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tv   Viewpoint With Eliot Spitzer  Current  April 3, 2012 5:00pm-6:00pm PDT

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lupe fiasco's code man of the year in 20061 going to be on? who is that? al gore! coming up on eliot spitzer. ♪[ theme music ]♪ good evening i'm eliot spitzer and this is "viewpoint," where we drill down on the top stories of day in search of facts that inform. three republican presidential primaries on top tonight. polls have just closed in maryland and district of columbia, and will close in less than an hour in wisconsin, putting mitt romney in position to wrap up the gop nomination. this time as they say, this party all but over. the latest national gallup poll showing romney with a 16-point lead over rick santorum.
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and at this point, more important, an almost incur mountable lead in the delegate count. nbc news projecting that maryland will go for romney. and we believe d.c. will as well. romney was ahead in the polls in both maryland and wisconsin, and had a clear field in d.c. where santorum fail even to qualify for the ballot. romney pushing hard for votes today with paul ryan in a sub shop in waukesha. >> he gets full credit or blame for what has happened in this economy, and what has happened to gasoline prices under his watch, and what has happened to our schools and military forces. >> honestly not quite sure what he means by that statement, but romney made the case to put the primaries to rest.
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>> i have twice as many delegates already, so if wisconsin gives me the nod, and i hope voters get out and do their job, i think it will go a long way toward me getting the nominee. >> nbc has already called washington, d.c. for mitt romney. rick santorum not giving up at least not yet. the former pennsylvania senator told cnn last night and we quote. >> we knew april would be a very tough month for us. but we also knew the month of may is rich in delegates and are strong states for us. >> but before santorum can get to may, he has to get through tonight. and then he faces five more primaries on april 24th including one in his home state of pennsylvania, which he admits he absolutely has to win. and that is no gimme.
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the latest quinnipiac poll has him leading by just six points. for more on tonight's republican primaries i'm joined by current correspondent david shuster. thanks so much for joining us. out in wisconsin at least we have been hearing that there is virtually no emotion behind this. are people turning out in wisconsin even to vote in this primary? >> if there's no emotion it's because they are so depressed over the negative ads. the romney campaign has spent nearly $3.5 million in advertisement. so they believe this is an important state. so there are a lot of negative ads that are running, and they are hitting each other extremely hard. a lot of the emotional attention for one particular ad that rick santorum was running against mitt romney, which compares to mitt romney to president obama and says he was a blueprint for health care, and the bells and
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whistles that the republicans don't like. but this is very much a competitive race at least if you believe the ad spending. >> i'm beginning to think that president obama's two favorite friends in the entire world are paul ryan, and rick santorum who is doing everything that barack obama would want rick santorum to do to mitt romney. let's go to washington, d.c. what was the turnout. i didn't even know there republicans in washington, d.c. >> right there are 30,000 registered republicans in the district of columbia which is out of a population of about 700,000. of those 30,000 they are expecting maybe 7 or 8,000 might vote. most of the races that are
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getting attention are simply down ballot. you have interesting city council races, that sort of thing. mitt romney rapped up all of the republican d.c. officials. d.c. republicans tend to be very progressive on social issues. and favor of statehood. but rick santorum didn't have a chance here coupled with the fact that he didn't expect to be competitive this far into the race, and simply failed to register to get on the ballot. >> if you have the delegates that mitt romney is going to win in washington, d.c. about how many is that if you know? >> win or take all, d.c. is 19. wisconsin is 42. maryland 37. just looking at d.c. and wisconsin, you are talking about 56, and no matter what happens in wisconsin, mitt romney is going to walk away with more delegates. but here is the math. the romney campaign needs about 46 47% to wrap up the 1,444 we
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needs before the convention. the santorum campaign is convinced if they can do really well in the month of may, and take california, they can deny romney that opportunity and make a case that okay this is a guy is headed to the nomination without actually having clenched the nomination. the romney campaign is all about erasing the media narrative that romney is vulnerable and that somehow falling short of the convention would be a problem. as you heard him say we have doubled the delegates, and again they want to make the media narrative that romney is eventually going to be the.com knee. >> the endorsements are a building up for romney.
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one way or another, jed bush did it by a tweet, didn't even show up in person. but romney is getting the endorsements. if you look at wisconsin tonight what is he likely to pick up in delegates. and how realistic is going to be to say that rick santorum will prevent him from getting the delegate count he needs. >> if mitt romney beats rick santorum, suppose it's 45 to 35 he gets all of the delegates, so you are talking about 42 delegates in the state of wisconsin. so whoever wins is going to get the most. and that's why rick santorum is hoping at least to outperform his poll numbers, which tending to do. and he is hoping some of the ads
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he ran will repress turnout. and there is actually a strong fundamental evangelical base that could go his way. >> there clearly is a message that rick santorum has done extremely well with the theological foundation, and there are really in my mind at least three different republican parties. and then the traditional sort of corporate-lead piece of the republican party, which is mitt romney that seems to be winning this battle. but it seems to me as rick santorum begins to become less relevant i'm beginning to wonder if he isn't running for 2016. he is saying i'm going to make sure if mitt romney doesn't claim victory, rick santorum will be the punitive leader of what remains of the republican party. is that notion out there at all?
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>> if that's the case rick santorum is doing a lousy job. the negative ad that he ran against mitt romney is far and above one of the most devastating ads that we have seen so far. and everybody believes that mitt romney is eventually going to get the nomination and if rick santorum wants to continue he should do it like huckabee did, continue your campaign but run a positive campaign. somehow he hopes he can convince enough republicans not to vote mitt romney and leave him short going into the convention. that doesn't sound like a very wise strategy. at a certain point the pressure on rick santorum will be enormous to help unify the republican party. i don't think he is there yet, but he is certainly beginning to
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feel it. >> give rick santorum credit for one thing. he lost by a huge margin in his home state. he clearly goes out there says what he believes is speaking to a convinced theological base and he may be taking them over a cliff, but he believed it. you are right. it will be interesting to see how this plays out. david shuster many things for being us tonight? >> sure. >> we appreciate it. and for more on the romney/santorum i'll joined by craig crawford author of "the politics of life." thanks so much for joining us. >> i think the fat lady is horse. >> she keeps singing, but this thing doesn't end. >> i know. >> we have had this same
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conversation how many weeks now? and it just doesn't end. what is keeping it going right now? >> well, i think maybe a lot the story, so as long as there are a couple of candidate in there throwing bombs, then we'll keep covering it. more groundhog days coming, but this one is getting a little bit ridiculous. and the thing about mitt romney is he has to now face the difficult choice we have discussed before of how to keep himself interesting against the president who controls the agenda. this is a very interesting turning point for mitt romney. >> craig can i just -- disagree about one little thing. you said keep himself interesting, i think it's make himself interesting. this is a bad sequel to a bad movie that we keep rerunning these tapes of mitt romney. we already know he is the etch-a-sketch candidate.
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i remember the toy. he wants to recreate himself but rick santorum won't let him. rick santorum is destroying their november possibilities, isn't he? >> yes and as a side note i just today discovered that etch-a-sketch in 2001 moved the factory to china by the way. >> does mitt romney own it? maybe this is one big bid for etch-a-sketch. >> right. when we look at what romney faces within his own party and looking ahead to the general election, he has a lot to do and he needs to get started. we talked about women voters. latino problems is a desperate problem for republicans, and then romney has to worry about these very conservative voters that are not warming up to him. and we can look at the demographics of a state and see
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what is going to happen if the conservative vote is under 60%, self idding, then romney usually wins. it's 56 in wisconsin. if it's closer to 70%, very conservative, conservative vote, santorum does better. so obviously that problem is still there. >> craig you just eluded to two of the central themes that have emerged for the republican party. mitt romney wanted desperately to talk about the economy. rick santorum have dragged him into a -- a very itable war on women and immigration. and two key voting blocks that will perhaps be outcome determinative, women and latino minorities, are clearly drifting away. we saw that in the poll data coming out. women in particular leaving the republican party by droves. how does mitt romney believe he can recover from that after this
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primary season? >> one interesting strategy i have heard about latino voters that makes me scratch my head i did see this was done by republicans in 2008 where they depressed latino turn out with third-party ads, telling latinos neither obama nor the republicans are looking out for you, you might as well not vote. that was the message to suppress the latino vote by saying obama is no better than republicans. he has deported about half the number of people that bush did. so i think they'll make that pitch to get that vote depressed. and then there's the ann romney factor for women. i think ann romney is someone who personalizes him, humanizing him. i think the best thing the campaign could do is have him disappear for a while and have ann romney do everything. i where is your husband, he is
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not here, but i want to talk about -- >> craig, i think the other way they could do that is make her the vice presidential candidate. she clearly has a genuine appeal for people but this primary season has been the death nail, i believe of the republican's party capacity to claim it has a large umbrella welcoming in women, minorities and the only people they are appealing to now, men over 50. craig crawford politics blogger, on craigcrawford.com. many things. >> good to be here. >> next up we move from the primary to the general election and talk to somebody who knows a little bit about that. vice president al gore will join us.
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president obama opening statement and he comes out swinging. special treat. vice president gore joining us next. and jamie dimon wants to know why people hate the banks. we'll give him plenty of reasons ahead on "viewpoint." can't see you, so this is big for me. >>tv and radio talk show host stephanie miller rounds out current's new morning news block.
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>>it's completely inappropriate for television. >>sharp tongue, quick wit and about all, politically direct. >>politically direct to me means no bs, the real thing, cutting through the clutter. my show is the most important sh the newest voice in cable news is on the new news network. >>it is an independent progressive voice and i love that. >>jennifer granholm joins current tv. a former two term governor. >>people like somebody who's got a spine. >>determined to find solutions... >>we need government to ensure that people have freedom. >>driven to find the truth... >>what's really going on? >>fearless, independent and above all, politically direct. today the battle began as president obama became campaigner and chief. take a listen. >> now the proponents of this
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budget will tell us we have to take -- make all of these cuts because our deficit is so large. that might have a shred of credible were it not for their proposal to trend is $4.6 trillion over the next ten decades. it is a trojan horse. an attempt to impose a radical vision on our country. thinly veiled darwinism. >> then the president turned to what is the most contentious domestic issue on the agenda, health care. >> there is a reason why there's a little bit of confusion in the republican primary about health care and the individual mandate since it originated as a conservative idea to preserve the private marketplace in health care, while still
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assuring that everybody got coverage in contrast to a single payer plan. now suddenly this is some socialist overreach. >> joining me now is former vice president of the united states and i will tell you his most agust title chairman of current tv, al gore. sir a pleasure to have you on the program tonight. >> thank you, eliot. and welcome. and we appreciate your continued loyalty. we are determined to live up to our mandate to be independent, fresh, hard-hitting political direct, and eliot you are right in that tradition and welcome. >> thank you, sir. i'm doing my best. and i just respect so much all
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that you have done in the different positions that you have had. >> thank you. >> looking at the president's speech today, is this the template for the campaign we're going to see between now and november. is this the argument he is going to make almost a new-found populism, his vision of america versus what paul ryan laid out in the budget that was passed just a few days ago. >> i'm sure it will be a part of his standard attack in the campaign because it represents the reality of what the republicans and the congress have been doing. i'm sure that he will make a lot of other important points as well, but this budget that governor romney endorsed and called marvellous is a fraud. the economist paul krugman is
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among many who have added up the numbers and pointed out it is entirely fraudulent. it expands the deficit, and the national debt, while at the same time ripping apart important parts of the social safety net, and giving more unjustified tax breaks to the very wealthiest in our society. >> i hate to just parrot what you are saying, but it is just appalling when you look at that ryan budget tax cuts for the very wealthy. restored money to the military. a wrenching tear in the social safety net. it's an entirely different vision, and you wonder why after 2011 where paul ryan proposed the same budget last year they are going forward over the same cliff. i'm not sure as a political matter it will succeed. i would be curious about your
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sense about whether paul ryan can market this to the american public? >> i rather doubt that he is going to be able to. there will be loud voices on the right wing trying to give them help, and saying up is down and white is black, but actually the numbers speak for themselves and what you said about the social safety net is certainly true. it really raises the fundamental question about who we are as americans, and what we feel is our fundamental obligation to one another. do people have a right to expect common standards of decency if somebody shows up at the emergency room? justice scalia for example, on the supreme court said that we ought to revisit the question of whether or not somebody who shows up at the emergency room should be given medical care if they don't have private health
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insurance. well, that's just a violation -- that proposal would be a violation of the fundamental values that most of us as americans hold dear. >> you are so right. and obviously that raises the very real issue and tension between the white house and the supreme court that is emerging. and one wonders whether that attention will become part of the political discourse between now and november if though supreme court overturns the bill, will the president go after the supreme court and say we are seeing a supreme court that is ripping apart the social fabric of this nation. you were so respectful to the court, will the supreme court and has the supreme court injected itself into the politics of this november? >> well i think there is certainly in deng danger of doing that. we are a nation of laws.
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that's the bedrock of -- on which our constitution rests, and i have always encouraged respect for the supreme court because under our constitution it interprets the laws, but the court is at grave risk of unmining the respect that all of us should have for the supreme court when they speak from the bench cracking jokes and speaking about laws under their consideration without knowledge of what they are referring to. for example, justice scalia again went for laughs in criticizing a provision that was once proposed during the debate on the healthcare bill referred to as the corn husker kickback. it was never put into the bill. it wasn't even a part of the bill, and the justice spoke of it as if it was a part of the
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law that was being considered by the court. well, that is really shocking to me. and then to go into political speculation about the prospects for getting 60 votes in the senate to make changes to the law, that -- that pushes the court into the partisan political arena, where it should not be. and if the court decides to go down that road i fear that they really would be putting at risk the image of the supreme court and its role that -- that all of us should hold up as a matter of respect for the rule of law, even if we disagree with their decisions. >> that is so correct. and what they are doing is putting themselves in the same position that the supreme court did almost 70 years ago, when it tried to stand in the way of the new deal and of course that
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effort on their part failed as they finally came around and understood what the federal government was about to do and what needed to do to save our economy. we're not through yet, mr. vice president, we're going to ask you to stick around and stay with us after the break.
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we're back with former vice president and now my boss al gore. thanks for sticking around. >> of course. >> i want to talk about the war against women and the war against science. the republican party is trying to become the party of the 1800s in his world view. what are we missing here? and why are they doing this? >> it's a puzzle to me eliot because the question to whether women and men should have access to contraception used to be controversial decades ago, but i has been pretty much settled for
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at least 30 years, and i don't understand why they have brought that back up. mainly it was one of governor romney's opponents who brought it up, but he refused to address it. at least that's the impression i got when he was asked, and some of the other questions they brought up are really unusual, and you see the results in the polling that now measures a very sharp drop in the superport among women, including among republican women. and where the war on signs is concerned, i don't even know where you want me to start there. but you can guess they'll start with global warming. >> yes, sir, please do. >> it was 87 degrees here in nashville yesterday, 84 today. in michigan minnesota new hampshire, the month of march, the daily low temperatures if in cases were higher than the previous all-time high
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temperatures. and of course one month doesn't make pattern, but the last 20 30 years do. we have seen record-hot years one right after another. and we see these catastrophic extreme weather events more than ten climate-related disasters in our country last year that cost more more than a billion dollars each. and they are on the news practically every night. and people are really asking the question, wait a minute are the scientists right? ever national academy of signs on this planet says yes. every scientific society, 97 to 98% of all of the climate scientists are most accurately publishing. so is some right wing group going to be their authority against the very powerful
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evidence from mother nature? i just think they are swimming against the tide here. >> they are swimming against the tide, but of course the great concern is by putting themselves in a blocking position preventing the united states from providing a leadership role, they are stopping the international types of actives that need to be taken, and we could get to that tipping point where it's almost impossible to stop a process that is right now endangering us, but there are some easy reasonable things that could be done that would be very effective. >> yeah. sure, and those companies that are taking leadership roles are making money in reducing pollution. as to why they are doing it, i don't think it is so complicated. they get so much campaign cash from the large carbon polluters they are beholding to them. we are putting 90 million tons
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up there every day, 20% will still be there 20,000 years from now. but these polluters want to continue to use our atmosphere as abopen sewer so they can freely dump all of this pollution on the heads of the rest of us and the future of this country and other countries, and not make any responsibility for it. and these candidates who are in their hip pocket because of all of the campaign support and % lobbying and all of that, they are just doing what they are ordered to do. they are dancing to the tune that the piper is playing. >> look, mr. vice president, clearly you and i agree not only on this issue, but on so many others, but what is emerging to me is that the next generation those below the age of 40 look at these issues through the prism that you and i do and rick santorum is leading the republican party and mitt romney
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is following right behind him so that long-term they simply will not be speaking the same language of the next generation and it's really folks who view the world in a different way. sorry for that monologue to end this, mr. vice president. we want to thank you so much for your time tonight. thank you, sir, for your service to this nation in so many different ways. >> thank you, again, eliot, and again i want to thank the current viewers for their continued loyalty and support. >> thank you, sir. next up we'll answer the easiest question i have heard asked all year, why do people still hate the bankers?
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♪ >> they still don't get it. wall street bankers and ceos saying why don't people like us? here to help us understand and
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maybe help them understand former -- i should say former -- i should say "money and power: how goldman sachs came to rule the world," and full disclosure, a person friend, william cohan, bill, thanks for coming. >> great to be back here with you. >> just last week, congress passed this bill this is like fraudulent bill. how long is this thing? >> it's right out of george oreswell. it allows companies with under a billion dollars in revenue to basically side step all of the securities. >> so -- wait -- i want to make sure i'm getting this right. the crisis was in '08.
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the economy still hasn't come back. we have poured trillions of dollars into the coffers of the banks, and now they have bought the congress to repeal the very few provisions that were put in place to protect the economy? >> and to protect investors. >> at what point do you give up and say, congress -- can we indict the entire congress and say you are as an entire organization corrupt? >> congress approval rating has never been lower. and for good reason. you have by partisan support for something called a job's act? >> look, you know the ceos and i say this with serious deference, you have written about wall street and the most sophisticated books, you were an investment banker do the ceos really not intellectually
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understand what contributed to the cataclysm of '08? >> you have got two sets of ceos. those that are no longer there because the firms they were ahead of are no longer in existence. those ceos are off on the beach somewhere. those guys are not even in the picture anymore. then you have the ceos who are still there, they actually believe that their companies did the right thing, and they lead their companies properly through this crisis. >> let me interrupt you, though. goldman sachs which i think it's fair would not have made it. the fact of the matter is they would have gone bust -- >> morgan stanley was next when they became a bank holding company -- >> goldman sachs became a bank-holding company overnight.
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why? so they could get a federal guarantee of all of their debt. >> so they could get access to the federal window. the problem these banks were funding themselves in the short-term market and then pledging long-term assets to do so. >> who was standing behind them? >> the feds. >> who is the feds? >> we are. the american people is now funding the balance sheets. >> this technical shift when goldman became a bank holding company and had access to the fed window so when they pay themselves $12 million in bonuses, that was our money. >> i think it's safe to say they wouldn't be in business without our help. >> and they did get $12.9 billion in one check. i want to add you wrote this spectacular article about why the sec -- or asking questions
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why is the sec still not giving you the documents you tried to get. >> right. >> what are they hiding? >> i don't know. but every time i have asked the federal government and the agencies in the federal development, whether it's the fed, state department the sec, so give me documents about these banks that i'm writing about, what do i get? nothing, eliot, zero. and then after the books come out, i get a disk or this or that. i got a disk from the fed about government -- >> okay. there's an answer, though. i'm going to apply to become a bank holding company. clearly that's the way to live. >> you don't have to reveal anything about yourself. >> all right. we'll do that by tomorrow night you and i will be a bank holding company. when we come back i'll weigh in with my view on the banker's
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blissful ignorance.
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still to come the prodigal son departs. and let's check in with governor jennifer grandholm in "the war room." i'm sure you have your eyes in wisconsin tonight, jennifer what is coming up? >> the polls closing at the top of the hour, so we'll be following that. i expect there won't be a big surprise. but we'll let everybody know what happens there. we're going to continue the conversation with al gore but we'll go inside the war room with the press secretary. it is a heyday for democrats. and van jones is going to join us to talk strategy and green jobs and all of that. so stay tuned. >> i did an event in washington west tuesday night with van jones. what a powerful voice he is. how did you get him on your
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show? i want him on my show. >> i wantal gore on my show. >> all right. we'll negotiate. news block. weekdays six to noon. a race car. polymers, hydo-carbons, thermal plastics, math and science? you bet it is. many kids don't understand how important these subjects can be that's why time warner cable developed connect a million minds. to introduce kids in our communities to the opportunities that inspire them to develop these important skills. how can my car go faster? maybe your child will figure it out. find out more at
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connectamillionminds.com here is my view. the president should have vetoed the miss named jobs bill that was named by congress last week. it repeals the few remedial measures put in place to eliminate the most egregious proud tos from the marketplace. wall street wants us to believe, one, you can trust us and two, we can regulate ourselves. let me tell you a story bark when i was attorney general we were about to bring a huge fraud case against merrill lynch. and they said eliot you are night, but we're not as bad as
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our competitors. and they thought that was a defense. so we put in place some measures to make sure they couldn't lie to the public the same way they had been. you know what this bill does? this bill repeals those measures. it's wrong. it's not fair. if there is no integrity in the marketplace, the middle class will not invest. that will be bad for the economy, bad for jobs bad for all of us. you know what the marketplace needs rules. it needs enforcement, and when wall street can dictate what those rules are or are not, bad things happen. how quickly can we forget the cataclysm of nearly four years ago, 2008. greg smith recently resigned from goldman sachs a senior executive and wrote a scathing op-ed? which he said it was a toxic environment. an environment where they, willing to lie to their customers simply to take a few
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bucks. and despite that congress passed a horrendous bill. mr. president veto it, stand up for capitolism the way it should be played.
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is a father sacrificing his son to save his company. the latest fallout in the murdoch hacking scandal the son of rupert murdoch steps down. damage com comes week after murdoch stepped down just months ago. he released a written statement
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saying and i quote vrm : the timing is likely not coincidence, the fbi examining the likelihood that phone hacking happened here in the united states, also in the coming weeks of powerful british parl men try committee will put out a detailed report on the scandal. joining me now american correspondent for "the guardian, " ed pilkington. first the timing of this suggests that james murdoch knows something about what is going to be in that report. how do you understand the timing and what do you think is going to be in the report? >> the pressure is starting to really pile up on the company in this corporation. on both sides there is a lot of trouble over the corruption act. and in the uk we have already had coming up to something like
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45 arrests, charges are bound to follow soon, and once that starts we're going to be seeing trial after trial. it will be very bloody instead. >> i want to take a part a couple of statements you made. 45 arrests in britain. how far up in the corporate hierarchy does this go? has james insulated himself by resigning and fleeing his homeland of britain and coming to the united states? >> right. of course the big question in all of this will we reach rupert murdoch. his son is one step beneath him. and we have some very very senior people in murdoch's empire in the uk have been arrested. and this is so close to the murdoch family as to almost touch them. >> there was an email chain that laid out for james murdoch the extent of the hacking scandal.
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and james defense was, gee, i didn't read all the way to the bottom of the email. >> the first time he said he was never shown the email. and then he people who gave him the email said he wasn't telling the truth. he then said he didn't read down to the bottom of the email. >> and next time he is going to say it's invisible ink. how much credible does he have left? >> essentially almost none. bare in mind the murdoches think only of television. the whole phone hacking scandal has been about establish newspapers. it is all about television. when he is forced to step down from the biggest tv company in europe, this is serious. >> you mentioned up to 45 arrests at this point. how many bribes paid? how many phones hacked?
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and remember when it first broke, they said one rogue reporter. >> the company has one rogue reporter and stuck to that story until they were forced to give that story up. we have not got up to 6.5 thousand people who have had their phone tapped. >> and bribes being paid to whom? >> bribes paid to police officers paid to military defense officials, at very senior levels within those two institutions. >> and the magnitude of the payments? how much money is involved? >> we think relatively small. thousand dollars here or there. but mounting up to hundreds of thousands of dollars. >> so from an accounting point of view -- under the fca, this is material not only with materiality being the legal standard here, not only in terms of the dollar amounts involved but also the credibility and
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integrity of the company. >> right, one, did they actually carry out bribery? these are employs of news corporation in the uk two, did they cook the financial books? >> i want to jump halfway around the world very very quickly, a news -- news out of australia last week that there was hacking there as well. am i correct? >> yes. it has been a scandal boiling up over the smart cards used in cable tv. and there was [ inaudible ] going on in australia -- >> in the murdoch empire. >> yes. >> and if you begin to show a global reach of the scandal becomes that much more relevant. did it happen here? >> yes. bare in mind the scale of the fca has reached $800 million. people have been put in prison for 15 years and this is really serious stuff. >> i want to thank you for
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