i think. they. would like to do it. did you know the price is the only industry specifically mention in the constitution and. that's because a free and open press is critical to our democracy shrek helpless. feeling you know i'm sorry and on this show we reveal the picture of what's actually going on when we go beyond identifying the truth rational debate a real discussion critical issues facing america ready to join the movement then welcome the big picture. back to the big picture i'm tom hartman coming up in this half hour each year

college athletic programs rake in millions of dollars thanks to the hard work and dedication of student athletes so should student athletes share in some of the well they're helping to create and republicans love to argue the tax cuts are a great way to help spur economic growth and put americans back to work that of course couldn't be any further from the truth i'll explain why it's still to. be unscrewed news based on previews from administration officials president obama will be spending a great deal of his state of the union speech tonight discussing the issue of wealth inequality in america but in discussions about inequality in america one of the things that often goes overlooked is our nation's addiction to so-called free trade deals nafta calf to shaft all these deals are signed under the guise of helping to improve. the economy and put americans to work in reality they take jobs

away from americans and help to further the gap between the wealthy elite and everyone else but despite the devastating effects of so-called free trade deals the obama administration is considering signing on to the trans-pacific partnership the latest of these so-called free trade deals that could do more harm than good for the american economy and the american people joining me now to talk more about the tea p.p. and what it will mean for all america if approved by the obama administration is john nichols washington correspondent for the nation magazine john welcome back it's great to be with you joe thank you john it's great to see you too well i got another e-mail today i we discussed this i think yesterday i got another e-mail today from another tea party group talking about obama trade and how you know we've got to stop obama trade and it's going to ruin our country and there's some. economy in crisis dot org i think it is the web site has you know which is kind of

a conservative web site very very concerned about this i mean this is this is this is the issue. that is going to unite the tea party and the progressive caucus. i think it will to some extent and it should and the fact of the matter is that honest players on the right and the left and i have to be clear with you i'm i'm not necessarily suggesting that every tea party group being meets the honest players standard but honest players on the right and the left have legitimate questions about a free trade regimen that has been proven on so many measures to not work the fact of the matter is we're now twenty years into an experiment with multilateral retraining agreements like nafta. like a host of other afters as well as the permanent normalization of trade relations

with china and instead of using the prosperity that was promised when each of these trade agreements was put into a fact we have seen an absolute crisis as regards our our trade deficit we've also seen the physical reality of a bad trade approach you know communities across this country have been hollowed out the fact of the matter is that tonight the president will talk about areas of this country where joblessness runs high where it is very very hard to find out or to nitty well if used take a serious look at those areas of the country which are going to find again and again and again is that factories closed whole industries shut down and we have generational unemployment because we ship jobs overseas. and them that i would say is the essence of why p.p. would be even more devastating who's behind this thing. who's gonna do. the sack

same people that have been behind every one of these trade deals go back to the start and this is an important thing to understand tom there is a tendency on the part of those of us who might critique these trade deals again people on the left and the right to say you know how could anyone when before this it leads to deal dust realisation it leads to displacement there's an avoidance of environmental laws workers' rights human rights there's also really a diminishing of democracy and sovereignty concerns of people across the political spectrum how could anyone be for it and then you realize of course the people who are for it are the people who want to create a wide open zone for them to run a race to the bottom economically relay can find the lowest wages the least regulation the easiest time making products for the lowest i know there were us the trans national corporations here the president of general electric a few years back say. if he could put a factory on

a barge and just move it from country to country as wages went up and moved to another country he would do it by an end of practically that's what's happened tom the amazing thing is that several years ago i interviewed a guy who does site selection for american industries and the interesting thing was he had come out of the textile industry in the southeast and has plant after plant after plant closed in valley care who conclusion that they didn't have much of a future siting plants in the u.s. so he became an expert in asia and here's what he told him it was absolutely passing he said that that what he did and this is you know what he did for a living he cited in design plans was to go into countries before they had closed free trade agreements with the united states and to start scoping out the factories start you know laying out the spaces. there were factories would go so that they would be ready to turn the key and start operating as soon as the breach for a deal was worked and this is the reality this is this is not i'm not telling some

secret this is this is talk but say that that could only happen i mean that could only happen basically if this in transactional corporations own and the politicians who are executing the deals and that can only happen if the supreme court says the money is protected by the first amendment and corporations are protected by the fourteenth amendment which by coincidence you know thirty eight years ago today the supreme court so that money was protected by the first amendment the buckley vs vallejo which decision and four years ago last week they said that both you know they they amplified that and said money is definitely protected by the first amendment even though i don't see the word money in there anywhere and that and the corporations are definitely protected by the fourteenth amendment although the word corporation doesn't exist in the constitution go if it isn't the cancer of the that is behind this cancer the fact that the supreme court has created these doctrines that no president has ever advocated no legislature state or federal has ever

proposed and that the people are generally horrified by i think there's some something to that but i do have to. remind you that you know we went through a gilded age a hundred years ago we have had periods in our history where we had let corporations pretty much write their ticket to as they chose and what we have found again and again throughout history is that when we have allowed that to happen these corporations have done exactly what what you might expect they've gone to the bottom line and done the race to the bottom and it and i think we've reached that point again it is money in politics issues there's simply no doubt about it it is a lobby issue there is no doubt about it because the truth of the matter. tom is that you can go across this country and find some great constituency for free trade there used to be constituencies there used to be a lot more farmers who were sympathetic to pretoria because they thought they would

ship food overseas there are people in many manufacturing industries who are sympathetic to free trade there are people involved in warehousing and people who were imports but again and again with these groups have found is that for all the promises that are made to them when when a final you know deal is done with the checks begin to get cut they're left out you know the farmers aren't more prosperous the the warehouses are not filled with american goods to be shipped overseas the industries that we're told they were going to do well are not doing well the fact is even people who once supported free trade very conservative folks are now stepping up to say this isn't working so the new slogan should be no i want to nafta calf to pay pay and all i got was this lousy t. shirt made in vietnam well privately. john nichols thanks so much for being with us it's a pleasure tom. it's

the good the bad of the very very pup pav or asli oddly the good schama so on seattle's first socialist city council woman has announced that she will take home only forty thousand dollars of her one hundred seventeen thousand dollars salary she will donate the rest of the money to strike funds and organizations that fight for civil rights so onset in a statement released monday that her decision is totally unlike the socialist principles my place is with working people and their struggles as a council member i would with my recommit to a fundamentally different political out. look in line with the principles of the political party i represent socialist alternatives i pledged to stay accountable to working people by taking only average workers which if only the millionaires in

congress saw things that way way to go shop the bad paul invalidly the retired general turned fox news analyst is under fire today in the wake of revelations that he spoke about staging a coup against president obama during a recent tea party event in arizona to listen. wholesale knew it required to open joe is that why do you want or do you really have to go along with you needed . ice. ice to start going on the road more you know that. to get out of the way. is fitted for a physical presence to do this. shades of smedley butler duck duck go that feel that shocked joker not the fact that a former military official would even consider talking about coups is just was this kind of talk appears to be totally acceptable however among some parts of the american right wing and that is downright disturb. the very very ugly todd king

cannon the tea party activist and former executive director of south carolina's republican party is facing criticism this week for sending out a flurry of sexist tweets about texas gubernatorial candidate wendy davis in one tweet concannon said that those thing about the what it is fiasco is this group is that you can still call horror a whore from a nazi's eight one yet my friends in early twenties said wendy davis is solved america's student loan crisis despite the dumb ass to pay off your loans in exchange for sex for nomics it's not even the worst of it can also wrote this tweet in other words wendy davis took a short break from blowing campaign contributors today they're going numb remarks made by mike huckabee so much for rince priebus is a new and improved woman friendly g.o.p. right it's just very clear that. coming up going to blow conservatives minds tax cuts don't help our economy explain why and how in tonight's get we take

. this drama as the trying to be ignored to. stories others refuse to notice. the faces changing the world lights now. filled picture of today's. from rose to. go up to the.

i marinate joining me. in park and financial reporting commentary in from news and much much. only on bombast and only.

in the best of the rest of the news college sports is a multi-day billion dollar business nation's top collegiate athletic programs rake in millions every year thanks to ticket sales lucrative television contracts and merchandise sales the people responsible for making these programs so successful the student athletes don't share in all that wealth that could be changing them back in november. federal judge ruled that football and basketball players at colleges and universities across the country had the right to challenge current national college collegian athletic association rules that rules the bar compensation for student athletes beyond the value of their athletic scholarships

in other words student athletes have the right to seek compensation in return for the millions of dollars they bring to their schools and now for the first time in the history of college sports some student athletes are asking to be represented by a union football players at northwestern university in illinois have started the process be officially represented by a union players have filed paperwork with the national labor relations board and are being backed by the united steelworkers union and the national college players association which is student athletes really be considered employees of their respective schools and share in the wealth joining me now for more on this is michael woods writer with e.s.p.n. michael welcome. thanks for having me tom thanks for joining us. you've got student athletes who are creating millions of dollars for their universities there are also typically grad students who are doing research projects you know developing new vaccines and things who are making millions of dollars for the universities as well you know most of the really high level r. and d.

in this country is done at the at the university level. a lot of those grad students are actually union members already wired why not the student athletes. that's a great question and this is something that is going to be playing out in the courts for the next few years because essentially these are employees the only reason they're not considered employees is none of these billions of dollars trickles down to them that is going to be remedied i suspect in the next couple years you know university of texas longhorns their football program made a profit of seventy seven billion dollars in two thousand and eleven two thousand and twelve. you cannot tell me that these kids don't deserve credit that well michael given what we know and what we've learned in particular over the last few years which apparently the entire industry knew for decades about closed head trauma costs

a bit concussive injuries and things like that. would you let your child. play semi-pro football play as a college football player. i'm going to go with the obama answer tom no dice no deal you know my specialty actually is boxing i'm a boxing writer mostly by trade and i'm tempted to say that i want to let my kids do what they want to do every day that passes we get more information that this stuff just isn't good for your brain long term i'm going to hold out i'm going to see where the medical direction takes us where the information tell it says it seems you would say it but as of right now i'm going to go with a bomb and say don't yeah yeah and my point to that is typically the really dangerous work out there that's done you know coal miners longshoreman where you're where you're you know working with multi-ton you know you know things. they're out there virtually always represented by unions because because you know they're

living on the edge of death and these are kids who are living on the edge of literally ruining their entire future the rest of their lives is it seems like somebody needs to be looking out for absolutely they need to be part of a player's association that is what they wish to do the ringleader of this is a guy that i think should win the heisman trophy for is boldness his name is cain coulter northwestern quarterback tom did you know that he interned at goldman sachs last summer will this kid it has real leadership qualities he's taking a brave stand people are lining up behind him and i just love this mass movement i love all these humble fast food workers that are rising up they want better than seven twenty five dollars an hour these seventeen and eighteen year old kids they know that all the money is trickling not to them they should get a share of it if they're having multiple concussions and need treatment down the line darn right that they should get compensation and help for that down the line

so i'm optimistic that we are moving in the right direction the pendulum is swinging back after forty years span you know if the n c w were to implement a payment system how do you think it would work. wow it would blow their minds. it's just not going to happen for a number of years there are going to be kicking and screaming i can't even conceive of it you know what the arguments are going to be these are seventeen and eighteen year old kids but guess what these are revenue generators did you know that underarm are signed a deal for ninety million dollars for notre dame football over ten years this is generating massive revenue the only reason that these people are employees is because no one has decided to do the right thing and pay them i don't know how it's going to work it's going to have to be a tiered system the quarterback who is the star is going to have to make more than the the bench it's really it's really almost the entertainment business is like

saying you know justin bieber made a lot of money so did. it very interesting michael were flat out of time but thanks so much for sharing your perspective with us and telling us about the strike you having me and you fighting the good fight every day sir thanks good talking to you michel thank you. for the nice green report more crude oil spilled from train cars in twenty thirteen in that one year than in the entire four previous decades combined according to an analysis by mcclatchy news more than one million gallons of oil spilled from trains in two thousand and thirteen while between one nine hundred seventy five and two thousand and twelve that entire period of time only eight hundred thousand gallons spilled the oil industry likes to claim that they have a ninety nine point nine percent a liver success rate but they fail to mention that they're shipping much more oil

via train than ever before in just that last five years the amount of oil being shipped by rail has increased two thousand four hundred percent which means these dangerous spills have become much more common this is what happened when toxic fossil fuels. are transported over our crumbling infrastructure and it shows why we need to act fast to fix both problems we should not be increasing shipments of oil we should be making the switch to green energy and we shouldn't be spending millions on cleaning up oil spills we should be investing that money in rebuilding our infrastructure. crazy alert i'm sorry trick. the internet is buzzing today about the skateboard skills of kali stone kelly

a resident of victoria australia like every great border collie can jump steps right up ramps into willis' and what's more he does it all or in a diaper you see the only real difference between cali and someone like x. against legend tony hawk is that cali is too i repeat two years old to friends and family has been skateboarding since he was at least six months old time most people are still crawling on their hands and needs polly apparently learned his skills and his father and siblings all of whom are also skateboarders is rumored to be the youngest speed boarder on the entire planet were his out though on whether or not a word is still out whether or not cali will be able to translate his skills into a lucrative indorsement deal one thing is clear however colley a toddler is better at writing a skateboard than george w. bush ever was at writing a segway. is

twenty fourteen barack obama is president ronald reagan is dead but for thirty three years we have continued to live in an era of reaganomics in every meaningful way reaganomics is alive and well and still controlling our economy. and what has thirty three years of failed reaganomics brought us it's brought us record levels of financial instability it's brought us trade policies that have destroyed the working class union policies that have destroyed labor america but most importantly has brought us tax policies that have made any quality worse that have wrecked our economy and put us at the mercy of cycles of boom and bust when ronald reagan stepped foot inside the white house the top marginal tax rate was seventy four percent and

a third of the federal government's income came from corporations today the top tax rate is sitting at thirty nine percent most rich people pay a maximum of twenty percent the capital gains rate and corporations are only paying around eleven percent of the total cost of running the federal government thanks to thirty three years of failed reaganomics many americans have bought the law either tax cuts or a cure for a struggling economy in reality despite what the conservatives tell you or the billionaires tell you it's those tax cuts that are one of the major factors keeping our economy in the gutter is larry beinart points out over at the huffington post the truth is that tax cuts cause crashes more specifically when the top marginal tax rates are below fifty percent. you've got hot money flying around that causes cycles of bubble boom boom bubble and bust america has witnessed four of these cycles in the common denominator for all of them were tax cuts as beinart notes coming out of world war one we had

a top marginal tax rate over seventy percent between one hundred twenty one and twenty five top marginal tax rate was slashed down to twenty five percent and as we all know what followed was the stock market crash of one nine hundred twenty nine in the great depression now fast forward in one nine hundred eighty one when reagan came to washington in one thousand nine hundred one the top marginal tax rate stood at seventy percent but then came the reagan tax cuts in eighty two the top marginal tax rate was fifty percent by eighty seven it was thirty eight and a half percent in eighty eight he took it down to twenty eight percent just two years later in one thousand nine hundred our economy went into another severe recession in one thousand nine hundred seven republicans in congress forced president clinton into slashing the capital gains tax from twenty eight percent down to twenty percent and that tax cut coincided with the famous dotcom boom bubble and ultimately lost in two thousand finally george w. bush lowered the top marginal tax rate and capital gains rate when he was in office those cuts helped lead america to the crash of two thousand and seven. but as by

our points out the tax cuts may lead to cycles of boom bubble bust tax increases could actually improve our economy respond to the great depression the crash of nine hundred twenty nine herbert hoover raised taxes in thirty two and by nine hundred thirty three the economy had begun to improve in one thousand nine hundred one george h.w. bush raised taxes in response to the mess left by reagan not surprisingly the economy improved and when clinton raised taxes during his presidency the economy thrived with record levels of employment and growth if we want to pull our economy out of the gutter and restart america's economic engine it's pretty clear what needs to be had to be done all the very mention of a tax hike is enough to make conservatives go nuts history shows us the tax increases helped the american economy time to roll back the reagan tax cuts declare an end to thirty three years of failed reaganomics and start practicing sensible economics that will improve the lives of all americans not just the world. and

that's the way it is tonight tuesday january twenty eighth twenty fourteen you know forget democracy begins with you get out there get active tag your. i marinate join me. for that impartial and financial reporting carry in for me and much. only past and. wealthy british style.

markets why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike stronger for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into cars a report on our. little. crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want.

coming up on r.t.e. armed in america over the weekend a shooting inside a maryland ball left three people dead i'll take an in-depth look at the growing trend for gun violence across the u.s. just ahead and more silk road fallout now two men involved in big point exchanges have been arrested and charged for money laundering authorities say they wandered one million dollars or virtual currency for the black market website more on that coming up and syria a whistleblower john kiriakou is calling out corruption from his prison cell and pennsylvania his latest letter accuses prison officials of violating his rights by censoring his communication with the press the details from kiriakou behind bars later in the show.