and twelve iran iraq yemen sudan north korea somalia and the united states what good what good does executing people serve at this point it's going

well. i think that. historically the death penalty in the united states has been something that has been allowed and it's kind of a democratic choice and there are a variety of different reasons that people might do these or vote for these sorts of things some of it is deterrents although some studies suggest that might not work at all so that does it will has some of it some of it can be expressive there's a bad action that happened here and someone needs to be punished and possibly the worst way possible i personally am opposed to to the death penalty in in most cases but that doesn't mean that this isn't the right of the citizens of missouri on our constitutional system to make these decisions for themselves you know i mean we were just talking about you know at the time of budget cuts and everything it costs more money to administer the death penalty at the end of the day it's a it's a system that cost more that we can't guarantee the justice of and that there's just no it's just not sound policy anymore it doesn't make sense and it's putting

putting us in line with you know developing nations you know we should be reaching for the highest standards in this country and the idea that we're going to perpetuate a system of death like this is just absurd i mean there's there's. we we say that states can't do certain things just recently with doma i mean. if you if you if just because a state or just because the local population likes the death penalty wants to keep the death penalty doesn't necessarily mean that they're right in doing that at this point at some point we need to culturally progressed beyond that i would guess rightly so call your congressman tell him to introduce a bill banning. painting the death of a boy it's important to point out here in kind of a kink in this story was how this prisoner was was of alternately put to death so he's put to death through lethal injection the prison wanted to use a fall a more humane way but because the european the european manufacturer of this had moral qualms with what was going on the u.s.

and they sought to really. stick it to the people of missouri those barbarians they would they threaten to not ship this profile which is used for other medical. uses and so the prison use something used another substance which is a higher risk but ultimately he was put to death but also backfired on on on the europeans that worse thinking oh yeah we're really going to teach him a lesson he all to me really reflecting on the state of missouri the kind of barbarism of this process the fact that he couldn't do this more humanely and they wanted to continue to pursue this. about your heroes trade policy that we don't have whatever the drug is needed to produce in your united states as conservatives small government conservatives comparative advantage. isn't it isn't it bothersome that the state has the ultimate power to take someone's life like this i would personally i would apply an anti-imperialist principle here which is that the citizens of missouri are no dumber than you or i and certainly you mentioned

developing nations have the death penalty i mean it's far be it for us to impose our cultural worldview on these other folks that have you know different modes of life i think i think that's what i would appeal to i think that pretty reasonable are going to think we see more and more states that are moving away from it so this is something that maybe over time we will progress beyond we'll see yesterday the senate so the senate is debating the defense authorization bill this is an annual bill that kind of programs the u.s. war machine how we're going to spend our defense dollars and usually this bill is used to put restrictions on closing guantanamo bay both republicans and democrats are guilty of this now the senate has defeated a lot of these restrictions as they're considering this new bill. the house is probably going to include a lot of these restrictions this bill is going to have to be worked out between both chambers and we'll see whether or not restrictions on closing guantanamo survive in the final bill i'm just wondering we had we started putting people there in two thousand and two it's twenty it's the end of two thousand and thirteen now we have one hundred sixty six people who are just sitting there and they have no

pay. we don't know what's going to happen to them how long can this go on for cameron leaving guantanamo open like the first thing to point out so you talk about bi cameral ism bipartisanship. bi cameral lee and bipartisan only this bill not this bill but the closing guantanamo bay prison was opposed now what i have issue with is the people that say let's close close guantanamo bay ok well where are we going to put that put the prisoners after that because that's right so disperse them throughout so where it becomes very difficult to gain together intelligence community devoted to security in december and later this year just as they have federal prisons do you know make you go on trial put the evidence that we have i don't say with them on trial on safe so we can secure the prisoners all in one spot for their own security they're all in security getting to them in one player has never been in the from an american maximum security prison it just hasn't happened so why can't you because there are magical no i'm not crazy where

are you talking about someone trying to harm them a one time obey we can in ensure their security and. it is an effort to show emotion in this sort of. for their own wouldn't i should you know and you know that this is all about politics closing guantanamo bay is not about policy it's not about human rights it's all about politics it's all about fear i think i mean there's this argument from the crowd of not my backyard i don't want these guys in my backyard because just they're being could be an explosion or something like that which is completely absurd and you know you drive a truck into that we have to drive load up hundreds of people in the united states in civil courts here in regular courts here of the stuff we tried terrorists and one time obey we haven't really done any committed one to less than seven trials have taken place in guantanamo it's been a business there's no good reason to keep it open other than fear of what might happen. if you really want civil i'm not sure if you really think that if the senate passed this bill and it's easier to move these prisoners united states that

the present. well you know i think the president's largely to sell his point over to the window just because just because republicans and democrats and the president seem to be on board this doesn't mean that we can't say it's wrong and are you going to certainly certainly i think everyone has i think everyone in the world has some sort of. natural rights to some sort of process and it's offensive if they're held there indefinitely however for no reason however it does seem that the president has made an all things considered judgment that these folks represent some sort of risk otherwise i would imagine that president obama would do something about ok so then cameron what do we do. we keep one town immobility open indefinitely i mean there's people going in and out of guantanamo eight hours away no one's going to guantanamo and because ok so let's talk about how you can send people out there are criteria for sending people releasing people from guantanamo one is actually ensuring that there's a country that wants them to oftentimes their home countries don't want them as

they're known terrorists and to it's ensuring that there's there are civil rights in there and their human rights are going to be enforced once they are sent back to said country that wants them and they're not going to be tortured you know when you were there there are literally dozens of people right now that we know can and should be released and there's just no excuse for lack of just the right of it and it's a lack of political will and as we all of our talk about there that's been. koester thank you all for joining us coming up alec the group that's brought us such conservative to stand your ground in voter id is back what's the shadow corporatocracy up to now and could the lives of millions of americans hang in the balance.

crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want to.

i'm the best at it and i think a society that i think corporation kind of can. do and the bankers try to get all that all about money and i was fascinated that for a politician writing the laws and regulations that bankers. there is just too much. of a diet. that. the best of the rest of the news so we know republicans in the house have tried again and again and again to repeal the affordable care act at a national level they've held nearly fifty votes to get rid of obamacare and they

haven't been too successful but that's the federal level and considering that critical components of the health care law like the exchanges are based on the state level the new avenue of attack against obamacare is opened up off the hill in state capitals across the country this new attack is brought to you by a familiar photo the american legislative exchange council or alec that right wing think tank slash legislation generator that teams of business fat cats with conservative lawmakers to pass corporatists legislation this year at its annual meeting alec approved a new model bill that takes aim at obamacare as health insurance exchanges it's called the health care freedom act and it would bar any health insurance company that accepts subsidies from doing business on the newly set up federal health insurance exchanges alex thinking is the only way companies can be mandated to provide health insurance to their workers.