the u.s. economy is on quite a roller coaster down then on and today another steep drop for a country already stuck in a financial sinkhole so will this ride ever and. it will but. at the same time you do what you have to do to make sure that you're providing for you know watching shows that were going up. there bill you heard things like the ride isn't going to end anytime soon for some at least those in california we'll show you just how much the golden state is losing its shine. and the verdict is in a russian pilot arrested in liberia is found guilty of drug trafficking by

a court here in the united states so what exactly is the u.s. involvement in the first. first it was libya and now syria finds itself in the middle of deadly violence so what's the criteria for u.s. intervention we'll take a look at cherry picking in the arab spring. is thursday april twenty eighth four pm in washington d.c. i'm christine for is now for watching our team. well our top story today some disturbing numbers out about the economy when it comes to jobs recovery it has been a bumpy ride i know one of those fun rides it's been a slow and unpredictable one last week applications for unemployment benefits jumped to four hundred twenty nine thousand that's an increase of twenty five

thousand making it the high. is total since late january while there still is some positive growth it seems to be just going a little too slow to get anyone really too excited take a look you can see here the seventh straight quarter of positive g.d.p. growth of just one point eight percent is from january to march so what's it all mean for the average american joshua holland is an editor and senior writer at alter net he's also the author of the fifteen biggest lies about the economy and everything else the right doesn't want you to know about taxes jobs and corporate america he joins me now from napa california. all right joshua on one hand at least the numbers are moving in the right direction but give me your take on the bigger picture here what do these numbers say to the average american. well i think it's important to understand that we've lost seven million jobs since the beginning of the crash and when you look at it one point eight percent g.d.p. growth that's anemic compared to what we need we don't need normal growth to make

up for the loss of employment we need super above average growth we need to catch up because we've fallen so far behind you know where and when you think about you know the average person that's going to take a look at places where you can actually get you know a truth life of the american pie and i think you know wal-mart is certainly one of us places if not the place but even there the observation is a little grim that wal-mart c.e.o. my do this week said quote a wal-mart course shoppers are running out of money much faster than a year ago due to rising gasoline prices and the retail giant as worries that you know we're seeing consumers under a lot of pressure not story does this statement tell. well it tells the story of this recession we know that it's a complex story the mortgage crisis caused the financial panic but it's a fairly simple story how that spread to the rest of the economy how it started to affect main street and what we're looking at is

a country where we've lost fourteen trillion dollars in wealth as a little stock wealth our retirement plans etc etc and economists tell us that when we lose wealth we stop spending and you look at the unemployment rate hovering around ten percent underemployment is also includes people have given up trying to find a job people who are working part time on a full time job is around sixteen percent the foreclosure crisis continues we're going to hit a new high and foreclosures this year you add all of that together what you see is a huge hit in consumer demand and the united states economy about seventy percent of our economic activity is made up by consumers consumers buying things buying cars or going out to dinner go on the movies whatever as of that drug. translates to a lack of customers business is never people they don't have customers it's not a demand for goods services at the same time we had

a stimulus. you know classic no one says that people in the. big government can. try to wage a mere. stimulus package because. i think that. in order to be surprised but these are the figures one would have had to go into recession fundamental issues of the session i think it's really interesting guys you said something that economists say that things kind of simple is that when we lose wealth we stop spending but i do want to give this a little perspective there are some places where spending has not stopped in the midst of all of this this country is still involved in three wars and right now the u.s. and particularly the pentagon you know they're still trying to stay on top of the development of new weapons and technology so here's something interesting pentagon has just released this figure it may cost as much as one trillion dollars to operate the military's fleet of lockheed martin f.

thirty five aircraft for the next few decades one a trillion dollars little as there are those so interesting to think about this in light of the economy. yes you know we have such a deficit fever crippling lawsuits in d.c. these days and i think it's important to point out that according to some estimates about ninety percent of our public debt is based on past military engagements so we talk about you know social security or medicare and we're not really talking a lot about what i would argue as an unsustainable foreign commitment problem and that's part and parcel of the deficit a major part and parcel of the deficit and it will continue to be going forward when you look at the long term cost of these wars a lot of and this is great that medical technology has advanced a point where we're saving a lot of soldiers who are rooted on the battlefield really terribly wounded but the cost of that is going to incur for the united states the long term health products

are going to be really a significant significant drain on the national coffers looking pretty interesting yesterday i thought of a groundbreaking of moment chairman of the federal reserve ben bernanke he held a press conference the first ever of it's kind of a lot of things from people on you know saw what he did and said you know thank god he's kind of coming out there and i setting light on what actually goes on in the federal reserve but i'm wondering if you think that anything that was said yesterday any of the questions that were asked by reporters gave people something to look forward to. well again you have this kind of relentless focus on monetary policy divorced from the real recession that we're looking at and one of the things that i found interesting about the press conference is that you had all of these economic reporters only one question was about the unemployment picture you know the the fed has a dual mandate it's supposed to bleed employment and control inflation and

we're only seeing really a real effort to deal with inflation and there. dressing again by talking about the deficit deficit deficit but there was no discussion of the fact that we have a truly painful. crisis that is really affecting making street americans and their everyday lives and certainly ben bernanke himself has even said you know it is up to the fed to try and control employment doesn't seem to be working out with anything that they've put into place quite yet and we'll see what happens in the future joshua holland editor and senior writer at alter net dot org. well then when we talk about the economy about economic recovery in particular it's important not to just focus on the big cities san francisco new york here in d.c. where you know i got to say times of economic woes are much less obvious we want to take a look at some of the less populated and i guess you could say less popular regions of this country where the light at the end of the tunnel is still too far off to

see our days were among the window takes us to one california community where the situation's gotten so bad people are actually packing up and moving out. thank you one construction in a series that we development projects give the appearance of an economic upswing in riverside california below the surface but darker realities blanketing the area east of los angeles river. and handling and homeless encampments are scattered around the landscape of the riverside area like most cities in america the housing collapse cause great financial suffering here the problem is that on the occasions show the situation is actually getting worse it is getting tougher and tougher in my own family i have to send an author out of work despite her own family struggles in the last shows up here homeless encampment and sack lunches every week she's been doing this for seven years providing

a lifeline i have to go back to. get food from buying groceries. but it's not just the homeless asking for a handout some of the people standing in line do have a home but were embarrassed to be shown on camera california writes sixteenth elimination when it comes to food hardship and riverside rank number two among all u.s. metro areas. at the riverside county food bank requests for food have risen twenty five percent in the past three years we are able to help maybe as much as three hundred to three hundred fifty thousand people per month there's almost seven hundred fifty thousand people who are living at or below the poverty crisis line and the two county regions so we still have a long ways to go in the bedroom communities east of los angeles hunger isn't the only issue there are tons of foreclosed homes just like this one which have been boarded up and are now sitting empty. according to realty trac an online

foreclosure market place there is a foreclosure filing for every forty nine homes were in the high streets in america that's part of the reason that riverside has are in the dubious distinction of being on top of forbes list of cities where the economy is still getting worse. they call it capitalism what they probably call life like the way. over the decades economics professor mason gagne has seen riverside go through some difficult financial cycles but the type of market speculation they contributed to the two thousand and eight financial crash along with a decrease in tax revenue have created an environment with grim prospects but we've been through bad times before and we have bounced back. but i. have. a sentiment shared by doing nichols' whole life you know where they can use say me email you know i would like to know because i don't see it

happening here nichols has been unemployed for two years and is applying for food stamps for divorced father of two thought his job as a floor installer would be secure now he takes whatever our job he can get his swallowed his pride to apply for government assistance it's really difficult but when bynum at the same time you do that you have to do knowing the nation better found provided for you know watching children waking up and i mean they're barely heard. last year riverside had an unemployment rate of fifteen percent only detroit was worse today the employment rate is holding steady at about fourteen percent while nichols prays for a call back from one of his interviews he's already considering leaving riverside altogether he's not alone economists predict that some four thousand people will be area this year you buy a car or buy a bike. that's the dream of financial prosperity in sunny california becomes more

elusive it's maybe just plain impossible these people are human beings and they need help and there they need to go and they should not forget about them we should help more of the people that are here in our own country in our own state as much or half as much as we don't do everyone else around the world in riverside county california problem. r t so forbes magazine actually ranked the top cities where the economies are not only not getting better they're getting worse and we wanted to bring you the top five here it is at the top riverside san bernardino that was where that report was just centered on number two is stockton california three is detroit michigan four at the los angeles long beach santa ana areas in california and number five they are still. certainly not a good showing for the golden state on this list george i mean here is the founder of survive and thrive he is an l.a.

studio george i think a lot of people would be surprised to learn that some of the consequences of this i know you point posted a video on your website of police actually arresting someone a homeless man for asking for money paint us a picture of what else you're seeing out there in california. well first of all after it solved my city on the top of the list i feel like we won riverside finally won something we're not i kind of as you want to win though and you are as. a man it's you almost have to laugh because you feel like crying. homelessness is so pervasive and i was talking about this on my you tube channel it's like ninety percent of the time i go out shopping the panhandle is. you know asking you for money sometimes accosting you for money so there's a lot of friction happening in my city between people that need money and are out panhandling and the people who do have jobs are just trying to go about their daily lives so we are now resting homeless people if you are too poor that you have to

big you're going to be arrested and put into a police car and sent off to jail so that that i clearly that best bet is a common practice in other parts of the country but that's the first time i've actually physically seen that so thrilling i just thought there was also a you know that report we just really grim picture of just driving along the road and seeing towns after ten you know this is people's homes now really interesting to you george i was really surprised that four of the five regions in the country with really bad prospects were in california i mean you know i don't think of california as a glamorous place why do you think this is happening. well we just we over did it we had you know in orange county. i mean it was sub prime mortgage the center of the universe and it was all about real estate over inflated housing prices and that just reverberated through the economy and everyone was drunk with taking second and

third mortgages on their homes by s.u.v.s going to the desert going to be just enjoying this overinflated bubble atmosphere in california and now we're hitting the streets and you know riverside is only an hour from los angeles an hour from orange county in an hour from san diego so we may get hit hard but it is going to some of the major cities in california as well and speaking of hitting the three charges really interesting this migration that we're seeing ramon pointed out about four thousand people are expected to leave the riverside area i mean where are they going to go and what's going to happen well i'm one i've been here over thirty years and i am leaving next week i have a job interview with a company called royal metals group in iowa and they're doing over five hundred thousand dollars in in gold transactions in the midwest and that's apparently where

you have to go for a job these days i talked with a gentleman in vancouver that does hotel hiring and he said california is dead he goes but the midwest is doing halfway decent so for those of us that can afford it or have the opportunity i guess we're going to farm country the narrow aisle where the center of the universe i guess a lot of politicians are already thing to know that also you know just looking back to the story that we we have of economics professor he says you know they call it count all of them but it's more land speculation when you think you have. well i mean i don't want to fault capitalism because i believe in the free markets and i believe in the ability of people to you know produce for themselves but what happens what we have here in california. we have a real leftist political bent to us and we have a political strategy that's killing businesses killing new job growth

and it's a tale of two californians you have you know illegal immigrants and illegal under the table jobs and then you have the above board jobs and those are just decreasing actually a little let me rephrase that we are getting jobs you don't mcdonald's is hiring burger king is hiring big lots is hiring in there but you can make eight to nine to ten dollars an hour those jobs are coming back so the economy is coming back but it is good jobs it's part time minimum wage and you got to get food stamps to supplement your income and then forget about having medical care if you get sick you can go to one of those immigrant hospitals and pay all cash but you know if you have a major disease just die and i was wondering within that campaign last week they were hiring fifty thousand new people buy back next year ask the question does that mean there's all these new mcdonald's opening up i mean how good is that for our

country you know if it turns out i mean i think you joke jobs are coming back but they're minimum wage jobs and they're minimum wage jobs and that maybe more fast food restaurants are opening two things then i started going to founder of survive and thrive t.v. . so now a jury in new york federal court has found russian cargo pilot constantine euro shango guilty on charges of smuggling cocaine prosecutors in the case say he was involved in a criminal scheme to transport an estimated two hundred kilograms of cocaine via diplomatic mail from guyana to new york on a delta airlines plane. in new york with the details. let's start with one of the most interesting aspects of this case you are shanker was arrested in liberia tried it in america and yet he's a russian citizen. absolutely christine that's actually one of the most important questions that is raising eyebrows in this case the question of why is

a russian citizen being arrested in liberia and brought onto american soil where he has never set foot before he's never been in the united states and he's now found guilty and faces up to a life sentence behind bars what was the the movie i mean was this something that was expected we've been covering this case since it's been going on i know that you spoke even with because wife what was a surprise to anyone the verdict here. you know in the last week or so christine this there was really not a way to find out what the outcome would be because the jury did take as much as over two days to figure out whether they support a guilty or not guilty verdict so really there was no way of knowing and earlier today when we spoke to the lawyer constantine your son so he told us that they were hoping that it would be a not guilty verdict especially especially because the jury took so long to figure out but then again we have to remember that there were three other suspects that

were arrested with your show and it looks like the reason it took so long to contemplate what the outcome would be is simply because they were deciding on the destiny of the other suspects two of them were found not guilty in the end. how common do you think this is i mean you know arresting someone in one country bringing them to this country for trial and then having them from a third country is this normal. well you know whether or not it's normal or not is certainly being debated right now christine throughout this entire case because this case is really a great example of sometimes words and not deeds being the reason for being considered criminal and in the united states we have to remember that the u.s. of course you know has been practicing this. way are arresting foreigners and bringing them to yet u.s. soil many analysts have been saying that this particular case is very reminiscent of victor boots the man who was arrested in thailand and also scooped up and brought onto u.s.

territory and of course in this in the scenario of the russian federation was very surprised because they weren't even informed of the arrest of your show for as much as a month which is really a breach of international law and the lawyers and the family have all been citing and saying that your son cole was not guilty at all and that the case against him has been a provocation take a listen to what the wife of constantine your son called told us earlier today. surrounded him as soon as he complained the guards were accompanying him and even in his sleep it was only during the few years you learn to disguise each and begin working with him and then she was introduced to the men drunks and that was. to send someone decent and him the prosecutor's office into pretty things the only way and this is the result of it. well you know christine it's also important to note that the lawyers have been seeing trying to get this case dismissed altogether in

the united states because because they consider it to be out of u.s. jurisdiction but as early as during the preload try pretrial stages the judge said that the question of whether or not it's ok to try this man on u.s. territory will not be discussed so this is really been avoided and unanswered and now he's been found guilty and we're going to be waiting for a sentence to come in three months time just briefly anastasio what were some of the prosecution's main arguments that led to this verdict well the argument stemmed from the we constantine your friend who was arrested we have to remember that u.s. special agents went undercover as drug lords drug dealers to hold certain conversations with the other suspects those conversations were recorded and those audio tapings were presented to the court as the mean proof and made an argument of constantine your guilt and of course the defense and the family and himself have been saying that just because he participated in discussions does not prove him

guilty that intent is really something the united states is the only democratic country in the world where a person can be found criminal for just an intense and not actually having committed a crime in the united states or elsewhere certainly an interesting case there are he's on a future in our new york studio. turning now to the middle east where the u.s. says that it's pushing for democracy but some call it instead a clear sign of hypocrisy france and italy are now urging the u.n. to put pressure on syria to end its violent crackdown on anti-government protesters washington well it's also considering imposing sanctions does this sound familiar at all well for some it's beginning to sound a little too much like the lead up to libya still so far more than there's more outrage here than action and let's go now to williamsburg massachusetts where war correspondent keith harmon snow is standing by. kit i want to hey there i want to

start off with what we're seeing today all right here in washington three senators senators john mccain joe lieberman and lindsey graham issued a joint statement today saying what's happening in syria has reached a decisive point they say by following the path of gadhafi and deploying military forces to forces to crush peaceful demonstrations all assad and those loyal to him have lost the legitimacy to remain in power in syria but senator said we urge president obama to state unequivocally as he did in the case of gadhafi that it is time for syrian president bashar al assad to go so my question to you kate is will syria be the next libya. well that's a bunch of interesting propaganda from those three guys it's important to know that they're backed by the center for security policy east the center for security policy is the most right wing terrorist organization in the united states very very secretive all kinds of defense intelligence apparatus officials involved so that they they're doing a living at the center for security policy so there's

a program behind this which has to do with unseeing different governments around the world to serve american interests and libya for example was a mistake but. it's going to get worse and i think they're leaning toward doing exactly the same thing in syria i mean just so people can understand their heat i mean you said they're doing the bidding of these organizations to serve american interests what kind of american interests are you talking about and most importantly are the extraction of wrong curial from these countries syria is in the big producer of raw materials for the united states but it does have oil and it's been producing oil which involves american canadian british and other oil companies in the last few years and it's a key player in the region with respect to maintain a balance of power between other powerful neighbors such as israel turkey as a bright young. the the others all can stay right next to the caspian sea. i'll have

a guess that it or not i think important to point out as well you know according to some documents on wiki leaks washington has already been funding some anti-government actions in syria they're not kind of sitting around and waiting some people call what's going on the people protesting against the government they call them freedom fighters or what do you think is the bigger picture here. well i think that you see this trend in libya you saw in egypt and you see it in other countries in the world and that is that we're involved in the intervention that's going on we stand back and say we need to bring peace and democracy to these people and help these poor people that we need to help the people of syria that's that your partner see in the nonsense and lieberman for example from israel has said the same thing we need to apply the same standards in syria as we have in libya but the truth is the national endowment for democracy in state government has provided over fifty million dollars in funding into governments places like syria in the last years to create a movement to unseat or provide more what we call democracy to make it possible for

our interests to be better served to these places i think it is so interesting because you're talking about you know the standards but i think for me that there there aren't any actual you know guidelines laid out for foreign policy when it comes you know to the pro-democracy movement sweeping across the middle east middle east and north africa president obama said in his speech last month you know we simply can't help everyone but what do you think needs to be sort of defined here i think we need to make clear that these are ca back to mossad back to tell to inspect operatives covert forces involved in creating these defiance in syria for example the violence that's been created there is not from the people this is not pro-democracy it's been instigated by the outside interventionist forces who claim to be in favor of truth and peace and those are the very forces who are causing the problems just well briefly you know israel seems to be looking on a little nervously to what's happening because despite you know some of the

criticisms of the syrian government a shakeup there could really be bad news for israel in terms of safety and security right. there's a lot of people talking about the problems for israel that this is going to cause that's just another form of the propaganda because we whip up fear in the american public and in the israeli public and we've got to protect the israeli people who are actually the aggressors of the mossad is involved in this uprising in syria and the mossad is argue presence remember syria has over five hundred thousand palestinians and there's no threat to israel from syria and threats in the region is israel remember that the president of syria was involved in peace talks with israel that the united states government didn't like at all so the united states government tried to shut down these peace talks the government of syria although they've been very responsible in terms of human rights in the last few years and very much of it then yes take control which makes it possible for american oil companies can even oil companies for example they also have been an independent voice trying to establish as an outside the world.