the classic. notably the old if you go did you know the price is the only industry specifically mentioning the constitution. that's because a free and open press is critical to our democracy correct call for us. to make 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 ready to join the movement then welcome the big. launch on our own in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture. it appears that we now know what chris christie did last fall for a port authority official who oversaw the george washington bridge lane closures in

september said today he has proof that christie knew about the traffic nightmare those claims check out chris christie's political career over and what does that mean for twenty sixteen for the republican party we'll talk about that and more in tonight's big picture rubble and on thursday congressman henry waxman announced his retirement and he leaves congress it'll be more than just the end of a career it will mean the end of an era that in tonight's conversations of great minds campaign for america's future roger robert and richard ask. you need to know this this past sunday marley's monos a pregnant texas woman who had been on life support since november in an attempt to save her fetus was finally disconnected from the respirator that was keeping her

body going even though she had been declared dead multiple doctors and said that she was. dead and her family had said that they did not want her on life support but john peter smith hospital nonetheless was refusing to remove her from life support spittal finally agreed to remove munoz from life support after a court ruling and after tests revealed that the fetus that she was carrying was deformed and suffering from a variety of health issues it came to this point thanks to an ancient texas law that lets hospitals go against the end of life wishes of women if they are pregnant now even though they want to remove her from the life support now monos this family may be forced to pay for her ospital costs when those husband told c.n.n. that he's receiving medical bills for her care and the hospital is refusing to say whether they're going to cover the costs or not so she misses family and her family be forced to pay for health care that they didn't even want in the first place is it the responsibility of the hospital to put the bill let's rubble.

joining me for tonight's big picture rubble are matt purple the system as you know to the american spectator the communications director for democracy with america and chris allman conservative commentator and activist and thank you to all of you for joining us tonight so you heard my intro on the rant i mean shouldn't. actually i in my universe i mean the bigger picture is this involves health care the family should not pay at all and we should have a single payer health care system back in one hundred forty six where forty seven harry truman proposed it and you know and the discussion would be like the rest of the world wouldn't be having this conversation but we are what's the appropriate response anybody want to take this and. i think i think all of us are probably in agreement that there's no reason why this woman and her family should have to pay for this. for being kept on life support against her will for months on end after she didn't declare did it you know i don't think anyone thinks that this is the

right solution and you know at the end of the day i don't think she's going to have to to pay. and frankly the state should step in and really the hospital should be paying the bills the speech state required her to be kept alive the state should pay chris you've been very outspoken lea pro-life and i'm curious your take on this because they were they were trying to save the fuse so many basically pulled the plug on it became obvious that the fetus was probably not going to survive the term well you know it's interesting we sort of i wonder if i was really concerned about this case and i went back and did a little research that the language that in the texas law was borrowed from an a california law when they rewrote their end of life laws and they just put it in each other always that it was a one thousand year there in the seventy's ok that california had the law and then texas i think rewrote it in the ninety's and so they looked at what california had did they read it even the drafter said well this is not a case where that would apply because she was brain dead so even the drafters of the laws said this would not have been the case i personally think that the

hospital was afraid of a lawsuit their attorney said we don't know what that means so we're going to do this but texas this is in texas right it is exercise tort reform so the maximum lawsuit that you can sue in texas for medical but there it is two hundred fifty thousand dollars that i know nothing for this hospital but they were going in one of them and they got her name and i know that attorneys can be overly cautious but i think this case is an anomaly i think now that we've had hopefully the worst case scenario texas can go back and say you know what we shouldn't borrow another state's language when we weren't sure what it meant and let's rewrite it in a way that's reasonable for everybody if a woman is declared brain dead obviously this would not apply and you know even the catholic church would say it ain't dead she's dead and that there's no more moral obligation and that's their doctrine i mean that is what the catholic church service and i think you know there's two very clear things i think we want to cleave apart here and one is that was this a catholic hospital you know does it and i don't think it whirls i don't think so

yeah. there's two separate things here one is the pro-life side which. you know i wish that that baby could have been saved i wish that if the section could have performed there have been cases where women have been in comas and a c section has been performer around the same time i managed to save the feet as it was very unlikely i know i'm just missing first trimester probably some of those there's also the end of first harasser well by the time the by the time she died i've supported i think it's twenty two twenty three weeks. but then the other separate issue is really the hospital in the payment and that is the hospital only did this for one reason they were worried about a lawsuit so should they have to pay for keeping her alive for a cynical reason like that absolutely the munis family can't afford this they should have to pay for health care they can't afford like i said texas did tort reform they said oh you know the republicans ran around so if we just kept you know make everybody's life worth a quarter million dollars and not one penny more in a matter how much damage a doctor does to somebody they may mutilate them for the rest of their lives in this budget in the thirty fifth person they're incompetent doctor still the most you can sue in the state of texas for

a medical malpractise is two hundred fifty thousand dollars period they got that passed during the george i believe it was during the george w. bush governorship i know there's a huge price for it right around that time but that but this is so i don't understand why this is anything to do with the hospital being cautious about lawsuits well as it is if they will because i still don't want it so i want to pay what it's going to. come out of the hospital bill doesn't know what this does or are going to only have thousand dollars a week this has to do with an archaic law that was inherited from another state where they didn't think this through they need to take this case and they need to take it back to the legislature and they need to say ok we need to you know put in a regulation we need to figure out how this is going to work in the future so that my shows don't happen again we should honor and respect the wishes of the family in the woman who was to bring to her her family knew from the very get go that she didn't want to be kept on life support there's no reason why there should be any law forcing an individual to seriously and will anybody you know the ones that are going to shouldn't sign a form either saying what or how is business that you have a husband had to just live through similar crisis and her husband knew that this is

not ok and that. that's kind of that's one of the arguments about in favor of marriage is that you get to you know ok you know i'm married to louise she can make decisions for me if i can and that's how it should work then again that's. death penalty yesterday speaking of life and death issues federal prosecutors yesterday announced they're going to seek the death penalty for boston marathon bombing suspect. what's his name's. tourney general eric holder so the nature of the conduct at issue and the result in harm compels this decision this at a time when states are saying you know that the drug companies will no longer sell us drugs to kill people because the drug companies don't want to be complicit in state sanctioned murder and so they're having to come up with these weird cocktails that keep people alive for like twenty minutes. and so now they're saying well let's go back to firing squads or bring back old sparky you know just write some

skin is the time to say enough is enough you know there's no science that indicates the death penalty discourages murder in fact if anything the opposite the states with the death penalty have the highest murder rates states without death penalty have lower murder rates it's the same with true is it's true of nations is no time to say enough of the barbarism already and let's start at the federal level i mean i thought president obama was pro you know pro-life is what it used to be called it used to be the entire death penalty movement before nine hundred seventy three it was called the pro-life movement. i mean i don't think president obama was ever death penalty but i think again after you know coming from illinois he knows better than almost anyone else the problems with the justice system our inability to really ensure that everyone gets a fair trial and that's the number one reason why we have to end the death penalty it was even early ultimate punishment and until we can be absolutely confident that our justice system is infallible there's no reason why we should happen well i'm going to i want to say on a doubt in this yeah i would say we got

a bad we can be quite confident here but still when we see. we are going to kill people by force of law. i started to get really and whether it's we're going to kill people with drones and accept the fact that sometimes we're going to blow up wedding parties or whether it's we're going to kill people with the death penalty except the fact that sometimes we're going to kill innocent people i think they're morally equivalent and you know we i think we need to really look at what our punishment is in cases like this ok this guy who came to this country was made a citizen and then did one of the most disgusting despicable things he could do which was set off bombs at a public event where a child died as well as two other people and two hundred sixty other people were injured ok death penalty we take that off the table this guy should be cracking rocks for the rest of his life not three culturally sensitive meals a day not a t.v. not anything like that yes we shouldn't kill him but let's make his life really

really hard public floggings no let's make him cry bring back the stocks do something that you know i mean if he cracks rock it's going to end up with. a big well he's also not a big show he will be out ten years in the red rocks that is a little today ok but you know i think you have to know the issue before and that is that you know you brought up the state by state example you know we did do you sometimes deterrence versus non deterrence the disproportionately affects people in the black community and so forth i don't think when we start getting into the sociological arguments i think we're going too far i think it's as simple as it's immoral to take somebody's life and we ought not do it unless we absolutely have to and that applies to abortion as we almost touched on before that applies to the war and that ought to apply to the death penalty too i don't think that we need to do this anymore i'm you know it's not in the constitution we should let the states decide but i think you know you're seeing a rash of states move in the death penalty direction now i think that's the right way to go and in fact what is in the constitution the at the moment is that we have

cruel and unusual punishment and times change. as jefferson pointed out and as times change the standards of society change and you know we've seen this in really big ways like the end of slavery and the right of women to vote and we've seen this in thousands of smaller ways and this is why this is somewhere between big and small i think and if you look at the countries around the world that have still have the death penalty as opposed to all the ones that don't i think we've got a graphic of that someplace there it is yeah it's full screen right now that company yeah. the red countries are the ones that have the death penalty right it's basically us china and a couple of countries that are that are. don't really have functioning governments right now i mean it's or you know whatever it's a. bad bad guy so. i'm surprised this consensus yes thank you that's all the more of tonight's big picture rubble right after the break .

we'll. its technology innovation called the least developed from around russia. the future covered. 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. google

. all the magnetized big picture rubble with a tonight our map purple nails rocha and chris all in let's get back to it i want to play a clip of chris christie from his brigade press conference a little earlier on. i have absolutely nothing to hide. and i have not given the instruction to anyone yet but my instruction to everybody will

be to cooperate me answer questions i am you know josh i have nothing to hide any questions anybody wants to ask me they can ask. you know from from law enforcement you don't even want to ask they can ask so we have nothing to hide in the uk so it looks like he actually did have something to hide david wildstein the export authority official who oversaw the politically motivated link closings of the george washington bridge claims that he has proof that chris christie had direct knowledge personal knowledge of the closings and the traffic nightmare in a letter released by his lawyer whilst in claims that evidence exhibit in exists tying mr christie to having knowledge of the lane closures during the period when the lanes were closed contrary to what the governor stated publicly in a two hour press conference so you know christie is denying this new with all those sorts out but whether or not he's guilty of anything whether or not he goes to jail or sixteen people in this administration do sort of like the reagan administration you know we had more elected

a more senior administration officials go to prison than any other administration has for the country yet nobody remembers that about the reagan administration whether any of that happens i still think by twenty you know his twenty sixteen probabilities are toast and what i thought was really interesting is the national journal today is reporting that the leading contender for the republican primary right now is mitt romney and there's this major rehabilitate mitt romney effort going on and is out there doing the new circuits right now netflix just released this biopic about mitt that makes him look like you know the same to figure and actually i don't know the whole thing i watched the first half of it and i just couldn't do it anymore i stopped to watch i watch you watch the whole i watch the whole thing on tuesday ok i think it doesn't necessarily come off that much better in the end you know i think it's going to be you know i should have said it's a great it's a great story and listen the guy had a phenomenal access and but i think everyone should watch it. it's a real one i haven't seen but there's also news stream scene in there where he's talking about how it's going to be sort of an apocalyptic scenario if obama gets

elected you know you like a bunker or something which is a little bit. in front of the camera and gene wilder and romney kind of audience has it's just america's it's a tragedy for america that it did get to be. this family are all going to drink something well you know what sorry republicans and conservative first i tend to vote republican but mitt romney you waited in line we gave you a chance you lost chris christie you said you were a man of the people you said you were a straight talker if it comes out that you're not sorry we don't need that kind of baggage let's move on i mean you know what's funny is that chris christie is not really a conservative at all and yet so many people in the establishment republican party are pushing him and it's got some pretty extreme oppositions but but you know do it the guy who ran against truman he was also the guy who ran against franklin roosevelt for his fourth term well you know you've got a prosperous in the republican party and they're going they're losers yes we do

have a serial loser not you but it was a real losers of the democratic party actually the only guy who ran twice was grover cleveland and he won both times even though there was a republican in between. the only democrat who held the white house during the last half of the nineteenth century but. so do you think it's possible that it was only . the republican base will ever nominated romney again i think it's kind of funny because there's no way for the republicans a certain amount of reaction against the tea party now we're having figures like mitt romney sort of i don't think necessarily he has anything to do with it but then people like liz cheney and jeb bush who are you know coming out of the woodwork again and trying to i guess pull the party in a more quote establishment direction the g.o.p. has enough fresh blood even with chris christie supposedly out of the race i'm not convinced he is but they have a rand paul scott walker there are plenty of ideas not all of the road as they say you know national. there's a scholar water walker is out of barrow yeah i think the real i'm going to recall

elections were a very unique situation i think once scott walker has to face voters and frankly has to come clean with a lot of what's gone on and during its own d.n.a. i mean i think they are the ones consummate con about why anybody that i would not count on might not like this is that the people voted walker obama there's a great example to you in drag democrats i was right when a couple of billionaire brothers through all you know you know people of that state liked what he did and that you know that if he does come out of it that's my goal is to say about christie really to he's not necessarily out of this in this going to you know between dawn zimmer and this other guy who came out today they need to stop thinking the new york times is the f.b.i. they need to there's three different investigations going on right now they need to cooperate them and you know i as i said i'm not it's i'm not passing judgment on his guilt or and they're trying to take i'm i'm i'm cynical simply observing the politics of this and i just think he's politically. and i think reagan would have been if the if the. contras stuff had happened in eighty two instead of eighty five

and eighty six but millions of americans are now realizing that they're too poor to afford obamacare and it's thanks to republican lawmakers across twenty five states which are either controlled by republican governor public and legislature refused to expand medicaid coverage case in point i think a great case in point is florida you've got over seven hundred thousand people in florida and the people who are signing these folks up. it's it's it's pretty it's pretty amazing they're talking about how people are coming in saying i make less than fifteen thousand three hundred dollars a year so i should qualify for free health insurance that's what you know if that's the case in other states i was see for example so i'm here to get it and they say no sorry even though rick scott the governor the republican governor wanted to take the money even though the republican senate voted to take the money the republican house of representatives said no it's important remember that rick scott initially didn't want to take the money right. and then he went back and tried to take the money and the republican radical republican florida house said no you can't do that

here so to do so the question in my mind here is is in two parts if i may just present this is as a question number one when medicaid was first rolled out it was optional for the states to pick it up it was fifty six percent payment by the federal government when the lot of states said no i don't want that it's going to cost us too much and within six years of its rollout in sixty five i think it was maybe sixty seven within six years every state picked it up so a isn't it just a matter of time before all the states do it just because of the pressure and b. . in two thousand and fourteen as people are starting to really seriously aggressively now figure out five and a half million people are falling into the red state donut hole the john roberts donut hole you know whatever you want to call the republican donor hole is this going to hurt the republicans in the twenty fourteen election now this is one more example of why obamacare doesn't work it was quickly and poorly crafted let me tell you as knowing that it was right it was a sound as if you know really does because they gave the option for the states to

not expand our roberts did that yes supreme court did that. it was mandatory. ok it was mallory and when i went into spring as they were let me tell you what happened in north carolina to a very good friend of mine he's a contractor makes you know independent businessman he went on obamacare website to see maybe i could only only share intimate and get a better deal plugged in this information last year because of some buying and some selling and whatever his actual taxable income. low enough he got an email back saying congratulations your unrolled in medicaid he said he called me because i don't want to be on medicaid i don't need to be in medicaid i have enough money to buy my own insurance i was just shopping around they said we're sorry we you can't get off you know you know he has he has been and now for a month and a half trying to reach somebody in the state and this is a republican state to get off medicaid this all is all horribly rafted all he has and we have probably no i understand the problems of life probably bureaucracy and

you have the same problems with health insurance companies but the fact of matter is that if he doesn't build anything to medicaid he doesn't have medicaid he doesn't have to worry about that and when it comes to raises an interesting issue you know the american legislative exchange council has been pushing the squad back thing in the states where if you're over fifty five and you're on medicaid you're not actually your health care is not actually being paid for you're being you're borrowing money and you have to wipe out your own the state to pay it back and this is something that alec has been pushing two thousand and twelve two thousand and thirteen to actually over the last half a decade or so they've been putting out press releases on this trying to get the states to be more aggressive in taking people's money i mean this is bizarre that that's completely off topic maybe it's not actually it's piece of it but i haven't heard from that and from i don't really you know i don't know i'm going to comment on the alec thing i don't follow them nearly as closely as you do i think but i think this is the latest in a series of problems for obamacare this one i think happens to be caused by republican governors who rejected rejected the medicaid expansion absolutely as

a problem but the idea here because it's a problem for obamacare is the latest problem of the law i mean between the website between. look we've got a website back and that isn't even being being built but i know we don't want to know what shows up to saying i don't believe this thing we're going to have severe damage to the health insurance market this thing has to be done by march they've got a new contractor working on it we've got something like ninety three million insurance cancellation scheduled for this year when the new grand fall bill is over and every year is going to cost we've got premiums going up all the that was written in the federal register that those are the number of cancellations that are going to go out so yes this one does appear to have been caused by the fact that we didn't expand medicaid but this law is a disaster it's not all the you know these carrots and sticks and the shifting parks they're not going to go i said that it couldn't be mandatory because it was unconstitutional for the federal government to tell the states it had to be mandatory so you know now you're good moaning the fact that they're holding the constitution in this aspect no i'm asking the question is this going to bite the

republicans in the i think i do much as i work with democrats i think it's likely that we'll win you when you have a person that is you know making fifty thousand dollars a year in can't get access to health insurance and actually there's a there's one story about the florida law we're gentlemen you know if he goes into renal failure then he can get access to health insurance and i was in dollars a year he he know if you make under fifteen thousand dollars a year you don't have that same problem read the story i made forty eight hundred dollars on his unemployment rate why is he not in medicaid because he's not even bumping up against the poverty level that was the whole bogus story i mean it's it's not a bogus story this gentleman who is suffering because of the lack of back story that you know but if he may well under the debris left ok went on the bogus story look at the one that kathy what's her name the republican official we're going to response use to you know kind of this this woman are going to grow up. about so much what if you're going to touted by president obama as being this great health care success story later came out now not counting with morris rogers another woman

came back and said no this is not working for me i don't have health insurance anymore i mean been there's. stories like this on both sides only we should hold up dueling anecdotes i think we should focus on the problem which is that this is going on or sludge policy that does not work so it's all true that we've got to we need to build a health insurance system in this country that provides catastrophic care and has a strong safety net underneath it for people like this as a result we have the exact opposite i get a new pair of eyeglasses every year on my health insurance plan and people who really needed or bumping up against that poverty line can't get it because you know it's just it's far too complex it's far too but that's because you or your employer is paying for your really nice health care right and that's great and part of the great thing about obamacare is that it is indeed difficult part about it is that it mixes in a system which kind of frankly wasn't working for the vast majority of americans tries to compromise with the republican solution that was offered in the early ninety's and as a result yet we've got a frankenstein monster of a situation if it were up to me if it were up to millions of progressives across

this country we would have single payer for it or he would not play station but everybody is eligible for medicare yet because this really is a republican brought a good answer this question already before we went into. chris thank you all for joining us thank you coming up during world war two and the decades that followed the united states experience a period of unparalleled prosperity but all that came crashing to an end during the reagan revolution of the eighty's is it possible to reverse the reagan revolution or was that just wishful thinking at this point more on that tonight's conversations of the great minds after the birth. of their native to the coast guard to network. it's going to give you a different perspective you want to never i'll give you the information you make the decision. it's a revolution of the mind it's a revolution of ideas and consciousness. extremely you produce

would be described as angry i think in a strong you know when you're single. i'm the president and i think a society that case i think corporation kind of convinced that to consume because we can do. the banks are trying to get all that all about money and i'm actually sick for politicians writing the laws and regulations to tax corporate bankers. there's just too much this is a society. that. join me. for that impartial and financial reporting commentary interview and much much. only on bust and.

on thursday california congressman henry waxman announced that he will be retiring at the end of his term waxman has never been the flashest of politicians but he's certainly been one of the most effective a tried and true liberal and during his forty years in the house of representatives he's helped as crucial pieces of legislation like the one nine hundred ninety clean air act amendments the safe drinking water act amendments and most recently the affordable care act obamacare and waxman finally packs his bags and heads back to the golden state congress will lose one of its most effective negotiators it will also lose a way of looking at the world waxman grew up in an era of on peril of prosperity for american society and like many people from his generation believed in the power of government to do good during his time in congress the country has changed

a lot and in many ways for the worse our society is now more unequal than it was then and waxman's belief in the goodness in government has been replaced by cynicism about the power and the anti-government philosophy of the reagan years union presence the workforce has dropped from around twenty five percent in the early seventy's when came to office to eleven percent now not coincidentally over the same time period the middle class his share of income has shrunk dramatically but waxman and other people from his generation leave politics when i want to remember what it was like before reaganomics and what we ever return to the prosperity that that generation and the generation be. for it and the generation before that enjoy joining me now for more on those internets conversations the great minds a rubber borisov co-founder of the campaign for america's future or future dot org and richard esko senior fellow at the campaign for america's future robert richer thank you both for joining us pleasure to be here let me let me start with you robert.