we have over 720 and it cost us $4 billion. i tell my republican friends, close your eyes for a moment, if there was a state program that was costing $185 million a year, and only gave the money to lawyers and criminals, what would you do with it? a former l.a. district attorney that wants the death penalty repealed said we are laying off teachers and laying off firefighters this is crazy. and so, if you are untroubled by the morality of the death penalty, unmoved by the pope s opposition to it and unconcerned with how unfairly it is applied and unimpressed with any morale argument that you heard about it, how do you feel about the cost? do you think it s worth laying off school teachers so that the state can still afford to kill
he said, the cost of our system of capitol punishment is so enormous that any benefit that is gotten from it and now i think there s little or zero benefit, is so dollar wasteful that it serves no effective purpose. mr. hellor is joined in this campaign to repeal the death penalty by ron briggs who ran the successful campaign 34 years ago in favor of the death penalty. mr. briggs said, quote, at the time we were of the impression that it would do swift justice and get the criminals and murderers through the system quickly. and apply the death penalty but it s not working. we started with 300 on death row when we did prop seven and now we have over 720 and it cost us $4 billion.
at least the democrats are pushing to get money out of our political system. right. absolutely. at least they are doing lobbying reform. the grand old polluting party is in the pocket of big oil and gas. so, call them out. absolutely. call them out. katrina vanden heuvel, editor of the nation, thanks for joining us. thank you. let me tell the audience one last thing. the president is definitely on the right path no question about it what he did today was terrific. i think he has got the to say there is no budget deal there is no nothing until we stop giving away $4 billion of taxpayer money for no damn reason at all to the most profitable company cans who are making all that profit from your high gas prices. it is a huge win politically and much more importantly, saves us $4 billion a year. it is a huge win, policy-wise. he has got to press on t that s how you win, it is a good first step today. i hope they stay on that path. l now, coming up next, donald trump s ques
this is what you call redistribution of wealth, and it goes from the poor and middle class straight up to the rich. the tax will not be raised for the rich under the republican proposals. this is fascinating. what they want to do is cut $600 million from the irs budget. if they do that, it actually costs the budget more money. that costs us $4 billion that we would get in collection from tax cheats, so why unless you wanted to protect the tax cheats, unless the people who pay your bills have offshore can see in the cayman islands and they want to cheat on their taxes, so they think, great, let me buy a couple congress men and make it much easier for me to cheat on my taxes. i m sorry. they call it tax avoidance. wouldn t we all like to avoid our taxes? all right. now, to the other side of the priorities, bernie sanders in the senate, he has a plan. he says, you know what?