i suspect. they would like to do it. did you know the price is the only industry specifically mentioning the guys that you should try that's because a free and open press is critical to our democracy schreck help us. program. to make you know i'm sorry and on this show we reveal the big picture of what's actually going going to go beyond identifying a problem you're trying rational debate in a real discussion critical issues facing america are you ready to join the movement then welcome the big. welcome back to the big picture i'm tom arbonne coming up in this hour another stand your ground should first trial has come to

a close in florida and once again the defendant has at least for now escaped a murder conviction why did a florida jury failed to convict michael dunn for the murder of jordan davis an unarmed teenager who was listening to music with his friends when he was shot and killed and the taxpayer funded public broadcasting system is supposed to provide americans objective about biased information so why was the p.b.s. why was p.b.s. airing a series about cutting public employees engines responded by billionaire political activist also right now every single working american should be enjoying what i rages lots of vacation time and plenty of time to explore their cultural and intellectual interests at least that's what people in one nine hundred sixty six thought america would look like in the twenty first century so what went wrong and what's keeping us from be coming a leisure society will tell you all about that on. reagan in tonight's state we

take. in screw news over the past couple weeks the media has been fixated on the so-called loud music trial down in florida and on sunday the trial came to an end michael dunn was convicted on three counts of attempted murder and one count of shooting into a vehicle but the jury deadlocked on the count of murder for the death of jordan davis and an armed teenager who was listening to music in his car with three of his friends when dunn opened fire dunn maintained throughout the trial that after approaching davis and davis' friends he saw what he thought was a gun and fearing for his life he opened fire on the s.u.v. full of armed teenagers don't also claim that the shooting was legitimate because of that stand that state's stand your ground shoot first law. well done faces up to

sixty years in prison for the attempted murder charges of the other three young men in the car it's unclear whether prosecutors will seek a new trial for the murder charge joining me now to discuss more about the trial and the media coverage of it is debbie hines trial were former prosecutor and legal commentator welcome back thank you sort of the circumstances are what they are. i was struck by the fact that this guy was convicted of the crime of shooting a moving vehicle which in florida parallel you can get you time in prison. but he was not convicted of the death of the young man who died this is what. explain this to me you know i thought about this a lot because i was trying to make sense of it when i first heard the verdict like how do you find the three attempted murders but you can't agree on the first degree or second degree murder of jordan davis and here's what i think happened tom first

the case was kind of broken up in that he fires a total of ten shots ok but then he fires seven shots they start to move the s.u.v. the car is moving he gets out and he continues to fire the other three shots so obviously there's no fear there's no threat they're trying to leave that's how he got convicted of the three attempted murders now and the shooting and the shooting of the vehicle exactly exactly but somehow the jury twelve jurors you know three white women three white four white women four white men two african-american women one hispanic one asian somehow or another when the case of jordan davis they could not come to an agreement and what i think basically happened there again we have twelve jurors and i always try to use analogies so if this were a football game you have eleven players when the team. but sometimes in football

they refer to the twelfth and that is basically the thing ends in the stadium so in this jury you have twelve jurors in that room but there was a thirteenth juror and that is the racial bias that caused one or more of those jurors to not to be able to come to cure it and to not be able to convict michael dunn for the death of jordan day with you know my my first thought on this was what happened was. was that because of the stand your ground shoot first law of florida this this law that the n.r.a. basically funded the american legislative exchange council to push out into twenty plus states. helps gun sales and that because of that. correct me if i'm wrong my understanding of that law and this was part of the jury instructions was that he doesn't have to present any sort of affirmative defense that he was being threatened all he has to do is say that he believed he was being

threatened and there's no way that you can challenge somebody and say what they state they believe is not true because it's not like you can open their brain and take it out look at it there's it's totally subjective and so my first thought was ok the stand your ground made it impossible for them to prove that he didn't believe it but then i realize that florida has you know the kind of murder laws were if you can find first you can find second they could have found him guilty of murder without malice or without premeditation or even manslaughter and they didn't and bad says to me that there's a racial piece going on here that somebody thought jordan davis should not have been talking to that guy that way or something like that right i mean that's the troubling piece i mean that's the point one thing with there is that somehow subconscious or unconscious or conscious racial bias that's there with some of the jurors for them not to be able to find first degree second degree manslaughter because everyone keeps talking about oh the state over charge they should. not of charge of first degree but the jury instructions that went back and i saw those

jury instructions they basically allow the jurors to find him guilty of second degree or even manslaughter and how you can shoot said then ran out into a call are we had to do that i think that was described that it takes about six pounds of pressure which isn't a lot but it's still pressure and each and every time he's exerting that one two three four five six seven and you can't find premeditated murder because each time he's actually thinking about pulling the trigger and that's the first degree murder part and he's got to be seen the consequences of what he's doing and then e and then he goes home with his girlfriend and has their let's get drunk and such good pizza let people. walk the dog it's well i'm sure we have not seen the end of the thanks so much. thank you. in other news back in december w n e t the news station the new york based flagship station of the public

broadcasting service announced the launch of a new series called the pension peril series talks about the push to slash public employees pensions and until friday it was airing on hundreds of p.b.s. stations across america and while p.b.s. has programs and documentaries are supposed to be free of corporate influence susan billionaire box it appears the pigeon pearl was anything but joining me now for more on that is david serota a staff writer with daily nationally syndicated columnist author of the most recently his is third book back to our future david welcome back thanks john thanks for having me great to see who's secretly funny in peril what is pension peril. john arnold a former enron trader turned billionaire who has been waging a legislative battle to cut the retirement benefits of police officers firefighters teachers and other media school workers. basically big. does that say

a kind of right wing doctrine it also to do that protects billionaires for instance from having to pay higher taxes to focus the state legislative and budgetary debate on the idea that pensions are bankrupting states means that billionaires like john arnold don't have to pay a little bit more in taxes to make sure we meet those pension promises to those workers that's who john arnold is what we didn't know until last week is that john arnold amongst other political activities in state legislatures john arnold through his foundation was funding a new series for p.b.s. called the pension peril that was airing on the p.b.s. news hour the pension peril obviously in in it's very title is skewed towards the idea that the pensions are causing a great emergency in states and communities he was secretly funding this series for p.b.s. p.b.s. was not explicitly disclosing it and that arrangement for quite obvious reasons

clearly violated p.b.s. his own conflict of interest rules about its own journalism and about disclosure. it's my understanding and please correct me if i'm wrong a lot of the problems that pension funds around the united states have to the extent that there are ones that are in crisis have to do with the fact that they're invested in the stock market to some extent when the stock market was crashed by wall street traders like the guy who's paying for the syrians does the series mention the fact that wall street is responsible for the pension crisis or at least bears some responsibility for. well in the in the first two segments that have aired the answer to your question is no the answer to your question of whether what the stock market crash has everything to do with public pension problems the answer to that is absolutely here's the key thing to remember of the pension debate pension shortfalls right now they are an issue there is something that we should be discussing but they are dwarfed by the amount that states and municipalities spend

in corporate subsidies subsidies to already wealthy big businesses oftentimes those subsidies don't create jobs so it's not to say that we shouldn't be discussing pension short balls or the as you suggest the roots of those pension shortfalls but it is to say that when you see ace a content a piece of content like a something on p.b.s. that says too that pensions are bankrupting states municipalities and they don't mention for instance that it was the wall street collapse that created a lot of those pensions short balls and they don't mention the fact that the corporate subsidies that are going out the door are bigger than those pension shortfalls you should be aware that what you're seeing really is a dictionary definition of propaganda and not something that's an honest analysis so i understand that within p.b.s. they actually came to the arnold and said we'll do this for you if you give us millions of dollars he did they did and then you broke the story earlier last week and things have changed in p.b.s.

well we did break the story and ultimately by the end of the week p.b.s. . said that they were sending the three and a half billion dollars back to john arnold you are right to say as we reported that p.b.s. originally went to john arnold not the other way around they went to him knowing his quote unquote their their quote interest in the pension issue a.j. they knew he was the chief sponsor of the national legislative campaign to cut pensions what's interesting is that they didn't mention that that he was funding the series in their series that they were airing on television including this is amazing including a segment in which they were covering a ballot initiative in california to allow for major pension cuts they didn't mention that he was funding that segment and they didn't mention that he's the chief financier of that very valid it's so it's terrible and david were flat time but is a brilliant people can dig it all out on the web their daily david serota thanks so

much for being with us thank you tom thanks so much coming up it might be the twenty first century but america is stuck in the flintstone age and it's all because a reagan but fair or not i'll tell you how we can stop both feet out with the flintstones and start living it up with the jetsons and i still take.

i marinate joining me. for an impartial and financial reporting commentary interview and much much. only on bombast and.

there is the good the bad of the very very courage is really ugly the good deal hanson texas sportscasters phrase all around the country this week on air takedown of people who say that the n.f.l. this isn't ready for a player like. you feed a woman and drag her down a flight of stairs pulling your hair out by the roots you're the fourth guy taken in the n.f.l. draft you kill people while driving drunk that guy's welcome players caught in hotel rooms with illegal drugs and prostitutes we know they're welcome players

accused of rape and pay the woman to go away you lie to police trying to cover up a murder we're comfortable with that you love another man well now you've gone too far it wasn't that long ago when we were being told that black players couldn't play in our games because it would be uncomfortable it is not our differences that divide us it is our inability to recognize except and celebrate those differences we've always been able to recognize them some of us accept them and i want to believe that there will be a day when we do celebrate him i don't know if that day's here yet i guess we're about to find out but when i listen to michael sam i do think it's time to celebrate him now. well so let's all deal knock some sense into the bigots of the world the bad. call pepper county sheriff's office the g.a.o. law enforcement agency is under fire this week for hiring john one goal to host a three day training session on bolo a former f.b.i. agent looks on paper at least for the sheriff's office training problem is he is

a conspiracy nut and a total islamophobia he believes the cia director john brennan is a muslim agent and has in the past quote muslims do not have a first of all right to do anything and quote let's hope that the culpepper county sheriff's office didn't know about one dollar asked when it chose him to teach a safety class is of the did not hire them anyway that was so terrible message that most muslims of culpepper and muslims everywhere. and the very very ugly this sunday shows. n.b.c. is facing criticism today for hosting a debate about climate change between bill nye the science guy who's an actual scientist and congresswoman marsha blackburn who's not a scientist about it in during yesterday's broadcast of the press but always did debate on something ninety seven percent of scientists say is a fact and it is questionable enough n.b.c.

isn't the only bad guy here sunday shows as a whole do a terrible job talking about climate change a recent media matters study found that they talked about climate change for a total of twenty seven minutes in all of twenty thirteen that's right the major sunday shows talked about the greatest threat our species has ever faced for less than half an hour during an entire year that it's very very . pretty sealers lizard. living among us the life of a politician isn't easy to beat in the public eye means you often have to be crazy rumors about yourself president barack obama for example had to release his birth certificate to prove he was an american citizen and poor christine o'donnell

meanwhile actually had to release a campaign ad to get into people she wasn't a witch i'm not a witch i'm nothing you've heard i knew. remember that pretty weird well christine o'donnell's image problems are nothing compared to those of you zealand prime minister john. check it. prime minister received an official information act request for any evidence to disprove the theory that key is in fact a shapeshifting rip tilley an alien a string humanity towards enslavement his office couldn't produce the goods but he fought back with us. as the saying no need to beat and i said. no i'm not really tall i'm sitting on nine eleven you been my shit i don't have a brain so you. well you know what they say are right politicians are all snakes there are lines where we have to get all the ground.

america could be flying high with the jetsons but instead. with the flintstones back in one nine hundred sixty six time magazine published an article that looked ahead toward the future and discussed what the rise of technology and automation and computers and all that stuff was going to mean for working class americans you know from the time of the church washington presidency until the president's iran and reagan was a few blips for wars in there but generally speaking all the time as american workers became more productive their wages went up along with their productivity or their working hours went down or both. we went from sixty hour work weeks in poverty wages in the early nineteenth century to the fifty hour work week at the turn of the twentieth century with better wages to solidly middle class wages in

a forty hour work week by the nineteen fifties whether was the steam revolution of the early nineteenth century the industrial revolution of the late nineteenth century or the machine revolution of the early twentieth century as workers were able to make more things per person hour and thus more profits for their companies with fewer hours the workers shared in the prosperity that was produced by their increased productivity. so time magazine looked at that and simply assume that from one nine hundred sixty six to the year two thousand. as computer and advanced mechanization made american workers more productive. their workers' wages would go up and the work we could go down the article concluded that by two thousand the machines will be producing so much that everyone in the us will in effect be independently wealthy with government benefits even not working

families will have by one estimate an annual income of thirty to forty thousand dollars how to use leisure meaningfully will be our major problem that thirty to forty grand by the way is more like two hundred fifty to two hundred eighty eight thousand dollars in today's dollars. and it wasn't just time magazine predicting such a jury's future for america back in the sixty's there was a common belief that the rise of technology and automation would mean increased productivity in america which in turn would be more money and fewer hours work for american workers after all it had always been that way in america the rationale behind that belief was pretty simple with the increased technology companies could be could produce more and more efficiently on a per worker basis revenues would soar profits would be passed along to workers would be making more and working fewer hours back in sixty six everyone thought that by the year two thousand america was going to be

a leisure society they thought that our biggest worries would be how to use all our time off where to go on our many vacations what sort of intellectual and artistic pursuits the middle class would be choosing to explore in the twenty first century . but that logic in on the top marginal income tax rate remaining at seventy percent where it was nine hundred sixty six. after c.e.o.'s that are in the first million or two they started hitting up against that top tax bracket and so they stopped taking more pay after all who wants to pay seventy percent income tax this is why for about fifty years c.e.o. is only earned about thirty times what their average workers are that high top marginal income tax rate encourage c.e.o.'s to keep their money in their business to invest in new technology to pay their workers more hire new workers so their businesses could expand as businesses became more profitable thanks to investments in automation and technology workers saw more of those profits their share of those

profits and they increased their standard of living and they had more leisure time and time magazine in one nine hundred sixty six assumed that that trend that have been going on for almost two hundred years would continue right through the beginning of the twenty first century but time magazine didn't see ronald reagan coming and then reagan came along slashed income taxes and everything changed the idea of the leisure society blew up in one thousand nine hundred one ronald reagan introduced his economic recovery tax act which slashed the top marginal income tax rate from seventy to fifty percent cut estate taxes for wealthy businesses and slashed corporate profit and capital gains taxes too and just a few years later reagan again lowered the top income tax rate to a mere twenty eight percent a level we hadn't seen since the early one nine hundred twenty s. a low tax rate by the way that is blamed by many economists for causing the bowl then led to the great depression side of the reagan tax cuts doomed today's working class americans opportunity for

a life of leisure the time magazine bought was coming but when the time article came out in sixty six working people's wages and stayed even with productivity levels since one thousand nine hundred so people thought back then that a productivity continue to rise which was likely to increases in automation and gains in technology computers things like that wages would rise to it thanks to reagan although businesses did become more profitable. there was less of an incentive to share the wealth because of historically low income tax rates c.e.o.'s pull profits out of their companies and filled their swiss bank accounts all at the expense of working class americans all the new profits that were created by gains in automation technology computers from the one nine hundred eighty s. to today and they were supposed to be shared with working people giving us all higher paychecks and more time off instead went to the wealthy elite productivity continue to rise as it has for more than two hundred years american history but for the very first time wages stalled since one thousand eight the connection between

wages and productivity which have been tied together for centuries disappeared worker productivity continued to increase thanks to cost improvements in technology but workers' wages stayed flat working people's paychecks did not increase and neither did their time off back to the one nine hundred fifty s. the average american working in manufacturing worked around forty two hours a week today an average american working in manufacturing is working around forty hours a week. even though productivity has increased four hundred percent since one nine hundred fifty americans are working on average just two hours per week less and they're paid the same or in many cases even less than they were paid in one nine hundred fifty if productivity is four hundred percent higher today than it was the one nine hundred fifty s. in america should be able to work just ten hours per week to afford the same one nine hundred fifty s. lifestyle back in the days when a family of four could get by on just one paycheck buy a car put the kids through school take a couple vacations a year and actually have

a pension for retirement. that's the very definition of the leisure society ten hours of work a week and the rest of the time spent with family would travel playing golf going to movies whatever you want. with the leisure society was doomed and then it ronald reagan came into power and decided to slash taxes on the very rich in america. it's time to undo the damage is done by reagan and roll back the reagan tax cuts for the rich these tax cuts that have let the wealthy elite prosper wall working people and got screwed only when the reagan revolution is reversed every american again reaped the rewards of increases in productivity and technology let's step out of the flintstones age and hop on board the jets. and that's the way it is tonight monday february seventeenth two thousand and fourteen and don't forget democracy begins with you they're good i could tell your.

america is joining me. for it seems that impartial and financial reporting carry on for news and much much. only on bombast and. i've got a quote for you. it's pretty tough. as they were it's about story. let's give this guy look good smear about john stead of working for the people most

missions on the beach were pretty cheap. bridegroom stays true to. the dead rather. wealthy british soil. is no time to write a. story about a. market 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 in to conjure reports on our. world. series technology innovations and all the developments from around russia we've

gone to the future covered. coming up on our t.v. stopped and interrogated at london's heathrow airport a legal advisor to n.s.a. whistleblower edward snowden and was singled out by a border agent and interview with that attorney from london straight ahead and the sochi winter olympics heat up with another day of competition russia has scored an alum pick gold and the two man bobsled race while the u.s. and russia stand neck and neck for total medals the latest on the sochi games coming up. and a mixed verdict in the trial of a florida man who shot and killed an unarmed teen will break down the verdict in the case and ask if michael dunn will face a retrial for the death of jordan davis all of that and more later in the show.