it could just be a one off piece of legislation we're going to get two very different opinions on this next president obama gave a speech today on his vision for the future of education in america but with the u.s. falling quickly behind the rest of the developed world and the teachers union as strong as ever could it be too late also a stunning new report has been published on the rates of cancer and birth defects caused in fallujah in fact the medical effects are worse than those of the bombings of both hiroshima and nagasaki so i asked why and how old military equipment and the use of depleted uranium have led to this travesty next is globalization and killing the american middle class as americans struggle through the greatest recession since the great depression there are many jobs that simply aren't coming back with developing countries being able to pay pennies for the exact same work so i'll take a look at how america can retool for a changing world and why do poor white voters continue to support public and

candidates who have launched an assault on them the same candidates that call the poor and call them unemployed lazy and dumb so what will it take to get them to realize that they're really voting against themselves we're going to chat with churchill on that matter but now let's move on to our top story tonight. as of two days ago medical marijuana is now legal in d.c. yesterday we spoke to a former law enforcement official who was against prohibition to get his take on how important these steps are to counter our failing war on drugs but today let's talk about perceptions public opinion and how we need figures into u.s. politics does the fact that the nation's capital now allows medical marijuana i mean the attitudes around the country are changing well we see a dispensary a block away from the white house one day and what is the rest of the world going to think well joining me here in the studio is allen st pierre executive director of normal and life from skype stephen steiner founder of dads and madd moms against

drug dealers gentlemen thank you both for being here let me start here why do you think it took so long for congress to finally say ok and let this legislation slide because in the past for more than a decade they have been blocking it very simply the stars have aligned politically when a democratic congress came in in two thousand and six and obama was elected that was what it took to break the logjam going back to nine hundred ninety eight all right stephen i want to ask you when the nation's capital legalizes medical marijuana one message that sent to you does that mean that attitudes are changing of this is becoming more accepted well i just proves i think the progress is controlled washington and anything goes and. which is not a good thing why is it not a good thing. well i mean marijuana legalization is just not where we need to go and in medical marijuana obviously smoking something is not good for us so.

mr st pierre's organization is advocating using really sick and dying people to advocate for legalization is what they're trying to deny you taking advantage of sick and dying people to get your point across well when the voters go to the polls they always vote in favor of medical marijuana so if it's a big scam we're doing a really great job. i mean just i mean clearly they're right it your debt you're doing a great job because you got money coming in from mr george soros actually we don't have an excuse excuse me unlike you who gets funded by oxycontin companies we actually don't receive a dime from mr soros not a dime if you do farmers sir john i'm sorry going to get employed great just not the plug age or the dangers of prescription drugs and the use of prescription drugs ok or do has no fight with you but if you want to attack me and my dad sign anywhere any time i'm not looking to attack you i'm just simply saying if you're

saying that people who you could ask what you want to attack me about my my my relationship with purdue pharma how about you know the pharmaceutical companies are reeling from the deaths of kids all over america trying to do something about it and they're giving me my so i can go out educate them and bending the learning system and and other things ok so you want to talk about the legalization movement i do or saw it or list they spent one hundred million dollars serve not with us andras not it's the bottom line about it caught let's let's talk about avarice going to be taken back by i did very well i know you're passionate here but the problem is due to the skype connection the latter you yell the more breaks up so you know i'm happy that you guys are having a passionate debate here but let's turn the volume down just a tiny bit of a prescription pills are clearly their problem. american this is a dangerous area there are a lot of deaths related to it marijuana so far. they don't say that there is there's any causes of death directly related to marijuana so is this going to be

the golden drug is this a even though that you know both tobacco and alcohol are illegal and are incredibly dangerous will marijuana now be the golden trog in the us well what it will be is the safest drugs amongst them the d.e.a.'s own chief administrative law judge when he ruled in favor of medical marijuana said it was the safest therapeutic substance known to man no one's ever died of an overdose so far pharmacological point of view it's really a very good first drug to look at so stephen what is it that your pa issue is exactly with marijuana and not talk about other drugs they're not talking about prescription pills why marijuana are we talking now we still talking about medical marijuana at this point yes medical marijuana since that's what's been legalized it does we don't smoke opium for pain relief ok we don't smoke opium for any kind of element at all what science was able to do is make it into a modern medicine called morphine you can do the same thing of have done the same

thing with marijuana called sativex let science do what he needs to do and make these medicines say well that's true these are going to be safe but stephen can any american buy sativa x. . so tat it's called sativex ya know i dunno where of it it's actually through the proper procedures going through the f.d.a. right through their system being. right and so you know why because of this question because i'm from california that you know a medical marijuana is illegal in california anybody that's from california and has lived there knows that it's very easy to get one of these medical weed cards you just go to the right doctor you dumb i have a headache i have cramps and you know sure there you go all of a sudden now you have a medical condition that that allows you to smoke weed so is the same thing that happened here in d.c. i mean it is any excuse going to fly big difference between california and d.c.

in states like new jersey and maine is that they have very restrictive laws it's not going to look anything at all like california do before five dispensary is here you have to have a very serious disease type or something to look anything like west hollywood so is that supposed to make it better more legit i think for washington d.c. in the shadow of the congress oh yeah now stephen i want to ask you this because you know a lot of people around the world i think look at washington d.c. as as a point where they can judge what's going on in the rest of america so how do you think the world is now going to look at america if the nation's capital allows medical marijuana is they going to be a nation of stoners well first thing i think this is just a short term way and i'm sure the congress when it's changes next january will reverse this so this is short a short term win for normal. but no i think it's a bad thing for a country when we start. we so we started door seeing the drug

use it's just a bad thing for kids you know i had a son he was nineteen years old when he died he was smoking marijuana prior to his oxycontin overdose and we had a lot of problems turns teenage years and millions of americans have problems with the drugs with this drug thing and the problem is his predecessor. showed you guys the. you know the link to our web page or facebook page that shows clearly what their intention is their intention is to use sick and dying people so they could further their legalization cause that's all any where they've gone with medical marijuana they soon as they got medical marijuana in play now they're going in for the kill for legalization but do you think this is short term because the fact is that not a single republican was opposed to this as passing so will it change of you know

the administration necessarily mean a change in attitude because it seems to me like you know more and more people polls show across the united states do support the legalization of medical marijuana less a stance that it's not stephen you're not average stephen you're an aberration here because as our host has indicated we have seventy to eighty percent of the american people not normal seventy to eighty percent of american people support medical access to marijuana and we have seventy five million americans who now live in states and even your state new hampshire that too is going to have medical marijuana soon just like maine and vermont so it's a fait accompli. so stephen i am going to leave i do i am betting that that's not really true because there there is a movement to repeal b. montana law the folks in california are not going to vote for legalization they're going to vote that down if i had the money that george soros has given d.p.a. in the marijuana policy project and all that i would have my own initiative in california to repeal i guess i guess in the free marketplace of ideas steve you are

losing in where winnings you're not getting the money. you're the problem and servicers that you look at the polling that is skewed by your members because we know the game that you guys play marijuana policy project how you how you i read the plain old are you saying that when people vote we rig the polls. well i think that odd you say the boat and the balls i'm talking about the design all that really matters of course stand in that way and should get stuck you know something you guys are very well primary stephen all that matters is when people go into the polling booths now they're still not getting the straight answer that's the problem are generally actually we have to go because we're out of time i think perhaps california might be an indicator for how the people feel in november when they vote whether to completely legalize medical marijuana medical marijuana not just medically you know i'm i want to see the day you know see how much time might change whether we will actually see politicians coming out and advocating it for now barney frank is the only exception there are good thank you all for being here

time for a break but still to come later in the show we'll have a report from arizona where the protesters have gathered over the state's new immigration law to find the bill being temporarily put on hold protesters are now demanding comprehensive immigration reform and president obama unveils some new changes for public education all these lofty goals ever come into play when the white house has to battle powerful teachers unions i'll speak with a teacher in l.a. to get his take on what can be done to reform education here in the u.s. . state struggle i did citizens with. knights and. so. i. didn't like. the good things. like going to like.

the be killing under the. line. russia would be so much brighter if you knew about some move from funds to pressure moves. from stunts on t.v. . you could say it's about time but it's still not enough congress has finally passed legislation that reduces the disparities between sentences for powder cocaine and crack cocaine crack cocaine is relatively cheap and disproportionately used by poor minorities while cocaine is far far more expensive and used predominately by wealthy whites

but back in one thousand nine hundred six in an attempt to stop the rampant crack cocaine use a law was passed giving crack cocaine offenders the same jail sentence as somebody who possessed one hundred times the same amount of powder cocaine even though numerous well regarded studies have found the health and psychological effects to be exactly the same between the two drugs so while millions and millions of poor blacks and other minorities were locked in jail for years for grad possession wealthy whites with the same amount of cocaine got off with sentences one hundred times less harsh so now this new bill narrows that ratio to eighteen to one and the mandatory five year jail sentence for first time offenders charged with possessing five grams of crack cocaine but if anyone else still think that that's fair sentencing eighteen to one you know i will give congress credit for passing these new guidelines there are numerous attempts to correct the one nine hundred eighty six law but they've all failed due political grandstanding accusations of being

soft on drugs who cares of the law is blatantly racist right well the measure passed in the senate back in march and the house there was only one person who voted against the measure texas representative lamar smith told his colleagues the bill was developed in one thousand nine hundred six to the crack cocaine epidemic that was causing widespread violence in minority communities he said that there's a chance the drug use and violence will now return but just looking at congressman lamar smith he really seems like somebody speaks for the minority community right i'm betting he's never even been to an urban area in his old life but like i said finally congress has acted and the white house has said the president will sign the bill into law so we have to applaud them for that. education reform is a touchy subject in america but barack obama has decided to take it on so that americans can continue to compete with the rest of the world. just last week we

learned that in a single generation america went from number one to twelve and college completion rates for young adults used to be known now with a plan that encourages charter schools and a race to the top program in which the states with the highest scores and success rates receive an extra check from the government that's all part of his plan also central to it is to ask for accountability from teachers but teachers unions who are one of the most generous sources for the democratic party are up in arms they're saying there is no universal met universal metric to assess their performance and attack on to his opposition a new report released by the urban league and six other civil rights groups say that obama's plan only further disadvantage minority students some are calling it the civil rights issue of our time obama today called it the economic issue of our time i want to get a teacher's take so joining me is george bramley head of the english department

green dot public school and he's joining me live skype from los angeles now george i want to get your take on obama's entire plan for reforming education because some people are calling it revolutionary and they're hailing him and others are really just painting out to be the devil. yeah you know i i tried to deal with the extremes obviously in a political issue they're going to try to paint one side is the enemy and one side is the good guy or the favor of the favorite. it's kind of an overall problem you don't really want to politicize this issue too much because you know there are kids involved in their future were i stand pretty much with him as far as you know if you look at him he obviously believes in a meritocracy he believes that people should be paid based on the merit of the work they do and i think that that makes sense and speaking from from my experience i think teachers being paid based on merit would be good now obviously the problem is like a lot of politicians ideas that they put out as far as education is concerned there's

just a lack of specifics as far as well it's all great to say that a teacher should be paid based on the good that they do or the results that they produce but you know how are those results going to be you know judged and i think that that's sort of a problem as far as the specifics you know i would wait to see what his specific plan is as opposed to just a bunch of rhetoric one story that's why i'm curious because you are a teacher do you think the test scores and that grades are an adequate way to measure teachers' performance. obviously it's a part of it you know what we all grew up and we all got grades and things like that test scores but the problem is you can't solely base a teacher's performance on grades and test scores i mean you know depending on where you're teaching you know the population you're teaching to those test scores are going to be very different it's it's a problem because you know there needs to be a more holistic way because if you know i have

a group of students who come in the third grade reading level and they're not passing in ninth grade test well i don't want to get hit for that for you know for my pay because my students need to sort of you know go along six years when it's sort of impossible basically i think that it needs to be grades and test scores as well as a way to measure growth because again if that student comes in third grade and can pass a sixth grade level test in one year i think that's just as good if not better than a student passing a ninth grade test who was prepared when they came in that year well right preparation eyes definitely a very important aspect in all of this and a lot of experts will say that your early preschool and kindergarten also are incredibly important to how the rest of your education will go your chances of going to college but i want to know from you because the green dot schools where you work you work with with minority students from low income families people that are surrounded with wood gang and drug use so to you what have you seen work the

best when it comes to getting through to these students. well there's a two fold approach you know there's all kinds of research out there and programs and different activities you can do to really sort of hone in on the curriculum these kids can learn you know i taught an a.p. class this year and none of the kids who took the test got a one it proves that no matter the ideas that people have about this area the kids are able to learn they come in with several deficiencies that you have to obviously plan for. so that can be done through curriculum building through scaffolding activities and all kinds of other teacher jargon the problem that i've come across is that it's so much of a personality based profession you know a lot of these kids especially in the areas that you're talking about they don't have much in the way of adult role models in fact a lot of their and i want to be too generally but a lot of their experiences with adults have been negative whether it's being

abandoned or i mean even abused so the teacher becomes sort of the adult in their life and the only way to really get them to buy in and trust you is if you are there all the time and you're dedicated and you know you really give one hundred ten percent of yourself now that again gets to the problem of the specifics in the plan with a merit based pay system because you know how can you normalize and evaluate somebody based on such a personality driven profession you know i've seen two teachers come in with the same curriculum and one is dynamic and one is static and the students totally don't respond to the to one of the teachers or respond to the other so i think that until we can find a way that i guess normalize a way to you know show personality and find a way to make teachers more dedicated across the board that this problem is just going to keep you know going over and over again or definitely as a problem as the u.s. and their educational system starts to fall behind the rest of the world something needs to be done whether obama's plan is right or not that's the great debate now

george thanks so much for filling us in with your perspective on it. thank you. well there's much more ahead on tonight's show is the middle class hearing right wing squeeze out there to globalization it's an interesting topic and i'll speak with an author who believes that that is the case will be back in a moment. to the chassis in the wilderness in the great town of soma. now while he goes to central russia where the car industry is rapidly developing

a history. in its place. where american citizens can find and. welcome. we're in a recession the unemployment rate is over nine percent and yet there is even more bad news for americans because many of the lost jobs simply aren't coming back and not because these industries are necessarily outdated but because the american worker simply can't compete with other countries with quickly developing economies can pay pennies for the exact same work so in essence it turns out that the biggest a loser in globalization has turned out to be america's middle class and i've a feeling that wasn't always in mind when free trade in the global economy were first brought up but what should america do now in order to stay afloat or earlier i caught up with the boer steingart author of the war for wealth the true story of

globalization i first asked him if he thought of this result of globalization when i've been and i've inevitable. i'm not quite sure that it's a little bold but it's a matter of fact today it is a matter of fact it but you don't think that this could have been perhaps predicted with the way the system was going in the sense that that america now had to compete the other you know the companies were moving to other countries than shouldn't someone seen this coming. yeah i think we we should have seen it coming because globalization is really not a win win situation for everybody if you're in a working. class if you're working in an industry which is facing heavy competition from china india your job is that risk the reason for that is very simple because these countries are catching up they are heavily invested now in new technologies they're heavy invested in education and so they are not more stupid than the germans and the americans and. i guess for maybe you know forty million american

middle class jobs are at stake during the next decades i'm not talking about blue collar worker talking about white collar workers lawyers advisors researchers engineers advertising people of the kind of jobs which are now american jobs or so-called american jobs but they are at stake you're in the next decades but if there are these jobs are at stake not only blue collar white collar jobs as well then what's going to have until america america has to understand the heavy investment is needed in education in education is key and the modern euless is not hidden in the ground in modern oil is in our heads and the heads of our kids and we need really heavy investment maybe we have to think the unthinkable to double or triple the education spending in our public budgets well you know it's interesting we bring up spending because this is one of the largest debates amongst

economists these days as to whether better the best way is to get out of a recession and obviously there are some people that say that you have to spend your way out of a recession there are other critics that are saying that it's simply it's unsustainable so what side are you wanting you know what do you think of a of obama's policies and his stimulus bills and his pending measures. i sing in the first place it was the right policy at the beginning of the financial crisis because we have seen nearly a meltdown of the financial system of wall street of the international banking system but we are in the second phase of of all of these developments and you know we have to to try to balance the budgets in all the western countries not we have seen it in greece and we will see it in spain and other souls and european countries what will happen next we don't try to balance the budget the financial markets which are now giving all the money for the

american people because the if obama is talking about taxpayers' money you're spending with this stimulus package he is really not spending taxpayers' money because it's not coming from the taxpayers coming from the credit market right now and yes to reduce this kind of bill otherwise he will bring american in in the really deep trouble. well ok thank you for you know for your perspective on i know tell me this one thing also if america does want to continue to be able to compete globally like you said investments needed which at the moment is hard to do if you need to balance budgets and air and air and rain and spending how is it that that america can compete because you also write that in large part we need to start manufacturing again these drugs that have simply disappeared when a benefactor in jobs but what do we produce what do we make there isn't already being produced all over the world. in the icing there is a great opportunity for all western countries to still produce industrial goods we

are not living in a world where the unjust root goods. are annoyed. there's no demand for them there's heavy demand for for normal industrial goods i'm talking about cars and talking about machinery tools i'm talking about trains planes all this kind of stuff and i think america's give up too early to this so-called old industry and now you have to rethink about a plan to kind of industrial development plant to bring all these so-called old jobs back because the old jobs are not old china is heavily shit in vesting in building up this kind of industries we have now more blue collar workers than ever before in our today's world so america was dreaming of the kind of dream when a lot of scientific people were talking about the service society which was coming up yes we have seen the service society but but the services side is always only

the big brother or her or the big sister of the industrial worlds or they're on they're living in in one family and we need both of them to to get the advantage of the today's globalization while america definitely has to figure something out because people are suffering right now during the recession and of course the larger question on the is what happens afterwards how do we create more jobs and what happens to the american middle class that is i thank you so much for joining us. thank you for having me on your show thank you so much. still to come on tonight's show goldman sachs is back in the headlines but not for defrauding investors this time we're calling them out in tonight's tool time for their new no cussing policy and new questions are being raised about depleted uranium and the long term effects it's having in fallujah many locals say that they're having health problems to the u.s. weapons used during the war so will discuss it and dabs with an iraqi journalist in

just a moment. issues that so much resentment you can see these people people are very sweet a good part of the world is experiencing it quickly. is this a trend or simply freaky weather one. every month we give you the future we help you understand how we'll get there and what. the best in science and technology from across russia and around the world. join our technology update on our g. our tool time winner tonight is goldman sachs those five folks on wall street are true.