the be . above. i'm. the mother. protesters hit the streets calling for a wall street's to pay up but are there cries falling on deaf ears for the u.s. deficit reaching a whopping two hundred twenty three billion dollars in february it seems that there's only more pain in store for u.s. taxpayers. and as u.s. workers continue to fight for their rights but new seems to be battling facts we're well let's call it create a fiction but wait what was that home treason in wisconsin.

and promoting democracy or is it regime change the case of one u.s. contractor convicted in cuba is shedding light on how your tax dollars are being spent abroad and exposing the darker side of u.s. meddling under the guise of human rights. he says it's nothing for someone who wants to get it but with the well you got to know that it's their first take it to some of the most secretive places in new york the ones that the government would rather you not know about. it's tuesday march eighth five pm here in washington d.c. i'm lucy catherine of and you're watching our t.v. well the actions of wall street have triggered the economic crisis making states struggle with budget gaps all over the united states one such statements johnson has seen people rise up to resist having to pay for the mistake. they themselves

did not me but as a stray sions have been raging on it seems that the fox news channel who else has been trying to vilify the teachers and students as chaotic animals now argue correspondent on a sea of churkin it takes a look at how one does network claiming to be fair and balanced has been spinning facts to get across its own political agenda. these are some of the faces of the wisconsin protests mothers teachers and students going to fox news to people protesting i'm sure i'll get a flurry of e-mails calling for me to apologize for naming them examine bullies but they are and i won't apologize for it but that's what they are in reality there was no bullying going on that was certainly the case when archie was on the ground in february as the protests were peaking even though people demonstrations i am going green i am. actually not that easy going.

very nice. and that right as workers that has remained the case for those who have closely followed events i know for a fact that there has been no violence whatsoever in wisconsin i mean you know i mean aside from people stepping on each other's toes accidentally there just hasn't been police even issued a thank you statement to protesters for being peaceful but according to fox news channel the demonstrators have been an uncontrollable mob not a terribly civil or classy group of people for a fan of evil garrity and pretty vile behavior and these are nothing but and bullies are not existence violence was taken to an extreme but a spin of an alleged attack on a fox reporter ok. but you know who seem to have seen it coming they have a right as you see it in their utter lack of civility civility and the harassment of reporters there from a video posted online it became clear that nothing close to harassment had taken

place but it was too late to stop the infamous fox bandits there pushing him there showing him apparently one even him pushing it he then further the so-called bullies came out to protest in a cold snowy winter a more violent protest video featured by bill o'reilly. palm trees in the background turning the channel into a cartoon show the breeze in the truth of this propaganda which is sad and tragic because that ninety percent of thoughts viewers will have no idea that it was faked can they will think that it was true but in another field trip let's traverse polling numbers to support the party line of the channel six were present in favor of you and meaning the teachers one had thought he did schooling part of the fight for their own lives liars that is no excuse that is no excuse for lying to children but the ones doing the line are actually the pieces of america's t.v.

screens since the show must go on and they told me she hates me it makes her feel that way you know you're right marching hand in hand with the lies go on and on and on and archie new york. and wall street banks have contributed to this economic crisis that has left millions unemployed for close down and without prospects and all this in the worst economy since the great depression and the financial crisis massive tax revenue shortfalls for the rest federal government were supposed to the largest monthly deficit in history in february a stunning two hundred and twenty three billion dollars and that's billion with a b. now to deal with these budget woes politicians are cutting public spending they're attacking public sector workers and eliminating and sensual services for those people who need them most indeed it really seems like the only folks that are left off the hook are those in power who are making profits on wall street and for a closer look at how we got here and what we can do about this entire mess i'm

joined by max fred wolf he's the economist at the new school that's thank you so much for being here now you know i'm not an economist but basic math skills i think that a kindergarten can figure out is if you're not getting in as much as you're spending it's time to get more revenue why can't we tax these corporations at higher tax rates. well it's a good question and we've basically dwindled them reduced our collection we still have a high corporate tax rate united states actually higher than some other states many other countries at about thirty five percent of the effective corporate tax rate in the country is much lower it's only a little bit over ten percent and if you look at the federal budget over the last few years u.s. government is getting at about ten to eleven percent of its tax revenues from large corporations so we do have a tendency to under tax large corporations but probably more egregious most recently including the obama administration decision to extend the bush tax cuts is that we're not taxing wealthy individuals we haven't much taxed wealthy individuals united states since the reagan tax cuts of the eighty's the problem that we're

having now is we've redistributed so much money upward so in other words our rich people our largest companies take home so much of the money at the end of the day if we don't tax them we really don't have enough money to run our basic government systems and services anymore and that's what you're seeing in the washington d.c. debates about national policy as well as in places like madison wisconsin and columbus ohio and all over tallahassee florida and i just want to but before we get into taxing though with the wealthiest people if you look at the corporations the big six j.p. morgan bank of america that are all their banks they're not paying the thirty five percent rate they're paying an eleven percent rate and if we had gotten the thirty five percent rate from them we would have earned thirteen billion dollars in tax revenue which were not i mean it seems like it's the sort of political third rail to even suggest that these corporations actually have to make more sacrifices when remember just a few years ago they came with their hats in hand begging for for bailouts to get out of this financial mess. no i mean i certainly agree with you obviously the financial system here was propped propped up very aggressively by the federal

reserve the treasury more or less taxpayers of many instances and then doesn't want to do its sort of fair share of paying taxes sadly however this in no way distinguishes wall street from any other major industry group whether that would be the pharmaceutical groups or the hospital groups or other groups or you can go really kind of on down the why are big corporations are making record money but record profits corporate profits are record percentage of the u.s. economy they're not contributing massively in any shape or way to the government's basic revenue which puts us into an enormous deficit at the local level at the state level at the national level and it's certainly true of the big wall street banks so they deserve the kind of scrutiny that few with the exception of archie are willing to give but on the other hand sadly that one of the saddest statements is this is not unique by industry group you know there's this anecdote that's been going around the labor movement that says basically a wall street billionaire union employee and a tea party are all sitting around a table with a plate of delicious twelve cookies the billionaire takes eleven of them he turns

to the tea party and says hey the union guys after your cookie i mean how is it that we got to this point where it seems like the working people are being blamed for the crisis the working people are being asked to make the bulk of the sacrifice in this crisis why is it it so difficult for politicians to say hey we need to scrap this pain around more evenly. well i would say first of all american politicians are increasingly driven by their ability to raise funds we further deregulated that the landslide and sort of average out of the norm legal decision called citizens united last year which gave an even a higher role to big money in american politics and american politics runs on big money big money doesn't pay and support and donate to politicians in order to become smaller money so that's part of the problem with the american political system and the other part is that we america was a country that sort of stood stayed together historically with great unity on the glue that we all figured if we work hard we played by the rules we do better than our parents that they would do better than their parents and our kids would do

better than us and as outward mobility has sort of collapsed in the united states where we went from being one of the most upwardly mobile countries to one of the least in the developing world once people in the united states have to stop kind of believing that their future can be better it becomes easy for them to be manipulated into thinking the way for them to be better off is to make someone else worse off and you get these nasty venal movements that are really trying to cripple others instead of stand up on their own two legs and sadly we've seen those movements proliferate and grow in popularity rather decisively in the last three years of this terrible recession why not just that but i thought blindly by news corp's like fox news for example which i found moments ago unfortunately we're out of time but thank you so much max rad wealth economist at the new school. that's what i had for it thank you so i had for this half hour spreading democracy of usa idea so where exactly is that money going. plus the for julian assange and wiki leaks there was john young co-founder of crypto straight ahead come along for

a tour of new york a secret one that the u.s. government does not want you to know about. but we are right. i think. we never got the says they're safe get ready because their freedom.

drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians makes decision to break through a third. who can you trust no one who is you with the mission where we had a state controlled capitalism it's called sessions when nobody dares to ask we do our t. question more. each year the united states gives more than forty million dollars to usa aidid this in hopes of spreading democracy abroad because the government really know where that money is actually going to the case of an american contractor who's been convicted of working to destabilize cuba's government joining me now for more is i think he's senior fellow at the independent institute and also the author of

this book here the empire has no clothes u.s. foreign policy exposed ivan thank you so much for joining us now i want to start by looking at the case of this contractor alan gross six year old man barely speaks any spanish has some history of going over to cuba. and most recently he went over there on a tourist visa with apparently a bunch of communications equipment satellite phones things are that are not allowed to be brought into that country there's a sign stating so very clearly in the airport and that he's been arrested so should we really be surprised that somebody has contacts you know is getting funded by usa idea in these programs is suddenly arrested for essentially breaking the law well americans whoever they are may not agree with foreign laws in foreign countries but if you knowingly break the law and you me even though you disagree with it you're probably going to be thrown in jail and so that's what he has been and the u.s.

has demanded that he be released that there's no reason that they should do that because he doesn't have diplomatic immunity is on a tourist visa and he was breaking was so it doesn't matter if he's breaking the law for the u.s. government and you would think that in a. communist. country like uber they would realize that there's a possible. he could get arrested so it's a very high risk strategy i can't believe there must have been some bungling in the states i mean a mistake somewhere else but i mean doesn't this raise the broader issue of sort of outsourcing our foreign policy it's all of these contractors. not only do the contractors get in trouble because they obviously don't have diplomatic immunity but the u.s. gets in trouble because you're essentially entrusting money in the hands of people whose objectives may or may not be pure yes or they can do silly things like this so yes there's less accountability than if the government does it but the real question is i think is should the united states be spending money on this stuff

since one thousand nine hundred united states has tried to install democracies in fifteen countries using military force and has succeeded only four times now this isn't even a military force this is just funding satellite phones and that sort of thing and so it's unlikely that you're going to topple regimes doing that these cell phones that people do get probably come in many more of them come in from just buying them and smuggling and then u.s. government delivering them so it seems like in the government's probably a really inefficient distributor of this equipment. so i think the u.s. as taxpayers are losing their money now was a great deal of money in this case forty million versus you know we have an almost three trillion dollars budget but certainly it's taxpayer money and it's an example of what probably should not be done but there's also there's not just the financial cost the taxpayers there's the sort of moral cost and the loss of standing in the world i mean cases like this are only served to undermine the u.s.

credibility when no one is criticizing the united states for believing in democracy and a values that this country believes and the problem arises when you use those values to sort of mask other subtle regime change efforts abroad and when cases like this emerge and somebody gets caught i mean it puts the united states and in an awkward position of not only saying one thing and. another guy trying to essentially interfere in a different country is government yes and i think particularly in the case of cuba after the bay of pigs and all the times you try to assassinate castro and stuff so people know that the u.s. is trying to monkey around with cuba one way or another so i think and we the problem that the u.s. faces overseas is that we work we stick up for democracy then we support countries like saudi arabia with probably one of the worst human rights records in the world right pakistan and afghanistan these corrupt countries that cetera so i think it would be better if the u.s. was a shining example certainly we can say you know countries would be better in democracy and give our support to anyone who dissidents overseas and that sort of thing but i

think the line comes when you're trying to actively take your equipment and your values and put stuff them into a country and you know insert them either right military force or by the programs like we're talking about here which are more minor but still there there are poised in your value system on other people it's better to let people adopt your viewpoint and it's sort of a sign of insecurity on our part because we we don't have the in our system i think we need to have more faith in our system because it is a good system of freedom and that sort of thing but we ought to be more of a an example rather than a medal or overseas and i'm just curious is it raising the sort of contracts or contradicts the contradictions in your mind when you have for example secretary of state hillary clinton at the senate foreign affairs for nations hearing last week openly calling for more money for propaganda efforts right there in terms of setting the message abroad and boosting our message wars versus what i guess the

chinese and the russians that are doing. when we're asking for more money for the state department programs like u.s.c. idea and seem to be able to actually track where that money is going and how it's being used well that's a problem there's also a problem of corruption the money goes to corrupt individuals for corrupt contracts no matter what your doing. it's also a problem of foreign aid is displaces economic activity that should happen otherwise meaning it destroys the recipient's economy so there's all these problems with it but i think one of the big things that she was talking about foreign broadcasting and she's talking about other countries their propaganda efforts that the u.s. is losing out and i'm thinking well you know the u.s. is supposed to be a free country why should we even have u.s. government propaganda you know let the system stand for what it stands it only undermines our democracy overseas and we have government propaganda because they say well the u.s. government has its own viewpoint you know people are sitting out there going well

you know there are government too so why how do we know that they're you know doing the right thing or saying the right thing because we don't really trust us because of all these actions i think we need to and you can this idea that we're going to improve our image through public broadcasting people compare your rhetoric and the high and mighty rhetoric of your actions and the problem that the u.s. has when they go out and do this the rhetoric is a high level but traditionally we haven't supported democracies overseas we've supported friendly governments and we continue to do that and tell people i know barak fall down and they were embarrassed by it so the more propaganda we put out the higher the level of rhetoric and the higher your behavior has to be better behavior doesn't match and that's the problem is i think that propaganda is counterproductive we should look i can't put lipstick on a pig so to speak you need to change the pig into something else in other words change the policy don't change the propaganda well i don't i don't know if the

folks over on capitol hill in the white house there are hearing your message but probably not but they listen i barely know they did i was i haven't you know and senior fellow at the end of it. well he's not julius onj in fact he shies away from the word dissident because he's heard it all too many times before especially lately the less the co-founder of cryptome dot org john young has been exposing secrets away before we can leaks even existed now for the past fifteen years his website has been exposing some exciting issues and artie's lauren lyster follows him out work as he'd be cripps from the streets of new york city. a winter's day rendezvous with an unusual tour guide and cryptic critic we are here with john young he started the website or he got to the game about ten years before wiki leaks to write releasing classified and secret documents of governments from all over the world on his site and another thing that he does is he goes all over

photographing what you call sensitive sites right here where we're near some right now some and put some on his web site for the world to see and he's got a lot of tag along and he's going to show us new york city through his eyes we begin outside the federal courthouse where terrorism suspects are tried photos john is published of places like this as well as the police and judicial headquarters known as the ring of steel where he's taking us now have led the f.b.i. to visit him and critics to say he's putting national security at risk in the contrary is it should there's a risk to our society and this is the. role that yours repealed notice all the barriers here john says post nine eleven america has amounted to a buildup of secrecy seen all over areas like this in what he calls security theater. at the. time how you know there's an officer around every corner that wants to know what we're doing they claim they're under threat they

said well threat john opposes the fortress looking buildup like this secured entrance outside the prosecutor's offices but he also thinks in this particular case it's a de quoi i go there to prosecutors are an awful. lot here john is an architect by trade so he reads buildings like books and the biggest thing he sees coming out of this area is the money being made these are huge. they call them government operation but there is a completion of contract. which is just down the street this federal building houses the f.b.i. into this underground driveway for the purpose with a group that john has discovered it's not. all is for mythical as it seems. anyone could you know despite all of these discoveries there is one place john hasn't found the cia office next stop wall street at first purportedly the world's largest repository of gold yes even more than fort knox house mostly for other

countries this wall of the new york federal reserve eight feet of concrete is nothing for someone to walk to get it but much gold and filming around the financial center of arguably the world we are met with skepticism the third officer of the day i'm certainly none the less the truer goes on wall street brings a cobblestone pavement to make it look more and more security if you get into it you hear that a lot of security you feel guilty because not much financial action truly happens here anymore john says the point of seeing the security first hand though is to question more should we really be pointing this much money into the showboating operations i'm trying to flee the hyperbole about this trip that all these so-called cannot simply we don't hear from a shelter go look lauren lyster our t. new york. now still ahead on our team is international women's day but not everyone is celebrating for american women or rights can be well downright unfair

compared to other countries that story coming up next. new website which twenty four seven live streaming news towns what to do about the ongoing financial hardship unlimited free high quality videos for download. and stories you never find on main street you. believe that there's a need for the police. or similar parties are such. a target here broadcast. you know why from washington d.c. coming up today on the big picture.

he. says it's just still. see. me. after a little below in fact he told the great hole that is what it meant nothing people are sick since he sees. no she said she stopped. a. now today all over the world people are celebrating international women's day but for mothers and daughters here in america it seems to be one step forward and two

step two steps back and while women may have reached new political heights working ladies in the united states are kept down by a lack of affordable child care as well as paid maternity leave and that's just the tip of the iceberg our chief correspondent killam ford has more and how this superpower is leaving its women behind. this kind of just you know. the rhetoric is familiar specially working with always made with the plugs in every election this year your voice your poll will be the southern. and fourteen of the future for america but the reality stands in stark contrast for all the talk of female empowerment women in america are losing ground two thousand and nine was a record year for women in congress but it only seventeen percent the u.s. still trails countries like a rapper twenty five percent of the parliament must be female the u.s. is one of five countries with no guaranteed maternity leave benefits women can legally be fired for becoming pregnant the standard is two weeks of paid leave after giving birth compared to three months to

a year in other countries. any birds three children were born in guatemala where women are guaranteed three months paid maternity leave and free preschool but here in d.c. she enjoys neither the women who are earning the minimum wage or anything close to that. there are not empowered there's a big gap you have mothers who are professionals but good salaries can pay you know fifteen hundred dollars per child for child care a lot of mothers have to pay. for chile all of what their salary would be in order to get child care act in irony byrd struggles with as a woman fighting for women's rights it's a human rights violation really for women and. not for children. being able to. to work to support the family in

the way that they need to be. compared to other developed countries the u.s. spends one third less an early childhood education and doesn't have universal public preschool there's a big problem with. the sight of congress deciding. not prioritizing basic social programs and fundamental human rights but instead. you know catering to the interests of corporations who are more interested in. building up the military with going to counting for two thirds of minimum wage workers in the us the economic crisis has forced many women here to choose between feeding their families and caring for their children killing for an artsy version to d.c. . well that does it for now for more on the stories that we've covered here please go to our t. dot com slash usa and also check out our you.