for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines kinds a report. think. they would like to do if you did you know the price is the only industry specifically mentioned in the constitution and. that's because a free and open press is critical to our democracy schreck help us. to make you know i'm sorry and on this show we reveal the picture of what's actually going on and we go beyond identifying the truth rational debate and real discussion critical issues facing america ready to join the movement then welcome the big picture. on to our washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture. just when you thought the

war on voting was dying down it's not how republicans in florida trying to prevent floridians from having a voice in our democracy now we'll talk about that and more with the nation's john nichols and according to a new report up to six million americans might be without health insurance thanks to republicans putting politics ahead of people's why how many americans need to die before republicans put politics aside and do what's right for our country that are more into nights alone liberal rumble. did you know this the war on voting is alive and well and surprise surprise florida is leading the charge joining me now for more on that is john nichols washing correspondent of the nation magazine john great to have you in the studio a pleasure by thanks for joining us so yesterday manatee county florida's republican controlled board of county commissioners. were known in those think in

moaning boom. one third of our polling places. which represents a lot of minority districts. actually before i even ask you the question. the fellow who was the co-founder of alec the american legislative exchange council and one of the co-founders of the heritage foundation another of why you must know that you have to haul why rick my father i am indeed and this is what he had to say when he was running ronald reagan's direct mail campaign and a big part you have this kurt yeah it is what he was when he was running riot at ronald reagan's from the direct mail campaign in one nine hundred eighty about voting. how many of our christians have what i call but goo goo syndrome good government they want everybody to vote. i don't want everybody to vote elections are not won by

a majority of people they never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now i don't matter of fact our leverage in the election is quite candid like go drop out go bowling populist go down. so you know isn't this i mean that was one nine hundred eighty this is today that doesn't changed very little has changed and i think that we have to be a little fair to our friend paul there and say that that historically both parties have understood this they've understood that that if you can figure out ways to make it easy for your people to vote hard for your opponents to vote they will get a better that is a structurally sound of a private party was the party of racism in the south that is where the they were the party that was pushing poll taxes and and but here's what it is to show something big has changed the we have brought in computers money all sorts of structural realities that did not exist in the past and even existed nine hundred eighty there and so now when they do redistricting for instance you draw these lines with such precision to exclude to diminish when you start to tinker with the

laws you know what they're doing this isn't just florida ohio it's got all sorts of questions about how many polling places you will have we have huge examples from around the country of different machinery from district to district the quality of machines the end result is we are essentially the only major democracy in the world that doesn't have a set of universal standards for how we vote and how we make sure that everybody's vote is equal and this is a big big problem because we throw it to the states some states try really hard some do really well but other states don't and within those states i wrote a book on the florida recount in two thousand and what fascinated me us from county to county you had you know in some counties over ten percent of ballots being roughly ten percent being discarded in other counties only one percent you know this is when you don't have universal standards you have incredible fluidity and a lot of americans are denied the franchise. there's a probably apocryphal quote that says or to joe stalin although peter king said

something very much like this for nancy pelosi his daughters little documentary he said you know basically it doesn't matter who votes it matters or counts the votes and. and when congressman king said it was you know well before the two thousand and four election as i recall two things and. you know don't worry about bases it's all about the crew all over but the county men and we'll take care of that. is. with this gerrymandering and even right down to the point of saying ok in this in this place we're going to install these machines which are easier to use and in this place we're going to use paper which is slow or we're going to you know whatever it may be. are we engineering our elections pretty in advance and there is no longer a matter i saw that yesterday in fact on this program we're talking about how in north carolina this has been so finally done that it takes three voters to elect

a democrat to one voter to elect a republican it's not a one to one race it's not it you know it is several you got one and a half million more people voted for democrats for the u.s. house of representatives than voted for republicans if the republicans control the house of representatives you could see the mourners in that if you could on the state level there are a number state legislatures which would have put control in the two thousand and twelve election cycle democrats would take the charge if you had just had you know fairly drawn districts which were competitive and and here's what happens that's the most troubling thing it isn't that the draw is bad it is that because the draw is so bad you really do tell people it doesn't matter to vote and so you get a double impact first you create an unfair district and then you basically say to people look you know your vote isn't going to matter that much and we begin to train people away from expecting contests to be competitive and it is very damaging to democracy we have we've got a serious democracy problem in america other countries would be aghast they would

be it would be a national crisis if their voter turnout fell to the levels that are goes down to and yet even our moe's many of our most progressive democrats don't talk about this in a serious way this ought to be front and. it's an issue similarly with you know the integrity of the systems voting machines all these kind of things and i brought this up with democratic strategist and members of congress and they said we do want to talk about that we don't want people to be afraid that their vote won't count and so they don't show up to vote and i'm like no we should be talking about the you know national standards good systems that you know open open source software whatever biggest problem is it's this when democrats get in charge of a place they're like oh now we've got it and so we're going to draw the lines in a way it's favorable to us and you know and and then they they have a reform deficit as a party the republicans may be in there aggressively trying to draw the lines in the most extreme ways but the democrats have not been passionate enough about

reform and it has redounded on them in very negative ways will figure this john nichols great pleasure with. redistricting seems like a nonpartisan issue right everyone on all sides of the political spectrum it seems should be against undemocratic unconstitutional tactics right i mean we want elections to be fair honest straightforward. it's wednesday are you ready to rumble join a for god's law and liberal rabble are under closter legal fellow with the heritage foundation and cameron seward program manager of the heritage foundation gentlemen good to see you both so you heard my conversation with john nichols and we were redistricting ourselves to the point now where democrats just can't win elections even when they win elections isn't there something you know fundamentally

dysfunctional about this historically both parties have done this this isn't the but the you know right now i'm picking on republicans for good but shouldn't we isn't there a point where we should do something like california. it's done where you have nonpartisan commissions that draw districts and they're more or less polygonum they're you know let's let's just try for equal sides no more of this jury manner instead of just let me just start off by saying that nonpartisan commission rarely means partisan to measure if you look at the missouri plan in for example judicial state elections these types of commissions have been captured by special interest groups across the country and usually you get judges you know i mean if i recall correctly we had the a.b.a. rating certain high qualified extremely influential federal judges as unqualified and vice versa so i'm always very skeptical of handing control innings that i don't trust why. we're talking about congressional districts there was an electoral

districts why not just come up with a rule we have computers now we can do this you know kind of fancy math really really fast why not just say patrick. cameron want to just say. they have to be as close to a poly gun as close to you know a square or a circle it can to you know even sides as possible the districts no longer can be looking like this. well i think that's kind of an arbitrary way to group them in dictating kind of the shapes or whatever i think you know it's the opposite of our. whoa i think you need to leave this up to the just states to decide like you said if they want to do it in the courts or the constitution is a function of a fundamental finding of the money in the constitution of what's in the constitution will find their let's leave it on the institution you know we've done that you know twenty eight times well that's the key let it go through the proper legislative process is whether it be at the state or the congressional level of amending the constitution but is ok then but i'm guessing you're you're thinking

that that's not a good idea it's not something that you would want to have happen right yes i don't think it would be a day in day to day get it's again done legislatively than interiority the problem but not necessarily a problem that has a federal solution as. you know i respectfully disagree i think that we need to have national stand with the debt ceiling yet bob ney was telling me today a former member republican member of the of the house of representatives he's got friends still in the house and he said in the in the big meeting that they had with the house the day before yesterday i guess it was yesterday john john boehner got up and they were they were all talking all the republicans in this close secret meeting were talking about fund raising and he got up and he said i'm going to bring a clean bill to the floor for the to raise the debt ceiling and he said you could just hear a pin drop there is just absolute dead silence and as boehner steps down he whacks one of the tea party guys on the shoulder and says you know i just i just took the monkey off your back you guys should be applauding me. should they did he know i

think is absolutely not the son of the bright and it was sent to the sent to the president this afternoon actually ted cruz was all such a filibuster and mitch mcconnell and you know and i think what's interesting here tom is that is is it wasn't just the kind of tea party that had. abandoned the speaker it is now his center right allies his traditional allies to be a twenty eight of republicans from his caucus voting affirmatively for this clean debt ceiling limit he in fact said i'm going to rely on the democrats to do this one so last but that all matters great ability with his party really lost that then they could simply call for a lot of who's speak well i think everyone knows he's going to step down anyway so no one wants to bother with that they really want to focus on the problems that are facing the country. one would hope to see more of

a nice long liberal rubble after the break. got a quote for you. that's pretty tough. as they were it's not a story. because this guy looks good smear about john stead of working for the people most issues the mainstream media were pretty chummy bridegrooms days into. the bedroom. and. it was a. very hard to take out. once again. why have we ever had sex with her hair cut.

and paste. please. please say. what if. the people.

well the bad guys the awful journey or andrew clustering cameron seward and let's get back to israel hilton a fella from texas as terminal brain cancer last year he was having seizures and headaches show up in the car in fact and they said we can't figure out what it is you know come back when it gets worse and he did it got worse. but a year later i guess it was and he came back and at that point it was brain cancer that are progress so far that even after the surgery there was they're going to meet he must live and saying sorry buddy here's the problem it's going to thirteen thousand three hundred dollars a year he works full time he has his entire life he's forty nine years old and he's

worked full time his entire life this is no slacker this is a guy who's done the best he can by himself and his family but he because rick perry said no i'm not going to allow the tax dollars that texans paid to the federal government to come back from the federal government to texas in the form of of medicaid expansion i'm not going to allow my own people have their own tax dollars seems to me nuts and absolutely not even republican most conservative israel making thirteen thousand three hundred thirty four dollars doesn't make enough to qualify for obamacare because there is a minimum a lot you have to make which was predicated on the assumption that everybody would be filled in with medicaid below that and he makes too much for the men. akkad which in texas i think is a row three or four thousand dollar cap in that neighborhood so this guy falls into the red state don't hold the republican don't at all what are going to do about that. well i feel for israel it's a shame that he's got to rely on such a lackluster program like medicaid for his health insurance he has relied on he's

got nothing he's really he is a lie nice old fashioned obamacare america system which is you know. the strategy you know if you're going to if you get sick don't get sick and if you do get sick and die well it look i mean i think the big issue here is that real reform of medicaid not obamacare would allow states and congress should in fact encourage states to subsidize private insurance for those medicare recipients that would be talking about the arkansas well i that would allow these people access let me really just let me just many why it came up to me like a good cards are are known as hunting hunting licenses because you literally have to hunt for doctors that will that will service you will seize a variety of ways that can be fixed but what you're suggesting if i understand this correctly with the arkansas model and feel free to hop in here and do is you know medicaid is basically

a single payer system the federal government gives the money to the states the states then distribute that money to the doctors you've got no health insurance company in the middle you know multimillionaire you know stephen j. hemsley is the c.e.o. of united healthcare has taken over a billion dollars out of his company you know from say no you can't have a liver transplant oh all takes more money no gold plated faucets in the washroom for the executives no corporate jet no meals with a corporate in-house chef none of that stuff and what you guys want to do is say you know we're going to bring those these leeches from wall street to call themselves health insurance companies we're going to bring them back and put them back into the middle between the patients. and and and and the payers you know it's why why would you want these guys to legally skim twenty percent off the top which is what obamacare allows them to off when we can do it much more efficiently without them they're making a killing they lobbied for this law they're making a killing the insurance company has a lot of them are making

a killing i would just say why does this guy do away with why is there this donut hole the reason there this donut hole is because when obamacare was passed it was jammed through folks didn't take seriously the constitutional implications and people don't remember that when the supreme court upheld the law the one part that they struck down was the part that told the states that they had to accept these medical or they don't like it or not without a convoy national report of reality here they the obama care did not say you have to take medicaid it said if you don't take it was conditional on a gun to the head in the words that you just don't take the medicaid expansion or you lose all your medicaid right right exactly so what's you know i disagree with chief justice roberts and you know so i mean i do too the whole lot probably should've been struck down but what you just did to my question of why is it that you'd want to take the insurance for the working poor that could cover say a million one point five million tax and better access to care and route if you're one hundred percent and you go to where it's only going to cover one point two

million you're going to throw three hundred thousand people out of the cold so that stephen jay hemsley can make and can build in their house you know i assume that you have a pretty robust health insurance and would you not want someone to have access to the same sort of robust health insurance in the private market as you do that's in fact i know the reality in america as long as you're medicaid is on allow the minimum wage to be raised the reality in america is that you've got a lot of workers in this country maybe thirty forty percent of people working in this country who can afford health insurance they can barely so that you're saying let's provide subsidies instead of expanding medicaid so then why only two hundred is a lie tax dollars why do you want to use fed. we could hollers to give profits to insurance companies. if we want to have a debate about fixing the problems with obamacare or about amending it about viable alternatives to a system that's already breaking down as you're showing but there's sort of everybody we can have that debate but he hasn't says he doesn't want the law did

the senate democrats don't want the law amended so why doesn't rick perry just take the damn money why is he saying why he's only one citizen so they can do no not as bad as your bad no no it's the citizens of texas going to be scared right there were an advocate oh that's got nothing do with care now i'm talking about taxes the citizens of texas are taxed enough already right big cities think all this money they sent off the federal government for in federal income taxes the federal government's now saying to texas we'll give you back billions of dollars in federal money it just has to be used as health care for poor people of the word yes i agree and i think he read where he says we don't want our own money back no i believe that you do it california i think if you put that to the people of texas they would say yes we want those people better better down on their luck that really do need this money we hope they get the best care possible so yes let's settle the guys over i've been sure going over this they're going to vote riparian out of office because they would say if we have it's a legislator let's talk about tax loopholes. this is this i find fascinating in the

one nine hundred fifty s. . to actually i don't have the numbers i thought i had oh yeah here it is the total federal revenue but a third of federal revenue nine hundred fifty s. came from the corporate income tax now it's less than a tenth so corporations painless and less and less and in income taxes making more and more and more in profits and we the people paying more and more in taxes. isn't there something fun fundamentally wrong about this u.s. per public interest research group found that twenty one states and d.c. had just closed one loophole the so-called water's edge loophole then you know where a company is making money in that state they should be paying taxes in that state but they route that money through some bank offshore and they say we don't have to meet that x. is that it we have a we have a an irish sub city or something you know this is what this is again that apple has

been playing that those twenty one states would have brought in additional billion dollars in two thousand and twelve. isn't time for us to seriously start looking at corporate tax loopholes. i think we need to look at the repatriation rate i mean that's what we're really getting at here and i think it's entirely too high i'm not mistaken i think it's the highest in the world of any developed country so i think that needs to come down i don't understand and i think we have the highest so when we have we have went on to a trillion dollars that's offshore right now that's been the sitting offshore for between corporations and billionaire because people because absolutely because who knows we're doing well i didn't know it was so you know i'm sure because because these loopholes got written into the tax code by bought and paid for members of congress we both know people call all sorts of things things loopholes they call the mortgage interest rate deduction loophole but that's it's i mean it's not a loophole it's a very conscious subsidy to homeowners for example so so this is a very conscious subsidy to billionaires and multinational corporations call it a lose that i'd like it's an algorithm i mean let me rephrase the question isn't it

time for us to stop subsidizing billionaires multinational corporations at the expense of average working i think we need to get smarter better corporate tax system so would you join me in in calling for a drop of the top corporate tax rate from thirty five percent to twenty five percent you know because we have outside is it out of the next three in the world and meanwhile closing these. subsidies. so you know exxon mobil doesn't have another year where they pay no income taxes at all and g.e. doesn't go years and years without paying taxes and apple can't keep up you know to do is it. simplifying the tax code is a great woodley important thing if you want to have a discussion where part of that package includes closing you know these so these so-called loopholes i think a lot of many people in the business community would welcome that on the other hand i would just want to point out that the tax code is a very very complicated document as it is it has to be careful the skewed toward it you don't that you don't discourage repatriation or american innovation a lot of people karate no one in work i mean you know really really want to people who are making their money this is not are it's really really rich people in

america who are making their money off you know with capital gains and so-called carried interest maximum tax rate is twenty percent i mean what you we have this so-called progressive tax code and so taxes go up until you make to three hundred thousand dollars and then they actually you know once people start peaking out over a million dollars they start going down really really rapidly you've got you've got people make a billions of dollars paying less in taxes than guys working at mcdonald's there's something fundamentally wrong with that will they put a lot of that money back in the market but of course you don't really would i don't agree with that but if you want to pray about it just really you know it is offshore i mean well a little bit because you think of the country they put back in the market all right well this is speaking of taxes heroin is its is the. issue in maine about heroin yes the taxes the taxes and heroin it seems like a perfect segue there is a drug that if you give somebody who's overdosed like see philip seymour hoffman if you give it to him you know within a few minutes of the overdose it literally reverses the overdose it's called elex

own and it's something that is carried by in many states. regularly it's carried by paramedics it's carried by hospitals you know with the what are called ambulances. governor republican governor paul le page of maine is going to veto a bill that would increase access to knowledge so what kind of insanity is standing up to big pharma. no even you and i know he's not i mean you know what's he's saying that if you if you give people an antidote to an overdose what you're what's going to happen is people are going to more like be more likely to shoot up and you know there's absolutely no science behind that in fact the science demonstrates the opposite that if you give people access to knowledge zone and in fact the swiss in the u.k. experience if you give them actual pharmaceutical heroin in a controlled environment you reduce aids you reduce habsi you reduce all these

problems and eventually people quit and then and you and you radically reduce overdoses is this is he like plan a some kind of weird base. i don't get it i don't think so i think. he relied on whatever he did that is made of any body there is in that state to make the decision that no this doesn't fact increase heroin use or the dangers there is no evidence of that ever he did not cite any of that just to be that's certainly up to him as the governor to make that decision so he's either bad voters why is it going to be a bad decision i'm you know no locks on is approved by the f.d.a. it's not like he's banning some unapproved drug so i guess to be determined i think there's a lot more studies old about illness and up to the voters and i sort of over there and or cameron thanks for being with us thanks for coming out the american media has focused a lot on the sochi winter games and scrutinize every little detail from the quality hotels and the conditions of the pavement in the streets you see american media

being fair or is it distorting russia associate number of. patients are forcing. him to finish line of the boston marathon. or.

what has happened here in. i. think. 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 our t.v. question more. over

. did you know the price is the only industry specifically mention in the constitution which says that's because a free and open press is critical to our democracy which recall for us. well i'm. going to go on i'm sorry and on this show we reveal the picture of what's actually going on we go beyond identifying a problem to try to rational debate a real discussion critical issues facing america by different ready to join the movement then welcome to the big picture. welcome back to the big picture on top.