i suspect. it was like the old if you. did 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 schreck. them you know i'm sorry and on this show we were the a little picture of what's actually going going to go beyond identifying. rational debate and a real discussion critical issues facing america ready to join the movement then welcome to the big picture. though i'm tom foreman in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture. news of an iranian nuclear

deal tore through the news cycle of a wildfire this weekend but what's the real story behind all of it at the lines and could we be witnessing the start of a once in a generation diplomatic shift more on that in just a moment also the swiss who realize that c.e.o. pay is out of control and they're taking steps to limit it so when will politicians in america take a cue from our friends across the pond and start trying to put a cap on the super rich and if republicans really want to stop welfare fraud they'd start rolling back the billions of dollars we get in tax breaks to be able will companies every year explain why in tonight's deleted. you need to know this running in foreign minister job job zarif received a. rose welcome return home to cheer on sunday night hundreds of people gathered by

airport to cheer on his arrival cheering crowd was of course celebrating the news that iran had reached an agreement with world powers about its nuclear energy program in exchange for halting uranium enrichment and freezing work on new centrifuges iran will get six to seven billion dollars as sanctions relief for six months it is the six month freeze will give the so-called p five plus one powers led by the united states enough time to work out a long term nuclear deal so far at least everything appears to be working as planned already inform and former foreign minister zarif said yesterday that the islamic republic could begin holding up its end of the bargain by as soon as january the moment that many people predicted when whose son rouhani was elected president in june has finally come the united states and iran look like they're moving toward a once in a generation diplomatic thaw arguably that thought has already started i mean who

could have imagined just six months ago that by november secretary of state john kerry would be shaking hands with the iranian foreign minister most of the media will spend the next few days breaking down the iranian nuclear deal like it was a money night football game and while the details of saturday's deal are obviously important the bigger picture here is nothing short of astonishing for the past thirty or so years american foreign policy the middle east has been based around three main things support for israel opposition to shit muslim iran and at the same time support for iran big sunni muslim rival saudi arabia you know that same saudi arabia that gave us a sound in law and fifteen of the one thousand nine eleven hijackers america's alliance with israel and the saudis has been great for arms manufacturers and great for the oil industry but our relationship with those two countries and our refusal to really call out their human rights abuses as fuel. many

a jihad jihadi is fire now that israeli saudi american intelligence appears to be cracking israel and saudi arabia both oppose the iranian nuclear deal reached this weekend in geneva switzerland back to iran no one is saying the islamic republic is a perfect country it's not a weak but it's also not the crazy bogeymen caricature that the western media makes it look like it's a culturally rich country with a two thousand or more year old history of literature poetry and philosophy back in the sixth century for example the persian and for cyrus the great issue of the world's first declaration of human rights the cyrus cylinder. and for those who take all that propaganda about appeasement seriously consider this iran has not invaded another country in over two hundred years united states two years like all big moments in history it's still too early to tell what will happen with the us and the world with sunday's deal the united states appears to be making the first

steps away from its saudi allies and the first steps closer to iran and when you really take a step back and look at the history of iran as well as the history of american foreign policy in the middle east it's probably a good thing for more on this i'm joined now by jamal abdi policy director for the national raney and american council jamal welcome thanks for having me thanks for joining us. first of all. this deal itself give me a snapshot summary of what we've come so far what what agreement has come to or what is it starting to look like so this is this is an interim deal this is a frame more for the next six months that gives both sides some reassurance that they should go down this path of negotiations what it effectively does is it it it rolls back certain elements of the iranian nuclear program it freezes other elements and then it verifies that they're upholding their end of the bargain in exchange the u.s. is and its partners the p five plus one the un world powers are offering

some limited sanctions relief there limiting sanctions on the on gold petrochemicals they're doing some things with the financial sanctions to allow for humanitarian goods to get into iran and basically what this does is it pauses the escalation on both sides to allow for six months in which we can actually have serious negotiations and get to a point where are we actually resolve this issue how do you see if there was a were approaching an agreement between the united states and iran if we were to normalize relations i mean when the shah was there the united states was basically using iran. were using iraq to you know as as as sort of an anchor in their region . what would the how would this play out and in the sunny states you know are saudi arabia seem fairly hysterical about this. what

are your thoughts about the dynamics of the region and america's relationship with those still so early in this process i mean i think this is an important big picture question to be asking i think that the current situation in which the u.s. and iran enjoy no diplomatic relations in which we are in a effectively cold war with iran while at the same time the u.s. is suppose. in a war against al qaeda and sunni extremist groups this is untenable it's also untenable to be invested in these dictatorships or non democratic countries in the region to prop up our security interests when you know that's not a that's not a stable situation that's not as we've seen with the you know the arab spring and and some the other changes in the region this is also not a sustainable situation so you know by by opening up these relations with iran first of all we have to recognize iran's not a democracy yet but by actually deescalate the tensions on the outside it creates

room within iran for people to actually be able to have more influence on their government to form civil society and then for the united states it creates an inherently more stable situation in which we can actually not be beholden to a couple of big powers who dictate to us what to do and instead have a more equitable sort of relation with i don't want to argue that iran is much more of a democracy than saudi arabia. i mean i it's a low bar at that point. but my point is i think the average american doesn't distinguish between sunni and shia and when you talk about sunni extremism. osama bin laden all this stuff and this is almost all sunni extremism. the. extremism i guess that people are hysterical about is is hezbollah and that seems to be that relationship with regard to israel and lebanon. can

you can you give us a quick primer for the average american who doesn't have any idea the difference between these and what i'm talking about here. a very quick primer i guess i would say the situation that we've been witnessing in iraq for the past ten years this was this schism between the shias and the sunni but really what it what this boils down to him. see now in syria is that there is a proxy war between the sunni powers in the region saudi arabia some of the gulf states and iran in the shia powers in the region now i would just caution that what we need to be thinking about is not picking one side's extremists over another but instead divesting ourselves of having to align with extremists and actually supporting the forces of moderation so that we can actually have a stable situations on both sides and in the rawn there's a new president he represents this moderate force in iran this force for change and

by securing this deal with him we're actually bolstering these moderate elements at the expense of some of the more hard line elements inside of the car now here in the united states we have the neo cons the people who told us that you know if we just went into iraq you know three weeks later everything would be fine and the war would pay for itself and everybody would love us if we just went to afghanistan you know everything would be perfect and in fact you know john mccain bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb iran i mean you know the this this. mentality of somehow. i frankly i can't it even seems like it's not just a cultural perhaps even a racist element to it i can't imagine them talking about a european country like this many of these guys is this the death of the neo con ism in the united states or is this taking a bite out of their blood or are they going to are they going to you know. what are you going to if the iraq war didn't signify the death of the neo-cons i don't know

if anything is going to get rid of these again are all over all over the media today they're all over the media they're still being listened to for some reason their advice is still being taken by some people i think it's clear that this path does not work now does this this this opening of a deal signify the death of the neo con movement i don't think so they we're going to see. you know in congress we're going to see a push for news. sanctions we're going to continue to see these guys on t.v. and the thing about this is that they're not going to be proven wrong in this situation any more than they already have that but they were saying iran can't be negotiated with they were saying that we couldn't take our foot off the sanctions pedal until we had toppled the iranian government and that was the only thing we could do this guy's been wrong time and time again we have we have just a minute left the. supreme religious leader a year or more ago issued a fatwa a say in the producing a nuclear bomb would be an abomination it would be a violation of his law correct me if i'm wrong and many many years ago many years

and. enrichment has not gotten anything close to what is necessary for a bomb while the conversation is well it's really it's about iran having the option to build a bomb and you know i don't think that i mean i don't leave it out to me u.s. intelligence and many intelligence agencies don't believe iran has made the decision to actually build a bomb but there is suspicion that stream leader wants at least the option so that if things start wasn't that bad he can flip it so if this deal is all about is ultimately to just put a cap on that they are getting the verification measures in place so that we will know one hundred percent that if you are on attempts to make such a move they'll get caught in order to hold them accountable to their to the nonproliferation treaty that they're signed on to thank you so much for being with us thank you pleasure pleasure meeting. coming up thirty years a regen exist here in america and in one of the most unequal countries in the world could limited c.e.o.

pay help bridge the gap between rich and poor and make america a level playing field once again. i've got a quote for you. it's pretty tough. to wait substory. let's give this guy like me here about john stead of working for the people most issues the beach. ritual the bridegroom speech and. if it was a. very hard to take. once again to come on here to play live happily ever had sex with that hurt their feelings if.

it was a month if. if if if if . if

. in screw news thirty plus years of reaganomics have turned the united states into one of the most unequal countries in the world over billionaire class is growing wealthier regular american working class people have seen their incomes grow slowly or not at all c.e.o. pay naturally has skyrocketed according to the recent analysis by the economic policy institute from one thousand nine hundred seventy eight to two thousand and eleven c.e.o. compensation grew more than seven hundred twenty five percent substantially more than the compensation of a typical private sector worker which grew a meager five point seven percent as a result the ratio between c.e.o. pay on average worker pay now stands at a whopping two hundred thirty one to one and radically more in some industries like

banks tourism to get a perspective on just how crazy that number is consider this japan which has a third biggest economy in the world as a c.e.o. to worker pay ratio of sixty seven to one quarter the if else so what do we do about this well one solution is to go the way of switzerland earlier this year in march swiss voters approved a ballot measure that band bonuses required companies to keep their shareholders up to date about executive pay and put an end to lucrative severance packages that measure passed with a two thirds majority a shocking event for a country that very rarely passes any referendums whatsoever so it is swiss activists have been trying to go a step further and make a strict twelve to one executive pay ratio part of their country's constitution but yesterday the ballot measure mandating a pe ratio was rejected but if marches successes are any indication this was just a minor setback for an emerging movement to keep executive pay under control

activists in spain and germany for example at. already said they want to start pushing for a twelve to one ratio in their countries but what's going to take to get a cap on c.e.o. pay right here in the united states for more on this i'm joined now by dr richard wolfe economist and author of numerous books including his latest democracy at work richard welcome back thank you very much so richard your thoughts on a an actually an absolute limit on executive pay. well you know we limit all kinds of things that corporations can do they fight it each step of the way we limit the rassmann of their employees we limit ecological damage they do we limit outrageous claims that are dishonest about their products i don't see any problem with limiting the amount of income they earn relative to that of

the other people in their employ and i think there's a perfectly good reason why the swiss people wanted to have a chance to vote on this and why they will continue to create more referendums because their society allows that much more easily than ours and i think the reasons are simple do we want to society of extreme inequality with all that that means or do we not the single most important reason for the growing inequality of wealth and income in the united states has been the system we have our capitalist system that allows the chief executives on the boards of directors of our corporations to decide how to distribute the profits of the company and surprise surprise they've distributed whopping proportions to themselves not only is it not good for the equal equilibration if you like of the equality of a society that prides itself on being so-called middle class but it's not even good for the corporation they should be spending that money on technical advance on

producing better products not driving a few wealthy executives into the stratosphere so i think it's not a good sign it's not a healthy sign even about our system let alone the kind of more equal society that most americans clearly want richard from the one nine hundred thirty s. until the one nine hundred eighty s. in the united states c.e.o. pay average worker pay roughly was thirty to one and it was fairly consistent during that period of time we had a top income tax rate between seventy four and i. the one percent during that period of time and until the middle of the reagan years who was also against the law to compensate c.e.o.'s with stock which they could then roll over and only pay capital gains rate of twenty percent on. if we were simply to roll back the that part of the reagan revolution roll back the top tax rate and change the stock compensation rule would we accomplish what switzerland is trying to do by you know

with an absolute cap. well we would take an enormous step in that direction you know you have to sit down and make some assumptions about whether it would be all that would be necessary but let me add to a point you made the use of the nineteen late forty's fifty's sixty's seventy's when we had high tax rates on the rich and when we didn't have these outrageous salaries for top executives these were also times when there was less unemployment in the united states when the rate of growth of our output was much larger and our economy was much healthier the irony is that for the last thirty years under reagan and all of that the argument was made that in order to get a thriving economy we had to allow inequality the historical record is exactly the opposite so that if we took the steps of the sort that the swiss people are looking at and the germans and the spanish as well it would be a major step towards getting back to an economy that function much better when we

didn't allow this inequality than it has ever since we began this sad road towards a society as divided as you said it was at the beginning now this makes perfect sense from an economic point of view. and you're not the only economists are saying hey you know this include idea this to be a good thing for society your thoughts on the politics of this. well i think it's really quite simple you know when in the american system starting in the one nine hundred seventy s. you basically stopped raising wages which we've been doing in this country for this century before you basically stopped you didn't have to anymore and business didn't pay wages anymore they took the resulting profits that kept rising because our workers were becoming more productive even though our employers weren't paying them more and you made this into a profit that was distributed to

a tiny portion of the population as the inequality gets greater the people at the top they know perfectly well what's happening and they understand that to make a small number of people super wealthy in a society that still has universal suffrage you're creating the incentive for the mass of people to try to use majority vote the democratic system to use politics to undo the inequality that our economy is generating and that the only way for the rich to hold on is that they have to control the political system they have to make it subordinated to money which is what they have since they don't have the mass of people they have the money and so we have seen our politics become a politics controlled by money candidates needed parties needed super pacs needed money money money to get the political system so that it can't own do the inequality created by the kind of economic system we have and i think that's our

fundamental issue the organization moved to amend or is aggressively working toward that because basically the the driver of that money in politics you know numerous politicians over the years i go back to teddy roosevelt and tell me to act one thousand and seven. many many times over the years much mccain feingold bipartisan have tried to limit money in politics the supreme court keeps saying no money years actually. speech and it's protected by the first amendment and corporations are actually people and they're protected by the fourteenth amendment so this is move to amend the constitution to get around the supreme court do you see any other solution. yes for me to be blunted clear i think we're playing a hopeless game if we allow the inequality to exist in the first place and then look for laws or regulations or supreme court decisions to try to limit or

constrain the people with the wealth have always shown that they can hire the experts the lawyers the accountants the professors to get around whatever rules and regulations are passed why don't we recognize this problem and go to the heart of the issue let's not allow equal incomes like this to ever happen in the first place so that we don't have to go through the political rigamarole of own doing something that should have been allowed to happen in the first place if businesses were run democratically by all the people who work there they would never allow a tiny handful of people to make absurd amounts of money while everybody else is scrambling around trying to figure out how to pay for their kid to go to college we would not have the inequality and that would save us the time and the failed efforts of good people to own do through the legislative process this inequality

that has shown how powerful those at the top will be and how they will use their power to hold on to what they have you're talking about essentially a cooperative cooperated movement as an alternative to capitalism. yes i'm trying to suggest that we need to make the kinds of changes that nipped this in the equality in the bod have some inequality twelve to one as this was proposed it seems perfectly reasonable we can find another one if americans would like to be different but i don't think most americans want some people in a corporation to be earning two three four hundred times what other people are it's not necessary it has a certain fundamental obscenity to it and we see in our country how it corrupts our political system and i think that's more than enough reason to to make the kinds of

basic changes so that the decisions about distributing income are fairly and democratically made by all the people who participate and contribute to production and not go to a tiny handful that then lord it over everybody else it's it's extraordinary richard roth thanks so much for being with us. my pleasure tom thank you always a pleasure seeing. crazy alert wisconsin is famous for its dairy products in fact is i'm calling america's dairy land now the state's largest city mall walky has found a way to use wisconsin's number one export cheese delve city residents through the tough upper midwest winter months in a walk a department of public works has announced that it will try to use cheese brine

liquid extract that is left over when cheese is made as a replacement for rock salt those were all rock salt helps keep roads clear is dangerous ice and can permanently damage them and has been shown to cause long from environmental harm she's brine is a cheaper and safer alternative at the same time though milwaukee's decision raises some interesting question i mean what's that cheese that traffic own. sounds like a plan. coming up it's republicans nightmare a basic income for all citizens whether you're rich or poor employed or unemployed hardworking or lazy that's going on in switzerland and could fuel a global movement.

in. 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. i know c.n.n. the m s n b c news have taken some not 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 truth and i think. it's because when full attention and the mainstream media works side by side the joke is actually on here. and our teen years we have a different approach. because the news of the world just is not this funny i'm not laughing dammit i'm not i. but. if. you guys stick to the jokes i will hand over their stuff that i've got to.

i think. everybody. did you know the price is the only industry specifically mentioned in the constitution. that's because a free and open press is critical to our democracy which i call books. that are you know i'm sorry and on this show we were real the picture of what's actually going to comment on it if we go beyond identifying a problem or trying to fix rational debate a real discussion critical issues facing our family members ready to join the movement then welcome aboard.