in order to create change you have to be honest you have to tell the truth artie's able to do that every 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 the news business you just need as the right questions demand the right answer.

questions. well i'm tom hartman in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture the signs are everywhere are we nearing the end of capitalism and if so what comes next columnist richard will choose to moan and we might finally have definitive proof that voter suppression one wisconsin for donald trump more on that tonight's politics panel brian approach now is lost and later on in the program.

richard smith is officially out as c.e.o. of equifax he resigned today just a few weeks after his company one of the world's largest credit reporting firms revealed that it had suffered a massive security breach that exposed the personal information of one hundred forty three million americans to hackers which raises the question just how did a massive for profit corporation like equifax gain access to something such compromising information without the public's consent and what does this tell us about capitalism joining me now is richard wool visiting professor at the new school cofounder of democracy at work and the author of numerous books including capitalism is crisis deepens essays on the global economic meltdown professor will welcome back. thank you tom glad to be here it's great to have you with us i think

this scandal has really exposed to a lot of people how really little control we have over our own individual private financial information equifax is just one company a ten billion dollar industry that sucks up our data for profit i robot in the seventies running a small business having to jump through all kinds of hoops to get done and bradstreet to give me a credit rating i had to reach out to them and send them information and all the stuff it was like in one thousand nine hundred eighty three seventy four how was it is this the news is this normal how long has this been going on what's the situation here and how different is it from my experience back in the seventy's. well i don't think it's fundamentally very different we have a mechanism with modern computers to gather vast amounts of data and to process this data we have a society now that is dependent on debt in

a way that didn't exist in the one nine hundred seventy s. everybody now is deeply in debt for their home for their car for their college education with their credit cards you can see people who go in for a bottled water in a small store using their credit card which is a debt if everybody is dependent on debt one way or another then you have a problem with the creditor who never knows whether it's safe to lend to this person for their home to that one for the car for that one for their credit card so we needed to develop an industry eat that would allow banks and other creditors to have some way to measure how safe and therefore how high interest rate they should charge for the loans that they make so it's the modern debt dependent economy the way capitalism has developed into a kind of a mountain of debt that creates the niche space for companies like equifax to make

a killing serving the deeper and deeper indebtedness of our population is there a metaphor here for the power the capital now has over our lives as a result of this capitalism and also doesn't the serve as a very clear example of where the profit motive conflicts with public safety and security. yes and the examples are everywhere let's review equipped for x. they discovered this is public knowledge in march that they had a problem with their security they didn't fix it in time they had a hack in july or later in the year that shouldn't have happened because they should have fixed what they discovered what was wrong that was the logical way to proceed they didn't do it i don't know if they didn't do it because it didn't want to spend the money i don't know if they didn't do it because they have a lax supervision program whatever it was this private for profit company was

busy doing something else other than protecting this vitally important information because if it's compromised you can and this is happening to millions of americans spend many hours and many dollars and enormous aggravation with theft of your identity with abuse of your credit card numbers and all the rest of it that's involved here when you add that high executives of equifax sold the huge positions of stock when they learned or now they claim they didn't know which is hard to understand how several people sold a lot of stock right after this flaw was discovered you're beginning to smell that this is a system i believe capitalism works this way that creates incentives for all kinds of people to do all kinds of ways social and anti social things as a normal part of business really put it one more way if

a public company abuse the public trust half as badly as equifax now did you would be hearing everywhere cries that we should have this privatized that the private sector can do it better where is the outcry that says we don't just want mr. smith the c.e.o. of equifax to resign after all let's remember he gets one and a half million dollars a year none of that is being taken back he has an eighteen and a half million dollar pension package which it was announced today when he resigned he would not lose this man is walking away from a disaster for millions and there's nothing at all not only to punish him which i don't care that much about but to change this structure so it doesn't keep happening the way the banks abuse those that car companies with their ignition and

other emission manipulation scandals we're surrounded by a private capitalist system that is literally screaming to us my god you can do better than this you know just to get one last time go back to my example from the seventy's. and again tell me richard if i'm this is just an anomaly i was twenty three in one nine hundred seventy two and that year i and i don't my own business for a couple of years that year was the first year that i made more money than my father had ever made in his life and i still couldn't get an american express card i remember for almost a year trying to get a credit card and they wouldn't believe me i had i had to submit copies of bank statements and all kinds of stuff i don't recall that there even was a credit reporting agency or maybe it was just that i was dealing directly with a credit card things have changed tremendously i mean i've gotten credit card applications in my cat's name. should we nationalize this you know

equifax and should we break them up through the antitrust law should we go back to what i was just describing if in fact that's what you know was real that the credit card companies and other creditors just did their own research and you know you had to prove to them you were who you were i mean what what are the reasonable solutions and and. why has it changed so profoundly in what fifty years since one thousand nine hundred forty s. however long that is the basic explanation is that after one hundred fifty years of rising wages in the united states in which workers became more productive and they got back part of that extra productivity in rising wages in the one nine hundred seventy s. that stopped and it has never resumed that is productivity went up for workers but their wages didn't this was a trauma for the american people and they expected each generation to live better than the one before which they had had they made promises to themselves and their

kids of what life would mean they didn't want to give up and so they did something very dangerous with the help of the banks they were told and they accepted ok if you can have the american dream with your wages no longer growing up borrow your way into that dream and the borrowing went crazy and the banks were there to do it but they needed a credit system to measure how reliable it was to flood you with the credit cards and the car loans that's where this industry arose as a response to the fundamental failure of capitalism to keep raising wages which is why people like us are beginning to say this isn't the problem of the equifax company or even the credit card companies it is a problem of a system that has spun out of control that is no longer serving the needs of the

people you know an economic system is like a refrigerator if it doesn't work anymore you can try to fix it here or there but after a certain point the refrigerator repair man or woman says to you i'm sorry i could keep fixing the motor but we're beyond that now you've got to get a new system that's where we are with our economy now we have to face that the basic way we've organize. it isn't working anymore and little fixes here or there punishing this bad guy or that one we're beyond all of that and the central thing for me and i think that for a growing number of people in america is to say look we have a system in which a tiny number of people the major shareholders and the boards of directors of the five thousand biggest companies in this country a total of thirty forty thousand people that's it these people are making all the decisions what to produce how to produce where to produce what to do with the profits ok when it went well they took the credit we gave it to them now the system

isn't working they've got to take the blame we've got to change the way we make all the basic economic decisions and the way forward is to bring democracy to the business let us all participate debate decide together what we want our economy to do if you want an economy that serves the people you've got to put the people in charge it's the oldest lesson of the human race in a recent interview and i believe in your book you said that you're more confident than ever that we are reaching the end of capitalism. is this conversation we're having about equifax and credit and how things have changed over the last fifty years is this a symptom of that or is it deeper and more profound even though now. no i think it's a system it's a systemic problem they're coming everywhere the coming fast and furious we've just

been through one abusive mistrusted behavior of the automobile companies after another of the banks we've just been through years of abuse by the banks now we're seeing in the credit. business it's everywhere it's what the cigarette companies did to us it's what the water companies are trying to do the private ones that are buying it up how many examples across how many industries in how many countries do we need both for as with that metaphor of the refrigerator repairman we understand we have a systemic problem and you know the scary part is yes to change a system is a big thing but as the repairman for the refrigerator will tell you to go down the rabbit hole of one small seeming repair after another very quickly adds up and proves it was

a mistake let's go on let's change the system you know americans were proud that they react reacted to the failing of the british empire by saying we don't want to better keyring we don't want to reform the king we don't want to monarchy we want an end to the king system and we set up something else we can do the same for our economic system it's long overdue to have at least an honest debate and what our political leaders are afraid of and why it's so important to bring it up in programs like this is we need to ask and debate the question have we come to the end of capitalism and if so what's the best way forward taking that as the basis for asking new questions and going in new directions on an island and i look forward to continuing that conversation professor richard wolfe neo great having you thank you. coming out in his nonstop whining about the n.f.l.

protests is any indication donald trump is about to go for richard nixon on the culture wars will work on brian pruett now which lawson in tonight's politics after the break. what you have for breakfast yesterday why would you put those through. your wife. now i've lived. with him. in case you're new to the game this is how. the economy is built around corporations perforations from washington to washington. voters elected businessman to run this country business if. you must it's

not business as usual it's business like it's never been done before. there's a real irony going. on the people and there is always well that's what it's always. wholesale surveillance you feel you have all meanwhile as you mentioned in the past and trump has used the social new oil always on the story because it's garbage real. all the world's. and all the news companies merely players but what kind of parties

are in t. america playing r.t. america off. america. many ways the news landscape is just like the real news big news good actors bad actors and in the end you could never. see the park in the world all the world's all the world's a stage we are definitely you. will fail i mean the racist flames of the culture wars helped donald trump save his presidency that's as tonight's politics. would be for the rise of politics panel our brian pruett contributor to red state and alex lawson executive director of social security works thank you both for

being here with us and so donald trump can't shut up about black men playing football this morning he went on another twitter rant about players protesting police brutality and urged. n.f.l. to quote set a rule that you can't kneel during our national anthem and quote you think the president would have more pressing issues to worry about than athletes exercising their constitutional right to free speech but during a press conference later on in the afternoon trump said that quote respect for the flag argued otherwise to me that was a very important moment i don't think you can disrespect our country our flag our national anthem but to me the n.f.l. situation is a very important situation i've heard that before about was a preoccupy not at all not at all i have plenty of time on my hands while i do his work and to be honest with you that's an important function of work and it's called respect for a country. this isn't really about in my opinion the flag or even football

really it's about telling black people to keep and know their place this is the kind of races culture war that trump like nixon used to get elected so a couple of questions number one is he just going to ride the culture wars out from here on out and number two is that even a smart strategy for trump to double down on the culture wars in our rallies the hard core of his white supremacist base but it also distracts from the economic populism that i suspect actually got him elected because this is all about economics i don't completely disagree with you that it's that it's racist it's about economics white middle class lower to middle class voters don't want to be lectured to by millionaires that work only sixteen days a year this is donald trump knows exactly what he's doing here and he is going to win on this issue with middle americans. i don't it's just dumb that's not an issue maybe because just politics but the fact is there's so much more

important things happening why are three million american citizens in puerto rico seven days after hurricane begging begging for the aid that they need that is what he should be tweeting about that is what he should be drawing attention to he said it was a word jumble as always but he's got lots of time all he does is work well i think the citizens in puerto rico would say he's doing a bad job or his focus is in the wrong place picking a fight with a bunch of n.f.l. players and nascar drivers and basketball players like i don't know is that a winning political strategy maybe but it's also i hear these talking points on the right i just heard you are a variation of them you know these these these guys who work sixteen days a week and they're multimillionaires right there you and i both know that if you're going to be a professional athlete you don't work sixteen days

a week you work seven days a week and you work most of the year number what you get your fan shape and number two. does that mean are you saying brian that that we should not respect the opinions of people who are multimillionaires because i've got a long list for you if your boss listen and you're missing the point what middle middle american middle americans don't get to go to work and express their for their constitutional rights on a daily basis this is not again it has nothing to do with racism it has to do how we with how we experience life in america most middle americans have to go to work work with their hands i work on i get the you know you don't get they don't get the luxury it's a luxury and honest question if these were all white players. protesting violence by police against unarmed black people do you how do you think the response would be different i think it would be exactly the same the best thing

that the n.f.l. players association could have done is issue a statement saying our players have the right to do this but we call on them not to do it as a sign of defiance against protesting against the president and honoring the flag in the country that would have been the smartest political move on if you know of i mean you've got a very real issue here of systemic racism in the united states and it's a most extreme form it's the it's the wanton killing of mostly young black men by mostly white police officers but it echoes through every dimension of our lives from from economic opportunity to housing opportunity to educational up to everything and and this is what collin captured started and he's a he's a guy was very aware of this as as being the child of a biracial couple i mean he's just very aware of this and that that discussion

seems to have gotten completely lost in this b.s. thing about are you saluting the flag or not well if we're going to have a discussion of what cap or nick was actually protesting i'd be happy to have this but that's not what brian trump or any of the pundits you know my point there and they're ignoring it and what capper nic is doing is drawing attention to a massive problem the problem is that in this country right now black lives don't matter because. african-americans are murdered pretty much with no consequence by police officers the list of no indictments is we just saw you and what last week before today before last friday gray guys the second of the fed said no and i'll just say one one quick thing not a same. will black man is being saved by football players taking a knee it not a single puerto rican is getting help right now by football players taking

a knee these are they some say we don't know why martin luther king when he was marching please don't compare millionaire football players to m.l.k. they're both out there but they are fighting for racial justice that is not true it's absolutely and what about muhammad ali what about the and then picks runners who raised right who saluted who raise their fists this is a part of history in a part of this is what nixon said about muhammad ali he was playing that game back in the seventy's i mean you know it's just well anyway what will move will move along. we're all starting get rid of voter suppression almost certainly one wisconsin for donald trump according to a comprehensive new study out of the university wisconsin madison the badger state's voter suppression id law deterred or prevented as many as thirty seven thousand eligible voters going to the polls on election day that's more than enough to account for donald trump's twenty two thousand vote margin of victory over hillary clinton in wisconsin when are republicans going to stop this charade and

actually let americans vote recent study by a loyola university law professor justin love it found that just thirty one instances of potential voter fraud in the entire united states all fifty states over a fourteen year period from two thousand and twenty fourteen that's one out of a million ballots cast one in two point three million chances of voter fraud will occur in a federal action in comparison one in two hundred well i don't know if you go through the list i mean this is you know thirty seven thousand people were not allowed to vote was cons and these were one hundred thousand of them were registered voters that's not true that's not what the study actually said the study actually said that when these voters were interviewed they said they felt discouraged not a single category that there are two categories and so i really was discouraged and the second was prevented you know they were. ever prevented you were allowed to know there were a lot of thousand people who are prohibited provisionally that's never a dollop provisional ballots don't get counted yes they do i vote if if you're an

actual the answer to your question of when republicans will stop doing this is never why because donald trump is the president because this is how they get power they get power and then they change the rules to cheat so that they can maintain power and can and complete or continue this upward redistribution of wealth to their criminal friends on wall street they will never stop doing this they will always just try to get people to not be able to vote because when the people vote greedy liars on wall street lose so the greedy liars on wall street rigged the system so that people's voices aren't heard topic has nothing to do with wall street that has everything to do the fact of the matter is this is the squishy ist study that's ever been done we need real radar online it should have been in north carolina who are the judges said why are they throwing this out because it was racially motivated to not allow african-americans actually vote and not it was

better citizens not consonant and the fact is it's actually the nation's reliable move. a largely black city and this is where most of these are sapping these are not mutually exclusive ideas one true for republicans to acknowledge that there is no epidemic of. voter fraud i can admit that there is no voter fraud but at the same time i can also say there is nothing wrong with asking an american citizen to prove who they are before they vote it's the most important thing voting is and we've been there is something wrong to have three hundred years to have there's just something else just because people feel discouraged an emotional response that has nothing to do with their actual as well as what do you think if you ask the person who was faced with a poll tax they were discouraged from voting. this is all about putting up barriers to prevent people from voting if you were honest if you wanted to fight on your ideas if you want to fight what you believed in what you would do is encourage

everyone to vote i had one fight either i mean she had everyone to vote everywhere you go and you wouldn't even any easier for americans to vote the examples they used in this report were people who had moved just recently that was who had that problem want to get ample but they used in the story about who were who had you know were problems getting a driver's license or something but there's they're primarily seniors and people of color that's who this is aimed at and students and students all people that at least i don't know about the students but the older people and people of color everyone has id has to have i.d. to get into a federal building to claim federal benefits this i had the idea that i do this idea of having an id is some sort of burden on the american people and we're leave you with the last word brian alex thank you both thanks and that's the way it is tonight and don't forget democracy is not a spectator sport get out there get active tag you're it.

all the field. every the world experience. and you'll get it on the old the old. the old according to just. come along for the. good. like i feel that attributes would be analyzed to keep the bottom. line but it be like you not i got. pretty

good. with excel. 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 out of those business you just need to ask the right questions and demand the right answer. questions. other news tonight former trump advisor roger stone blasts congress and special counsel robert muller after testifying in front of the house intelligence committee today and the senate republicans failed for a third time to pass a health care bill and get rid of obamacare obamacare is here to stay for now and the kurds in iraq declare victory in their independence referendum as baghdad and its neighbors react furiously. reporting tonight from washington d.c. this is the news on r.t. america.