welcome they learn a show when i look at the real headlines with none of them or see or hear a lot out of washington d.c. now they will take a look at a battle between banks and retailers to industry giants at the end of the day and screw over you the consumer and as a new batch of wiki leaks cables it shows the u.s. fighting to keep factory wages down in haiti so that companies like levi's and haynes can keep making the big bucks but first let's see what the mainstream media decided to spend all of their time on while missing the bigger stories.

there private a third prize it's still wiener gate and i'm not getting these people will just not let this story go i'll try me all right it wouldn't be a day on cable t.v. if we do a kind a bit of anthony weiner and then here comes the drip i'm talking about today a vegas blackjack dealer named lisa weiss well she came forward and admitted having a nine month sexting relationship with a congressman another woman in the wiener scandal is a porn star june juror lee today t.m.c. reported winner gave the porn star get this detailed instructions on how to lie about the relationship calls for winners resignation are growing louder as we learn some steamy new details of his online escapades along with evidence that he may have tried to orchestrate a cover up and this story undoubtedly is lowering the bar and that's unfortunate

that your cell phones out i want to know what you think and only it's the same question tonight that i asked you last night given today's new developments should anthony weiner resign. you see what all this incessant coverage has resulted in as the nearing of the end of a congressman's career now the republican party the family values moral gardy is just loving this opportunity to say the us to step down because finally it's not one of them got caught with their pants down and then wieners own party well they've completely turned against him as well. i know congressman weiner. i wish there was some way i can defend him but i can't you're going to get me to yes. call somebody else but i think that the leaders of the caucus i think the leaders of the democratic party ought to talk to the new winner and tell him that he needs to go you. you know what's really the most obnoxious thing about all of this to me yes we're prudish nation yes the guy lied about it for a week or so yes more pictures this time foley knew and more details keep emerging

so now it just feels like it's his unstoppable downward spiral that he's on and it seems like the only way out is for him to resign become mine do you know why this has become an unstoppable story and more dirt keeps coming out and it's because of the media beast it needs to be that because the mainstream media keeps perpetuating the cycle the story won't go away because you won't let it so congratulations you have yourselves of power on the back for really ruining a career over a picture of a winner can you just imagine how different things would be if the media went after wall street bankers that brought down the entire economy because of illegal practices and then it took our bailout money with the same tenacity if they only had the same hunger to see it actually morally decrypted person who has nothing but profits on the mind of everyone else's expense and i want to see them crash and burn if only every mainstream media talking head the dominates the evening is would devote as much time and attention to the housing crisis or the trillions of dollars

that we put into our wars while low income americans who are needy are told that there just isn't enough money to fund the programs that help them heat their homes anymore but thing is they don't and here's another thing that they've really missed lately the economy is stupid and we notice that in the last six months the government the federal reserve they've done absolutely nothing to try to fix the economy that's really only getting worse congress they're way too busy bickering over the debt ceiling to get back to what they're supposed to be focused on which is jobs ben bernanke the fed chief well he's kind of letting things play themselves out this is what he had to say in a speech yesterday they expect during the last months as for a straight answer in the second half of the year. yeah the recent data highlight you need to continue monitoring the job situation sure sure. you're monitoring the situation well thanks a lot guess what i've been monitoring the situation too and it sucks i mean i'm not even saying if a solution here is that you have to have another similar stimulus or that you have

to have another round of quantitative easing since q.e. two is expiring this month i'm not an economist and i don't know what the magic solution to all that is grad like to see a little bit of action i'm sure the millions of unemployed americans whose gas and food prices are skyrocketing whose children's tuition costs are out of control whose houses are underwater and whose health care costs are completely out of this world would love to see the same but the mainstream media doesn't really seem all that bothered by it bell obama gave a speech today about jobs in the manufacturing center which didn't offer any real solutions or actions on the part of the government but the networks still didn't even roll on it we heard two minutes of an introduction and then they moved on meanwhile there are analysts out there saying the not only are we entering a double dip there are great recession is going to become another great depression and you know what it does happen the mainstream media is going to look shocked though look surprise they'll act like somebody just hit them over the head with a bag of bricks because aside from sensationalizing about leaders stories and great

mass graves when it comes to the real economic outlook of the country when it comes to calling out the government for that action asking for their resignations because let's face it things don't need to suck this that well that's where the media is missing it. now we spent ten years and at least a trillion dollars fighting the war in afghanistan but did you know that we've also spent nineteen billion dollars on aid between two thousand and two and two thousand and ten and the administration has already asked for another three point two billion for reconstruction projects just in this coming year the strategy of flushing large amounts of money into areas cleared of the taliban coping with the rebuilding efforts of the towns we just destroyed and the huge amounts of cash will keep the local populations on our side so for there is this one giant problem to all of it see all this nation building of ours has made the afghan economy completely dependent on america's war our foreign and military and development spending now provides ninety seven percent of afghanistan's g.d.p.

so as we near a drawdown of our troops but only congress is realized today we might actually cause a depression once we leave and that's according to a two year congressional investigation that was released today so just a few questions why did it take them so long to figure this out and what we do about it joining me to discuss this is jack rice former cia officer and criminal defense attorney jack by the problems here are all over the board when it comes with a story let's see if we can break some of them down one by one let's think about this right we have contractors that have really flowed into afghanistan and get these giant grants from the u.s. government from the military and now they're hiring local afghans and they're paying them a much more than the afghan government could actually pay these afghan so obviously they're opting to work for the foreign contractors and they are for their actual afghan government but then once all of this at some point has to come to an end

they're going to be screwed and they're going to be a depression i just can't figure out why nobody thought of this before they actually did it. but you know i think in the end what's really going on here is that everybody wanted a really simple answer to this we would just go and beat the hell out of everybody bait payoff where we couldn't beat the hell out of him that would fix our problem but i think he just highlighted at least one of the issues and you one of the problems that we have right now just one of like so many is that what we have now is a real brain drain from the afghan government itself where literally we have gone on in and paid off so many people to do things for us that they're actually fleeing their own government in order to do that which means the best and brightest are not in the real work that needs to be done and i think the worst part about this is what we have spent you right in excess of a trillion dollars here part of the problem is that the people who are there they're doing it just for the money meaning our contractors are a lot of the other or international organizations that are involved and sadly

a lot of the people who could be doing really good work are not because what they're chasing the cash to. that's one problem now let's think about some of these towns that they might get destroyed if there's some kind of a raid or an operation that's going on then of course we'll come in and we'll bring in some people to reconstruct to rebuild this town but what we also do is we just flood these towns that we have cash whether it be just to repay them for the fact that maybe their homes are destroyed over the fact that they may have lost some family members but do afghans actually know what to do with all that money if they're getting a you know in one day more than they my earn in a decade or at least five years or so how do they spend that money wisely so that's part of the problem too oversight when you have foreign money coming out of nowhere dropping out of the sky after half of your village has been destroyed and they say here you go we're sorry somehow that's going to fix the problem in the short term in some ways it's even though it's even more of a problem in the long term it's very very clear i mean you this introduction you

started with talks about the amounts of money the americans spent she was quote unquote rebuild afghanistan what we have come to realize is all of the money that we spend we spend for very specific reasons and in the end what you get is that dependent afghanistan in afghanistan that can that cannot stand on its own is more dependent upon foreign powers foreign money than ever before now president obama continues to talk but we're going to pull troops out of afghanistan what you will get is a massive back you not just get back in terms of power that's one problem you have been discussed but now you have this economic vacuum which will only be filled by somebody and the question is is home the people we want we're the people that you don't that's a that's a third or fourth of this problem we haven't even discussed yet but so in that sense you know of course we constantly hear a lot of opposition to ending this war any sooner to making the amount of troop

withdrawals or at least the numbers there i mean larger even though the president now is saying that hopefully it might be a little bit. bigger than initially they said some or even you know saying maybe up to fifteen thousand troops might leave at least at the end of this year people like john mccain think no more than three thousand need to go but now that congress after two years of investigating has suddenly realized that they've created this war economy that's dependent on an american war being fought there do you think that's true it's going to lead to more arguments for why we should stay and why we can't get out. i think part of our problem is this is that we can talk about pulling out all we want but again alluding back to what i was referring to before one of our biggest problems now is who will fill the vacuum and the fact i mean if i highlight one point think about the recent problems in these frankly our recent just become very public in the last few weeks and months it is the problem with the pakistanis remember from the very beginning you know it was always the pakistanis who were the ones driving the child in where you are standing as

they were trying to control the region the idea that the americans will leave just provides an additional back for the pakistanis to go on to do exactly what it was that they were doing prior to this you see that's the fascinating part about this whether or not we're talking about iraq or afghanistan or any place else that we go in the world it's very very easy relatively speaking to go in the problem is is the destruction because in our week it's massive and then we try to pull out all of a sudden we're sucked in as deep or maybe even deeper than we even intended and we don't even know the ramifications of just how bad this could be for the americans and we've talked about the problems over and over again and yet the last administration and this is going to stretch and so almost exactly the same when it comes to the issue well you know let's make it a little more domestic and see what it's going to be like for the americans on one hand of course there's a security issue who's going to take over but what's going to be like for the americans if and i still don't believe that this is ever going to come to an end

because they do you think they're going to use that as an excuse if let's say the one hundred thousand contractors that are there come home who have had jobs for the last ten years thanks to a giant war being fought what do you know we did what are we going to do with them the economy is not doing well and we already have over nine percent unemployment. well i think one issue that we have already seen coming out of iraq and afghanistan are these so-called private armies i mean blackwater's the other organizations that have come out and some of these that i've seen very up close and personal in baghdad when things were very ugly indeed what we're seeing now is various countries actually hiring these groups and hiring these with this expertise they're taking it overseas all of the things that we've spent trillions of dollars on american taxpayer dollars and american lives will now be so sent in we were all died sort of cold and make it even more complicated and we get this is all part of the problem that we have what we talk about trillions and trillions of dollars and all of the problems that continue to be out there you know there's even one

probably haven't even addressed it is if we have the time and that's what we have seen with what's going on between the two groups one side and the taliban in the other not making the distinctions and then all of a sudden you're seeing a slight shift in american policy saying just maybe we should treat these organizations differently you merican still the what you do need it doesn't know what to do the europeans don't know what to do and we're all just shining us up hoping it will go away clearly it will not i'm happy you brought that up here because there has suddenly been a lot of talk even at the u.n. a german official recently said this is madness we need to start negotiating with the taliban we also need to take them off of this this blacklist at the u.n. that so that that sanctions that that's something that the u.s. has always opposed now it seems like there are some whispers like they might be into the idea there's also now with really you know the state making the distinction and the difference between the al qaeda and the taliban known do you think about the good idea do you think that we should take them off these lists and

how do they get to be lumped into one by an organization like the u.n. to begin with but without question you should start making distinctions i mean i think if we go back to two thousand and one and i hate i hate to necessarily just playing on the bush administration but there are so many deep failures here when it comes to this. this is not left or right republican democrat conservative progressive what i'm talking about is looking at is that as a you're either with us or you guinness you're either good guys or you're bad guys it's black and white this is not a right world and there was a huge distinction between what the taliban is and what it is to see them as one of the same is an absolute disaster i saw this in kandahar i saw this in kabul i saw this in herat i saw this through out the country itself the sort of simplistic approach to what the americans and nato forces it done you simply don't understand on the ground what is going on in the problem is is when you see them as one in the same with a tendency of driving them into the same chain up so in other words they kind of

become one in the same you're starting to create enemies rather than trying to separate them and actually targeting those you should target versus those that should not so yeah that's about time they actually started doing that officially jack thank you so much for joining us tonight. and he'll. also calmly often cover stories about swat raids or go too far coming out going to the department of education and also had a team of police that raid homes sick around that story and there's a battle here in washington over debt card debit card it's likely doesn't really matter if banks or if the retailers when if in the end consumers and if it's part of that research are. into that all their military mechanisms to deal with the to bring justice or. i have every right to know what my government should do if you want to know why i pay taxes.

but i would characterize obama as a charismatic version of american exceptionalism. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so for sleep you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else here sees some other part of it and realize that everything is all going to. charge the big picture. let's not forget that we had an apartheid regime right. i think the. one well.

we have the government says here keep them safe get ready because of the your freedom. it's a problem that we've told you about all too often on this show a swat team that goes too far aggressively beating down doors handcuffing and

driving people outside of their homes own part of a criminal investigation but as you know there's another unit that operates similarly to swat yet though the inspector general's office of the department of education cannot provide a stockton california found himself face to face with this law enforcement unit which operated similarly similarly just want it all to violence way he was woken up at six am dragged out of the house and he has three children were detained all because of overdue student loan payments and kind of claims that it wasn't even here is overdue payments but his estranged wife's check an a.b.c. news ten report because of where the bomber make me out my house right there the grid and before you or through our own you gotta pay you i just i've got to keep it because it is. and after that original news report aired the department of education has since released a new press statement on the incident and they said while it was reported in local media that the search was related to

a deep altered student loan that is incorrect this is related to a criminal investigation the inspector general's office does not execute search warrants for late loan payments but of course they can't reveal what the true criminal motive is for busting down writes door because it's an ongoing investigation also take a closer look at the inspector general division of the to education department to see their responsible for detecting waste fraud and abuse of education funds and just like any other branch of government or law enforcement excuse me they operate with the same weapons the same abilities like obtaining search warrants and carrying out arrests and she also knows and this department got twenty seven or remington brand police grade twelve gauge shotgun just a year ago people who used to loan payments really held to the same degree as a violent criminal but i'm sorry but unless there's an imminent threat i really don't understand why swat or anybody who carries out the same functions as a swat. team are invading this man's home even cases or is specially in cases of

fraud waste and abuse no violence there but you know i can think of few buildings around here in washington that have those problems of fraud waste and abuse why don't you try it out going on the pentagon store but in all seriousness this is ridiculous is just another example of our country's militarization of its police functions. now today we saw a showdown on capitol hill between one gigantic industry and another and today while st finally lost a fight but it had nothing to do with facing criminal charges for bringing down the entire economy it was just about debit card fees something you're probably aware of if you ever watch t.v. because you literally cannot escape the ads the money's been wasted on from both sides of the aisle here. small business is killing jobs every time you swipe your card credit card companies and big banks make big bucks for years to get your credit card pushing people to use their cards is that right for them to use their market or charge you a loan shark rates for the kurds have been running

a small business for less than a year for seventeen years for over fifty years it's a tough economy. more than words and you see last year when the dr frank financial reform bill was passed in it was a requirement for the fed to limit the fees the banks are allowed to charge retailers every time they swipe your card they've been charging you forty four cents per transaction but after a little bit of careful studying the federal reserve realized that twelve cents would be the real fair price now banks have been lobbying heavily against the change i was going to lose them a lot being at sixteen billion dollars a year and they of course are up against the retail industry another giant that says its prices for goods might go down if the fees the banks charge them will too sour perkin changes here debate about the subject the senate voted fifty four to forty five in favor of a retail today but the funny thing about it is a goal sides claim to have the consumer's interests at heart but at the end of the day is the consumer the one that just got screwed here to discuss this with me is george washington d.c.

reporter for the nation george thanks so much for being on the show tonight thanks for having me so tell me are you do you agree with my assessment here i mean sure everyone's saying that wall street lost out the retailers why and you could even say that it's you know rural america and small business owners but i think the consumers are the ones that really took the hit i think they are if you look at the larger picture i mean it's good for consumers that these retailers no longer have to pay swipe fees that were exorbitant but studies show that that will only save them about two hundred bucks a year at most and that's an industry study so sure there's a lot of places that will take place there but don't have places you go they say we don't take plastic we'll know other persuade these are a little better than me so there is a moderate benefit but the overall. picture here is that you have to pay to play the game in washington senators do take this up to save you a couple hundred bucks a year at the corner grocery they took it up because big retailers like wal-mart depot target came to them and said we need this done and that's why this is happening but let's also look at some of the threats that the banks are putting out there right they're saying go fine if you're going to take away some of our fees

that we could charge every time you swipe the card then that means our customers are just going to have to start paying more when it comes to their checking accounts because they have to offset all of these fees when really all they're doing is is raking in profit you know and is there any kind of restriction or regulation here that retailers actually have to take all the money that they're saving and make it you know so the so the third charging less in terms of products for the consumer you know nothing like that i mean a lot of smaller merchants probably will but if you think that you know home depot and target are going to take all of the savings and put them right into price reduction i think your problem is they can and the same goes with the banks they collect fifteen billion a year in swipe fees which is a lot of money but to them for example they get out twenty billion in bonuses last year so the idea that you swipe fees are always going to cause them to jack up their rates just doesn't hold water also there if you vote is that is that's why they have been shaking in there but it's so much all that's been going on for why

this is been lobbied heavily i think even who was a senator dick durbin says if this is in full employment for washington d.c. tell us more about exactly how much money each side is really shelled out here friends of millions of dollars it's hard to even tabulate because they're there donating directly to congressman they're putting out expensive ad campaigns we see them all over the subway here in d.c. you know each side has spent probably will say fifty to sixty million and that's something that makes senators make very difficult choices one senator said today that he doesn't like choosing between good friends because these are two very powerful industries wall street and then retailers like home depot target lot of money flooding and also that's the thing is the end of the day is that this has been a. really difficult one for all the lawmakers because both of these industries well they have all of our congress in their pockets right i mean how much do you think that these industries actually contribute when it comes to you at home to more of these local campaigns for the politicians quite a bit i mean in john tester state john tester is the senator who's who sponsoring

the bill to to lead the swipe fee rules you know there's ads all over his state you can't turn on a t.v. or radio station in his state without him either being attacked or supported for this i mean all across the board anyone who takes a position on it immediately gets hit with this influx of money and spending and one thing that is i think a little bit discouraging is that finally everyone is saying wall street lost with that all right but it's the only way the wall street's going to lose a battle is if it's up against another giant like this because we haven't seen wall street really lose any battles you can even say that god frank reform bill was incredibly weak in terms of regulations that are put on it the banks are still huge big to fail that you're not really regulating derivatives and we saw it's anybody prosecute at the end of the day absolutely here in washington there's a lot of pressure for brains to go a little easier and people who are under foreclosure you haven't seen a lot of movement on that because people who are into foreclosure can't pay for can't pay senators they can't pay for expensive ad campaigns and so there's just no pressure coming from that side you have to be right there has to be a well funded effort to actually get things done in washington but it's really

unfortunate that somehow the american people the will of the american people all the taxpayers that actually bailed out wall street we're just not powerful enough when it comes to you know to fighting for our interests here in washington d.c. i also want to ask you see you since the federal reserve decided to finally do a little investigation in a little number crunching as to what these banks really should be charging in these debit card swiping fees forty four cents versus twelve cents that is a huge difference how come nobody really looked into that before retailers have been complaining for a while but there's not much that they could do about it i mean you know the banks will keep raising the fee and raising with you the u.s. has the highest sleepy of any kind. in the world and you know the only your only option if you're a retailer is to just not take credit cards and that's not very effective so this is something that they've actually wanted to do for a long time and it's finally come to fruition now have we heard any any threats now that wall street actually lost the battle after spending tens of millions of dollars lobbying to win we'll see what they do and i don't mean for you and i

because we've already obviously heard about the pressure in terms of having to pay more for our checking accounts and everything but any threats to congress we can guarantee that they'll be back this is something that they tried to stop last summer weren't able to back this summer with an amendment and wall street has enough money to keep going you know like you said they collect fifteen billion insulate feeds you know this super expensive quote unquote lobbying campaign cost them what fifty million dollars that's nothing that's what they collect in a week what's this amendment they were talking about the amendment tester's amendment to kind of the lady scilly pupils to say well let's put them into effect a later on and that's of course the classic tactic well let's wait a little bit and then we'll put these in a fraction of course in the meantime what they're trying to do is put together an effort to just kill it altogether kicking the can down the road until you've killed legislation altogether or i guess it's patriot act you can just keep it alive forever but july twenty first is when all of this goes into effect is that right correct and so actually you'll see a lot more stories that will you know it's a plastic one of the one before so that's not

a bad thing it's just not the greatest thing in the world that we could be focusing on the how it all really plays out george thanks so much for joining us tonight thank you. ari coming up next tonight you said it i read it i respond to some of the comments that you've left online about the shell and the newly released documents show the u.s. pressuring haiti's government not to raise sweatshop wages we'll tell you all about that. i think. one. or the other the government says they are safe. because you have freedom.