it's a classic. over by the if you're. good 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 help us. a little. bit 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 real discussion critical issues facing america. ready to join the movement and welcome the. longtime arbonne of washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture. reporters grilled the

president about obamacare at his final press conference for the end the year today but is the affordable care act really doing as bad as the media says it is we'll talk about that and more and tonight's big picture rubble and meghan kelly ignited a stocking full of controversy earlier this year with her comments about santa claus but lost in all the hoopla over whether set as white or black is the real question why do we use a big man in a jolly red suit to celebrate a christian holiday. greetings you know this netflix is coming out with a new documentary chronicle in the life of mitt romney the trailer has just been released and if you haven't seen it yet it's worth watching it opens with a scene of romney coming to grips with the fact that he is losing in the two thousand and twelve presidential election check it out. i

can't believe you're going to lose. so what do you think you say in the concessions . by the way some of them are for the president i do. one thing that probably won't be in netflix's romney documentary however is any discussion of the ongoing a lawsuit that the former bain capital c.e.o. is involved in in southern california back in october los angeles businessman stephen haas sued mitt romney and nine others including goldman sachs over federal racketeering charges the charges relate back to the purchase of haas's former company eat toys buy another store k.b. toys it was owned by bain capital the details of the case are pretty complicated but they basically boiled out of this stephen haas is accusing willard mitt romney of being a gangster and to be perfectly honest has

a point when it was running bain capital during the eighty's and ninety's the company made its money by forcing companies into debt and then squeezing them blind for every last bit of cash they had in fancy terms this was called private equity in real reality it was glorified piracy glorified piracy that was made possible by who else ronald reagan when he stopped enforcing the sherman antitrust act and deregulated the financial industry in the early one nine hundred eighty s. leading to the explosion of mergers and acquisitions the carer characterized the early eighty's the m. and a mania former labor secretary robert reich described bain's pirate like approach to capitalism best in a recent video. let me explain the magic of private equity and eight simple steps step one pointers from private equity firms don't risk their own money they get other people to give them money to invest.

step two they use this money to buy of companies they think they can squeeze higher profits from for step three they squeeze out higher profits by cutting the company's costs and for most companies the biggest cost is payrolls so private equity managers typically reduce payrolls by firing workers and or cutting other workers' wages and their health and pension benefits step four they also use the company as collateral to borrow a pile of money from banks and since interest payments on this debt are deductible from company income. the company shows even bigger profits step five they get the company to issue a special dividend to repay the original investors so now everything else is gravy step six then they sell the company for much more than they bought it for because hey it's more profitable. to step seven they pocket to twenty percent of the gains

from the sale and finally step in eight because the tax law treats these earnings as capital gains they pay only a fifteen percent tax on them this is a sham because the justification for lower capital gains taxes investors supposedly risk their own money and yet private equity managers have been risked a dime worse yet you and i and other taxpayers subsidize all this when they fire workers who wish to pay more for unemployment benefits we do when they pump up company profits by deducting interest payments and all that debt quest to make up for the lost revenue we do when they treat their earnings as capital gains and pay only fifteen percent who wish to pay more taxes to make up the difference. we do and then later when some of these companies go bust under the weight of all bad debts and their pension obligations have to be taken over by the federal government who pays we do you see the magic of private equity is really

a magic trick and it's played on you and me. that's right while mitt romney is friends care rich laying people off and hustling the tax code you and me the taxpayers have to foot the bill is the time i put an end to this insanity let's rumble. joining me for a big picture rubble are jessie jane duff conservative commentator gunnery sergeant for the u.s. marine corps christy setser progressive strategist and president and c.e.o. of new heights communications and marc harrold libertarian commentator and attorney great to see you all if you thank you for being with us let's start out with this

private equity i see is really a small symptom of a much larger problem which is all the changes in the tax code and the basically the wool's of business that are part of reaganomics that we've been living under for thirty two years have moved us from thirty five percent of our economy being manufacturing eight percent to eleven somewhere between eight and eleven depending how you calculate it and some people say mcdonald's is manufacturing numbers and and moved the flyer economy finance. insurance and real estate from being less than ten percent to being over thirty percent of our economy so now instead of making things that actually create wealth we move money around and the people who have money around really efficiently skim a piece off the top and they become billionaires how does this how is this a good thing you know there's this legacy of reaganomics and shouldn't we be seriously considering a role in a bag anybody want to take this debt is just agree that needs being met sally

rolled back i'm going to understand tax code modification i do appreciate that tax code is really very aggressive and driving every day as you know what i do but i do think that we need to look at we've got nurses in ohio that benefit from this we have teachers and minissha michigan that benefit i have two sisters that are retired teachers and because of their pension plan which was funded by private equity they retired before they were sixty five years old so there's many people that are not millionaires but there are middle class people that. very well kanchan plans have been private equity that was invested into universities have offered endowments because of private equity that they've invested over in other words they were investors and they got rich just like what mitt romney got really rich my sister is a far from millionaire everybody pensioner pension plans and many millions millions of dollars people invest i mean if we want to use mitt romney as the target he has less than how many millions but has got a good idea i mean shouldn't if it were pension plan is going to make money by investing should be investing in a whirlpool factory that makes refrigerators. private well it's not tax it is

a tax on a little all your feelings on this campus this week did not exist before nine hundred eighty one because the tax code didn't allow it but it's never the game it's going to go well modify your tax a little tax scam chris yes but there's also there's sort of almost mal intent behind the entire operation it's basically taking trying to squeeze profit out of a company by firing the workers by cutting benefits and then profiting off of other's misfortune so there's really something wrong there i think the very least look into regulating it if not you know outlawing it and that's just private equity i would like to take this to the to the larger picture of what's go back to a trade policy for example who protect this country mark we used to have we used to have you know from from the george washington the ministration to the reagan administration we had averaged thirty four percent tariff import tariff on imported goods and therefore everybody who bought anything in america was something made in america you know what we what we make in america right now is a bigger government and we make war that's basically what we do whether it's the

drug war the overseas wars that's why the suburbs of washington d.c. are the richest in our country now instead of gross point michigan as far as going after mitt romney here and i think there's blame to go around on that one of the ads that came out against bain capital that same night i think it was mitt may president obama went to tony james manhattan you know and had a big fundraiser tony james of course is from blackstone so any idea that this another private equity private equity blackstone it's even bigger than bain capital so this is this idea here that this is just. you know republican thing it's also a demo i'm not very character i said as you know there's a lot out there i think people watching might think this is something just romney does this is infused in politics and that's why the loopholes are there really if it is legal and it can still be it's a it's they're not loopholes the idea that loopholes exist i understand when people talk about their planned tax relief for certain industries to basically do these kinds of things and but and until you simplify the tax code and make everything more transparent if you change this and you outlaw you find a lawyer change one part of the tax code they'll find another way around it simplification of the tax code is absolutely necessary so people can see where

their money's going whether it's a pension fund or the market generally you know i don't disagree but i think that there's a larger issue here to frank's character on h.b.o.'s the wire i think said it best here's a little clip from. you know into trouble is bruce lee. to make it in this country bill. now we should put our hand in the next guy's pocket. and that's what's happened i mean our tax code has changed the incentives tax tax taxes or our social engineering there's no way around it the courage some things they discourage other things and for thirty years we've been discouraging manufacturing and encouraging this fire economy well i don't think i disagree with reach it would change the tax code i think it's it's it's so difficult you have to hire an attorney to file your taxes i mean it's not fair the way it's designed because not everybody has skin in the game that's the first part of it and you've got people that are paying more then share then you got to be revamped entirely

reported however most profit corporations in america paid no taxes at all i just find it humorous that the left always leans on mitt romney when as our libertarian pointed out that there are multiple people democrat republican i don't think that that idea of like i want all this is going after mitt romney but he's running very little i mean the fact that you had a guy running for president who got all we got over a minute who's made i believe it was on to his staff and i didn't pay any taxes for a decade well that's you know that's not bad is not true that was said but it was i was never substantiated and that was an irrational that's not even a rational argument that we were more of tonight's big picture of.

a good quote for you. it's pretty tough. stay where it's not story. because this guy looks. good working for the people on the beach we're pretty sure i'm right because these are the. the brother. it was a. very hard to take i. once again to put them on here the plane flight had never had sex with her thick hair plugs. and.

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or a bag of big picture rubble joining me jesse james duff christie said it's her and marc harrold let's get back to it start with the success of obamacare sue spank of montana had her health insurance cancelled and was understandably upset she called her state government and found out that because of obamacare she went from a horrible policy with high deductibles it cost three hundred fifty dollars a month to a new policy that cost her thirty dollars a month that has a deductible of only five hundred dollars for the national journal spank is now thrilled with their coverage and states that created their own exchanges are reporting huge surges and sign ups just days before the first enroll in deadline california averaged fifteen thousand and romance a day last week up from an average of seven thousand a day the week before and in kentucky enrollments are up forty percent since thanksgiving as states as three thousand kentucky ins

a day are being approved for medicaid or qualified health plans so isn't all this proof. that at least in those places around the country republicans are not sabotaging obamacare it is incredibly successful mark no i don't think so i mean. first of all your dad i thought well first of all you're talking about the fact that all these people are signing up when they're compelled by law but i think it's a bigger question to pragmatically we can look in so you can help by law they're compelled by the tax code after all of our previous disco well but seventy five bucks you pay the understand what is the as the as the drug war goes down a diminished importantly i.r.s. will go up as one. the main components of law enforcement this country but i think it's a bigger question in a way the idea here is if it works we should do it the idea is that government should solve any problem that theoretically can and i don't think that's the case i see you see this is an absolutely inroad into do personal information a way to control people a way to take over their health and their iris already has that information that we're exactly that's really going to put now they're giving the they're going to

get him out of the information government and get him out of the machine you know the databases it's not what they're designed to do it's what they can do is the problem i have with you doing this is or this is not is not any of the things you characterize the basis of this is that of the thirty four most developed countries in the world the o.e.c.d. nations thirty three of them have national health care systems that work really well they have better outcomes than we do in the united states lower infant mortality longer lifespan better help and it costs apple what we're spending this is crazy what we're doing we had an incredibly broken system before it's obviously working and this is the administration's gamble all along from the moment they decided to embrace the whole obamacare mantel was that people would eventually see past the right wing propaganda groups like americans prosperity you know going after young people talking to not enroll because they a fundamentally believe that the product was good so so again it is now paying off i mean even paying off in places like like kentucky where people say they hate obamacare but when you tell them that they're signing up for k.-y.

now the state version whatever and they're very happy with the results. you know we're seeing the fruits of that right now unfortunately. the administration obviously stepped in their own foot with the rollout so people person question was a negative one but even so we're seeing the positive just how many of these people again how many of these people signed up have been signing up for medicaid is my first question and that those data numbers have not come out the second thing is i fall under government health care and it's offensive to me for somebody to tell me that is great because if i go outside the beltway i can't even get health care because what they want to pay those doctors is so low. that they won't accept my insurance many insurance carriers cannot cover this anymore because the government is regulating the cost of these doctors can charge and if i leave this beltway i can't get the care at walter reed that i rate or qualify for you want to look at government health care look at the five hundred thousand veterans who can't even get their health care covered for the last five years who have been pending in the v.a. medical system. is that the government health care because i fall under and i am up

to i am up and if anybody tells me it's great to have that number i want every survey done by republicans or democrats ok we're on our own or government health care and see what everybody who's happiest with their health care of the united states because the people who have tri-care or who have government health care and socialist medicine through the military are the happiest the ones that are close there's a basis in some way for this is you know. they're not accepting applications because the doctors won't get paid enough the paper you know your face so i want you to hear that there is a disaster going on in the military in the veterans of the crowds of george bush declaring two wars one carol doubling the military budget during that amount we got a v.a. backlog before george bush they don't get even given up but there has been a big debate you know the v.a. backlog as a result of the secretary sentients the esky not planning for the agent orange you know the bulk of these backlogs is agent weren't it is not desert storm it is i'm sorry it is not iraq afghanistan so your numbers are wrong there it is agent orange

do the data do the research they're finally recognizing that the finally recognizing p.t.s.d. that was never recognized till two thousand and nine so please don't tell me where the backlog comes from this is my topic i know this topic like the back of my hand and when you look at this seven minutes later the people have no health and no i didn't suggest that but don't tell me that the government health care is the right way to go because right now they are telling these doctors when i'm going to hear that when i have to help here it is not a myth the government is not going to give you free haircuts health care through this and what they're doing is they're regulating what you can charge what you can build you're telling a doctor what you can do and try to get it why are you going to judge the private insurers have to go to the regulators and cite and they are telling the doctors why . they can bill what i can to tell you that i don't feel they i have to accept health care ok i am one of those you know a few billion people who have been in the individual market because then self-employed so i actually know exactly what it's like to pay three hundred fifty dollars a month and get really crappy health insurance and i have to say that i'm sure that i'm one of those plans that would have been considered a scam plan and not gotten married a couple months before the threat into effect so most people's experience with the

insurance market is a really terrible one i definitely feel for you that your head that you've had a negative experience for but the truth is that most americans have had a negative experience and it's because the private insurers well my government doesn't do any better so we're all anything but one day well here's here's another here's a much larger problem i think and this is the gap in the in the coverage as a consequence of twenty five states twenty five largely republican governors a couple of days as democratic governors of republican legislatures this graphic shows this where in these states where they said no we won't take the medicare expansion if you're genuinely poor you're covered by medicare if your you know making a little more than the average mcdonald's worker but not much more than you're covered by the obamacare subsidies but there's this area between you know roughly i don't remember the exact numbers but maybe maybe people making from twelve thousand to twenty five thousand dollars a year roughly where they can't really afford health care but they're not poor

enough to qualify for medicare and they're just screwed in the states i mean they're just out in the cold they've got no coverage at all there's not a don't qualify for the subsidies they don't qualify and they get in and it's been in this is intentional sabotage the john roberts authorized in the supreme court it's not built into the law it's not the way they're always written this is the supreme court did this and this is intentional sabotage being done by republicans in these states at what point and what these republicans are saying what rick perry is saying to texans what rick scott is saying to floridians is you paid federal taxes it was in the federal tax system and i'm not going to let you get that money back. i'm not going to allow that money to come from washington back into the state of florida i'm not going to allow that money to come back into the state of texas don't these people in these red states have the right to have their own tax money back you know they do and they'll take care of that at the election this is a very big moment for federalism we're going to see how this works these governors are standing in the way they don't believe in to be there any logically or they don't think will work one thing that's interesting though is at this point the

litmus test for obamacare and whether it works or whether it doesn't and we still have to see certain things everybody is declaring victory just because people can sign up for it we haven't seen how it actually works we haven't seen if the doctors will take it we haven't seen what the care is going to be actually these are all these are all the existing right here and it would still be showing us the still united health care is what the mission accomplished here is sort of like well geez the web sites finally working people are actually able to enroll in this huge program so it must work it's working now because people are able to sign up i don't think the fact that people can sign up for it means it works and has means people can actually access i think we've all you know any further commitment to move on one of the fits this week congress passed this bipartisan budget deal and you know too much hoopla oh you know and so that's the least worst terrible program right but. the one of the things that paul ryan apparently demanded was that there be no extension of unemployment benefits which i find bizarre you know it's like why would somebody want to stick to one point three million americans three days after christmas you know just a shift in the back. what's going on i mean why are the republicans why is this the

flag the paul ryan plan on the hill wasn't it that was a bipartisan budget potato in the you also have patty murray on that but i know you're not in our hands yet even about that input and then let's not put it all up paul ryan democrats pass this whammy baby that argue for iowa yet they had nothing to do with it they voted for it just my grandmother didn't get the job done voted or took the retirement so in your code you're condemning now i'm not condemning anybody i'm just saying it's not all i'm paul ryan so if everybody voted for this there are very few people who did not hold back. outside of the senate it passed in the house and it passed in the orphanage resi easily know you can it now you have a democrats who controlled the house and controlled the senate the filibuster proof way do you think that unemployment benefits would not have been extended if passed in the senate without a filibuster there was no argument no would do unemployment benefits have not been extended unemployment benefits never passed they were never ever going to have had run if they would have probably read more of her own grams that would have gone on

and on the one year there are many more there's got to have a two trillion dollar debt and we'd they've done nothing to cut any of that there are any deficit has been cut in half of. the debt if you think it's needlessly cruel i mean you're sort of saying that yes everybody alternately. everybody else might have to budget deal at the you know two party system of course i agree with you but i'm saying this was one party who was pushing to not increase unemployment benefits and there was one party that really would have much preferred that we didn't create them i find it particularly galling that it's at a time when you know many republicans privately republicans in congress will tell you that under ministration he's not creating jobs the economy is terrible people just can't find work and yet they're not willing to you know to extend the benefits at this point either so we have removed a loophole for the illegal immigrants either which is seven billion dollars of that income tax right they didn't fight it the republicans went to him and said let's cut this and they didn't offer that so you're just talking about how bad

republicans are what about the democrats who could have made greater cuts they didn't try to climb it and they are going to lay down stay totally lay down everything so please don't dump it all on republicans there was no resistance from democrats on this zero name one senator who resisted one and thank all of you both . any of them came out publicly on this day they are what did what did nancy pelosi say eat the soccer suck the eat or something like that affair you couldn't care less mark i don't think there was a lot of pushback on this it was voted the way that you can look you own your vote i mean with you don't push back on something this idea that well you know list. this is a terrible budget it's way too big look we can go big no i mean this is the no one any large we cannot you can this country cannot continue with this kind of debt you already know we're going to want to accelerate into your going to have to cut entitlements and you're going to have to cut defense i mean there is no way around it what are you actually i was there's really no way really don't we don't you have to do this no you don't have to be it's they need no cut this this cannot go on in

perpetuity i mean what we're going to hand on the children grandchildren i you cannot carry this kind of debt no person could no company could at the only people that can work this way this far over their means is the government because you're not spending your own money so you don't really care but i don't think this is a to me it's a terrible budget it doesn't do anything really it's just status quo to me we just have thirty seconds to finish this up well they didn't make the cuts that i would have a pup i agree with the defense budget that wasn't enough they did not they didn't take military retirement though they did take three thousand five hundred dollars out of my annual income right there where the only ones i took at that why didn't you take out when i once was not only selling hamilton were the only ones they increase that just and spending go did not go at all they did not know after they got to the federal workforce to even put into their retirement because they have a union protecting them they did nothing with this budget other than go after military retirees and everybody voted for. more of tonight's big picture of. it.

i would rather as 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 for. i know c.n.n. the m s n 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 and for the truth and might

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 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 we'll handle to make us happy. i think.

about the ongoing big picture rumble pretty good i just joined christie setser a marker oh let's get back to it today the canadian supreme court struck down all all of canada's anti-prostitution laws just said all of them are violations of the rule the constitutionally guaranteed right to life liberty and the security of the person in fact if you look at the experience of australia and most of the western european countries where prostitution is legal when prostitution was decriminalized it reduced the rates of sex crimes to reduce the rates of sexually transmitted diseases and well there's a big argument about whether it's increases the quality of life for sex workers or not i'm curious we have two women the family i'm just curious everybody's take on i have so many mixed emotions about it one i believe in less government i believe in less government in the bedroom i believe in getting less government involvement from my.