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tv   The Willis Report  FOX Business  September 11, 2014 5:00pm-6:01pm EDT

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of declines. david: you woke up at what time? long day. lori: "the willis report" is next. and gerri, you are talking about the growing controversy surrounding olive garden's pasta push. gerri: thank you for that. when you think the black markets, drugs, liquor, now the olive garden all you can eat cart. as obamacare 2.0 is about to kick off. we're all paying more for health care. obama is promising a coalition will stand with the u.s. in the fight against isis but lou dobbs helps us break down the facts surrounding the president's strategy. and if you thought the student loan debt crisis impacted millennials. think again. "the willis report" where consumers are our business, starts right now. today as the nation pauses to remember one of the darkest days in history, could the biggest throw the our security be as close as your
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computer keyboard. fox news today has learned islamic militants are planning a massive online attack to the united states, what does all this mean? we're joined by two experts on cybersecurity, louis rincon and michael balboni, great to have both of you. michael, start with you, in addition to running homeland security, you ran the cybersecurity agency. what we're hearing tonight, islamic militants are bragging, bragging online it's only a matter of time before they launch some sort of massive attack on our financial system or on our infrastructure. what do you make of this? how successful could they be? >> consistent with their whole global effort to recruit, to spret their message, but they want to increase their footprint. doing that is hard when it comes to tanks and missiles
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because they don't have the infrastructure. go to the internet, you can get a huge reach. that's what they want to do. especially if they bring down our financial sector, specifically the united states. it's the poor man's weapon at this point in time. gerri: that is so smart. the fellow that hacked the personal gmail of tony blair, the former prime minister. with weapons like that at their disposal, seems like they have a powerful front on the internet front. >> all you need is a dedicated group of individual who have access to computer hardware doing nothing but trying to develop new types of modes of attacks. whether it's new worms, viruses, new way to spoof addresses so you don't know where they're coming from. up to now, it's been about taking out data, stealing money, that's what the net attacks have been focused on. i think we're opening a new
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phase where they are going take down the adversary and make a statement. gerri: the world has changed so much in 13 years, louis rincon joins us now. what a change this has been over the years. you look back, what are the major innovations that put us at risk, there's a positive side to all this, research and technology, now there's a negative side too, right, louis? . >> thank you for having me. there is obviously negative side to all of this. overall you have to unanimously agree the advancements in technology over 13 years have been a net win. the number one change that has happened and you guys specifically are concerned about the vulnerabilities is the proliferation of smart devices, specifically smartphones. remember 2001 people still had to do what i call go online. you had a specific device that was connected, perhaps still through dial-up either at the office or at home and it was an event to go online.
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now if you have a smartphone or a tablet or a wearable device, that device is constantly connected to the internet. there's a lot of interactions taking place that didn't occur back then, in terms of the amount of actions happening online, the amount of data created, that's the number one change. gerri: you can see what the difference is between 2013 -- now, and 2001. take a look at this list. this is interesting. obviously we didn't have smartphones. no tweets, half a million a day now. consumers and credit cards on itunes, take a look at that. amazon sales annually times 75. e-mails sent daily, an incredible increase, the world is a very, very different place. risks are different. you were nodding your head when louis said smartphones are the new thing. they're also tracking devices. >> they are tracking devices. the one thing we don't have with the remote device is the ability to encrypt everything.
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therefore when you do online banking using iphone, that's an added concern. they can track where you are, the geospatial tracking devices in the nsa report also to concerns about the government's ability to track where you are, well, the bad guys could possibly do that, too. convenience drives vulnerability. the more convenient for us to do all the things with our hands on a device, the more opportunities to have for somebody to come into the opportunity, the transaction, the network. gerri: louis, we are hearing the jihadis are looking to recruit people with great educational backgrounds, they have the computer skills that are needed to do the kinds of things they want. does this square up with where you see technology going today? it must be simple to hire people who have that kind of training. >> you know, there's definitely more people aware of how technology works nowadays and
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more people who have the ability to manipulate software, write software code. i will not comment on the ability to recruit the people to islamic militant state. that is something i am completely unfamiliar with. in terms of where technology is going, there's a lot of things the consumer need to remember to protect themselves. yes as my colleague pointed out, they track your activity but there is basic settings can you change to protect against that. there is third party services, including identity theft protection and password managers that you can use. it's good to begin with the basics and have the understanding how the technology works before you start getting considerate of these more involved vulnerabilities. david: wow, yeah, definitely you need to know more to stay safe. we've just been reporting over the last several weeks and mostly this month as some of the hax we've seen jpmorgan chase, the hack at home depot. fears that maybe not jihadis
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but someone, russians, state sponsored terrorism. this is the terrorism of the poor guy who doesn't have a lot of resources at their fingertips. is the government prepared to fight this and the same tools you use to fight a foe? >> congress has shown inability to develop a consensus that's what you want to do. president obama announced over a year ago the cyberinitiative. we don't have a safe harbor for folks to share the attack modalities. we don't have a stopgap of liability so that when you share this information, you don't get caught up in the liability issue. these are real necessary steps that the government can provide. gerri: they're not doing it? >> they're not doing it, they cannot pass the legislation. they've been trying for years, i spoke with folks at the department of homeland security as well as the security in the house, they haven't. it is up to the consumer. you have got to be aware.
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pay attention to this stuff and you can't use a device and forget about it. gerri: i can't protect myself from a hack that hits my bank. there is only so much i can do. and washington needs to get up off its keister and do something. >> completely agree. gerri: michael balboni. luis, thank you for your time. >> thank you very much. gerri: here's our question tonight, when was the last time you changed your passwords? log onto gerriwillis.com. i'll share the results at the end of the at the bottom of the hour, stay tuned for this. lou dobbs will be here for his take on last night's address and president obama's terror strategy. you know there's a markets move to reverse slumping sales that is backfiring for olive garden. the restaurant chain offered a never-ending pasta pass which gets you seven weeks of unlimited pasta, salad and
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soda. the demand was so high, the website crashed and when consumers couldn't log on they took to social media and blasted the company. things are out of control. there is a black market for the pasta pass. according to reports, more than 50 passes almost immediately went on sale on ebay and the prices ballooned 400%. going for 400 bucks, 500 bucks. the pass has the customer's name on it, if you don't have the id to match, well, you're out of luck. late night comedians are getting in on the act. >> olive garden introducing $100 all you can eat pasta pass to last seven weeks. so technically, the last two weeks are for next of kin. [ laughter ] >> if they did this to get attention they succeeded. is there no touch thing as bad publicity. pretty good, huh? . like the publicity the white house is spinning on obamacare, you should buy into the latest claims?
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joining me dr. scott gottlieb, resident fellow at american enterprise institute. you laughed at that. i saw you giggle. >> good joke. gerri: we talked about rising prices in health care. the white house denies, it they had a post on their website today talking about how everything is great. take a look at this. right now employers inflation adjusted cost benefit up 1% year-over-year. among the lowest rates slow growth in employer health costs helps businesses create costs and pay a good wage. what do you say, true or false? >> playing games with the numbers. those are the costs of the employer providing coverage. the reason they're not going up as much as you expect, much of the costs are going in higher copays and deductibles. underlying order of health care is going up 6% on the year. it's a matter of time before the employer can't shift costs
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to consumers and have to absorb it. more employers are getting out of providing coverage. 2012, 61% of employers provided coverage. this year 55%. gerri: big difference. >> the substantial number dropped out of the market. that's skewing the numbers. gerri: a lot of small employers doing this, too. now the workweek is shorter because of obamacare, right? >> right, so when you look at numbers in terms of what it costs employers, you're seeing a skewing of the market. people who had the higher costs are cutting back the number of hours there offering employers and getting out of market. so the average looks a little better but by and large most of the reason the employers are able to lower costs. gerri: because i'm paying for and you're paying for it. obamacare premiums are up dramatically? how much? >> this year family plan is only $17,000 total cost between
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the employer and consumer. gerri: this is astonishing, when you put together a bar chart, it puts it together. going up, up, up. >> for instance tied to underlying medical costs, underlying medical costs go up about 5.9%, that was the latest data we saw. health care inflation is back. the only reason medical costs started going up over the period of time, people weren't going to the doctor. now that utilization is back, costs are going up. gerri: you go to the doctor used to cost 20 bucks, now $30-40. a third of workers pay $45 and more for that visit. more costs, more burden but all on regular americans. it would have been better to try to support and build on what was a corporate sponsored health care system in your
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view? >> i think you're going to see in the market bifurcation between obamacare and what employers are able to do. employers offer high-deductible plans, and skewing between what's left in providing coverage and everyone else. gerri: dr. scott, next time you come, find good news, okay? >> okay. gerri: still a lot more to come including your voice, your voice is important to us, during the show facebook or tweet me, you can go to our website gerriwillis.com and send an e-mail. at the bottom of the hour, i'll read your tweets and e-mails. former director of the fbi leading the investigation into the nfl after reports league officials may have seen the ray rice video much earlier than reported. what did they know and when did they know it? the latest coming up.
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. gerri: lots of twists and turns in the ray rice scandal. former fbi chief robert mueller assigned to handle the investigation of the domestic violence incident and on the heels of the associated press reporting a law official sent
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an nfl executive the infamous video of rice punching his fiancee. in the wake of all this, fans may be feeling uneasy, especially, this putting it mildly, especially female fans. what impact will this have on the league? joining me serena hubbard, i love your handle. >> thank you. gerri: i need to ask you about news we have this afternoon on the show. co-owners of the steelers and giants say they're looking over the shoulder of former fbi chief mueller as he investigates and news that mueller is going to share this information with the nfl owners and ultimately with the public whatever he finds in the investigation. this seems to be moving quickly, it seems that goodell has hired somebody well known and respected to handle the investigation. what do you make of it? >> sounds good, sounds like
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it's going to be an independent investigation. the consensus is they're not going to find anything groundbreaking that will ultimately affect roger goodell's position as the nfl commissioner. rooney and mara are two owners that are fond of goodell. a lot of people are wondering why they are leading the investigation. it's well known they are both lawyers, but because of their fondness of mr. goodell, one wonders if they are unbiased about how they go about the investigation. gerri: very interesting, and i think a lot of people have voiced support for goodell certainly on this network and in other places. he's a very well-known commodity and well regarded for what he's done. questions arose about a video that a law enforcement official told associated press had been delivered to nfl offices way back in april. the nfl explicitly said they had not received that earlier. what did you make of that
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disconnect and the nfl's defense which was essentially we never saw it. did you buy it? >> no, and i don't think most people did. i think that most people thought they had the tape, and you'll find a lot of people believe they actually watched the tape but the nfl is such a high-powered entity. they can have access to everything. players tell you they know about what they've done in the first grade. for them to say they don't have access to something as important as domestic violence including one of their high-high-profile players. people know they have whatever they need to close that case. gerri: i wonder and we've been talking about this all week, just how much impact this might have on the game, and especially when you consider 46% of the audience for football is all women. you talk to women all the time about the game, you're a woman yourself, you actually worked for the ravens at one point. what's the reaction out there among women fans?
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>> they're not happy. and they have a right to not be happy. 46%. since goodell's tenure about 56 sexual assault and domestic violence cases have come, and only a total of 13-game suspensions among all of those cases. one person in particular is a multiple offender, and he was just a guest host on inside the nfl, one of the nfl's premiere shows. it looks bad for them to not have made a big deal about this before, especially now with the growing popularity among female fans. i think that them making new laws helps, but they have a long way to go gain that trust against women and a lot of people would like to see resignation of goodell to start the process, whether it's right or wrong. gerri: you know ray rice, you worked with him when you were at the ravens. what did you make of him? >> i worked with him with some community work doing my nfl
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chick things, and he was a really good guy. he talked about being a role model and how important it was to be a role model. he genuinely cared about what was going on in the community. he was a guy who was regularly in the community. of course when this happened, myself and a lot of ravens fans were definitely shocked, because this isn't the guy people knew him to be, and it was just very surprising to see such things happen and be transpired on film compared to who he was and who he portrayed himself to be in the public eye. gerri: something of a disconnect. great to meet you. thank you for coming on the show. >> thank you for having me. gerri: later, lou dobbs gives us his take on the president's isis address. and next a look at a new device that may detect lung cancer super early. don't go away. [ hoof beats ] i wish...
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. gerri: dying noegs lung cancer may be just a breath away, a new test could test for the disease by measuring the temperature of someone's breath. we are joined by an oncologist and the medical director of the cancer research lab rational therapeutics. thanks for being with us tonight, dr. robert. the idea here is that there is a distinct odor created by lung cancer the even a dog can pick up, and if you can put that into a device, maybe we could detect lung cancer early. are you buying it? >> well, the particular report that you're speaking of came know from an italian group at the respiratory society meetings in munich, they measured the temperature of
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exhaled air to determine whether the actual temperature changes reflected the presence or absence of cancer in the lung. gerri: what do you make of that? do you believe you can predict cancer? do you believe you can diagnose cancer by just taking the temperature of someone's breath? >> well, it's a provocative finding and a small study. only 82 patients, 40 of whom had cancer and 42 of whom did not. there was a correlation which means there was a relationship between the higher temperatures in the exhaled air and the presence of cancer, but again it's a very small study and raises questions whether the temperature which could reflect inflammation, infection, and level of e distinguish the presence or absence of a cancer. gerri: 159,000 deaths from lung cancer this past year. my own father died from lung cancer. if there was a way to diagnose
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it super early it would be so welcome. what do you think are the most likely ways that folks could get diagnosed early? >> you're quite correct. lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in the united states. 27% of all cancer deaths in the u.s. are from lung cancer. unfortunately this is a disease where the survival has not changed. the five year survival remains approximately 15-17% and that really isn't changed in several decades. you're entirely correct that the detection of cancer at early stage is the best way to cure this disease. we know if we can find the disease early which is maybe 17% of all patients, they have a better than 50% five year survival. clearly we're on the right track. would we be able to use this particular test? that remains to be proven. the concept of non-invasive screening is brilliant and extremely important. we spend over 9 billion dollars
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a year currently on the best detection method, spiral ct's done as a cat scan in the radiology department and they have a lot of false positives and false negatives. even still with a not very good test, the report from 2010, the national lung cancer screening trial report showed a 20% reduction in survival are in disease. we are definitely on the right track finding it early, whether this particular breath temperature test will work, i can't say with certainty, i very much appreciate the concept. gerri: keep up the good work and thanks for coming on tonight. >> thank you for having me, gerri. gerri: next, the irs scandal getting more and more unbelievable and the reaction keeps pouring in on the president's address. hear what lou dobbs has to say about president obama's terror strategy. stay with us. no. not exactly. to attain success, one must project success.
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gerri: in a 14 minute address to the nation, president obama laid out his plan to defeat islamic state militants. the president ordering airstrikes in syria as well as iraq to stop the terrorist organization, but he made it clear there will be no american combat troops on foreign soil. here to weigh in, lou dobbs, great to have you here h. i was really curious about what you made of the speech. >> the speech was, first, my first thought is there wasn't enough. i mean, it was 14 minutes long. as the saying goes, bill clinton couldn't have cleared his throat in that time. to set up the premise and to establish the need to move our troops into conflict, i think required more personally. i would have liked to have heard far more about strategy rather than his steps toward engaging in syria against targets. but overall for what it was, i thought it was fine.
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my personal resistance is i think the philosophy that it represents is not adequate. gerri: and i think voters agree with you. a recent poll shows that some 57% of folks think the president is weak and indecisive. do you agree? >> he has been on this. i mean, because he's reversed himself, he's contradicted himself over the course of just the past 13 months on the issue of the islamic state of isis or isil if one prefers. to see this one kind of a 180-degree reversal on the part of any president over that period of time is stunning. gerri: four weeks. a turn around on some of the facts. >> yeah. and it's, but at the other, you know, on the other side we have to hope that this man has finally worked his way through to a direction that he is energized to pursue i and will lead -- pursue and will lead effectively because he is the commander in chief. our troops, our forces depend upon that.
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we depend upon the success of his leadership. >> absolutely true and, to me, one of the big questions is why do you take troops on the ground off the table? is it possible to do this job without some of our troops on the ground, in your view? >> well, i'll defer to the military analysts. amongst them, general jack keane, general richard meyers. they believe this can be done at this level. jack keane, for example, suggests that it's going to take a significantly larger number of our troops' boots on the ground in order to be effective. that's ground controllers for sophisticated smart weaponry and ordnance. but if this is as limited as one might infer from last night, a conflict that he intends to pursue, you know, i really don't know the answer to that. what i do know is that we are leaving afghanistan with the enemy we swore to destroy 13 years ago still intact, still in
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power, the taliban. the poppy fields are still there growing. we have exerted so little of our will of our enemies and brought so little retribution for the pain that these radical islamists have caused and the threats that they pose to our allies including israel, saudi arabia, that it's going to take historians, i think, some work to rationalize what we have failed to do in the war against terror as it's been styled from bush through obama. gerri: you know, it's like the old joke about nato, right? they would give you frown beams, that was the ultimate extent of their effort? i feel like that's what we're getting with the president. >> yeah. it is difficult to explain his reticence. at least he referred to american exceptionalism when he talked about the burden of america's leadership in the world. i would, i would prefer that he talk, have talked about it five and a half years earlier, but at
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least he's come to that point. and we have to take on those responsibilities, but reasonably can and intelligently and accurately in our assessments. i personally believe that this is an incorrect assessment. i believe our primary enemy in the region is iran, it is primary enemy of our allies, and it is the threat that poses the greatest danger to america and to our interests. to go after the islamic state will say to all of our blood lust for the two americans who were decapitated by these terrorists. but it will not remove the threats that keys for us in the middle east, but in part by not pursuing conflict to victory. gerri: yeah. it's a big anniversary day today, and americans keep getting asked by tollsters, that is, if they feel safer. do you, lou, feel safer today? >> i have to say i do feel safer.
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it has been 13 years in which we can say that, with great experience and with great commitment and sacrifice on the part of our military, our intelligence services, we have remained safe throughout that period in this country. we've had small incidents whether it be, you know, the times square bomber, whomever it may be, that have ended well. so, yes, i do feel empirically the facts say we are much safer. going forward, i don't think we understand as well we should, you are leaders don't understand as well they should the costs economically and financially to this country. the burden has been immense, $2 trillion. the costs continue and mount. our debts have risen for a host of reasons, but amongst them the necessity to wage this war on terror rather than radical islamists. those costs we're going to be carrying with us for a long time. we have to rationalize the way we fight. we have to fight smarter, we
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have to protect ourselves smarter, and we have to determine as a nation that we're going to prevail in every conflict. it is insufficient to conduct long wars that don't change the landscape of the threats and don't change the destiny of our enemies that is in their destinies altogether. verier and we have to understand the changing nature of the threat. lou, thank you so much for being on the show tonight. >> thank you. gerri: and be sure to tune in at 7 p.m. eastern time for continuing coverage of the president's address and his promise of more airstrikes. lou will be joined by media mogul steve forbes. and the irs is under fire once again, and once again it all has to do with lois lerner's inbox. liz macdonald has the details. >> that's right. yet another e-mail has surfaced in the ir/lois lerner controversy. but this time lerner was upset not about tea party profits, but
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about an irs employee who was working full time on federal union duties and not taxpayer issues. lerner is the former irs director of the nonprofit unit who has been under fire for targeting tea party nonprofits for extra scrutiny, but lerner was also upset about an irs staffer getting paid up to $138,000 annually for not doing her job. lerner vented in a 2011 e-mail about how she was blocked from firing this employee and wrote, quote: we can't do anything about this worker when has spent most of the last year doing nothing. despite lerner's complaints, the federal union saved that worker's job. and now the house subcommittee on oversight has sent a letter to the head of the irs demanding answers as to why taxpayers paid $23 million last year for irs employees to work on their federal union duties and not on
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irs work. in fact, taxpayers have footed the bill for more than 200 irs employees to work on union duties, and many of them earn $100,000 a year or more. these irs workers spent more than 520,000 hours on union work in 2013 and even longer, more than 573,000 hours, on union duties in 2012. gerri? gerri: shocking. liz, thank you for that. and now we want to hear from you. gmail is warning users to change their passwords tonight after unconfirmed reports of five million passwords turning up on a russian web site. so when was the last time you changed your password? here's what some of you are tweeting me about our poll question tonight. rick writes this: every two months, just long enough to get them memorized, and then change them again. on facebook gayle says: within a month. you can't be too careful anymore. if changing often helps, i'll do
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it. and here's mark: a week ago, will do it again in another four weeks. and bill says: with 75 accounts, i'd have to spend all day. i feel your pain, bill. when we come back, a shocking new report show just how widespread student loan debt is, and next is california putting fish before people? how state regulations are protecting salmon, not citizens, during this devastating drought. here's your consumer gauge with the numbers you need to know. take a look at that. we'll be right back. ♪ ♪ when fixed income experts work with equity experts who work with regional experts that's when expertise happens. mfs. because there is no expertise without collaboration.
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gerri: there is a pig fight over watern california between the farmers and the fish. the state, suffering from a historic drought, and every drop of water matters to the farmers who are struggling to survive. but right now federal regulations are putting salmon first. here with more, steve moore, the
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chief economist at the heritage foundation. steve, always good to have you here. >> hi, gerri. gerri: this story confounds me, i'll just say it up front. you know, how do we weigh these? you know, the snail darter, a spotted owl, it's a salmon and then it's food for people. why are we making the wrong choice here? >> yeah. and why doesn't this story surprise us? [laughter] because it's happening all over the country, and it's been happening a lot recently where people's ability to develop their land or to get processed water in places like california where literally, gerri, farmers are losing their farms, their livelihoods because they don't have access to enough water and it's being used to protect the salmon. this is a reflection of a kind of radical environmentalism that has taken hold in washington and the epa and the fish and wildlife service, and it is denying a lot of american people the ability to develop their property and to make a
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livelihood. and by the way, when you listed all of those things like the spotted owl -- gerri: prairie chicken. >> right, exactly. [laughter] the prairie thicken is left -- you know, literally millions of acres cannot be developed for things like ranching and oil and gas development. that's a big issue. you know, so this is happening way too often. gerri: way too often and, look, here's what we're not thinking about. the agriculture market in california which serves the entire nation, a $43 billion market. >> exactly. gerri: this is critical to our tables, right? we're already experiencing food inflation in the worst kind of way, but it's also important to california families who live on these farms, they work on these farms. this is a major industry, and let's just be very clear about what happens here. so the pum teyssenal so wtnso tntio wa onre sut h
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sfer. >>xact. gerri: i don't think i don't uns priority list. >> it's not as if salmon are an endangered species. [laughter] there's good indication that some of the salmon population might be lost if they divert this water for agriculture -- gerri: true. >> -- but it will still, the species will still exist, we'll still have member -- plenty of salmon to put on our plates as well. again, there is an attitude among a lot of the radical environmentalists, we're all that way. we want clean water and clean air and open space, but when livelit's a real problem. and you see this, i can't tell you how many times when i go around the country i run into people who say, you know, these environmental regulations are preventing me from developing my land in a very efficient and responsible way. whether it's water rights, whether it's the endangered
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species act, the environmental groups are suing the epa and the fish and wildlife service to get more and more -- hundreds more of these species on the list. this is the tip of the iceberg, this story you're talking about, gerri. gerri: we don't even talk about the wind farms that are killing the birds -- >> and the sage grouse. do you know about the sage grouse? that's another one that is going to, you know, ip hint a lot of the drilling were -- inhibit a lot of the drilling we want to do. i was just out in midland, texas, and they were complaining about the sage grouse and the prairie chickens that are preventing people from developing their own private property. gerri: people first, that's what i say. >> i like it. gerri: thanks for coming on. >> thanks, gerri. gerri: still to come, my two cents more. and next, we all know the student loan crisis is crippling millennials. details after the break.
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♪ ♪ gerri: the student loan debt crisis is haunting americans long into their retirement. in fact, the amount of student loan debt held by our nation's seniors is soaring, up 600% since 2005 to an amazing there are 18 billion. so i how do you pay down these debts on a fixed income? joining me now, john vento, the author of the book "financial independence: getting to point x," which i have seen, as a matter of fact. >> thank you. gerri: john, let's get started by talking about seniors with student loan debt. what we know from the gao, the general accounting office, is that 80 percent of that debt is from their own education or re-education. i thought they were all paying their kids' debt. apparently, that's not the case. what would you tell somebody who
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is already a senior citizen who is facing heavy college debt? >> right. well, first of all, that's an amazing statistic because in my wildest dream, i would have have never thought that to be the case. as far as seniors, if they're, in fact, in that position where they have large student loan debt on their books and they're already in retirement, the only thing you could possibly say to them at that point is, don't panic. you need to go back, speak to those lenders. perhaps you could work something out just simply by speaking to the lenders. one of the biggest mistakes people have made x that's why a lot of these seniors are in this predicament, basically comes back to the fact that they didn't make loan payments on time and ignored it for years. could have been for other financial reasons -- unemployed for a period of time, death in the family, who knows what -- but when you add the interest and penalties on top of everything else, a $50,000 student loan could easily turn into a 300 or $400,000 student loan. gerri: oh, that's painful.
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i've had people on the show saying, gerri, i'm going to be paying this debt until i die, basically. it's going to be with me forever. consolidation is a good idea, trying to negotiate a lower rate. a lot of people are going to be trying to look at forgiveness packages which means all that debt is going to revert to taxpayers. >> right. and, unfortunately, for a great deal of these seniors that we're referring to, they will literally carry that debt into their grave. it's going to be forgiven eventually, but they will end up, unfortunately, one day passing away with that debt there. one of the unique things about student loan interest unlike a lot of other debt that you get into, bankruptcy, it's very, very difficult to qualify to forgive that through bankruptcy. although there are some cases where that has been -- gerri: but it's rare, my friend. take a look at these numbers because this really tells you what the problem is. 1967-'68 average tuition and fees $2100. look at it now, $8,000 times four -- times four. so you've got to think if the
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boomers are having this much trouble, what's going to happen to the millennials? >> couldn't agree more. it's a frightening number. the way i look at an education, an education is perhaps the best investment an individual could make, but just like any investment, it's a question of what is your rate of return going to be? it's foolish in many cases, if you're going to be spending $50,000 or more per year for an education, that job down the road better pay an awful lot of money. because if not, that state school or that city school which would have been a fraction of the price, same quality education but for a fraction of the cost. gerri: you can't be willing to pay absolutely anything for a commodity. and i'm sorry, education is a commodity. john, thanks for coming on the show tonight. great to chat with you. we'll be right back with my two cents more and the answer to our question of the day, hey, when was the last time you changed your passwords? stay with us. ♪ [ breathing deeply ]
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gerri: when was the last time you chand your password? we asked the question on gerriwillis.com. this is interesting. 27% said in the last week, 35% said a month, 24% said a year, 14% said never, ever, ever. we know who's in trouble. and finally tonight, two senators from opposite sides of the political aisle spent a week marooned together on a remote island for a new reality show called rival survival. the two senators -- new mexico democrat martin ion rick and arizona republican jeff flake -- will star in the show airing october 29th in which the two explore themes of political unity. discovery describes the island as an utterly unforgiving, deserted december destination with dangers that includes lionfish and scorpion fish. let's pray the scorpion fish can survive the politicians, that's my two cents' more. and that's it for tonight's
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willis report. don't forget to dvr the show if you can't catch us live. monewithayne k ♪omup nex : nighn "ma y,wall and in obam sech aait a ttit mkeo mis:lead is ing risnd on prtecticais eensi. tchi theorld go up in flames, priceless. and a twist in the ray rice story, well, they keep coming. we're talking big money, big issues and major lessons to be learned. and these of the welfare utopia. the scotland vote is the tip of the iceberg as europe is on the cusp of cracking up after decades of deterring work. workers of the world are really uniting, and i've got a gr am nhe athe show. to match it with two more ideas,

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