mission is to. welcome the alone to show we look at the real headlines with none of them or see if you live in washington d.c. now it's no secret a gas prices are skyrocketing and that means the oil companies are bringing in the big bucks so should they continue to be allowed to get subsidies from the government we don't think so well find out of politicians agree then president obama is working on an executive order to force government contractors to reveal their political contributions are republicans of course are up in arms about it so

we'll talk about the slow road and transparency and then when it comes to the debt ceiling we know that several republicans are in favor of raising us but did you know that some democrats are now vallance a vote against it too so now that we know of a bipartisan effort to go against the president's wishes does that mean that the white house has completely lost but that is a battle and it was a royal occasion kate and william were married this morning and people in america woke up really early to catch every single minute of it on news networks but for those who care about i don't know what's really important in the world what the hell are we supposed to watch and it's friday so i think we all deserve a toast to happy hour raise your glass and watch as artie's jenny churchill might want to hand and myself discuss the stories creating a buzz this week or saving that plan for the end of our show up first our top story . prices are rising and economic growth is slowing down here in the u.s. the five big oil companies are raking in the dough this week they released their first quarter. it's an exxon mobil the largest oil company in the country reported

a ten point seven billion dollar profit just in the first three months of this year that's a jump of sixty nine percent from the same time in two thousand and ten chevron the second largest oil company didn't do so bad themselves reporting profits of six point two billion up thirty six percent from last year so you would think that i don't know since big oil profits are reaching at near record highs maybe they don't need all those billions of dollars in subsidies from the federal government maybe what the democrats have been trying to push for years cutting from forty eight billion in those subsidies might actually come true if republicans would just get onboard and they almost had a sport. that will give them. the good stuff you're. going to use those i agree with the federal government they sure are revenues and we need to control spending but we need you to go over. there

you're there for sure so you'd like to see those subsidies to oil companies and there's a kind of the world series. of boehner has already walked back his statement paul ryan and daniel webster despite what they say their voting records prove otherwise so when are we going to start seeing some rage from the people joining me to discuss this from our studio in new york is kelly evans wall street journal ahead of the tape columnist kelly thanks so much for joining us tonight first orders i don't know are you with me here or something that just seems wrong when the economy is bad when unemployment is so high and gas prices are rising that you know these giant oil companies the oil producing nations are really just having the time of their lives raking in all the money. i don't know i think it might offer a little bit of perspective here first to put the perspective of forty eight billion dollars worth of tax breaks here exxon mobil in the first three quarters of the year and they're the biggest u.s. company by market cap not just the biggest oil company they made one hundred

fourteen billion dollars the u.s. federal deficit budget deficit this year is about one and a half trillion dollars so while it's tempting to sort of look at these tax breaks as a sort of just too easy way to fill those coffers it's it's a drop of water in a very large bucket so what's happening here quite quickly and unsurprisingly is it's become much more of a political issue really than one that has anything to do with the budget deficit sure might be a drop in a very very very large bucket but the thing that politicians have done here especially republicans is to make it about taxes they don't want to raise taxes on these giant oil companies and the corporations because then you're stunting job growth but if you really think about taxes exxon mobil didn't even pay any taxes last year. i'm not sure that's correct but i do think that it's tempting to look at the oil companies as a convenient target when gas and oil prices are high the reality is that here in the u.s. we pay a lot less than

a lot of other countries do for our fuel there have been economists arguing for a long time that that's actually the wrong thing that should happen that when we get gas prices high as we did in two thousand and eight we should try and keep them there to help change behavior and try to keep people or try to shift behavior away from high consumption of gas and oil so that we're less dependent on them when prices do rise because look as much as we'd like to think that we can just point a finger at some of these companies that would magically bring gas prices down nothing could be further from the truth these are powerful global forces at play it has something to do with the run up in. the sixty's and speculation activity on wall street as well but there's nothing that raising taxes by a couple billion dollars on these oil companies is going to solve that problem and i'm afraid it's distracting us from the bigger picture well i think what's what it's distracting us from is that instead of perhaps raising some of the revenues or the taxes on these oil companies or instead of cutting programs that actually could be helping some lower income americans and what i was talking about in terms of exxon paying taxes last year is that's what came out after a lengthy investigation from the new york times but since you brought up

speculation in a market manipulation the obama administration has now announced they're going to have a task force look into this what do you make of that task force do you think if they're going to find anything is anyone actually going to start investigating anything. i'm not big on task forces in general we saw a similar group looking into activity back in two thousand i do think there's a lot of work that needs to be done to parse out just how much the financialization of commodities oil and otherwise is playing a role in their runup it's a huge issue unfortunately a little bit hard to disentangle and so we haven't really seen any clear cut answers three years now after what happened in two thousand and eight and we don't really have now a lot of information to help prevent a similar outcome this time around the other reason why i and i wrote about this in one of my columns the other day why i see these high oil profits is almost a bit of a warning sign is that the last time this happened they weren't sustainable. sine high oil prices were centrally solve themselves because they got to a point that they were so high that people cut back a lot of industries to cut back on their usage and so they then we had the

financial crisis which obviously quickly turned things around so the real question here now as we have prices at the pump out twenty cents off their two thousand and eight peak acting is a real drag on the u.s. economy is will high oil prices collapse the way they did a couple of years ago will they not just how much potential is there to try and get windfall profits tax on some of these oil and gas companies right now he's a really difficult issues that i'm not sure congress is going to be any more insightful on or better able to sort of time than anyone else and remember a lot of these tax breaks go back to trying to encourage oil and gas companies for exploration and some of these other things over the years that we thought would help the hope it would help to bring oil prices down then as we've come to realize it's just kind of it's just kind of a fringe issue in the bigger picture here yeah well it definitely doesn't encourage them to change any of their practices is the same thing as allowing these industries to regulate themselves you're never going to see any actual change from about there but you know maybe congress isn't the are the ones that can handle it president obama's task force is what can handle this donald trump seems to think

that he has all the answers of let's look at what he had to say about it. do you want to lend money. because we know what you want. but what do you say i mean does the donald really have the right way to go about it you just call and you say you put those prices down or else. i think that makes my point which is that this is quickly turning into a political issue that people are using to pander to the real serious financial trouble that a lot of households are in i think by not having a mature discussion about what's really driving the prices higher we're only doing ourselves a disservice and i think what i would really like to see come out of this is maybe just a recognition that we are held to the forces of strong global demand of relatively limited supply of oil you know it's been years and years of us sort of pretending that this isn't an issue or that it won't be won when oil prices are low i think

we're the reality is now staring us into the face and nothing no comments from donald trump or even from republicans or democrats right now really show me that people are starting to think seriously about how to address this in the reality maybe keeping gas taxes higher now to generate more income for the budget long term and help try to actually shape behavior well people definitely need a wake up call on with you there kelly thank you so much for joining us tonight of course thanks for having me. now still to come tonight president obama is working on an executive order to force government contractors to disclose their political donations the republicans don't like the sound of it but isn't transparency a good thing and that while the debate over raising the national debt ceiling carries on there's a new congressional members who may be planning to vote against it and there are democrats so now the president's own party is going against them does this mean that he's lost the fight for the custody issue with politico's de tat in these after the break.

let's not forget that we are in a park right. i think. either one well. we have a god that shows the keep him safe get ready because of your freedom. if you are been here broadcasting live from washington d.c. coming up today on the big picture a. new

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the gaming community has been on pins and needles after word got out of the sony play station three suffered a major breach earlier this week tech site started reporting that sony suffered an external intrusion which forced their online network to shut down and its details about intrusion start to leak out we've now learned that pro players personal information was breached and was breached massively i'm talking user names addresses e-mail addresses birthdays network passwords and audience and we should point out here are the for the first few days that tech sites are reporting this unprecedented breach so he decided not to make any kind of public comic it wasn't until days later when the tech giant decided to finally send a letter to each of their users to inform them of this major problem and in their email they stated we have discovered that between april seventeenth and april nineteenth certain play station network and korea also the service user account information was compromised in connection with an illegal and unauthorized intrusion into our network now the letter then went on to give users the bad news

about what private information had been released to the public we are happy to report at least one piece of good news for p s three owners turns out that while the hackers do possess some personal information your actual credit card data was encrypted meaning that they cannot touch it so while gamers breathed a slight sigh of relief there i would like to take a moment to ask sony where the hell their priorities lie. if you remember a few months ago we told you about how sony filed a lawsuit against george hotz when he released a code online to show other gamers how to modify their console and even use pirated games on their system so he had absolutely no qualms about going after hotspurs attack on their gaming system they took him straight to court so keeping all of that in mind i can't help but wonder why hasn't sony taken more steps to protect their customers they spend so much effort tracking down one guy who damage their bottom line meanwhile they leave their own database open to hackers who potentially have gained enough information to perform identity theft on seventy seven million

users so maybe sony should read some of their vast resources to protecting the personal information of customers the people who have made sony what it is rather than waging a legal battle against one lonely hacker george hotz and several governments such as taiwan canada the u.k. and the u.s. seem to agree are currently pressing sony for information on this very serious breach but in the meantime sony is hanging its head in shame because frankly this kind of data breach is one of the biggest and one of the most embarrassing and gaming history by the way ex-parte fans are growing by the minute. according to the white house the president is considering an executive order that would force government contractors to disclose their donations to political candidates and organizations and the president says it's about transparency about letting the taxpayers know more about the contractors that see better off funds which by the way in two thousand and ten was about five hundred thirty five billion

dollars or so but oh boy lawmakers and contractors are really not happy about this one in fact senator susan collins mitch mcconnell and twenty five of their republican colleagues have already written a letter to the president asking him to please reconsider and their complaint is that this is going to insert politics into a selection process that's supposed to be fair but our politics already there discuss this with me is founder of voters for peace and executive director of cumhal america kevin thanks so much for being on the show tonight here tell me first of all if you're with me here if you think about how many factories there are around the country the fact then that consistence work at these factories and that plays in our politics are very much already involved when it comes to government contracts and i think this will actually take the politics out of it more because it will bring transparency people see what the truth is what they will see the real playing field and will create a more even playing field if you will know what the what the story is and the fact that the contractors and their colleagues in congress are actually so strong it

just makes me want to look more when i used to practice law when the prosecutor was not giving me the evidence that i would love to discover new you have something to hide so in the height of the ball i want to see the bill more so i think there's something to hide here we should really push transparency aggressively and we need to because our elections are becoming nontransparent as far as funding goes in the last election alone three hundred million dollars are spent and that's an off year election in anonymous donations and so we're seeing less than most transparent electoral since we don't know who's behind what and what they're going to return so this is a good small first step the obama should take immediately and is also. way that this is going on here because contractors technically aren't supposed to donate to political campaigns directly so does that mean that if there are any political contributions and they must be going to these out of their outside organizations where you don't know exactly if there's a lot is lots of indirect ways to get money into politics and to make payoffs to get these returns and it's a really good deal you can get

a pretty small donation and you can get ten times return a thousand donation leader tens of thousands or hundreds hundreds of thousand dollars in contracts so we need to know this kind of stuff this is a democracy of the people and by the people the people don't know what's going on and so we're going to have this our system we hide critical facts like who's paying for what and what are they getting in return it makes the market even less real and it's especially fair and important i think if you consider the numbers involved here like i said just in twenty i've hundred thirty five billion dollars worth of these government contracts federal contracts were awarded but let's talk about what usually happens at these contracts right there are going to let's talk about the f. thirty five strike fire this is a project that might come up and what happens is that it starts extending production and being delayed somehow it ends up being a twenty year long project just to develop it and now the pentagon has recently released figures that lockheed martin's after the fives are going to cost us over a trillion dollars over several decades that doesn't say one trillion dollars and

so you look at all the weapon systems that we're going to produce and you'll find that to be a very common story we've created a military contractors and that's out of control with a bloated military budget if we're not going to face up to it we're not going to control the deficit and it's the one thing that both republicans and democrats have taken off the table defense spending military spending it's not even defense which optional offensive military military spending is fifty five percent of the discretionary budget if you add in the intelligence budget and homeland security it's sixty six percent of the discretionary spending and both parties have take it off the table that means. all the oil goes on people in the cities and so we see a lot of weapon systems with cost overruns delays i don't even need any more and i i bet you if we saw the contractors who were given money to politicians we'd see why those problems can continue now this also obviously goes back to the citizens united ruling as we were saying last year the congress actually failed to pass this

close to try to force corporations so here the guys are the president is going about it in his own way he's trying to issue we're going to he hasn't officially made the announcement yet an executive order to force this on some government contractors i think that he like executive orders well i'm glad he's doing it and doing what he can do if he does it we'll see because you know he has and is going to push back he you know might back down as he's done too often but this is united nations important we have a project called protect our elections dot org we're very focused on government transparency transparency elections and as i said in the last election one hundred million dollars spent that was from anonymous donors right now the department of justice could be enforcing existing was forced to end the transparency what they were doing people like karl rove the chamber of commerce american crossroads what they're doing is they're avoiding the election was the federal election laws which require you to tell where the money comes from and what they do to avoid that is they set up a nonprofit a five a one c. forgive zation which is a lobbying group which is not intended for elections but they use it only for

elections which is a violation of tax law and a violation of the election law department justice has the power to enforce their criminal with the criminal law violations the election law partner just should be doing that so we don't see in the next election even more massive spending i'm sad to say though the democrats have said rather than fight them they're going to join them sort of like you know what i was raised a billion dollars openly and which is the raise from anonymous donors to these nonprofits and run independent can supposedly independent campaigns that would be taking the place of political parties how much is going to be their sort of billion dollar presidential campaign you're probably talking billion dollars in these anonymous donors as well that's right we have also a car that here on this show to the democrats. i've just decided if you can't beat them join i can't really blame them though because you still they still want to win the election but just think about it if the democrats do win the election is there any chance to look at the disclose act passed i doubt it because they're playing the game of democrats and playing the same corporate giveaway game since the 1980's early ninety's version of recorded history and it is that you can do so with

republicans obama took twenty million dollars from the health insurance industry he's giving one hundred million dollars in taxable subsidies annually no he's paid off ten times the donation so i am from sad as they were not considered the only we're going to get this right with everything else in this country is of people get organized educated and mobilized it's going to take massive effort by people to take the government back and take control to really make a government people right now it's a government of corporations both parties are corrupted by corporate money we could organize mobilize to take it all back paul why is it always the conclusion of every single interview that everybody is evil but if you want to know how you can act as you put everything into everyone's we've all together but i can't thank you very much for joining us tonight thanks a lot now the clock is ticking according to treasury secretary tim geithner the u.s. will reach its debt limit by may sixteenth a locker house a few months ago aside from a few defiant tea partiers the political establishment agreed that not to raise the debt ceiling would be catastrophic. it would be catastrophic not just first the

united states but for global financial markets if the us did not really hate responsibly he said be it steady if we hit the debt ceiling that's essentially defaulting on our obligations which is totally unprecedented in american history the impact on the economy would be catastrophic i mean that would be a worse financial economic crisis than anything we saw in two thousand and eight. now fast forward to today and it's not just republicans who say they won't raise the debt ceiling unless significant budget cuts are passed with it even democrats are joining the chorus people like senator kent conrad joe manchin and mark pryor and even the president's own party doesn't want to tell the white house line to pass a clean debt bill does that mean that they've completely lost this political fight and a discussion with me is politico's. they thank you so much for being here tonight

like i said a couple of months ago except for some tea partiers you even had john boehner you have republican leaders that were saying this is going to be catastrophic we can't let it happen we can't even toy with the debt ceiling and suddenly it's fair game hey it's just something you throw into every debate what happened i think you saw the political environment and i mean democrats you're right a lot of them thought that this was going to be an easy vote for them they'd be able to vote for this up or down there wouldn't be a controversy they have the votes they still the majority in the senate but i think the political calculus now because of all the concern about the deficit that they're hearing from their constituents and there's still that lingering message from twenty two and about spending that is in a lot of their minds i think the two thousand and twelve now a lot of the senators as you mentioned are saying ok maybe we do need to do this with some mandatory spending cuts which is the republican argument exactly that's the republican argument so i just can't understand why the democrats i mean they picture later already so many times right we saw with the bush tax cuts we saw with the government shutdown debate now. well it's coming here but don't they have

a political philosophy you don't think think that spending is the way to get us out of a recession to get the economy pumping again but they just that right all the window that's the liberal argument i mean liberals will say that but don't capitulate this is too important you should stand your ground and say look if you guys are going to make it's default it's going to be on your backs you're going to make that but we won't do it but the problem is a lot of these senators lost their colleagues in elections and they're in states were fiscal issues are resonant and they're also i think campaigned as moderates in some of these states and say we care about fiscal responsibility that's always the democrats' line but what are you doing about it polls show that voters still trust republicans more on these fiscal issues they don't agree with all the specifics you get specific and the polling drops but they still agree that something needs to be done and i think the democrats see that writing on the well and then is it ok for me to say the voters are idiots because republicans don't want to raise taxes on the rates and they want to cut programs for all of those americans that are for some reason trusting that they don't want to cut defense spending i just don't

understand where the mentality is here i don't understand the tax issue either i think i think it's a fair point i don't know if it's a communication problem the democrats don't have but the democrats have never won the tax argument i mean can you remember an argument even if it's about raising it on the wealthy people that are in those income bracket brackets will say you know you can't do it because i hope to be there someday that's that's the argument but in this debate the democrats aren't framing it the republicans are out there saying before going to raise the debt limit we want to see mandatory cuts and they're going to their districts they're saying these things and little by little statements come out from democrats first thing worth saying anything now they're peeling them off saying ok maybe we do need to do this so unless someone makes that tax cut argument or makes the stronger argument that these programs that it's not can be effective but i think they're starting to with the ryan plan which is different you say tax cuts i think the democrats always lose every single argument and you just are horrible about sitting but if there's somebody that should be able to really get involved here it's the president the president is the one it's

telling. his own party you know we have to have a clean bill don't capitulate and they're going against him so does that mean that he really has just completely lots of he's lost his own party he's just lost it i don't know if he's lost his whole party yet but i do think of a fair point there's a great fear i mean the president has you know treasury secretary geithner go on the sunday morning shows very high profile to say this has to be done this has to be it's going to be it has to be done it has to be coming clean bill the language a clean bill but have we seen the president come out you know recently say this we're going to watch his language in the few weeks just to see where he moves as he moves where the senate democrats are moving is going to move because we're going to lose our earnings are just going to move i'm going to get you know i'm disappointed because i want a little fight you know when i hear people like harry reid saying well the white house can speak for themselves but we're going to do our thing i want to get his own party in order here let's look at some polls that also help me to try to somehow understand the mentality of the populace here you know recently we saw a poll that said that only sixteen percent of americans actually favor raising the

debt ceiling and we would have to wonder is that because they don't understand what the consequences might be for the entire economy but then we also see a new gallup poll that came out today says that forty seven percent of americans now are not looking favorably upon the tea party so is that a sign that something is changing i think there's two separate issues because the tea party has its own identity and sometimes people see these people screaming at the party very much driving especially the republicans to go against the step oh absolutely but if you take those two issues out i don't think people understand exactly what the debt ceiling it is very complicated i could sit here and explain to you every program that would you know all the effects that would happen if we didn't raise the debt ceiling but you listen to the experts and they say catastrophic things i think you separate that out from the tea party which has more mixed image because some of them have presented themselves as you know making valid critiques and are credible on some of these issues but some of these people just hate the president and want to go in scream at him no matter what he does so i

think they're. the message gets mixed and i think the debt ceiling is very complicated for people to understand and who is articulating the message on the debt ceiling why doesn't the president or someone from the senate and the democratic party lay out exactly what it would mean if this didn't happen and you know in basic terms like a toy second graders i mean that sometimes that's what you need to do i don't miss a show that when you're off it just seems like a big word but you don't actually get any visible visualisation there really is that what we taught like try to simplify the message don't get too complicated so people can understand it at home i mean they are doing it dave thank you so much for joining me tonight sure thank you now coming up after the break thanks to all time winner is one of the united states and most prolific is a lot of popes and this time he's going after the top brass in the military claiming that he's been brainwashed by muslims we have details on that in just a moment and people across the country were glued to the television to watch the royal wedding this morning but for those who are interested in more hard hitting real news they are probably disappointed by the wildlife coverage of buckingham

palace so why did the media forget the real headline was because ben cohen when we return. we. will. we have the love that shows he's safe ready for freedom.