think. it was like gold if you. did you know the price is the only industry specifically mention in the constitution. that's because a free and open press is critical to our democracy correct help 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 i'm ready to join the movement and welcome the big picture. oh i'm tom hartman in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight the big picture. the koch brothers are at it

again this time leading a nationwide media campaign that is attacking obamacare and exploiting americans is it time to start regulating the amount of money that billionaires like the koch brothers can throw at our democracy and political processes that and more into nights alone liberal rubble and it's been two years since george zimmerman shot and killed trayvon martin and used florida's stand your ground shoot first law to get away with murder can we take alex stand your ground shoot first laws off the books and ensure there are no more trayvon martin's or jordan davis'. you need to know this we need to be regulating the koch brothers today senate majority leader harry reid took to the senate floor and ripped the koch brothers a new one over an anti obamacare a television ad put out by americans for prosperity

a koch funded group here's what that ad had to say. my name is julie and five years ago i was diagnosed with leukemia. i found out that i only have a twenty percent chance of surviving i found this wonderful doctor and a great health care plan i was to fairly well fighting the cancer fighting the leukemia and then i received a letter mind servants was cancelled because of obamacare now the out of pocket costs are so high it's an affordable if i did not receive my medication i will i believe president i believed i could keep my health insurance plan i feel lied to it's heart breaking for me since that ad first aired fact checkers have been analyzing it and surprise surprise it doesn't add up thanks to obamacare misses this is as insurance premiums have actually been lowered and because obamacare caps out of patients out of pocket costs for patients will probably save money over the

course of her treatment but the fact that the coax latest anti obamacare ad is a lie shouldn't come as a surprise as paul krugman pointed out in a recent op ed for the new york times the right is having a very hard time coming up with real cases of hardship under obamacare when it goes on to write what the right wads are struggling average americans prefer women facing financial devastation from health reform so those are the tales they're telling even though they haven't been able to come up with any real examples on the senate floor today harry reid lashed out at these blatantly false obamacare ads and their sponsors like the koch brothers take a look. leukemia patient whose insurance policy was counseled would die without her medication and that's what i have been paid for by two billionaire brothers it's absolutely false for the woman whose insurance forms you want to month and spend for around america by the multibillionaire koch brothers and and is

florence. we heard about the evils of obamacare about the lifes it's ruining. republican some speeches and in ads paid for by oil magnets a koch brothers but in those tales. turned out to be just. tales. to say that the koch brothers have no conscience and are willing to lie behaviors associated most commonly was sociopaths so if that's the case maybe it's time to start regulating the amount of influence the sociopaths can have on our political processes maybe we should be regulating people who are throwing billions of dollars at our democracy while exploiting the story of woman with leukemia for personal gain in america the first amount protects our rights to speech association but we regulate those rights for example you have the right to

free speech but you can't yell fire in a crowded theater and cause a mass panic that could turn deadly similarly you can't stand in front of a store that short changed you for hours on end yelling and causing a public disruption our right to association is also regulated our country you have the right to hold a rally in a public place like a park or street corner but if you don't get a permit to hold that rally you'll be going to jail it's the citizens united decision the supreme court in the citizens united decision the supreme court said the money was protected by the first amendment the same as speech if that's the case and if money is protected under the first amendment the same way that our rights to speech and association are should there be some regulation on that too and if there is some regulation on using money is speech shouldn't be let's not let sociopaths and psychopaths use money to corrupt our democracy while exploiting people like julie boon for personal gain let's rubble.

join me for that as low level rubble are and are closter legal fellow with the heritage foundation and cameron seward program manager with the heritage foundation and guys welcome back you heard my rant we do regulate speech in this country we regulate association in this country what's wrong with regulating money from billionaires. well first of all i just say that what you did get one little fact wrong with. you can't yell fire in a crowded theater if it's on fire if it's on fire because it's so so one man's what the supreme court. recently heard about a year ago involving false speech gentleman who had been claiming that he had medals one of the things that the supreme court has as his has held is that. one of our first men and principles is that it's very difficult for the government to regulate what do you have an absence and now you have you have an absolute right to lie and you have a right to report has said that the right to lie is even more important in the political arena than any other and that's the most protected of all it is ok that

the president touted that you can keep your insurance if you like you can keep your doctor absolutely he had you have the right to life it is long as we lay that out and but right but he. but should we be regulating whether it's george soros or it's david koch should we be regulated it's let me let me just back this up a little bit and this is the way i think most americans are looking at it. back before the reagan revolution every. shopping center every down town was filled with small local mom and pop businesses thirty years later since reagan stopped in force and sherman antitrust act it's all you know basically a handful of corporations that own basically the entire retail sector in america in every other sector so we've seen our economy go from a fairly free market economy to basically an olive gonna me a an economy run by oligarchy three four companies to dominate basically every industry in america similarly we have seen back you know when reagan came into

office there were only three hundred registered lobbyist in the city there was you know there was only a few million dollars being sent out and spent on a presidential election now here we are thirty two years later two billion dollars elections thirty five thousand lobbyists and so are our democracy has become an. an oligarchy we you know we've gone from a knowledge gonna me to an oligarchy you know oligarchy basically running our our our form of government and this just doesn't seem i think to most americans i i would say to you this is probably a tea party rant as much as it's a lefty liberal rant there's something fundamentally wrong with this and so what are we going to do about the oligarchy first of all i would i would just say that there has not been a golden age in america where money has been completely out of politics like it was john adams who said that in a wrist a crowd of someone who commands more than one vote and if you recall we had the yellow journalism that sort of caused or was

a precipitating factor in the spanish-american war so for a long time folks with money have had an outsider as well and there was an awful huge reaction to that i mean that was that was that was eight hundred eighty ninety eight sees me and. there was there was that the whole progressive explosion of the first two decades of the twentieth century was in response to the golden age that you're referring to right and it did and teddy roosevelt and howard taft of the. robert taft or whatever was over to have to get robert has the republican presidents didn't just break up oil companies they broke up match. is sugar so that gets paid newspaper syndicate's. so we have taken an oligarchy for why don't we do it again why we do have laws on the books and our antitrust laws should be vigorously enforced but let me just point out that when you're talking about going after political speech. you may have the face of the koch brothers that may be an easy target but the reality is there are lots of

smaller groups out there that are often affected we have these i.r.s. regulations proposed regulations the comment period closed tomorrow it was kind of fly by night the obama administration put out a bunch of proposed regulations to regulate c for political activity and you know it created a firestorm of division between those on the political left and those on the on the ideological left because the political left says we can get rid of the seaforth they can clamp down on money in politics and sure will kill some some lefty groups but will really kill you know the koch brothers groups but you have folks on the left and right agree that these regs are bad you know just yesterday i think it was you had floyd abrams of cahill gordon and the group great first amendment attorney stross and former a.c.l.u. head of the whole bunch of folks coming out against these proposed i.r.s. obama all i'm saying is when you start regulating political speech you know i could throw the baby out with the bathwater well i'm saying. actually i you know that

that's a cliche that is that come up we i'm not talking about regulating political speech on time or regulating money i don't buy that speech is money speech is not money money is no instrumentality necessary. speech no money is the answer and salary necessary to buy television ads that's a different thing. or to print books or to print pamphlets or to be able to have the free time in order to your take yourself to go protest in front of and look forward to and so we have done since the nixon debacle is we have regulated money and it's been bipartisan republicans and democrats you know i don't think much not disagreeing that there is an opportunity for regulation or there are regulations here we have a tax system that allows people to use different forms five twenty seven c. three c. four and to express themselves i say a pox on all or houses these are just ways for for rich people to hide their identity the supreme court a very least person i'm going to say very regulated out of existence i'm saying at the very least at the very end you know how a president or

a presidential candidate senatorial candidate has to say you know i'm tom hartman and i endorse this message i'm running for the senate what if at the at the end instead of americans for prosperity is said paid for by david koch you know they have that in the five twenty seven arena you do have donor disclosure but i guess what i don't understand is that's not how disclosure is not happening associated with the speech and i'm not here at all from camera but how do you remember he was going to defer to college yeah but he said i don't want to break up the role that he's on i think he's hitting everything on i would associate myself with everything that he's saying how would you handle i guess here's my question how would you handle intimidation because you know the koch brothers have a large security apparatus but there are lots of smaller donors out there millionaires maybe small business owners that are not at the level of koch that want to fund a local election maybe there one guy in suburban you know dallas or whatever who's not in or you say to put his name i was afraid of his name out there because i organize i get left that go to his house death threats yes i guess that there are threats when it and you shouldn't have to put up all i know it's very simple what

you do is you turn it over to the f.b.i. if you think it's serious it's really set meanwhile a really good you know any of more incidents along the rubble after the break. i got a quote for you. it's pretty tough. if they wait substory. but if this guy like you would smear that guy stead of working for the people most issues in the mainstream media are working for each other bribery must be sure to fight. the good rather. it was terrible a. very hard to take. once again to put some on here a play by patton that had sex with that her thick hair cut if it.

means if. if. if . the.

with me are andrew closter and cameron surgeon let's get back to it it's fall off the radar of the mainstream media but one point eight million americans as of the three days after christmas a couple of weeks a couple of months ago it was one it was a little in the neighborhood of one million now it's one point eight million and counting americans are not are without unemployment benefits this is not for lack of the united states senate passing it by a majority it was passed by a majority in the senate you'd think it would be a lot but no the republicans are filibustering this in the senate it did pass the house of representatives and my recollection is correct or was it no it didn't it didn't get to the house because it didn't go to did it fail by one vote in the senate and to break the republican filibuster did it actually won by knowing vote

there was no filibuster at. the final vote could they go it went through it they they brought it to a conclusion that the final vote failed by one vote just. down vote just a simple majority it's yes simple majority on that vote there was no filibuster. cloture was was was gained debate and did straight forward and they simply did not have the votes at the end and by one vote are you suggesting that there were democrats united correct who i would have to look at the vote i didn't see the vote breakdown i only saw the number that failed by one vote i'm i'm sure he's skeptical of the ice or well you know the producers in your ear they can they did exactly what i did. actually it doesn't work that way or. doesn't work that way anywhere that i. but the fact the matter is that it's republicans who are blocking this i mean it is rand paul coming out and saying twenty six weeks and it can't get

through the house that's not going to you know john boehner is not bringing this up so why why are the republicans playing politics of this when people are literally losing their homes as we speak well i think you know first of all as we just determined or maybe it's up for discussion it wasn't just republicans but anyway the unemployment insurance contrary to what you hear from the left does not stimulate the economy and in fact extended long term unemployment insurance as the calling for hurts unemployment rates we see this in europe and you know in fact and you don't see that you know yes yes we do we saw in north carolina actually you know once north carolina short their unemployment extended benefits their employment rate went up actually in fact ok my producer my ears fifty nine votes not forty nine it failed by one vote to pass to cloture. harry reid voted it there

was no zero so you can get to a final vote for it ok so. the other the other point to be made in this goes back to this latest iteration that came into it before the senate was that it's on page four and it was let's finish this first or how is it possible that one point eight million people having a couple hundred dollars a week. and spending that into the economy fails to stimulate the economy or alternatively one point eight million people having absolutely nothing that they're not spending in the economy one prior that they were spending money in the economy doesn't hurt the economy this is like common sense one hundred one how can you refute common sense one of the little i think the. i think that i mean i got on the north carolina when they cut it off on employment you're no longer counted as unemployed because it looks like the numbers went down but no the numbers didn't go down the numbers to go down because partially he said suddenly. people found jobs because people left the left that work for that's my point person and this is not

ok you know that's word that's the issue that i'm leading to is this bill that was in front of the senate did nothing to reform the program it just continued this perpetuate going after your i know i said if you're losing their nose we've had ample opportunity were we come here time and time again this is been six years now that this is been treated at the end all of the time for your age boys that it was like yes let's pass it along let's pass along and suppose i don't think that was a good idea. gayle's let's people give people the skills to get those jobs that we know are out there what jobs there's plenty of jobs that are out there that people simply don't have the skills for that would look there are no smoko there i used to get no those those h b one visa jobs that you're talking about there's the software engineer jobs where i just say about that we've got to hire people from india because we can't five people in america they can find plenty of people in america they just can't five people in america with a master's degree who are willing to work for thirty thousand dollars i don't know i'm also talking about skilled jobs in manufacturing as well. those are out there

and employers simply cannot find the people that have those ideals that i don't know but that i don't believe you know it's and the unemployed people in america don't believe it and there are you know when capitalism fails as it does periodic leigh and i'm not knocking capitalism but when capitalism fails as it does periodically i think there's a moral obligation as well as as just a rational financial obligation you know to maintain the economy for government to step in and fill in the hole and social capital isn't comes back but tom don't you think there needs to be something done at some point we need to save look we need to bite the bullet on this what do you tell me a little better to serve that for you but it's meant to serve no it's not yours don't cut people off you're saying like ok you know if george has a warrant on his foot and we're going to take care of that first we're not going to feed him for four months because you know we haven't gotten to the war i mean this is you know that's a terrible. not a four but. you know what i'm saying ok let me move along here turns out that in

the state of ohio john huston the ohio secretary of state the republican secretary of state noticed that in the largest county in the state fifty six percent of all the weekend voters were black people they only make twenty eight percent of the state's population but they're fifty six percent of the weekend voters so what does john has to do these says we're not going to hear any more voting on the weekends indeed yesterday he eliminated early voting hours on that state in weekends two days before the election and on sundays and this is just i mean this is not just in fact yesterday joe biden told the group of attendees at a black history month reception that the new republican backed voter suppression laws across america are a form of a tree he said these guys never go away never never goes away the zealotry of those who wish to limit the franchise franchises legal speak for the vote cannot be smothered by reason. is the vice president wrong. because this is

a slave trade or is this just trying to suppress the black vote because gee they tend to vote democrat i think the irony is that it may backfire because there was a university of wisconsin study a few years ago showing that early voting actually decreases voting turnout and they looked at ohio for example by looking at presidential elections by three to four percentage points so and why is that right if you have that you might say exhausted wouldn't have done this i know it's not that you might not be that bright i don't know i don't know what an answer that is but it might be i don't know ok to do in the high order we could secretary of states not all that is right i'm somebody who is also down in florida texas and new jersey as well there were a number of state they look at but the bottom line is that early voting number one may actually depress the vote so that's important number two it actually hurts the little guy too it hurts the little campaign because big campaigns can afford to pay money for a rolling get out the vote effort but little campaigns cannot maybe they can only get out the vote on election day so if you want the koch brothers running around

town with being able to handle that these are the you know it's a little bit of straw man we both know we all know that the little guy the fringe candidates who are going to pull one or two percent from the constitution party or for three or four percent from the libertarian party are not having a consequential effect on who we still don't give them the best shot don't you thing you come on you know it's the left side there will be i actually am going to there are three mario but so more white libertarians oh that's right i just said it's not suppressing their vote necessarily because if we want to expand the franchise we need to do it smartly we need to make sure that all the tools are there you know i revere the vote i live outside voters in oregon where they have vote by mail and it's i believe it's either number one or number two and in terms of voter turnout in the united states because it's so easy to moat you can vote for a full month before the election you can vote any time you want you get it in the mail you fill it out you mail it in it's just that simple it's a given that common sense these years it is the easier it is to vote but one of these republican states just. a week or so ago it just did away with with voting

from home you know with the you know automatic mailing of ballots i forget which state was it was you guys probably know i think was wisconsin and it was one of those midwest states that's been taken over by the republicans why well because it makes it easier to vote you know paul weyrich the guy who who helped run the reagan campaign who was one of the co-founders of the american legislative exchange council alec he laid this out he said this in one nine hundred eighty to a group of republicans who are meeting in a church in dallas texas here he is. how many of our chris have what i call them grown 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 no matter of fact our leverage in the election is quite candid like go top of the voting populace go. so tell me so me this isn't

a republican. i think there are now why is it that voter suppression is only happen in the states controlled by republicans i don't know what you mean by voters but to what type of law is cutting back on the amount of time that people have to vote cutting back on the number of voting polling well the race is and cutting back on the ability of people to vote but you know what new york i don't think has really voting i think that absentee but i don't think they have early voting so it's not just red states that that don't like cutting back not don't have well honestly i haven't looked at it enough to be able to say which states are the republican the republican health plan earlier this month the republicans in the house ways and means committee voted to amend obamacare the only problem according to the c b o their amendment is going to reduce the number of people getting employment based coverage by a million it's going to add seventy three point seven billion to the deficit neither of which does obamacare do so this clearly isn't the real republican plan what is the real republican plan. well it's actually there is still one unified

republican plan various iterations that are right you know ever since one thousand nine hundred eighty two when nixon proposed what is now a bomb of here you guys have had a lot of years to come up nixon well i thought his. first was heritage started it all started actually go back and look at nixon's proposal it's almost identical i think heritage stolen from in fact it probably you know probably joe coors gave it to nixon if your heritage was starting more or paul weyrich put it do you know what the bottom line is there's various iterations out there what would i take. pause within what i take take what i when i put the brakes is when i see these massive pieces of legislation very much similar to obamacare i'm not saying it's provisions but the sheer size and scope of it it is solves it tries to solve every problem although once i did i thought about really simple know why don't we just do simple targeted the camera this is i got a policy i got it i've got it simply pass a piece of legislation this one payer system i know you're going to save ten years

of her debt ten ten ten years per year right we drop a decade every year every year the eligibility age for medicare drops by ten years so over the next six to six and a half years everybody's covered by medicare we already have it in place it only cost three percent united health care cost us twenty percent it you don't want to do it. well you know i have that but there are others that. you could get if you can get you know the majority of both as a congressman and sign that it's what most countries in europe you know there are there are lots of work over the current system that we can handle that will not open to a system we've seen obamacare have huge huge problems with it's onboarding that's not republicans fault that's not always the way i agree with you i have surprised you about it here we got to wrap it up but we're out of time i was sorry and as i want cameron great i think you know just coming up two years ago today trayvon martin was shot and killed by george zimmerman and much of the nation learned for the first time about the absurdity of stand your ground shoot first laws so who's

really behind shoot first laws and what can you do to help white these absurd braces laws off the books. they were made in. two or three posts work. it's going to give you a different perspective you want to never i'll give you the information you make the decision. the revolution of the mind it's a revolution of ideas and consciousness. extremely. probably exists would be described as angry i think i'm a strong enough i was single. chances are forced. into the finish line up. on.

my. list. and. 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 r.t. question lol.

i think. over the place. that 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 shrek albus. well i'm. going to go on i'm sorry and i'm this show we reveal the picture of what's actually going and going to go beyond identifying problems to try to fix rational debate a real discussion critical issues facing america by ready to join the movement then welcome to the big picture. welcome back to the big picture tom i'm tom arbonne.