sets of jokes will handle them except that i've got a. plastic . over the place to do its job did you know the price is the only industry specifically mention in the constitution which says that's because a free and open press is critical to our democracy schreck office. will. never go on 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 a real discussion critical issues facing america are you ready to join the movement then welcome to the big city. lawn charmin a washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture. today thousands of people

gathered in pretoria south africa to pay their final respects to nelson mandela as his body laid in state in the in that nation's capital but mandela may never have been such an important figure in south africa if alec american legislative exchange council had achieved its goals back in the one nine hundred eighty more on that straight ahead. plus late yesterday congressman paul ryan and senator patty murray announced a budget deal that would avoid another government shutdown but not everyone is happy about it so what does john boehner have to say to conservative organizations that are bashing the budget and are his criticisms of balancing. beauty knows this today marks the first of three days the nelson mandela's body will lie in state for toria capital of south africa thousands of flooded pretoria

to pay their last respects to a man who united a nation by bringing his beloved country out of its brutal apartheid regime but have some groups had their. way the south african apartheid regime was still be in power today and one of those groups is alec yes the same corporate lobbying juggernaut that's brought us standard ground shoot first and voter suppression idea laws played an active role in encouraging more investments in american companies operating in south africa during the one nine hundred eighty s. according to new documents uncovered by people for the american way and the center for media and democracy as the global community began to increase pressure on the apartheid regime there was a huge push for people neutral funds and pension funds to sell their stocks in companies that were operating in south africa in hopes that less investment in business that did businesses that a business there would lead to a regime change and bring an end to apartheid but according to the newly discovered documents alec led a massive campaign using state and federal policy papers monthly newsletter

so-called fact finding missions and panel discussions led by lobbyists on the payroll of the south african apartheid regime all done to encourage more investments in south africa no less joining me now to enlighten us about alex attempts to prolong the south african apartheid regime is calvin sloan legislative representative for people with the american way cal would welcome. thanks for joining us how did you uncover these documents it was a it was a it's been a long long time in the making about six months we are working with center for media democracy we went through the library of congress to the president reagan presidential library in simi valley to the berkeley bancroft library in berkeley california and filed open records requests to find the original documents of these were alex newsletters their memos as well as the reagan administration's memos to alec and within the administration in their discussions so these were original

source documents and it was it was pretty interesting to look at yeah i can imagine that we're talking about the american legislative exchange council here alec how did their involvement with the parts. and south africa get started. we don't know exactly how it got started but we do know that by the early one nine hundred eighty s. they were heavily prioritising it we can imagine though given what alec represents now what their modus operandi is in general that its inception was derived from the corporate agenda alec responds to the corporations that fund it and corporations at the time of apartheid had substantial holdings in south africa they had assets on the line that were very high yielding many would argue because of the apartheid itself that engendered very low labor costs and the divestment movement directly threaten the bottom lines of those investments so alec starting early one nine hundred eighty s. and well into the one nine hundred eighty s. mobilized their networks against it so this was all about at the end of the day

apartheid eighty percent of the population south africa not being able to vote and having all these restrictions on their behavior and basically it was all about cheap labor you know i think it wasn't it was definitely related to south african investment and the profit margins that were on the line in south africa but what was also reflected in the alec literature was that this was more expansive and that the idea that social investing could take off in america was a very threatening concept to the corporations and to the corporate world in general this concept that social investment and economics would be in the same arena was frankly terrifying and they they saw that coming and they realized they needed to stand against south africa or the where they draw drew the line if people wanted to absolutely use their money for socially responsible investing. this was

where they were that's yeah you know and and it wasn't just with didn't just end with the south african apartheid divestment movement. in one thousand nine hundred one nelson mandela was free he took a trip to america and visited visited berkeley and think the american people on behalf of their efforts in supporting the divestment movement and at that point you know history really show that the case was closed divestment works social investing work and eight years later in one thousand nine hundred eighty alec had the audacity to adopt a resolution against principled investing they did the resolution and said something around the order of whereas currently the tobacco and alcohol industries are are under the public target and in the future fossil fuel industries the nuclear industry might come under the scope of social investments actually in some way forecasting the future of the current climate change divestment movement so in

no way is that they learned a lesson that if anything they double down to support their corporate funded agenda sure well i mean that's that's their job so you would expect that ronald reagan in his diaries. noted that he believed that. the disinvestment movement was actually hurting the people at the bottom in south africa. that belief was fairly widespread and there was some actually probably some truth to it as well probably certainly some truth to that. was alec responsible for reagan taking the position that he took i don't think we can see that there was direct responsibility but we can certainly say that alec influenced the reagan administration before going into that i'd like to take a step back and address the issue of whether divestment would hurt black south africans that. had a certain bit of truth to it but really denied the overall truth of the fact that apartheid. killed black south africans in the words of one south african who was

interviewed whereas divestment only temporarily provided. unemployment so in the in the overall scheme of things certainly divestment was absolutely beneficial and the polling that showed that black south africans were not that were in opposition to the best of strategies alec relied only on one poll done by a white professor at an all white university so that certainly was a very specious argument and history show that it really was not accurate remarkable in terms though of the reagan ministration i have to say that yes that the alec was directly affecting the reagan destruction policy the secretary of commerce the u.s. trade representative the department of state all issued positions against divestment after being provided allocute of the literature on the issue remarkable thank you for being with us and thanks for having me.

it's wednesday you ready to rumble join me for tonight's long liberal rubble are cameron the seward program manager of the heritage foundation and andrew closter legal fellow with the heritage foundation thank you both to join us. and all heritage this is going to treat yeah ok the american heritage speaking of dictionary defined fascism as quote a system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right typically through the merging of state and business leaderships together with religion and nationalism that was the the entire definition or one of several and in a piece in the new york times in one hundred forty four henry wallace then the sitting vice president united states said that quote the really dangerous american fascists are not those who are hooked up directly or indirectly with the axis with you know with what the f.b.i. has its finger on those the american fascist would prefer not to use violence is about that is to poison the channels of public information with

a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to do seem. the public into given the fascist in his group for money and more power so here we have alec the american legislative exchange council which is merging government and business interests this is the american heritage dictionary definition of fascism there are literally sitting in an equal number of lobbyists and largely republican lawmakers together in a room and coming up with good laws and then they're out there promoting the in the public sphere as whatever they are oh you don't need to know about g m o's it's going to cost or if we have to label it whatever it may be this isn't alec a prime example of fascism. either if you know i personally don't think so i first of all i'd say that fascism is a very difficult thing to define and i would also say that. well mostly one is aligned quite clear about anyone one muslim claims to have invented the word and

what he dissolved parliament and replaced it with the coming. months he replaced every elected representative in congress with the representative of the largest corporation in that congressional district i mean how can that be construed in any other way than the merger of corporate state interest and let me start at the beginning corporate interests and state interests are not always easily distinguishable i mean the president said you know you did build that i think that's to some extent correct the government of america exist to protect fundamental liberties one of them is is the right to petition your government is the right to redress and the right but there's no right to do business in the constitution. i think it perhaps precedes the constitution i think it's a pretty continental the bill the right of the government to regulate it there's a right to association there's a right to there are rights to property in the constitution business itself is not named in the constitution as such but i think that just gets to the point that it's a really difficult thing to. just jump in with you know it's easy to to single out

the concern i don't know anybody else is doing both there's there's plenty of groups on the left there's groups funded by the progressive state network funded by george soros that does. is that proposes model legislation with a do as they put it on an open list serv and say here's what we think they don't say vote for this don't vote for this they say here's what we think here's what we think about this issue this is a model was that he was drawn up on the no and in fact alice the left you know sister to alec. alec does the same thing as well so this is a total misnomer that there's only conservative groups or alec is the only one well alex alex requires their members to actually swear allegiance to them just like. the oath was released last week in these papers and this is a note to conservatism or is an overdose of the actual word of alan to al loyalty to al gore you guys don't know where you take sort of ask questions about people's loyalties but i think the reality is if you have to look at individual proposals you have to look at whether they're good proposals whether they come from alec or

ellis or being here to form log in to your heritage board or anybody it's an honor off a group ok first of all and i go and see if you're a p r o p h e t you can ok more of today's long low rumble after the break. wealthy british style. sometimes. market why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy when mike stronger the no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to conjure reports. for the new a little more than

a lot of these policies i think you. a pleasure to have you with us here on our team today i'm rory sushi.

rolls in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want. well go back there's a nice long liberal with a cameron sword and andrew kloster let's get back to it at a press conference today speaker of the house john boehner went after conservative groups that are already were already opposing the just announced budget deal before it was even announced when asked about the group spinners this. group so you know

opposed to before they ever saw if. you were there if they're using our members in there as you see here you can people. this is. so what i'm curious your guys you guys take on well first of all they saw the outline the proposal that was put out an official kind of executive summary of the bill and that's what these groups including heritage were going off of both left and right judging of what was going to come of this so-called bargain the so-called deal so beaners pushback here is. this purely political is it not he wants to get this legislation through clearly. and i'll tell you why because he wants comprehensive immigration reform that's what he's clear in the path for in the new year. is this is this is this is this is not a group is the ball not to have you know a government shutdown and all these are the many legislations many people will see

this as speaker boehner swansong as as he as he you know the rumor is he won't be around for another term or he's not going to round you'll step down rather is easier. he's going to push to. go i don't know i don't know but i certainly this is this is to clear the path in the new year you know especially during you know you have a lot of primaries coming up in a lot of a lot of midterm elections in twenty fourteen and are your thoughts honestly the. infighting here is not anything that i. it happens all the time with anybody a deal there are people that like it people that don't like it i would personally hope that we went back to some sort of whatever proposal some sort of regular order and didn't have these stopgaps i hate the c.r. as i do you think that this is better than something that's not as good or not. when i get as in there that is how i would describe it it's better than so you know it's better than some is terrible but it's still bad well i would say it's bad too

but for different reasons you know i mean we're i'm sure plead opposite should act as though it was a better than something is a better than doing nothing is that ok which throws us into into sequester you know it's like are we going to be bludgeoned to cut or are we going to be surgically cut what we wind not why not take this opportunity then as as the two budget chairman in the house in the senate why not take this opportunity and direct the cuts in the sequester why not use that's what i did no they didn't they did away with the sequester caps they blew through that half well they have the same symbols to. the blue so this is a lot of discussion from day one the headlines of the discussion we're not even talking about keeping sequester we're talking about how to get above sequester and how to do it in a way we can so that our constituents and not say that their taxes will raise are going to say user fees and spend a lot of our day or when you go on an airplane that's going to solve all the problems of the world. ok scientists have discovered that

new age seven and nine bird flu this is like one with some incredible what forty percent mortality rate or something in china that it has developed on its own apparently resistance to tamiflu which is the only anti-viral agent that stops the flu and. this is spooky stuff. doesn't this once again remind us that there's two reasons to have a good national health care system the first is so that if any of us individually gets sick we can get that remediated you know you break your arm and get a fix on that without going broke but the other and arguably a more important one from from a national point of view from the national security point of view from a quality of life point of view i would think even from you know the koch brothers point of view from the from a billionaire's point of view is that the guy next to you who's coughing is not coughing up to work ulos or a deadly bird flu that when somebody gets sick they have mediately go to their physician knowing that it's not going to break the bank so that dangerous illnesses

can get caught doesn't this demonstrate the need for a national health care system sort of like the one that the heritage foundation proposed and that president obama's put in place well i would say more importantly than all of that is that we have a robust innovative pharmaceutical infrastructure and pharmaceutical industry in this country is now back to forty million people can't get access to this for a. while no i think right now honestly i was joking with andrew on the way over here i think you know if we go to single payer health care which is what we're talking about here if we go to single payer we just say in a national health care system i see you know that everybody is covered that everybody's in and that's the goal of obamacare is not single payer at all i mean you know i'm in favor of civil obamacare is not a single payer. single payer i mean we behave you read it said that much in your stymying by i think the rest of the health care industry i think about twenty sixteen when you're a mom goes single payer under the provision in obamacare that allows that that

we're going to see the candidates and i guarantee you won't see any pharmaceutical companies relocating to vermont to with their innovative but the major makers in the circle companies are not united states right now anyway many of them are you have merck is a german company you've got by there is a german company you know merck is a swiss company the i mean you know what i call final act so smith kline has has their major headquarters now in london they all have research arm of the united states they all file patents in the united states they all take advantage of our government to get on with their research you know are we paying three hundred baht in system which i think is a very important to developing these techniques what does any of that have to do with our not our having or not having a national health care system i mean isn't this a reminder isn't this this flu a reminder that we really need to be sure that everybody the united states one way or another has health insurance having more has access to health care you know well i personally think that the folks that need health care should be able to have health care but i also think that sort of the way that diseases spread is such that

not everybody always needs to be inoculated not everyone needs to be quarantined and not everyone necessarily needs to be covered even if there are certain people are. out over here and are not going to infect other people and i mean if you're looking at it from an epidemiological standpoint no i don't think this necessitates a national health care system and i also think that if you have a national healthcare system it may help over here but it may also hurt over here if you miss something you missed something big you missed it on a national scale so you can also sort of you also to know if it's a command control you know old soviet style health care system perhaps but i you know that's not what we have that's not what anybody's talking about i mean there's i mean look tom the the bottom line here is you're arguing for obamacare and i'm saying no you're going for any well i mean anyway you. so coverage and right in the community are ways to do you know. who cares right there's ways to have universal health care coverage that's not our current system that's not the system that's

being implemented now under obamacare so how do we get to universal coverage from where we were three years ago without obamacare simple there's tons of simple fixes that would also reduce the cost of health care as well because remember that is what then candidate obama you can buy you buy insurance across state lines you equal tax treatment so someone over here making when somebody is making fourteen thousand dollars a year and can barely buy food is going to now buy a policy that because of state by state should insurance commissioners over eight hundred bucks is going to drop down to six hundred dollars because we're going to go to the lowest common denominator and just like we do credit cards some folks i don't need health care i was off healthcare for a while as well and and you to be on a car accident and yet thank goodness if i had i mean on the one hand i could have been irresponsible and i could have said gosh i just hope that someone will pay for this for me and just go to the emergency room and put it on the taxpayer or i could

have said i'm going to live with this it was a it was a calculated risk i took that kind of risk behavior is what drives the market at the rest of your life i mean this crazy not to have health insurance as some people i think should be able to make their own choices about their own life decisions particularly in this arena i think it's very important for our spillover costs but that doesn't necessarily necessitate it let's let's talk about the auto bailout the treasury department just sold their last shares in general motors and so you know we no longer own g.m. and or even any little piece of it and g.m. is doing really really well and this. was called a bailout but now that we've sold all the stock i think it's obvious that actually it was a bridge loan but whatever you want to call it this bailout saved two point six million jobs just in two thousand and nine increase personal income were. and two hundred eighty four billion between two thousand and two thousand and ten and these are pretty nonpartizan numbers. this that two hundred eighty four billion in personal income is all taxable personal income that wouldn't have occurred so we're

not even counting that in you know the tax revenues in against the you know that this is a net net positive doesn't the and you've probably seen the ads that edgy is running on t.v. the merry christmas ads with the president comes out and says you know we paid back all the money and we fact the government made a profit and we're still here and the fifty one thousand people a day i do wish you very christmas or whatever it was that fact and. doesn't don't both of those be bailouts arguably as much as i. said bailing out banks don't they demonstrate that when capitalism fails there are appropriate times for the government to intervene. the worst first of all i would say i'm not sure those numbers are nonpartisan i thought that that was an auto lobby group research studies center for automotive research ok so number one they may be inflating the numbers of that they can get bailouts down the line so damn right you know that well i think look first of all this this did cost there was a cost of this right it cost the taxpayer

a couple tens of billions of dollars number one that number two. no the taxpayer lost on this the taxpayer was a net loss of i think thirty billion dollars on this number to it that does not include that's not offset by the tax revenues that were collected from people who kept their jobs and that amounted to thirty billion dollars wouldn't surprise me six million times that have to be pretty high taxes i guess it would. take it over a decade but on the other hand this was a dangerous precedent that was set via the bankruptcy code and how this was dealt with so usually they was given much favorable treatment the government could come out in the black in the positive on this but yet they lost money on it because they gave favorable treatment to the u.a.w. and kind of put aside normal bankruptcy procedures and in procedures that have been usual you gave us you know gave up a lot to i mean they said well we're going new hires of fourteen dollars an hour and one in new hires but right but when you do when you go through bankruptcy

generally you bring your salaries down to the market rates unionized workers you know the unionized workers keep their jobs and they bring down to market rate just like they are all the airlines the airlines did as well and they did not do they busted their it's in the they brought their salaries down to market rates that's part of the bankruptcy code and change a bankruptcy code if you don't lobby out of change well that's rather than rather than a debate. in bankruptcy code i'm just. during the great depression government came the employer of last resort in this case government became the lender of last resort it seems like that's an appropriate role for government these were all great excess policies that were imported by the f.d.r. administration and how it was. so raw you know maybe maybe after talk about corporate it maybe yeah after the. interesting point actually. cameron thank you for being with us and much appreciate coming up the mainstream media is already praising tuesday's budget deal as an example of what card rules can do when

lawmakers. are watching. was the field really all that great cancer after the. little. little. little.

crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want. i've got a quote for you. it's pretty tough. if they were it's about story. let's give this guy like me or that guy stead of working for the people both issues the major media are working for each other right on stage and. they did run it well. we're. big i think. everybody go to do is go did you know the price is the only industry specifically mention in the constitution which says that's because a free and open press is critical to our democracy shrek helpless. little.

bit like you know i'm tom morton and on this show we reveal the picture of what's actually going on we go beyond identifying a problem to try to fix rational debate a real discussion critical issues facing our family member ready to join the movement then welcome to the big. body bag big picture tom our been here with you coming up in this half hour senate and house negotiators have reached a deal to fund the government for the next two years that offers billions in sequester relief that raises no new taxes so why should progressive see the budget deal more on that in just a mall and republicans are always talking about giving the american people back their tax money it turns out they don't actually care about making good on their own talking points when it doesn't serve their political purposes explains guys to .