the story is built on going after the back story to what's really happening out there to the american what's happening when a corporation makes a pharmaceutical chills people when a company in the environmental business ends up polluting a river that causes cancer and other illnesses they put all the health risk all the dangers out to the american public those are stories that we tell every week and you know what they're working. most people think to stand out in this business you need to be the first one on top of the story or the person with the loudest voice of the biggest raid in truth to stand down in the news business you just need to ask the right questions and demand the right answer. questions.

on larry king you are watching our america question and more. hello i'm sam sacks in for tom hartman in washington d.c. and here is what's coming up tonight on the big picture. is the united states the world's greatest threat to nuclear disarmament suzy snyder in just a moment and the push to sell the gramm cassady obamacare repeal bill is laughably

dishonest even by republican standards but could it work of course it could more than that with brian pruitt and alex lawson internets politics panel. so imagine for a second to a world without nuclear weapons well that is precisely what more than fifty diplomats did wednesday on the floor of the united nations just one day after donald trump more or less threatened to blow north korea off the face of the planet these countries signed a treaty banning nuclear weapons once and for all the so-called treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons sounds pretty great. not so fast none of the countries that currently have nuclear weapons not the u.s. not the russia not china not france not u.k. not israel not of these countries not india not packed pakistan none of them signed

on to the prohibition treaty so just how big of a step is this been for disarmament so joining me now is suzy snyder nuclear disarmament program manager at pax issues he welcome to the show hey thanks very much great to be here so you were in new york you were there for these events what was it like well it was rather exciting the secretary general of the u.n. opened the session the president the general assembly spoke the president of the international committee of the red cross and a crescent spoke president of costa rica and the director of the international campaign to abolish nuclear weapons and they gave some opening remarks said how important it is that we do everything we can to make nuclear get nuclear weapons off the planet in a safe and secure way and that we need to really do this because any use of nuclear weapons would cause catastrophic humanitarian consequences they welcomes the treaty

and then opened it for signature and countries heads of state came up and started signing now once it gets fifty signatures it takes effect is it ninety days after that. no not exactly it's it takes effect ninety days after their state the ratifications ok so with any treaty you got to two steps you sign it and then you ratify three countries did ratify it yesterday already the holy see ana and thailand so they're there and they're there to spot deposit their incidence of ratification forty seven to go and then ninety days after that the treaty enters into force we get to that point and it looks like we will after all this when this treaty was approved back in july it got one hundred twenty two votes in support what does it do what are the mechanics and what it would look like if this is in effect right now. it's a great question that this treaty makes nuclear weapons categorically illegal any

possession any use any threat of use and anybody who signs up and ratifies the treaty locks in the baseline verification standards they already have in place and then are encouraged to negotiate new verification standards kind of like what all other nuclear related treaties do and it's it sets up a mechanism for anybody who is harmed by nuclear weapons to be able to get some assistance from the international community so it's got a victim assistance provision as well as that's different from other disarmament other specially nuclear disarmament treaties and this is really the first of its kind because the only sort of treaty that's on the book or books right now is the treaty. the nonproliferation treaty which was signed in one nine hundred seventy ratified in one nine hundred seventy it's kind of what the u.s. in all these other countries the nuclear armed nation sort of what they want to

have is the baseline what they defend but as you've noted this goes well beyond that. yes and this does go beyond that because this does not set up a two tiered system this doesn't say some countries have nuclear weapons and some don't this says no one should have nuclear weapons any use of them is devastating we don't want that to happen but it doesn't change the fact that those countries that have nuclear weapons did sign on to the nonproliferation treaty and in that treaty they are obliged legally required to negotiate nuclear disarmament they haven't done that in almost over forty years that they've since they joined that treaty and this is meant to help them along a little bit to deal with jim eyes nuclear weapons completely because the rest of the world thinks they're just a bad idea sure what i mean really though how effective can this be in. if the entire nuclear armed nation isn't on board and i know there are some comparisons

being made between this treaty and the. treaty where that dealt with land mines and things like that the auto a land mine convention of the one nine hundred ninety s. can you talk about those comparisons in which you had countries that didn't major countries that didn't initially sign on to it and yet a sort of standard was laid. and that's exactly right it's a standard it's a norm countries that didn't sign on to the to the out of a convention banning anti-personnel land mines don't make land mines they don't deploy land mines because the rest of the world recognizes them as illegitimate and illegal and that's the thing with this is that it gives an opportunity for to really deal with generalized to stigmatize and mean possession of nuclear weapons and that's very important and what we've seen with the convention on cluster munitions for example as that a lot of countries decided to make any investment and those in the producing

companies illegal so some companies stopped producing them a lot of private industry is involved in the production of nuclear weapons and we think that this treaty is going to help stop their financing as well the argument the nuclear armed nation is made in the u.s. u.k. and france came out with a joint statement back in july of course these countries and the rest of the nuclear armed countries didn't even participate in the negotiations over this treaty they didn't participate in the vote approving of this treaty but they did release a statement at least the u.k. the u.s. and france saying that this treaty is basically i'm paraphrasing it wrong headed and that it would undo the system of nuclear deterrence that's been set up over the last decade fifty years that has prevented you know nuclear war other than the two times we drop bombs in japan i mean how reliable is deterrence really knowing that all it has to do is fail once and thats it. i think you've just

answered your own question can we count on a system that a failure means the destruction of a city it means one hundred thousand people dead in the blink of an eye i don't think that's a very safe system to rely on and i don't think it's really about that question when deterrence happens in lots of ways we can take nuclear weapons out of the mix and not worry about becoming less secure if anything we're going to be more secure because there's been less risk of accidents there's less risk of terrorists getting the material to make nuclear bombs or stealing the bombs themselves let's not forget just a few years ago and eighty six year old nun broke into a nuclear weapons facility in tennessee like she got into the fort knox of uranium that's not safe that's not secure so the best thing we can do is to get rid of

nuclear weapons to disarm and the u.s. the u.k. france they know that this treaty is going to have an impact it's going to delegitimize their weapons and that's why they are so loud and blustering against it but we know over the last fifty or so years there's been dozens of incidents that brought us just within a hair of annihilating each other there are over ten thousand estimated nuclear weapons around the world. i mean from a practical perspective how do you go about building an international regime to get rid of them considering i mean here in the u.s. especially among the political right among conservatives there's this constant fear of one world government that's coming and if you direct a one world government at the weapons that you know people perceive to keep us safe there's there's going to be a lot of anger at that so i mean how do you how do you go about tackling this

massive massive massive problem. well you know what there's a lot of experience already because at the height of the cold war there were seventy thousand of these weapons seventy thousand and it's gone down to less than fifteen thousand now so there's good experience in how to dismantle them how to destroy them how to take them out of operation and i think that we should look at how to build that experience up again i would much rather see a disarmament race than an armament race and it's not going to be easy nobody says it's going to be easy but just because it's not easy doesn't mean it's impossible putting people on the moon wasn't easy but it sure happened and i think that we have some brilliant minds some excellent creative geniuses who can help take care and get rid of the nuclear arsenal all nuclear arsenals are different coldly

and securely how difficult is this project with the president being donald trump right now i know that the previous administration one is it wasn't exactly in a rush to get rid of nuclear weapons and back they invested money to modernize and upgrade nuclear weapons but you have trump who wants to you know blow up the iran nuclear deal. confront big confrontations with north korea right now it seems like none of these are helping toward the disarmament plan. to be frank they're not. but it's not about trump his trump is one person trump and the rest i think the rest of the u.s. state department recognizes the iran deal is a pretty good deal the rest of the countries negotiating that deal they sure recognized it was a good deal and they want to keep it and i think it's very important that kind of listen to our partners listen to our allies and make sure that happens so in the coming months and years wart should these countries that have signed on to this

tree. doing what is what are groups like your organization doing to convince the rest of the world to dump their nuclear weapons. well like i said you know you mentioned yourself this the nonproliferation treaty still exists and what we've done with this tree is we've deal of jet-a mys the weapons and we need to continue to diligent allies that deal a generalized them that helps to disarm them the former un secretary general said there are no right hands for the wrong weapons what we're going to do is we're going to keep educating people on what it is that the weapons do so tell you when you discuss how the how these weapons the impact that they have nobody wants to be responsible for using them there's a taboo against their use and we're going to make sure that the the new nuclear weapon prohibition treaty enters into force and use it as

a tool to put pressure on those states to disarm and eventually join the treaty or at least get rid of their arsenals susie schneider nuclear disarmament program manager at pax thanks so much for coming on the show thanks so much. coming up conservatives supposedly hate freeloaders so why do they support right to work laws which literally legalized freeloading. and alex lawson in tonight's politics panel after the break. on larry king you are watching our america question and more. your launching an r t america special report tonight on this bugs you and me

because one that's been basically everything that you think you know about civil society have broken down. there's always going to be somebody else one step ahead of the game. we should not be dismissed of the normalising mind. we don't need people that think like this on our planet. this is an incredibly tense situation. the mission of newsworthy is to go to the people tell their side of the story our stories are well sourced we don't hide anything from the public and i don't think the mainstream media in this country can say that the average viewer knows that r.t. america has a different perspective so that we're not hearing one echo chamber that mainstream media is constantly spewing. we're not beholden to any corporate sponsor no one

tells us what to cover how long the coverage or how to say it that's the beauty of our t.v. america. we give them. we hear from. and we question more that . not letting anything get in the way to bring it home to the american people. lead. it. i think i.

am. welcome back republicans are trying to lie their way through another attempt to repeal obamacare and unfortunately it could actually work for more on that let's hand things over to tonight's politics panel. joining me for the panel tonight are brian perrett contributor to red state and alex lawson executive director of social security works thank you both for joining me let's get started as they rushed to pass the grand cassady obamacare repeal bill before the end of the month republicans aren't even bothering with their usual rhetoric about how this bill is better because something something the market solves everything they're just straight up the lying in saying the bill does things that it doesn't for example louisiana senator bill cassidy the cassidy of graham

cassidy went on c.n.n. when today and said that his bill has specific protections for people with preexisting conditions but the specific provision that says that his state of the. as for a waiver it must ensure that those with preexisting conditions have affordable and adequate coverage for yeah that's not true graham cassidy does require states that opt out of guaranteeing protections for people with preexisting conditions to describe to the federal government how those people will get affordable coverage but that provision is about as toothless as they come and that's because the bill as a whole still lets insurers charge with preexisting condition people with preexisting conditions insane amounts of money something that's currently banned under obamacare that graham cassidy gets signed into law and you're a forty year old with a preexisting condition like say asthma insurers could slap you with a four thousand dollars premium surcharge if you've got a heart disease that surcharge could rise as high as eighteen thousand dollars if

you've got metastatic cancer insurers can make you pay as much as one hundred forty thousand dollars extra so i mean if republicans are going to lie and say that this bill has all the protections that obamacare had why not just pass obamacare again under a different name and that way they can sell the american people what they're claiming to sell then i think what we're living through right now is where you stand depends on where you sit and you may say they're lying that a lot of republicans say they're not lying so we're all just sort of you throwing what do you think are incentives are going to do with this bill when the insurance companies when they no longer have to. i guess take the financial loss of providing coverage but i think they're going to do it in conditions they're going to keep preexisting conditions coverage i think that's a no brainer in the final bill i do believe is that what he how it's not the second thing will the second thing that they're going to do is actually what most americans want to have happen is to have choice which means if you're

a young man you shouldn't be forced to be to buy insurance that covers you know maternal care or you know new baby care if you've got to understand how insurance where i got your stuff. under you if you want to rise or something that does is an insurance you don't understand hold reinsurer and you get and show you're like no what i really want is to just reach into the american people's pockets steal their money steal their health care destroy medicaid raid medicare and give the money to our criminal friends on wall street oh and by the way you can't really know if it's the truth or not because where you stand depends on where you sit we know it's written in black and white and the reason we're having no protection at existing conditions and if metastatic breast cancer survivor has to pay one hundred forty three thousand dollars a year what that means is they die that's what this is about your reading the talking points are literally reality i don't have an authority as the talking points what i'm talking about is that trump care eight point zero or whatever we're

on is the same moral garbage that the last seven attempts have been stealing people's health and giving it away to the criminals on wall street you know who's for this literally no one the a.m.a. is against you know who's against it and they have the lobbyists for the insurance companies themselves say it injects too much to the marketplace there's literally no one for this except for republican politicians and their propaganda and there was no answer it's the no for that it's not what you try for a lot of senators right now and that's about that's about it but bryan you mention this idea of choice and even sometimes hear democrats talk about insuring more choice curious what that means because the reason we embarked on health care reform was for people who didn't couldn't afford health insurance so when you talk about choice to someone who can afford it to begin with isn't the only choice whatever the cheapest option is i mean who's going to have a choice of selecting something they can afford out of the poll of options or not

at all and the fact is to your point there are people making a choice now not being insured under obamacare because they can't afford it does they're not a choice ship it but there should. choosy. to pay the penalty they're choosing to pay the penalty this is the green cassidy is it's one hell of a choice to solve this problem of people deciding to go without care how is of the because of the cost especially spell it out how how does this solve that the person doesn't have it right now because they can't afford it and then you make it less affordable the person or not they will get less not have your health care to your allowing them to buy a less expensive place on the plan that's garbage that doesn't cover anything where they take your premiums and deny your care that's where we were before obamacare passed they take your premiums they deny your care it's a great gig if you can get it and the only way you can get it is by electing a bunch of criminals to office in d.c. who will do your bidding for them to play a clip here here's lindsey graham talking about this during

a press conference about the bill. it's pretty well clear to me where the country's going under obamacare and bernie care is going into further bankruptcy is more decisions further away from where you live so here's the choice for america socialism or federalism when it comes to your health care. alex i kind of sort of agree with him here to a certain extent in that look obamacare is an improvement over the last several years in health care but it's not going to get us all the way there and we're starting to see two clear distinct choices emerge we saw bernie sanders introduced a single payer health care bill got a third of the democratic caucus on board including very prominent members of the democratic party and now we have this great cast a bill i'd like that to be the choice because it's pretty obvious socialism or nihilistic barbarism where everyone warms themselves on the garbage fire of the after glow of the nuclear attacks or right i mean like this is this is not

a choice you cannot provide health care to the people with this path that strong care and you can call it whatever you want but if a person gets sick and goes bankrupt because they got sick immoral immoral and we're the only country in the world where that concept is even allowed to occur and the trump care path takes us away it takes us in the wrong direction to where more bankruptcies will occur to where more children will die to where more mothers this ill we didn't know we had been days on liberty island as she has no i have my next seven days i'm sorry but yelling people who want to tell anybody that's in this country do not look like any other o.e.c.d. country that has our per capita and we're the only ones innovating less where they were going to grow than were the only country that's actually using the free market to create solutions to create cures we have to have the free market for the i don't talk about right to work laws massachusetts senator elizabeth warren and some other

democrats introduced legislation that would do. rid of right to work laws in the mostly southern states all the states but they exist mostly in the southern states right now justin trudeau said that right to work laws in the u.s. are unfair when it comes to trade practices as we start renegotiating nafta we know that workers in right to work states make six thousand dollars less in wages are less likely to have health insurance coverage more likely to experience accidents on the job. what i want to attack this from is you have all these foreign companies now coming to the u.s. opening up car plants ikea's coming in moving more and more manufacturing plants here which on the surface seems good until you realize the reason they're coming here is because we've become the low wage labor nation for the developed world you used to think of us as going out and finding you know bangladesh and all these other countries now they're coming here to do work what's that say about the state of labor in the countries or i i completely dismiss your premise because why

they're coming here is because we have the highest skilled workers that actually build cars that last very very long and i'll tell you that you really are that all going to southern powers that are with the union on the politics side of this this is a disaster for the democrats for any of these democrats and all you have to do to lose an election in america is say let's be more like canada that's all you have to do as a democrat let's be more like canada you will lose your election well i think it's not let's be more like canada but let's protect what we're going to really like we listen to and justin trudeau who is a perfectly fine and decent man and is running canada as well as he can but you do not go into an electoral process in america saying let's be more like a different country this isn't i mean like. politics it's not about politics it's we're talking about policy we're talking about wages and the erosion of the american workers why because that right to work for less that you're talking about it it protects billionaires it protects billionaires ability to just extract money

from the workers who are actually producing the things that these billionaires are making money on and that race to the bottom we are definitely no longer a leader i agree with you brian that the reason people do move here is because where the second largest manufacturer in the world we have incredibly skilled workers here we have workers who produce things with quality but again when you have these billionaires who are able to buy these criminals in. d.c. to do their bidding just for them so you have a handful of families you have four hundred billionaires who own an entire political party and at least some others plus dozens of governors houses just you do their bidding that's not the free market so you sam's example you're calling criminals b.m.w. toyotas all these companies are moving into the south they are not criminals they are going to the cell because they want to produce their saving money by wire the only time all the states that they don't care because you have cars where they're

being sold you don't have to share them vs for them sold because we are now a cheap labor hub because we no longer care about words interests are at a sure there are some with some action calling the politicians the criminals and the reason that they are the there buying the politicians it's cheaper here we've become the cheapest one of our main industries here is just the cheap ability for corporations to buy politicians it costs almost nothing it's like the cheapest thing you can get the return on buying a corrupt politician in america is astronomical and if you have a fiduciary duty to your bottom line the quickest way to do that by a few republicans have them limit our liability on kratz are for sale and that is something one whole party and too much of another for sure this is a bipartisan criminality but it's the corruption that's why they're doing it they know that they can protect that whatever they fall for like the volkswagen giant diesel scandal right they know they can buy their way out of things like that in

this country because of our interrupt political there are this and there are certainly democrats behind it by the no offense to bangladesh but we see it here can self becoming that when it comes to labor which is unfortunate prime pruitt alex lawson thank you guys for coming on the show and that is the way it is tonight don't forget as tom always has democracy it's not a spectator sport get out there get active tag you're it. it's called the feeling of freedom to. everyone in the world should experience phillida and you'll get it on the old roll in. the old according to

a gesture. welcome to my world come along for the ride. if you want to know what an old expediential street looks like the trails attributes would be analyzed in this case the bottom would. be like with the like you not i got. pretty good. with excel. most people think just stand out in this business you need to be the first one on top of the story or the person with the loudest voice of the biggest ratings in truth to stand down in the news business you just need to ask the right questions

and demand the right answer. the. question. on the news tonight president trump signs an executive order granting the treasury department increased powers to target north korea's trading partners and the chinese to step up to the plate ordering their central bank to prohibit the country's banks from doing business with north korea and hurricane maria leaves the entire island of puerto rico without power as rescuers continue their efforts following mexico's earthquake on wednesday i'm ed schultz reporting tonight from washington d.c. this is the news on our team america.

good evening friends we start tonight with an executive order signed by president trump sanctioning north korea's trading partners the president announced a decision during a sideline meeting with the korean and japanese presidents at the united nations general assembly the order enhanced as the treasury department's abilities to target individuals or groups with significant trade relationships with north korea today i'm announcing a new executive order just signed that significantly expands our authorities to target individuals companies financial institutions that finance and facilitate trade with north korea a new executive order will cut off sources of revenue that fund north korea's efforts to develop the deadliest weapons known to human kind.