my. and i'm actually sick for a politician writing the laws and regulations to tax corporate bankers. there is just too much rat is a society. that. i. think. everybody. did you know the price is the only industry specifically mention in the constitution. that's because a free and open press is critical to our democracy correct help looks. like you know i'm sorry and on this show we reveal the picture of what's actually going on we go beyond identifying the truth rational debate a real discussion critical issues facing america are you ready to join the movement then welcome they'd.

go on tom hartman in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture. a federal judge has ruled that the n.s.a.'s bulk metadata collection program is probably unconstitutional so unconstitutional in fact that it is almost orwellian yes the judges will so has edward snowden been redeemed and talk about that and more in tonight's big picture politics and elizabeth warren has revitalized the left wing of the democratic party so what can progressives do to keep up that momentum is tim carpenter national director of the progressive democrats of america in tonight's special conversations with great minds. you need to know this republicans don't give a damn about working class americans but they want them to think that they do

during an appearance on an assembly sees morning joe that a risk on wisconsin republican congressman sean duffy told host and republican joe scarborough the republicans need to change their messaging so they can connect to people who are trying to. up the economic ladder. we have to actually take a message to where people are out we have moms that can pay the utility bill you can pay the mortgage so does our conservative ideology and philosophy actually help lift them out of the place through today and move them up the economic ladder we don't do a good job of presenting that message and we have to change how we're doing it this is the core of the problem that republicans face there is nothing in the republican party's platform that actually helps people move up the economic ladder while a good party platform only helps you when you're already rich so messaging doesn't mean a lot when your policies are designed to screw working americans and enrichment billionaires are part of the republican party's philosophy really just boils down to basic ideas

tax cuts for the rich and social safety net cuts for everyone else neither of these ideas do anything to help america's working class in fact they actively make it harder for working people to as congressman duffy put it move up the economic ladder let's start with taxes the idea that cutting taxes for rich people helps working class people has become a religion of sorts on the right ronald reagan and george w. bush put cutting taxes for rich people at the center of their agendas and to this day the conservative movement still asserts that cutting taxes for rich people is the only way to grow an economy and build a middle class those conservatives have even repeated this lie so often that a surprising number of everyday americans believe the same thing about tax breaks for rich people or republican tax breaks for rich people don't help everyday people they hurt that from the roosevelt administration up until the reagan administration the top marginal income tax rate the maximum amount paid by the wealthiest americans fluctuated between ninety and seventy percent the same period also saw

wages for everybody every day working people rise and rise and rise wages to building the strongest middle class in the history of the world why did this happen . you guessed it higher taxes on the rich it since. higher taxes on the rich stabilize an economy rich people don't spend the extra cash that they have like regular people do they by and large gamble with lower taxes on the rich and thus encourages wealthy people to throw their extra money into wall street this fuels bubbles kind of bubbles that crash the economy and cause prolonged recessions like the one we're in now that tax cuts have any trickle down effect at all it's this a screw working people by turning the economy into one big casino the republican policies don't just destabilize the economy republican policies actually make it harder for people to get by on their tax breaks on rich people inevitably send the economy into a tailspin that's because republicans also want to slash away at the social safety

net that protects average working people medicare medicaid social security food stamps unemployment insurance you name it never mind the fact the big government programs have as one recent study found help reduce the percentage of americans in poverty from twenty six percent nine hundred sixty seven to sixteen percent in two thousand and twelve no what's important republicans is that people suffer through poverty so they can reach some mythical level of self-reliance republicans believe that working people are motivated by the fears of starvation disease and homelessness so they want to threaten working people with those things but they also believe that what motivates rich people's very difficult motivates them is tax cuts and swiss bank accounts so we need to give them more of that stuff more money for the rich starvation were wages for working people pretty bizarre when you think of it but if you need any more proof of what republicans are all about consider this right now a week before christmas they try to cut billions of dollars in the food stamp program when most of the people who qualify for food stamps are working

a low wage jobs at places like wal-mart or mcdonald's and is that as if that wasn't enough republican members in congress are also trying to prevent the extension of federal unemployment benefits which are scheduled to expire three days after christmas. if congress doesn't renew them an estimated one point three million unemployed americans won't have a way to make ends meet starting in january i'm sure congressman sean duffy wishes that republicans could find a way to tell those one point three million americans and all their family members who are losing their benefits so that's a good thing but let's be honest. which other republicans can say to make their policies sound better and even if republicans did find a way to tax to make tax cuts for the rich and austerity for the rest of us sound like a family friendly platform for the working class they still have to explain how massive tax breaks for big oil companies and free trade deals and send jobs overseas help

anybody here in america other than the investor class it also still have to find a way to explain why refusing to raise the minimum wage helps people move up the economic ladder the list goes up until republicans actually adopt progressive policies and make them their own like dwight eisenhower did in the nineteen fifties there's nothing they can do to make themselves look like they're the party of everyday working people so instead of looking like hypocrites republicans are probably better off just telling people the truth they want goodies for the rich and pennies for everyone else. joining me for tonight's big picture politics panel are neil munro white house correspondent for the daily caller nate sweet progressive commentator and healing is a member of the national advisory council for the project twenty one black leadership council thank you all for joining us to have you all again so let's start out with this g.o.p. platform deal this or this this to me this. actually is not that it's the

budget deal and this budget is like this is still austerity we've been on austerity basically since one thousand nine hundred two progressively and it's only this is like a really really bad i mean you take this thing apart and first of all only thirty nine percent republicans and thirty six percent of democrats approve of it so it's like managing to p.o. everybody you know upset everybody on top of that the deal sets federal spending a one point zero one two trillion next year at one point zero one four trillion a year. after that you know these are these are all the kind of we'll want the details but the bottom line is that this budget is still putting the screws the average working not even slightly i mean if you think that even says let you go but it is cutting it doesn't ask you that it is flat and even declining somewhat over the years as what inflation increases which means that in real terms it is just spending a colossal amount of money and you are forgetting the money that the president is

shoveling to the fact that the need in new york if you want to the easy there's the president has nothing to do with oh golly gosh no nothing at all he would never dream of calling up and stopping them a huge amount of money is really not. in the car lyndon johnson taking the chairman of the fed and slamming him up against a wall more vendors and basically said no and we know we also are running a massive deficit that's called a stimulus on our bridges to our most dangerous deficit is not the budget deficit is the trade deficit and you guys never talk about that because that's all about. in terms of spending we're spending like drunken sailors like you i think this is the whole problem here the entire discussion about this budget deal that you're hearing on the mainstream media that we're talking about right now to discuss from having right now is about budget deficits there's no discussion of trade deficits there's no discussion of how to dance you know government spending to improve the lives of the working class is the entire framework and we've discussed fiscal policy for the past four years probably for the past thirty years and it's cutting

back cutting or cutting budget deficits that aren't really a problem to begin with and that's something the chicago school stuff here this is it's all about monetary policy it's all about budget deficits when in fact our budget deficits are not that different from that of most of the other developed countries and a and b. there's never been a demonstrated correlation between budget deficits in the economy working or not working it depends on the metric that you use and i mean right now if you compare the budget if you compare our national debt to g.d.p. we're to roughly well over no one hundred percent we were worse than that we were one hundred twenty seven percent of g.d.p. right you know i don't want to and what did i do they are going to go shop. that money but you talk about after mobilizing to defeat nazi isn't fascism versus now no i'll give you you know the bush fought two wars both longer than world war two and you know we we have and i mean just in vietnam we dropped more bombs in world war two god only knows what we've done in iraq and afghanistan but we've spent a fortune that all absolutely give you that but less you know put that in

perspective everybody always be what is the war they are by always talks about these unfunded wars but let's remember that the first time we ran a trillion dollar deficit was gone so that was that was under very the middle but worse than the trillion dollar debt and budget deficit on the reagan oh yeah three trillion dollars oh i have to bring up the reagan circus i have to look reagan tripled the national debt maybe came into office it was just over one trillion when he left it was just that you know i'm talking about but angle budget deficits the first time oh yeah i'm sorry every time we ran a budget deficit over a trillion dollars which is the last year of the bush administration they both shared one year of the president. but it was it was ambitious targets you can target is now that our deficit or this is spending roughly seven trillion dollars why present and ok so what what has it gotten us our economy we're still sold and why don't you go to whatever month the employer of last so you're saying well we've spent seven trillion and only problem is we didn't spend enough at some point you

got to say to me maybe you are some other method that we should try out let's roll back the reagan tax cuts let's go back to what was working in the fifty's the sixty's the seventy's cables in a bipartisan deal let's say roll back much of the. back of all that we're going to get let's also roll back all those profile rules that health professionals all those lawsuits rules all those diversions to academia all the money that flows make up across professions like the most rich that's a colossal amount of money to mere have those don't have anywhere near the economic impact they have an enormous. parity if we could build a skyscraper in six months now we can hardly get to. planning permission six months i'm afraid there is a massive tax in this economy to use the professionals trying to rip off industry and what is causing that it was built six go to a committee of new york skyscraper i was always a common cause how long do i take to build a boulder dam a year two years ago how long it takes us to build a replacement for the twin towers we're still not even finished there's a massive tax be spent on professional cats but as just and that's just for our

good purposes the money is not going all to five cats in new york it's going to other people it's going a lot of money goes to progresses and universities who sit around. and i'm not saying rich but our education warrants and i'm sorry but picture politics pale. old. technology innovation all these developments 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. in a lot of these policies i think you. should have you with us here today i'm sure.

i'll go back with you for tonight's big picture politics panel neil munro nate sweet and he knew some let's get back to it. that's the whole question. ok a federal judge has ruled that the national security agency's bulk metadata collection program the one revealed by edward snowden back in june is probably unconstitutional this record judge richard leon said in a ruling released monday that the n.s.a. is dragnet surveillance likely violates the fourth amendment ban on unreasonable search and seizure he said that he could not imagine a more indiscriminate arbitrary invasion and the systemic and high tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes aquarian analyze it without judicial approval. you know just to boil it down he actually used the word or so this is orwellian so we're here with us this is

a great judge reaches for frame you become makes a strange decision and he becomes famous magnificent piece of entrepreneur we're going to name time he's a real problem much of our life is moving online and if we were to keep records of it somebody has to keep records of it we do not want the i.r.s. or the democratic party doing it and so we want all these special corps of people with short hair and wear uniforms and live by their own code those are the people who want to collect the data those are the military the are the least corruptible of the various groups in town then it was the you know it's a i've gone overboard this time but he's hard to believe that this information is not useful in combat in crime and the occasional jihad the outburst of self-expression you know was interesting enough if you actually looked at this case with the ruling judge leon's ruling he specifically pointed out that the government could not present evidence any evidence that showed that paul meditated collection at all prevented any terrorist attacks you know that's one part here but what's also interesting is that we've been hearing from intelligence agencies we've been

hearing from keith alexander for months ever since ever snowden came out with these leaks that the the the courts that they had that there was enough overhead by the courts and the executive branch to prevent violations of the constitution liberties but it's very clear that once a court that it wasn't the foreign intelligence surveillance court looked at the n.s.a. strategies they saw immediately that they were constitutional liberties violations going on actual actual court i'm going to show you isn't there a bit of an issue here that has there is ok you've got one i've got one to my bigger issue is the seventy percent of what's going on you know the number of private corporations and i think we're seeing the same thing that we see with private prisons the private prison say hey we need more customers let's pass more drug laws or this past harsher sentencing guidelines if you got seventy percent of the n.s.a.'s budget is in the hands of private corporations like booz allen hamilton we're or. ed snowden used to work ghazala known by carlisle on by the bin laden family you've got seventy percent of the budget there they're putting money in the pockets of politicians saying hey give me some more business or bill here's

the thing about the top which is run by you know the so-called fourth state of the fourth branch of government which is a big bureaucracy so you do have government at the top we have runaway government here that's the reason why i like the n.s.a. story because it really brings to light brit really exposes this whole idea of a branch of government the brock received morass that can't be controlled by the by the executive branch president barack obama in my opinion probably doesn't approve probably does not see the value of all this wiretapping all the political damage that's being done by the n.s.a. but at the same time he can't control it because government's out of control we see it very clearly with the n.s.a. i know you want to focus on the proper contractors but those contractors still work at the behest of the tale that's waving the door yeah you know i don't see you know agencies like the like the e.p.a. which has not outsourced most of their functions those agencies are not running amok but we still do but at the same time we still need to be very careful if you

look at the laws of the been passed over the last five years of the dot frank look at. nothing to do with it most certainly does look how much power it gives to organizations within the with the rule making organizations within the within the exact not enough it has taken us back to where we are ninety nine those laws continue to give rulemaking take rulemaking away from the legislative branch and move it to the executive branch which is against that which is the end of the first two sentences here war you're the first where is your sense are those laws if it's a law it was made they exhaust all the legislative but these alongside by the rulemaking the doherty the legislative body and that's that is that's the way we're behind we're just fine but the general point is true north is private and government have an incentive to expand their mission and demand more budget for me the important thing is what is the mission why. it is the value of the work and it seems to me judging looking back in history the value of the n.s.a. in being able to break into other people's now work to collect the data is

extremely valuable the only question is how well is it controlled and if necessary sometimes it will be overdone law of human nature says a lower do it. but it works have been won and lost because agencies because the government don't do this properly is about the most critical task for the government we would know what's going on in cyberspace if we don't know do do it well someone else is going to do it what if i'd like good spies i want them you know i want the best i want the most competent spies but i don't want corporations to do this and i don't want them to be a lobby politicians for more business this is just you know we're sort of you know i said but this is what i think is i think the whole n.s.a. spying issue is a really good example of why we need to take money out of anybody who's afraid of corporations have an increasing amount of control to see what they're doing to violate the constitutional liberties need to understand that they are able to do this by essentially buying our politicians a method ricardo and from private government intelligence contractors or private

prisons according to a new report from the inspector general of the justice department america's overcrowded and expensive prison system is an increasingly critical threat saying while we do not prioritize the challenges we have done a fine and our annual top management challenges report we believe that one of the challenges highlighted this year represents an increasingly critical threat to the department's ability to fulfill its mission of challenges addressing the growing crisis in the federal prison system your prisons budget has increased by over two billion from four point three to six and that's a thirty percent increase since two thousand and one chicken feed this is precisely what's going on this is the justice department they're looking at ways to could to reduce the levels of imprisonment they're going to think of any lamebrained excuse they can this is an organization that the federal government wastes money by the billion every week and seventy they're complaining about to know this is a transparently obvious scheme to roll back imprisonment which has sharply reduced crime over the last decade and one easy have a quarter of the entire planet sweet these we prisoners live in the country yes we

live we are three percent the world's population we have a great leader i was planning this prison when we had a lower percentage of the planet's prisoners we had a. much higher crime rate that destroyed the democratic party of we also we also had lead in our era because lead was in our gasoline and the change in crime rate was the same in every european country as it was the united states and would lead to take it out of their gasoline fifteen or twenty years later the crime rate drop a fair point but it's prisons as well and by the way are not going to do it perhaps this is a good compromise i would say all of you thing is to level the illegal immigrants out of prison send them own that's about eleven percent of the budget surely we can agree on the real issue here is that we penalize people for we penalize people straggly for nonviolent crimes i think a plurality of people that work in the federal prison system right now or in jail for nonviolent drug crimes they didn't hurt anybody and worse they hurt themselves by smoking too many joints which is arguably not even that harmful to oneself if we really wanted to stop overcrowding prisons we probably should just legalize

marijuana and tax it like any other commodity and at the very least consider legalizing others i think we should i think we should do criminalize anything that you can grow but you know the libertarian and it's difficult to be know without a doubt i think we do need to look at decriminalization of certain drugs is no question and you know looking at it from a racial perspective the fact that you have minorities that have such a severe impact from drug laws versus no minorities in the fact that you know these prisons is so crowded with minorities hispanics blacks in particular and just that the disproportionate impact something by itself should cause calls us to take pause without doubt yet i think what's important is that the political parties seem to understand that this is going to become a wedge issue for my generation in the new generation i think you know a vast majority of americans now support the legalization of marijuana and the proportion climbs higher as you look at younger generations people of my generation i think actually. one of the reasons they're so attracted to the libertarian wing

of the republican party and i'm not happy about that is because they're the most vocal political segment in congress right now speaking about legalizing drugs and forming a criminal. grandest all brain and progressive and it's like and nobody ever asked the question you know back back in the day of george washington and thomas jefferson and all these guys or even the day of abraham lincoln or even the day of mccann lee and teddy roosevelt you could you could buy pot at your corner drugstore you could buy heroin at your corner drugstore goes and the country was not going back there were no bad but there was an obvious limit on this there was no well we're going to limit there was no welfare system so if you smoked the drugs welfare system was put into place by george you are going to be hungry the next week now large groups and large governments will offer to college to convert you or look at a drug problem look at alcohol there's many ways to solve the drug problem instead of just legalizing it improving the economy improving families but we don't want to do that that would be to the disadvantage of the democrats so you'd rather let all

of this if this is an area where progress is and the libertarians agree. i think the trans-pacific partnership increasingly is becoming one as well the t.t.p. and all the all these trade deals so that ross perot was the only guy on the stage was right back in one thousand nine hundred eighty whatever in one thousand nine hundred two in that election and here we have a record of white house officials getting up and running remains a top priority for president obama although it didn't work out so well singapore last week which is like that's a good thing. president obama says he thinks that. let's actually says inequality is the defining issue of our time and try to push nafta on steroids this makes no sense to define one of our time with i thought was inequality this was last week maybe this week yes the libertarians are freaked out by this conservatives are creeped out by this the only people like this stuff are big business big business the greatest national business are like this increasing the president for example

sat down for two hours today with fifteen top c.e.o.'s with the information technology industry progresses and business just like this so you won't fire. many enemies on the center of the american political system who disagree with you yes president obama is a moderate. republican arguably so i don't think. nixon nixon created the e.p.a. he actually be the first but in general a congress created obama live at home in nixon's republican party or ford's republican party arguably but i think the real issue here is that some progressives better working with big business of the clinton democrats at the top did republican strategies and i think it's right frustrating as a progress as one of the progressives on this panel know you'll see obama thirty seconds for you here. i don't i'm not comfortable with the team but in general trade deals i don't think trade deals or a bad idea we have to be more competitive at home and figure out how to educate our young so that we can be more competitive why don't we do wear

a limit you can in germany and china and taiwan and south korea are all doing which is have trade policy is that make it harder for people to import and where you are happy to have trade barriers break them family policies and education policies that are better than ours and yes i'm afraid the president is a progressive you know he may try to run away from them now but he's no letter o. nates we here in the us thanks chris. coming up senator elizabeth warren is leading the progressive push on capitol hill but all across america progressives are making their voices heard just how strong is the progressive purpose and what can be done to make the movement more powerful carpenter a co-founder and national director of the rosa democrats of america special conversations great. thank you.

i am the president and i think a society that case big corporation trying to convince to consume cars can do. to the bank trying to keep all that all about money and the national effect for a politician writing the laws and regulations to tax corporate bankers. there's just too much is a society. that. welcome

to the special thursday edition of conversations with great minds with tim carpenter tim is the cofounder and national director of progressive democrats with america he graduated from cal state university fullerton with bachelor's degrees and history and political science and was a key organizer for the presidential campaigns of reverend jesse jackson and governor jerry brown and served as deputy national campaign manager in the ku soonish for president campaign back in two thousand and four in two thousand and seven and was named progressive activist of the year by the nation magazine and recently here in washington d.c.

was honored by a number of members of congress including john conyers and. keith ellison and others. joins us from. amherst massachusetts for the it we've got a problem with the video feed the cameras way into tight on you so we're just going take your audio from the first ball walk of the program. so you think someone here if you will get the video but we're here yeah we got audio there you go thank you. and thank you might just tell whoever's there if they can just pull the camera back i think that's that's the problem. that's not the problem never mind. so our our guys are talking to each other so anyway let me start with you what first of all what got you into your radar and what got you what you got me to politics as. well i guess the honest answer would be. grade school.