there's not one way to do something. no details too small. american express open forum. this is what membership is. this is what membership does. this at first glance looks like a really awesome paint job and detailing job on this car. and this look is kind of a trend in cars now, if you've noticed. the blackout package. where you get a black car, with black trim, and black wheels, no chrome at all, everything's blacked out. it's very stuffy looking. but you know what? that is not what is going on in this picture. and we know that in part because this picture was taken in 2007, and that's before the blackout look was popular in cars. but it's also because what this picture is, is part of the documentation of an oil spill that happened in the vancouver area in 2007. here's another couple angles on that same poor car.

yeah that's not point. it's crude oil. the pictures of that oil spill that happened in 2007 up near vancouver, they're really dramatic pictures. in part because that oil spill gushed like a cartoon oil spill. in part, though, the pictures are very dramatic from that spill because it happened right in the middle of a totally normal suburban-looking neighborhood. in terms of why this oil spill happened, this is the picture that's the equivalent of the bank robber covered in the dye pack. it was this guy, this excavator, that was digging apparently a new storm drain in the town of burnaby in british columbia, when oops, did we hit something? oh, god, oh, geez, what did we do? yeah, despite the sort of adorable advertising campaign involving a cartoon horse who reminds you that you should call before you dig anything to make sure there isn't say a 300,000 barrel a day pressurized pipeline where you're going to stick your shovel, that

construction crew in the vancouver area in burnaby in 2007, they just made an unbelievable gusher of a mess. the pipeline that they hit is a pipeline that runs from the alberta oil fields, so roughly from edmonton all the way across canada westward to vancouver. it's called the trans mountain pipeline. and the company that operates that pipeline has just applied for permission to the federal government in canada to basically triple the capacity of that pipeline. right now it carries 300,000 barrels a day. they want it to carry almost 900,000 barrels a day. if they were able to do that that would not only mean a much bigger pipeline physically snaking its way across canada toward vancouver. it would also mean, at the end of the line there, on the west coast, there would be a lot more oil-related traffic. for what to do with that oil that we're getting out of the now triple the size pipeline. instead of eight oil tankers per month pulling up at the end of the pipeline to load up in

british columbia, they'd go from eight a month to more like 34 a month. so instead of a tanker or two every week it would be a tanker or two every day. this decision about the pipeline has big implications for life in canada. it's a big decision for the canadian government as to whether or not they're going to approve this thing. the approval application for that pipeline expansion is 15,000 pages long. and in the application, the pipeline company, kinder morgan, they're called, they do reckon with the possibility that their pipeline might burst again. and of course, if it's triple the size, of course this time if it bursts it would be a much bigger deal. it would be just a much bigger pipeline bursting. in their application they explain what they would do to try to make a rupture like that not happen. they explained how they would plan to respond if there was another big pipeline spill. but kinder morgan has apparently been eating their wheaties or something. because in addition to applying to expand this pipeline, they have taken the whole risk of a

spill thing one amazing step further. look. this is the headline from "the vancouver sun." kinder morgan pipeline application says, oil spills can have both negative and positive effects. positive -- yes, yes. we understand that there might be an oil spill. from our giant pipeline but have you considered the benefits of an oil spill? seriously that is what they're arguing in their application to triple the size of their pipeline. this is from their application, quote, spills can have both positive and negative effects on local and regional economies over the short and long-term. spill response, they say, spill response and cleanup creates business and employment opportunities for affected communities. now, as to whether or not your community's oil spill is going to be a good thing or a bad thing for you, kinder morgan in their application they say they've got it all worked out, this is how they calculate it, the net overall effect depends on the size and extent of the spill, the associated demand for

cleanup services and personnel, the capacity of local and regional businesses to meet this demand, and the willingness of local businesses and residents to pursue response opportunities. turn that frown upside down oil-soaked neighborhood. you can get a job cleaning it up. if you just have the right attitude. hey, you, sperm whale. want to tow some boom before you die? yeah, we'll make it worth you while. you get a job out of it. that is seriously what kinder morgan is arguing to the freaking canadian government about why they should be allowed to triple the capacity of their pipeline. more oil means more chances for oil spills. and more oil spills means more jobs cleaning up oil spills. honestly. this is like, in old movies and old cartoons like you'd see a vacuum cleaner salesman, the guy would come and knock on the door and if you open the door he'd dump the bag of dirt, you know, coffee grounds or whatever into your rug, hey i'm offering to

sell you a vacuum cleaner to clean it up. that's what kinder morgan is doing. if you let us triple the size of our pipeline, we might spill more oil, and then you could hire yourselves to clean it up. wouldn't that be great? the canadian member of parliament who represents the town where the pipeline has already burst once, his response to the company's assertion that oil spills can be a good thing was this. quote, we know kinder morgan is using every trick in the book to push this pipeline through our community, but this, this one takes the cake. kinder morgan is actually an american company. they're based in houston. they're huge, huge firm. and they're not just proposing this expanded pipeline in canada. they're also proposing new and expanded pipelines all over the united states. including one that they want to go through new england. i happen to live in the part of western massachusetts where they are trying to put that pipeline through. and headlines like these head lines out of canada, about

kinder morgan, they're part of the reason that people are losing their minds about the prospect that this company might be running a pipeline through massachusetts. but, you know, as a country, actually as a continent, pipeline capacity for carrying crude oil is really maxed out right now and that has happened over a really short period of time. there's obviously been a huge production increase in north american oil in places like the north dakota, back in formation and alberta tar sands. the means of moving that oil around, though, getting it to refineries, getting it to port, the means of moving that oil around have not expanded at the same rate that production has. and so, we have got, and whether we've got enough of it -- whether we've got enough of it or not, the technology for moving oil in terms of what we've got is, is, is terrible in terms of its safety. so there's this question of how much capacity that we have and there's also a question of how safe our means of transporting oil are even before we expand that.

this is the mayflower, arkansas, oil spill. this was mayflower arkansas learning they had a lousy exxon oil pipeline running under their town. this is how they found out it was there when it burst. and there's the pipeline that ran under the kalamazoo river in michigan until it didn't. it touched thousands of barrels of tar sands oil they don't know how to clean up in the previously pristine river. there's the yellowstone river in montana that was not supposed to have a river running through it. there's the north dakota wheat field that nobody knew was disguising a burst oil pipeline until the area that the pipeline had leeched into saturated an area seven football fields wide. just this week this is the head line in the anchorage daley news oily mist sprayed over 27 acres at prudho bay. so the pipelines that we have got, they're liking like they're made out of spun sugar and it's raining.

the political fights are endless and epic over the new pipelines that the industry wants to build. whether it's that keystone pipeline that would cut across the entire length of the country or other proposed extensions of existing pipelines or that kinder morgan pipeline that think want to put through western massachusetts. pipeline capacity is maxed out. and troubled already. proposed expansions are super contentious. but meanwhile, production is up. meanwhile, they are still pumping oil in record amounts in north america. and it's got to go somewhere. and if they can't squeeze any more oil into our leaky, lousy pipeline system they've decided instead to move it a different way. next time you're stopped at a railroad crossing waiting for the train to go by, count the cars. the average train carrying rail cars full of crude oil is now more than 100 cars long. and this is something that has not happened gradually. this is brand-new. this is one of the most amazing changes over time of any kind during the obama presidency.

look at this. i find this remarkable. in the year that president obama was elected in 2008, that year nationwide there were 9500 rail cars full of crude oil moving around the country. that was 2008. last year, the number was 415,000. nothing goes up that much in five years. nothing increases 40-fold over a period of five years. but this did. and while that is amazing change in our country, and hey trains are neat, the problem with this particular revolution in how we move what around the country is that there's a reason people have started calling these things bomb trains. and that's because they keep blowing up. >> explosions sent flames and thick, black smoke billowing into the sky after a train, carrying crude oil, derailed near castleton, north dakota, about half an hour west of fargo. crews are letting the blaze burn itself out. so investigators are not expected to get close enough to gather evidence until later today.

>> crews are letting that blaze burn itself out. investigators could not get close enough to that explosion to gather evidence from it. that was from castleton, north dakota. that was in december. six months before that disaster, of course, it was july, the town of lac-megantic in quebec that was reduced to something that looked more like a war zone. that was how the canadian prime minister described the scene. that gigantic explosion happened when a runaway train of 73 cars carrying crude oil exploded in that town, it killed 47 people and destroyed most of the town. 150 firefighters fought that blaze. it took four days to even start to get it under control. think about that. burning for four straight days. well in january of this year, in new brunswick in canada, another train carrying crude oil derailed causing a gigantic explosion. this time, too, emergency responders decided that their best option maybe their only option was to just let it burn itself out. they could do nothing to stop it.

it had to stop itself. again, that one burned for four straight days. then this week in lynchburg, virginia, another train derailment, another explosion. this time witnesses report blames reaching 80 feet into the air. local reporters wrote that it was a miracle the entire town of lynchburg, virginia, was not burned down. and again, how did they deal with the explosion and the fire? they let it burn. firefighters had to wait for that fire to burn itself out. and when i say wait, i mean wait and hope. that fire resulted in the unnerving spectacle of the james river in virginia also catching fire. because some of the punctured derailed train cars full of crude oil, they tumbled into the james river while they were on fire, thus setting the river on fire. james river is not only a major tributary leading into the super ecologically sensitive chesapeake bay it's also a source of drinking water for richmond, virginia, about 100 miles downstream. richmond ended up diverting its intake of water to protect

itself from the oil spill. that happened just two days ago on wednesday. exactly one week before the lynchburg derailment and explosion and the fire they couldn't put out, it was the last week on the job for the chair of the national transportation safety board last week, and one week before the explosion in lynchburg on the wednesday of her last week on the job, the outgoing chair of the ntsb warned that the cars we use to ship oil on trains, where we've had this 40-fold increase over the last five years, she warned that those cars actually cannot safely transport oil. the national transportation safety board chair says the obama administration needs to take steps immediately to protect the public from potentially catastrophic oil train accidents, even if it means using emergency authority. there isn't time to wait for the cumbersome federal rulemaking process to run its normal course said the outgoing chair, we are very clear, she said, that that issue needs to be acted on very quickly. there's a very high risk here that has not been addressed. she said federal regulators have

the power to issue emergency orders to protect the public rather than run the risk of another accident occurring before regulations are in place. noting that the federal rulemaking process often takes many years to complete the outgoing ntsb chair said that it is not acceptable -- that that wait is not acceptable for this risk. she said, quote the rules aren't moving fast enough. we don't need a higher body count before they move forward. she said that last wednesday. and then this wednesday, one week later to the day, this is what happened. in lynchburg, virginia, with exactly the kind of rail cars she was saying are not safe to transport that kind of oil. and then hours after, literally hours after that explosion in lynchburg, virginia, while lynchburg was still burning, the transportation department delivered its proposed new rules about this stuff to the white house. the new rules for transporting oil by rail. the ntsb, meanwhile, wants the obama administration to act on

an emergency basis to impose new safeguards through the powers of the presidency, rather than putting them through the normal rulemaking process. the hazardous materials committee for the international association of fire chiefs says that normal fire departments in normal communities all along these rail lines all across the united states do not have the ability to fight the kind of fires that happen when things go wrong on these trains. if an oil car on a rail on a train blows up, normal fire departments do not have the ability to stop the fire. had that lynchburg train not derailed it was on its way here, to what you see on the right side of your screen there to coastal virginia. a new shipping terminal for oil at yorktown, virginia. on its way there that train line passes right through historic colonial williamsburg. where the fire chief there also told the associated press this week that his fire department does not have the means to put out the kind of fire that happens when crude oil blows up

in these soda can rail cars. there goes colonial williamsburg. better let it burn out. last week canada announced emergency action to try to stop these bomb trains from blowing up. they announced that the oldest and most dangerous rail cars, 5,000 of them, would be taken off canadian rail within the next month. another 65,000 cars will be replaced or retro fitted within three years. but when it comes to oil production, and moving oil around, the united states and canada are totally integrated. i mean, yeah that's a big land border we've got with canada, but oil trains are crossing it moving both directions, all day long, every day. and canada just declared that a type of unsafe rail car that we use by the tens of thousands in this country, will be illegal to use in canada as of the end of this month. we use it here but we can't use it there. how is that going to work? you can't have an american oil train chugging up to canada to go pick up some tar sands oil from alberta, but half the cars

on it are not allowed to be on canadian rails. you can't have it, so that some cars are legal in the united states, and not legal in canada, when we've got a totally integrated oil economy with canada. yes, part of the emergency here is that these things keep blowing up. the regulators cannot get the warnings out fast enough before another town has something like this happen. but the other part of the emergency here is that it is, it would seem, logistically impossible for canada to get its act together on this subject without us, as a by-product, also having to get our act together. and the recommendation from the safety people to the obama administration right now is that the administration, the president, should act unilaterally. that president obama should skip the normal rulemaking process, and do this on his own as an emergency matter. get those unsafe rail cars offer the rails right now before another lynchburg happens. he should do it by presidential decree, essentially. what is the obama administration

going to do with that recommendation? they got the new proposed safety regulations delivered to them while lynchburg was still on fire this week. what are they going to do? is the administration going to act? and if the president acts on this on his own authority, how much are the republicans going to freak out about it if he does? joining us now is russell gold. he's a senior energy reporter for "the wall street journal." he's the author of "the boom: how fracking ignited the american energy revolution and changed the world." mr. gold, thanks very much for being with us. appreciate your time. >> thank you for having me. >> so the issue of whether or not we can safely move oil around the country, is canada moving on this in a way that is forcing the united states to act or are both countries thinking about this in the same way? >> no. i definitely think canada by moving ahead is putting a lot of pressure on the united states. you made an excellent point before. how can canada declare that these d.o.t. 111 tanker cars aren't safe, shouldn't be on the rails, but yet they are in the united states. that's just something that doesn't -- it's not going to be able to last for too long.

>> is that, i guess, is that the cause of a sort of regulatory emergency in the united states? i mean, the folks who work on these rules note that the regular rulemaking process here does take years, the ntsb has been complaining about these rail cars for 20 years now, and nothing has happened about it even when the industry says that they acknowledge that some changes should be made. does that logistical dilemma that canada has just put us in mean that this sort of has to move fast now? >> well, actually, i think that it's moving fast and there's a lot of urgency being felt in washington, because of all these explosions and all these incidents you've seen happen. you know, everyone -- many people have heard of the north dakota oil boom what's going on in the boccen. it couldn't exist if it weren't moving all of that crude out by rail. there's just so much of it right now and the crude itself is so flammable. much more flammable than what you found typically on the gulf coast, some of the historic oil fields. what's really driving this emergency is the number of

trains moving on the rails and how flammable and combustible this crude is. >> and some of the pictures we're showing right now is just a reminder when you've got a pipeline and something goes wrong in a pipeline it can be devastating. when something's going wrong on a train that's a disaster that goes through a lot of main streets in small town america and even in big city america it's very close to human development in lots of ways as we saw this week it's a very scary effect in lynchburg it's a miracle that nobody was hurt in that spill. essentially were the old rules for transporting oil by rail designed both for a much smaller volume in terms of how much is being moved but also for a less flammable product? a less dangerous product? >> oh, absolutely. crude oil doesn't explode like we've seen it typically. castleton, north dakota, in december, 10 story tall fire balls. in lynchburg this week eight

story flames shooting up, that's not typical of crude. so one of the first things that people inside the industry and then regulators began to ask is, why is the crude exploding like this? and it's taken awhile but as we reported and the canadians regulators have also said now, this is really flammable crude. and the rules that we have in place really are not designed to grapple with moving so much volume of crude all across the country, east coast, west coast, down into the gulf coast, the tankers just right now are not up to the task as we've seen. >> do you expect if the administration does try to move quickly on this and you say that there is some urgency and some real sense of movement here certainly the sort of sounding alarm from the outgoing ntsb chair last week right before this lynchburg disaster happened makes it feel like people associated with the administration feel urgently here from your reporting and covering the industry and how it has grown and its influence in washington, do you think that there will be either a partisan or an industry driven freakout if the administration pushes for these regulations to change quickly? >> well, the industry has accepted a lot of changes.

they've gone on with allowing slower moving trains, which were designed to slow down, to prevent derailment. the real crux of the matter are these tanker cars. because if you're talking about taking tens of thousands of tanker cars that are right now used in the oil trade and upgrading them or strengthening them, that is just going to take a lot of time and money. and that's where we've seen pushback. it's going to be a fight as to do you need to retrofit these tanker cars and how quickly. and i would expect a lot of contention. the relationship right now between the oil industry, and the department of transportation, is very tense. >> russell gold, senior energy reporter at the "wall street journal." author of "the boom: how fracking ignited the american energy revolution and changed the world." it's really helpful to have you here to help us sort through this. thanks very much. >> thank you. >> we'll be right back. stay with us. big show tonight.

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right around lunch time today, at the rose garden at the white house, just outside the oval office, president obama and german chancellor angela merkel met the press. angela merkel is here in the u.s. to talk about the situation in ukraine, and what the west can do to try to change the behavior of russian president vladimir putin, and that was what the majority of this press conference today was about on this beautiful spring day in washington. but, watch this. watch the question that president obama got from one of the foreign news agencies that was there to cover the press conference. and that the president called on today. watch this. >> earlier this week an inmate died in oklahoma in what critics have called an inhumane manner

because of a seemingly botched execution. human right groups put the united states in the dubious company of china, iran and saudi arabia when it comes to the primitive executions. some countries have expressed their concerns, as well. what are your thoughts on this, and does this raise more questions about u.s. justice and your reputation? >> i don't imagine that president obama was expecting to get a question on that today. especially not from a foreign reporter. but given the chance to ask the president of the united states about anything, what that france reporter wanted to ask the president about was oklahoma's botched execution earlier this week. the execution that state officials tried to call off halfway through it when they realized they had not killed the prisoner and they didn't know how they would finish the job. they tried to end the execution process at that point. somehow, we still don't know how, but then they say the prisoner later died of a heart attack behind closed doors.

agence france press asked president obama for his reaction to that today. here's how the president responded. listen to the very end of his answer here. >> what happened in oklahoma is deeply troubling. in the application of the death penalty in this country, we have seen significant problems. racial bias. uneven application of the death penalty. then this situation in oklahoma, i think, just highlights some of the significant problems there. so, i'll be discussing with eric holder, and others, you know, you know, to get me an analysis of what steps have been taken, not just in this particular instance, but more broadly in this area. i think we do have to, as a society, ask ourselves some -- some difficult and profound questions around these issues. >> president saying there, i'll

be discussing these with -- the issue with eric holder. attorney general eric holder. it's not clear what those discussions, what those conversations will entail or what exactly the president meant. the president basically just said there that he wants to look at the issue broadly. presumably not just this situation in oklahoma. but there will apparently be a review of some kind undertaken at the federal level at the presidential level based on what happened this week tuesday night in oklahoma. i don't think president obama expected to get that question. and his big angela merkel let's talk about putin press conference today. but he did get that question and in so doing he made some news. i'll be right back. new business owner, it would be one thing i've learned is my philosophy is real simple american express open forum is an on-line community, that helps our members connect and share ideas to make smart business decisions. if you mess up, fess up. be your partners best partner. we built it for our members, but it's open for everyone. there's not one way to do something. no details too small.

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it is bigger than any private sector employer in the united states, it's bigger than any private sector employer or public sector employer anywhere in the world. it is the single largest organization of human beings on the planet earth. and within the u.s. government the second largest agency after the defense department is the v.a. used to be the veterans administration. it's now the department of veterans affairs. and the reason that the v.a. is so huge is partly because defense is so huge. we have a ton of veterans in this country. but the other main reason the v.a. is so ginormous is because veterans have their own health care system. it's not a private insurance system like you might have through your job or maybe you got through obamacare. it's not a public insurance system like we're all looking forward to having from medicare when we get older. what we do for veterans is not like anything else we do in this country. the v.a. medical system more than anything is like what

they've got in britain. with their national health service. it's socialized medicine. and i mean that despite any ideological backlash the term may cause. it's true. v.a. owns the hospitals and it owns the clinics, it runs them itself, it hires the doctors and the nurses. v.a. health care is a totally different thing than the health care system that nonveterans have in this country. and it's a pretty good system. the v.a. gets to brag basically every year about the patient satisfaction ratings that show that veterans consistently rate their experience with v.a. medical centers higher than the rest of us nonveterans rate our experiences with private hospitals. and, at the same time, problems. as the huge bureaucracy at the v.a. has created paper nightmares, like this one, at a v.a. office in winston salem, this paper nightmare here was so bad it threatened to collapse the building under the weight of all those paper files, literally. between an antiquated paper

filing system. a computer system that did not speak to the computer system used for troop files at the defense department, which after all is where veterans come from, an influx in new veterans needing care after coming home from the wars in iraq and afghanistan, congress and the administration increasing eligibility for v.a. care for things like exposure to agent orange, the inability of v.a. to adapt quickly enough to deal with the signature wound of the post-9/11 wars traumatic brain injury, between all of these factors, the backlog for disability claims, and the wait time for some basic health care from v.a., particularly mental health care, it's been bad. and at times it has been at crisis levels for some v.a. facilities around the country. funding for the v.a. has not been hit as hard as some other agencies in washington and that's thanks almost entirely to smart and loud work by veterans organizations making sure that that's funding was protected. and when problems at the v.a. or with the treatment of veterans get discussed in washington

veterans get paid the best lip service of anyone in washington at all. but lip service only goes so far. and the suicide rates and the unemployment rates for veterans are still way, way too high. the access to mental health care in particular is still not adequate for vets. the backlog on those disability claims is dropping but it's still terrible. and the wait time for health care at some facilities for basic first appointments and for follow-up specialist care not only still needs fixing the various v.a. facilities around the country it has now given rise to a roiling scandal at one v.a. health system in particular. the one in phoenix, arizona. the v.a.'s inspector general is investigating claims that administrators there may have kept two parallel sets of books. one official waiting list which showed that veterans were waiting not too shabby 14 to 30 days for their health appointments. and then a real list, a secret list that it kept on the side unofficially which reportedly showed that wait times were more

like a year. this unofficial real list allegedly included more than 1,000 names, including 40 veterans who died before receiving those very long-awaited appointments. the allegations have been reported extensively in the arizona republic and at cnn. they've been denied by the top v.a. administrators in phoenix, and the top official in charge of health care at the v.a. said this past week that the department found no evidence of the secret wait list or any effort to manipulate the apparent wait times faced by the veterans at that medical center. now, at the request of the acting inspector general and the v.a., the v.a. secretary has suspended the top two administrators at the phoenix v.a. and another nonexecutive employee and republican congressman jeff miller who chairs the veterans committee in the house, he says the v.a. has allowed documents to be destroyed that would have been crucial to the investigation into these allegations. a doctor currently employed at the phoenix v.a. has declared herself a government whistle-blower and has said that administrators were destroying documents related to this

investigation as recently as this weekend. she says those documents should have been preserved for the investigation. and when the inspector general investigation is complete into what happened in phoenix, the head of the veterans committee in the senate, independent senator bernie sanders of vermont, he says to expect senate hearings on this matter, as well. what is going on at this v.a. center in phoenix? should we feel comfortable yet that we know what's going on there? and is this alleged scandal there a phoenix-specific problem, or is this potentially a nationwide problem? a systemic problem in this huge system that we count on as a nation to make good on some of the most sober and honor-bound promises that we make to anyone as a country? joining us now is independent senator bernie sanders of vermont. he's chair of the senate veterans affairs committee. senator sanders, it's really nice to see you. thanks for being here. >> my pleasure. >> so overall what is your response to these allegations about the phoenix v.a.

do you feel like, as chair of the veterans committee in the senate, do you feel like you have a handle on how serious these allegations are and what really happened? >> well, rachel, the allegations are very, very serious. as you noted, the director of the hospital denies them. what is going on now is exactly the right thing. the inspector general of the v.a., an independent entity, is going down there, they're in phoenix right now, and they're going to do an exhaustive investigation to get to the truth of the matter. and what i have said and say again that as soon as that investigation is completed, we're going to do a hearing or a series of hearings on what has happened in phoenix. so i think we're moving in the right direction. we're going to get the facts, and we're going to go forward with hearings after we get the facts. >> what seems troubling to me, i've been following this story since it first broke in arizona papers and people first started covering it nationally. what seemed like a troubling development to me was when we had the head of health care for the v.a. say, yeah, we sent people to phoenix, this is not the inspector general's office,

this is the person who is the head of the health care within the system, we looked into it, we don't think there's anything to it. we don't see any evidence of a parallel waiting system or any effort to gain the systems in terms of the waiting times and then basically immediately after those claims were made within the v.a. the inspector general asks the secretary to suspend three top employees at that system. that sounds like two very different interpretations of the same problem. >> well, maybe, rachel maybe, and maybe not. i think what the secretary wants to see happen is an independent investigation. what the inspector general's office has said is that they can pursue that investigation best if they put on administrative leave the leaders of the hospital so they can go unimpeded, if you like, into all of the records. i think that is the right thing to do. but i'll tell you one thing that does concern me, rachel, and i agree with much of what you said in your opening remarks. about the v.a. there are some 300,000 v.a. employees, many of them

veterans, working in 151 medical centers, in 900 primary health care facilities. and what a whole lot of independent studies have said is that the quality of care that veterans are receiving at the v.a., in all of these facilities, by and large, is good-quality care, in many respects it is better than the care received at private hospitals, and in many ways more cost effective, and the v.a. in a number of areas is doing some cutting-edge work on telehealth, using complementary and alternative medicine, infection prevention, et cetera, et cetera. so we have got to take a hard look, an objective look at what's going on in phoenix, and if these allegations are true, if we find that they are true, we are going to deal with it and deal with it in a very, very strong way. in my view people who have put their lives on the line to defend this country deserve the best quality health care

available, and i'm going to fight to make sure that that happens, and that abuses, alleged abuses, such as we are hearing from phoenix, do not occur any place else. >> i think that's an important contextual point. and you see that in the patient satisfaction surveys when you compare how people feel about their private health care versus what people are getting from the v.a. and you see how often rates comparably or even better in those satisfaction surveys. and i take that point exactly. i wonder, though, with the attention that has been paid, particularly to the issue of the disability claims backlog and also the wait times for veterans to get into services at the v.a., i wonder if the pressure on that and i think the v.a. has felt political pressure to get those numbers down to improve those numbers, if there is a risk that by accident washington has created an incentive system where v.a. administrators at the local level feel like they have to lie about those problems in order to hold onto their jobs. >> well, that is something we have to take a look at and i hope it is not true.

but, i also have to point out something to you, rachel, that i think you know. washington is now very, very highly politicized. you got a whole lot of republicans who want to repeal obamacare. they want to end medicare as we know it. the ryan republican budget in the house made savage cuts in medicaid. you have republican governors all over this country who do not want to expand medicaid to their people. with the result that a lot of people, or some people will die, because they don't get in to the doctor's office when they should. and within that context, and that anti-government mentality that many republicans have, i fear very much that there might be a politicalization of the v.a. so we want to look at any and every problem that exists in the v.a. but as you indicated, let's be frank, the v.a. is a socialized health care system. and i think it is fair to say that most republicans are not terribly enthusiastic about

socialized health care systems. so i think one of the fears that i have is that some of the overall criticisms of the v.a., and i'm not talking about what's going on at phoenix, that is a serious allegation that we have to look at, may be political. so that's something that we have to keep in mind. >> senator bernie sanders of vermont. thank you very much for joining us tonight. please stay in touch with us on this issue. it's got a lot of people very concerned and i know that you're taking it very seriously. >> thank you. >> lots coming up tonight, including something important about what you're going to be doing this weekend that you might not know about yet. stay with us. [ female announcer ] crest presents:

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i heard last night that president clinton charged abraham lincoln's ghost 10,000 to sleep in his own bed.

so that's -- that doesn't seem right to me, you know? i mean -- no. look, the preds, you know, has come under fire for raising money but, you know, he's good at it. he's good at raising money. that's not a bad thing. every president has done it, it's just that president clinton is very, very, very good at it. do you know he has organized in the past year over 100 fundraising dinners and over 200 fundraising midnight snacks. did you know that? is he laughing? is he -- is the president -- he's drinking a lot of water but ultimately he is laughing. tomorrow night in washington is the white house correspondents' dinners which affords, let's be honest, the ethically dub bows and in poor taste annual opportunity for the white house

press corps to canoodl, the one great civic virtue sincerely about the white house corresponden correspondents' dinner is it is freaking funny. it's always funny even when the comedy pushes the limit for what you are allowed to say in polite company. >> but this is amazing, you know, the first black president. i know you're biracial, but the first black president. it's proud. proud to be able to say that. you know, the first black president. well, that's unless you screw up. and then it's going to be, what's up with the half white guy, huh? who voted for the milado. what the hell. >> we're not so different, he

and i. we both get it. i believe the government that governs best is the government that governs least, and by these standards we have set up a fabulous government in iraq. i stand by this man. i stand by this man because he stands for things, not only for things, he stands on things, things like aircraft carriers and rubble and recently flooded city squares, and that sends a strong message that no matter what happens to america, she will always rebound with the most powerfully staged photo ops in the world. >> donald trump has been saying that he'll run for president as a republican, which is surprising since i just assumed he was running as a joke. donald trump often appears on fox, which is ironic, because a fox often appears on donald

trump's head. if you're at the washington post table with donald trump and you can't finish your entree, don't worry, the fox will eat it. donald trump owns the miss u.s.a. pageant which is great for republicans because it will streamline their search for a vice president. donald trump said recently he has a great relationship with the blacks, though unless the blacks are a family of white people, i believe he's mistaken. >> i'm not sure president obama wanted to laugh at that one but seth myers made it impossible not to. this year i have to tell you joel mchale is the host and msnbc will be showing the whole thing including the president's speech and everything. it's live on msnbc starting 9:00

p.m. eastern. the correspondents' dinner may be a sceevie thing in person but on tv you get the best of it. the president is always funny, the comic is always funny. it will be tomorrow night right here live 9:00 p.m. eastern. don't miss it. "weekends with alex witt" starts now. developing now, new and deadly battles in ukraine and the u.s. delivers another warning to russia. a live report ahead. the woman at the center of the donald sterling debacle now says he is not a racist. the role she's playing in his life today. what led to one woman's gutt feeling that in the end prevented a teen's potential gun mele and massacre. the backstory behind her 911 call. it's called the most exciting two minutes in sports. the kentucky derby. dylan dreyer reports on america's biggest horse race set to run in just hours.