tv Larry King Now RT December 2, 2013 7:00pm-7:31pm EST
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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. i'm sorry and on 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 . ready to join the movement then welcome the big. blow up job market in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture. we conservative internet
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trolls are just plain wrong the united states is not a capitalist country never has been one more on that in just a moment also everyone likes a good bargain especially a bargain a nice pair of jeans or a love for cheap clothing killing people in india and bangladesh and their barrack the banks tears are already hard at work creating the next wall street bubble and then ideally take i'll tell you why that mobile is even more dangerous than the one that burst in two thousand and eight. you need to know this as the low wage worker movement continues to grow it's becoming obvious that many americans don't understand anything about basic economics have discovered this from personal experience that i wrote an article for alternate arguing that any company that refuses to pay its workers
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a living wage should get the corporate death penalty and if you can't do business in this country in a reasonable way don't do business. right almost as soon as the article went online the economically ignorant took to the message boards to bash it in how couple of comments really stood out as representative of just how misinformed tragically misinformed i'm not a true it is to malice this is just like people don't know about economics for example there was a comment by terry terry somebody earlier who said that this is a capitalistic country running a business is a right in a free capitalist country like ours if we made such stupid laws that they must pay what some outsider i guess that would be me decides is a living wage they will simply move their physical business overseas to a place where they face no such control ok let me break this down first of all this is a capitalist country sorry no the united states is not
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a capitalist country we are constitutionally limited representative democratic republic and you can argue that ever since. the supreme court has decided that they really run the show were cause to show monarchy but we are we are not a capitalistic country capitalism is one of a whole bunch of different forms of economics that exist in the united states we have cooperatives we have we have communities we have you know you have some capitalist you have entrepreneurs the word capitalism appears nowhere in our founding documents no where in our constitution i mean learn some basic civics and some economics be running a business is a right in a free capitalistic country wolf you know yeah i suppose if that business is like ok you and i are going to do business in the purest of all wash your car your mall my lawn ok but what happens if as i wash your car i break a window. who do you appeal to. a court suddenly it's not
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a free system anymore. in order for an economy to work beyond just watch car mode on an even way back you have to have thing like stable currencies a stable banking system a predictable and fair court system actual rules you know who's responsible if the weather gets broken you have to have transportation electrical water septic communications infrastructure all of this is paid for by we the people you have a criminal justice system to enforce the rules of the game of business you even need a workforce educated at the public expense and protected with public pension called social security so this whole idea that you know it's a right in a free capital is nonsense it's a privilege to have access to all that stuff they eat that all of us pay for with our tax dollars next if we made such stupid laws but they must pay what some outsider decides is a living wage we're going to teddy roosevelt the moment they will simply move their
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physical business overseas well yeah unless you have a rational trade policy from the george washington and ministration until the reagan revolution and certainly with nafta calf to shaft to. kind of thing there are three a lot of ways to say you know i really don't think it's going to be in your best interest to move your manufacturing over to india we're pretty much the only country these days the only developed country that doesn't either use some form of terror for some form of a vat tax which can be reversible on the way out and double up along the way in as a functional tariff to protect the marketplace. so you know again here we've got a comment or you know who just doesn't understand basic econ here's another one this is vague just wondering what that living wage would be why not fifty dollars truly prices would rise to offset most real gains and many especially the
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unemployed which is suffer from the runaway inflation created good business is a right but good fellow it is called freedom actually tiredly wong so. again just wondering what that living wage would be fifty dollars well how about using teddy roosevelt's definition he came up with a with a living wage he in fact invented the phrase back in i think around one thousand nine hundred five and he said it would have these pieces number one who would be enough and after curly all of them show normal standard of living just as i can imitate teddy roosevelt's voice you can actually find it on the internet you can hear it thomas edison made the recording so there was enough to live on reasonable life a standard high enough to make more possible in the region of the steal food to provide for education and recreation in other words you can educate yourself you can take a vacation every year to provide to care for him a church members of the family i'm quoting teddy roosevelt here in other words you
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can raise your children to maintain the family during periods of sickness in other words you can pay for your health care and to permit a reasonable saving for old age. end of quote from teddy roosevelt this is been pretty much the standard of a living wage in the united states broadly agree upon by most people at least anybody serious you know is serious about it. for over one hundred years i mean over on hundred years so no we're not just going to say fifty dollars you know it sounds like fun now let's look at what it actually would be as teddy roosevelt pointed out of the very place place the country but there has to be some bottom line there's a truly prices would rise to offset most real gains in presumably gains in in salary no actually prices won't rise what happens is that c.e.o. pay will go down or dividends or profits will go down for most of the history of this country what you saw was c.e.o.'s making thirty times what their employees are
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making now they're making two hundred three hundred four hundred times what their employees are making if they paid a decent wage they would go back to making thirty times what their employees mean c'mon this is not rocket science just look at the history of our nation you say especially the unemployed would suffer from the runaway inflation people don't understand what causes inflation inflation is not caused by wages going up unless there's a genuine shortage of labor because inflation is caused by shortages of things so serious shortages of things. well there was the german hyperinflation there was a shortage actually of the pitch marks as a bit of a treaty of versailles or whether the best example to most americans now is back in the one nine hundred seventy s. we had this spike in inflation and it was because of the arab oil embargo it raised that goes through everything oil runs everything in the united states and then you say you know economic activity between people is a right it's called freedom well yeah if you don't want to use the courts if you
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don't want to learn some basic economics i know it's easy to dismiss this kind of information is just your usual internet trolling but i guarantee you that if you walk into any bar in any city in the u.s. and start talking about a living wage you're in the same kind of criticisms whether it's because people have been brainwashed by fox or called news or because they don't know any better the fact of the matter is that tragically most americans don't understand basic economics and the media knows this which is why on thursday when fast food workers in hundreds of cities across the country walk off their jobs to demand a living wage. the media's going to be churning out hours and hours of anti worker propaganda mark my words filled with the same sort of misinformation and rhetoric that was just used by these common commentators on the alternate article that i published last week that rhetoric is nonsense thursday strikes however are far from nonsense they are the real deal the logical logical conclusion of thirty plus years of failed reaganomics failed economic policies that are rapidly turning our country
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into a third world banana republic for more on that i'm joined now from milwaukee by mary l. crowley wisconsin with workers will be striking this thursday ariel welcome. great thanks for joining us. let's start off with you what's your plan for thursday. there is a we're going to beyond early because we've got some stuff going on and some guys are going off. we're going to the street that we shut down last time we went on strike we're going to go to the windies there start up some ruckus we're going to be out you know trying to get is living wage and my apologies if i mispronounced your name is mario mario ok great thank you. you've been a mcdonald's employee for six years what made you want to get involved in labor. when i was approached by my organizer everything you just may think i've been working for six years absolutely nothing to show for but where in dedication you
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know i go into work every day one hundred percent and all i get is a page that i can barely get to the next week. and i think teddy roosevelt was right people a lot of. the work they do. your thoughts on what a living wage should be in your area. around eleven twelve when we look at. we are looking for fifteen we're asking fifteen in a unit. that's good and the union that's that is spectacular what do you have to say to those people who say that forcing big profitable companies to pay a living wage is somehow wrong. i feel like it's complete nonsense i mean we've worked so hard. we need all the. help these companies thrive. we are the people that are making all these profits
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for these people in some people who like we're not liable to those profits but if we're not there who's there to do it who's there to make things happen who's there to make sure that the customer is satisfied with the service so for them to say oh well they don't believe that we deserve it we do we go to everybody that i know goes to work and work hard for us in everything that they can at the job because it's all they know it's all they can do so that's what we do you know so it's like it's nonsense to me because it's like. five point five billion after you've paid us all off. just you just froze up but perfectly said there was just the right moment thanks so much for memories that are. coming up it's twenty third teen do you know where your clothes were made the global textile industries are rife with abuse and exploitation reports of sexual assault are more common than you might think so how can we rethink our trade policies to protect workers at home and abroad answer
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after the break. i've got a quote for you. it's pretty tough to. say where it's about story. let's get this guy like you would smear about guns instead of working for the people most issues in the mainstream media were pretty german bridegrooms digital. companies. they did rather it was. the place. it was a. very hard to make. once again so long. live happy ever had sex with her thick hair no please.
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it is true news april's disaster at the rana plaza factory complex in bangladesh brought to the forefront of public conversation one of the stark realities of the global economy things that westerners take for granted like t. shirts are often made by people in the developing world who work in dangerous conditions for exploitative wages and what's more those can dangerous conditions can lead to suffering and death more than a thousand people were killed in that run applies a factory collapse that knowledge in mind more and more people in the so-called developed world are taking a closer look at where their clothes come from mother jones reporter dana. recently visited the southern indian state of time they'll do were she learned some shocking
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facts about the region's textile industry and now joins us in the studio welcome to the show thanks for having me thanks for being with us so you were literally curious about where your clothes are made yeah i work in washington d.c. and every day i walk past forever twenty one a nation and then where you see you know i can buy a dress there for five dollars ten dollars and i figured as a reporter you know that cost has to be coming from somewhere so everything sort of lined up and i had this opportunity to go to india and kind of poke around and you know see where exactly my clothes are coming from so i'm well i sort of stumbled upon what is called the soon. suman value is a word in tom all that means happily married woman sounds really positive. but actually what it started to imply is that girls in india have to earn money for a dowry a lot of money. and they end up getting involved in the debt bondage scheme at
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textile factories making clothes for u.s. companies in order to earn money to get married which sort of blew my mind a little bit of the same age as me if younger and what kind of conditions are they working under and what happened when you showed up you described in your article the. military fortress rather than a factory right well i started by interviewing girls in their home villages after they'd come back from working in the factories and what they told me was just it was terrible i mean they're working i spoke to some girls who work twenty hours a day were woken up in the middle of the night to work who weren't paid what they were promised sexual harassment sexual assault was rampant among the girls that i spoke with. and then i had the idea to actually try to visit one of the factories where i knew that some of these conditions might have been going on this is something that people do in china if you want to go so you go to the gates of the factory you asked for a tour so i did that in a city called coin but india and when i got there i asked for
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a tour and they said no so you know we were on the public road across from the factory taking some photographs and all of a sudden over two dozen men came running out of the gates the factory surrounded my car started threatening me threatening us to delete the photos said what are you doing here we sell clothing to u.s. companies. you're not allowed to take photos here. and it wasn't until i managed to convince them that i was a student if because i looked. and i didn't see any of the pictures in your article so you didn't take them away we know they did it the photos are in the piece in the print edition of the president yes i did. they did let us leave after we left and people straight to our hotel to look for us they called the police to throw us in jail the police recommended that our photographer flee the city immediately because they thought that she was going to get in trouble and get beat up. you know so it's kind of interesting experience.
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and you're a hell of a reporter dana thank you so much for being with us tonight thanks for having me great work great. story of the soon dolly girls of india is one that western audiences need to hear if they want to understand how our global economy really works at the same time though the plight of factory workers in india is only one part of a much larger story over the past few decades the united states is abandoning the trade policies that worked from the time of george washington until essentially the reagan administration in the process the u.s. has opened up the global economy to predatory companies eager to exploit cheap labor to make a quick buck for more on this i'm joined now by lori wallach director of public citizen's global trade watch lori welcome back it's great having you here. laurie can you hear me. i can hear you know oh now i can hear you now i can hear you ok so you just heard my conversation with dana from mother jones how do we get to a situation where fifteen year old girls in india are making t.
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shirts for twenty something americans. we basically have so that the trade policy that creates actual incentives to outsource investment and jobs to lower wage countries and then we have no conditions about what standards have to be met by the companies producing offshore but we allow the products to come back into the u.s. with no conditions so it's both promoting the offshoring and we do that with investor rules that take away most of the risks that used to be linked to going to a developing country we guarantee the investment if it leaves we have special protections and then we don't set. the floor of labor standards so anything can come back in why has this happened it's a political choice it's a matter of power this is not an act of god for instance all the countries that are part of the world trade organization where those rules i've described are basically
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set up are also members of the international labor organization the difference is the rules are strongly enforced and the ilo rules the human rules are not and the rules political decision trump the iowa standards if i for instance were writing the rules i would have the ilo standards as if lower of decency any company that wanted to put it good into international trade would have to meet those basic terms and i would also have a global living wage it would be a different amount in different countries based on what it would take as you described to live a decent life so it wouldn't be the same as the us minimum wage but you wouldn't have sweat labor as the condition that basically is a race to the bottom that no worker benefits from running so it is there and i you know i i recall actually when nancy pelosi was speaker of the house she passed out of the house of representatives correct me if i'm wrong
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a piece of legislation that would have gone a long way toward doing away with the incentives that companies have for dismantling american factories moving manufacturing overseas the republicans filibuster that the son of my recollection is correct is this a partisan issue or is this a bipartisan issue and is there anybody seriously working on this outside of the you know sure brown and bernie sanders i mean there are a few people who are fairly outspoken about jan schakowsky about trade but. what's what's the situation. where the wonderful news is just last month one hundred fifty one house democrats in one letter thirty republicans and another. fifteen democrats now they're all basically sent the boss to signal they announce to president obama in the face of his trying to rush to finish the trans-pacific partnership the t p p which you can think of as sort of nafta on steroids with the asia pacific region in the face of that agreement being raj president obama knowing there are
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a lot of outrageous things in t.p. pay the investor off shoring and scientists but also abandoned by america all kinds of limitations on financial regulation etc those members of congress are not going to just roll over so president obama has asked what's called fast track trade authority it would take away congress's constitutional control over trade the founders very wisely put in there as a check and balance and all of those members of congress one hundred ninety in total said. not so fast and they wrote to the president very unusual democrats and republicans alike and they said they weren't going to give away their constitutional authority so what does that mean practically that is the beginning of how congress gets a steering wheel on an emergency brake on this run to the bottom trade policy and it's not a partisan issue it's a corporatist issue versus everyone else so there are democrats and there are republicans who are in the corporatist part of each of their parties and then there
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are democrats and there republicans who are in the people part of their parties and the question is what we can do to organize to make sure that the people in this side are the majority plus these guys feel enough accountability of what could happen to them if they screw us with another bad trade agreement that we actually have a majority well you know doing a. radio talk radio show three hours a day five days a week. just astounded by how overwhelmingly outraged americans are the g.d.p. is even being negotiated in secret much less that it's going down the road. do you think that it's dead or do you thing. these guys have you know a whole lot of power and a bunch of tricks of course leave that we have and we are no t.p. is not dead fast track trade authority the power grab is something congress is saying not so fast but c.p.p. they mean the story is that from the seventh until the tenth of december i.e.
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now the u.s. intends to bring all of the twelve countries together in singapore and trying to whack out a deal that they can announce is done and the kind of deal that they want to make basically boils down to we'll give you away these many u.s. jobs you can have this band and buy america and in exchange you mole asia or vietnam you have to give up your financial stability rules for wall street and you over there you have to give up your access to medicine for poor people and you over there in australia and new zealand you need to let yourself be sued by corporate tribunals and we'll give you a little sugar a little dairy and that kind of trade off is what the us is trying to pull off in the singapore summit now whether or not it happens is a big question but if this is a worrisome thing for you certainly making sure your member of congress weighs in now would be the time because the goal is by the town to try and steamroller a deal on t p p. lori wallach it is always such a pleasure thanks so much for joining us thank you.
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when the mirrors go. wrong there rob ford is no stranger to controversy over the last monkeys admitted to smoking crack jokes about his penchant for drunken stupors and pretty much all of his powers were poor to our city council but now the mirror and maybe if you see his weirdest scandal on sunday he was spotted and in atlanta falcons buffalo bills game in toronto eating chicken wings. there is a big football fans was the parents of the n.f.l. game isn't all that strange what is strange however is the ford seems to have stolen his seat from another friend right around four fifty five in the afternoon is issued and bills fan that mays tweeted out rob ford is sitting in my seat at the bills game he stole my seat i don't want to go i'm by myself i don't make it all
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right i mean i'd pick anyone else all of them are wrong. therefore did eventually give up the sea after mays talked to him but questions remain about this curious incident therefore didn't know that it was still in someone else's seat and if so would he have stayed there if mays had remained silent like anything involving rob ford there are no easy answers one thing is clear though if this whole politics thing doesn't an out for the mayor he could definitely find a spot on the bills defensive line i mean check out his accolades. why is that a. yes. going on in that meeting was not only not. coming up we know that a gun in the hand of a child can have deadly consequences but his recent events have shown us a toilet gun can be just as bad as the time we made toys with like boys and not
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like deadly weapons. i would rather 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.e. question lol. i know c.n.n. the amazon b c fox 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 in for the truth and might
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think. it's because one full attention and the mainstream media work side by side with you is actually on here. and our teen years we have a different right. ok because the news of the world just is not this funny i'm not laughing dammit i'm not god. if. you guys stick to the jokes well handled it makes sense. that.
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i suspect. we're going to go did you know the price is the only industry specifically mentioned in the constitution so far that's because a free and open press is critical to our democracy which i call books. will. never go on i'm sorry and on this show we reveal the picture of what's actually going on will we go beyond identifying a problem trying to rational debate a real discussion critical issues facing our family member ready to join the movement then welcome to the big city. more to add to the big picture i'm tom harben coming up in this half hour back in october police in california shot and killed a thirteen.
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