morons get stuck in this kind of like puritan mentality that's completely antithetical to everything that's happening two steps forward one step back i have an update on the reason and as it finds against nature a lot a lot of the mainstream media isn't telling you about. it by the media before the. guilty until proven guilty. from perp walks to screaming headlines just how can anyone be innocent until proven guilty in the mainstream media and for. the record is one closer this was a good mother you see the audio is even if you know you're a voyeur and you and frankly you can't stand it either so why is the mainstream

media still captivated by casey. and some big tox for some big money issues so as obama tries to build a bridge with top lawmakers will the result make for a more divided america. it's thursday july seventh and christine for zero in washington d.c. watching our team. all right i want to start off by making an observation and i am certainly not alone in this people in this country are obsessed with the u.s. justice system these days with murder and juries and evidence the defense versus the prosecution we can blame it on the casey anthony trial but it's not just casey anthony and it's not totally new for years shows like law and order and c.s.i. have dominated the airwaves so i mean for the laws of the land you want then that's

what you'll get we'll talk about it i want to turn now to a law in the easy ana that you've probably never even heard of but one that's been in place since before the wheezy anna was even a state in which people were prosecuted as felons for having oral or anal sex so when you're prosecuted as a felon you're then forced to register as a sex offender which changes things like where you can live or your ability to get a job and this isn't one of those laws on the books that's largely ignored this has been used in convictions as recently as last year well but the louisiana just gathered enough courage to abandon the law and least for felony convictions it sounds just a misdemeanor but that's a great alonzo was so interesting we traveled to louisiana to look deeper into this and cedric moon brings us the report. this is the carnival of colors and sounds. that is new orleans louisiana.

a mississippi river port city awash in its southern roots its colorful french creel charms and its overtones of piety. it's very catholic very catholic very bad just even very few of the a city that lives according to code it. gets stuck in this kind of like here it's a mentality that's completely antithetical to everything that's happening people come and have conventions here because they know there's the french quarter they know they're strip clubs prostitution. this is bourbon street. for about two hundred bucks you can buy yourself six more specifically straight up intercourse. with a new orleans street walk or anything else or start saying all sites can be negotiated but anything else is also. against the law. according to

a law called crime against nature it basically prohibits anything other than ordinary intercourse there's no police out there going into a neighborhood saying you can't have sex with your husband you can't have oral sex with your wife right no one's actually enforcing that but it isn't forced and enforced heavily on the prostitutes of new orleans these are people who can least afford to be charged with something like this right now you have to do is have an undercover officer driving around in plain clothes in a plane in an unmarked car and want to do is drive around and drive up to people that they believe are prostitutes or known are known prostitutes. and just ask how much and if she answers. she's just open if huge hole in her life. a huge haul because a crime against nature charge is punishable by as much as a twenty year prison sentence incredibly large fines and. you're talking

about a woman who's in her early twenty's who has to register as a sex offender for the next fifteen years. for city whose sole job quietly includes closures of the flesh why they need to criminalize sex acts in which just about anyone in gage it's not just all of these cases and are going to plan your probation and finds fines and. and the important part about the fines and fees is that's revenue coming in to pay for the court system to pay for police to pay for the jail to pay for prosecutor's offices simply put an antiquated nineteenth century law. passed on the guise of christian values or. maybe being used today still to me it's a five year felony you can use that to encourage people to plead guilty very quickly and justifies higher by the hookers often instead plead guilty to

a lesser charge of prostitution down to a misdemeanor and you can charge higher fines and fees to prostitutes who usually can't afford those fines and fees pay for them they're paying for it by aging in more prostitution which they get hit again then they get caught again and right they have been gauging more prostitution it's a vicious cycle this is an old law the stupid law it's a law that a lot of people even within the criminal justice system don't agree with now you can see how some are trapped in the carnival that is new orleans. and if you think they're the only ones which there are others. well keeping with the theme of justice in america let's talk about the notion that in this country there is a presumption of innocence until proven otherwise this is important because it's at the foundation of what many people in this country see as vital to our freedom now let's hold on a second in dissect this notion a little bit let's take

a look at the ties between the u.s. criminal justice system the media and the court of public opinion are not really totally independent of one another and in this day and age with technology where it is you could make the case that instead it's guilty until proven innocent are she's honest osteosarcoma operates. innocent until proven guilty it's a whole mark principle of the american justice system legally aftershock aside from the vigor of some of the arrests young african black and brown subjects being sat down in history and in a sensitive kind of way fifty shots sixty starts laying on our stomach in our back as we run or as we watch or flee to beating suspects into offenses in cases of entrapment entrapment is not legal entrapment is getting someone to do something that they would normally do to perp walks that parade suspects in handcuffs for the

world to see. to a media frenzy devouring some cases and not others i finally did before that i see it as guilty until proven guilty in these cases the government is changing the laws sam and is a former white collar convict who knows the criminal justice system discrepancies inside and out i have no idea of the role two years covering up my crimes. well i decided with their lives. two more years. now a teacher he says media coverage also affects the jury pool they see an image of a guy in handcuffs and see an image of a person being arrested they see the image of a person doing the perp walk and warfare just like everybody else. so are you presumed guilty from the get go and how much of a role doesn't media play if you're accused of a heinous crime it's going to be

a huge headlines on page one when you exonerated it's on page twenty seven below the fold to column inches and your neighbor somehow didn't manage to catch it that day surfer would still thinks you're a child molester not guilty take the not guilty verdict in the casey anthony murder case involving her two year old daughter the court of public opinion remains split from a court of justice all thanks to nonstop media coverage of the case for the past three years. i think it's great damage him and i get that one from the media is going to is going to go. in the case of former i.m.f. head to many extra scar on the media satisfied their gluttonous taste really extreme passion only for the case to crumble i think there should be a. media outlets are required to play your exoneration as big and as long as your accusation this is rarely the case as dubious practices in the criminal justice system spread so does the finger pointing and questioning the future of human

rights in the us why is we calling as americans outfits one years old and i'm like . this is no good this is really good luck with the principles that he was once a part of itself in our fire suspects of having to fight their battles for what we the minute of their arrest and attempts to prove their innocence underlining the discrepancies in the u.s. criminal justice system are alive and kicking this intricate out are to new york. all right well as much as we here at r.t. are sick of the casey anthony story we do think it's important to talk about the story behind it story of the media the number of show people are watching h l n and because it had its best ratings month ever last month averaging about six hundred thousand viewers a day during trial coverage so we want to look deeper into why this case which if you have even called pornography of sorts continues to dominate the conversation

and the airwaves are his loyalists or takes a closer look at the hype that is and that isn't the jury find the defendant not guilty it was a verdict heard around the nation the climax this is a historic rejection of the prosecution's case in a case that has captivated america. and the mainstream media who's been covering and analyzing every single detail of the casey anthony murder trial but if you ask any average american on the street if the case actually affects their lives the answer is unanimous probably no i think is too much emphasis on it but that has not stopped every day from being groundhog day on the cable news networks casey anthony the woman accused of killing her two year old little girl the latest on what happened in court today and despite the verdict and

sentencing both handed down and delivered media anchors and pundits continue to weigh in on every aspect in a case already considered closed from what i know of things. there is a special place in hell. if you do like that with your child listen the record is conclusive this was a good mother you see the audio you see this is the boy you hear it i think that it's a call the st paul three people know and there's water boredom so somebody caves in a tells us what happened why that kid's dead today it's a bad day for america it's a bad day for america it's amounted to more coverage for the casey anthony trial than any of the republican g.o.p. candidates according to a smart politics study that since opening statements were delivered in the trial the only thing up to this has gone. jaw dropping moment a moment in a murder that is eclipse thousands of other murder cases in the us let's take a look at the numbers more than sixteen thousand murders occurred in two thousand

and eight that for your caylee anthony but missing that's almost forty five murders per day and in florida where the casey anthony place took place and the attorneys said that this should draw attention to the death penalty there are three hundred ninety four people currently on death row and twenty three people that were innocent and free from death row since one nine hundred seventy six so why then the overwhelming attention paid to the case of just one woman casey anthony you have not only a child but a white child who was murdered you have a young white female who is on trial a party girl a show trial that according to chambers has all the ingredients middle america wants to see if it were a black woman who was a single mother and the baby was there to be the people would say all that happens all the time the who cares about that and it doesn't happen all the time and those cases could affect the country how take really good case as an example it's registered just a blip in the print world a black mother who is fifteen had

a miscarriage is accused of murdering her unborn child under a one hundred thirty year old statute because of an alleged drug habit it's in mississippi and the rule. it is being awaited by the state supreme court in which the first case there of a woman charged with the murder of her unborn baby. i mean as michael austin i was arrested able to one of the four for murder and armed robbery and this man represents one of the wrongfully convicted who has been found innocent and freed after a long wait twenty seven years more from comfortable but not a whole lot of fanfare it's not big news that big used to get no prison being in may so was is not a big deal when i do thirty forty years and get out of prison one of many cases americans may never hear about the well received exposer i would never move it from

a court as they continue to redistricting and captivated by. dogs dropping moment the continues to be rehashed yet again today it's like a lottery day soap opera of whether it matters or not lauren lyster our t.v. washington d.c. so today in case you hadn't heard casey anthony was sentenced and will soon be released as a result of that fountain thing i can now safely say the case is in fact being shoved down our throats this morning i turned on a political cell and it was alive coverage of a sentencing and i wasn't even the good stuff it was the boring stuff counts six counts seven where was anything about the debt talks a presidential race grief you know all casey all morning long i want to talk about this with michael hoffman who was a blogger for the political commentator and joins us from jericho new york to talk about this obsession. and michael i know you wrote about this casey anthony trial

watching and asked the question don't americans have anything better to do with our time it seems that when it comes to the impact of this trial it's hard to argue that whichever way it would have turned out it would have changed things for anyone in their lives legally economically and yet people are fixated or do you think this stems from the first christine thank you very much for having me on but the the bottom line is that we've turned into not just in the united states but around the world something along the lines of a reality show society with respect yours unsure whether it's the real housewives of whatever city you can name that's what people like to watch and in a lot of ways the casey anthony trial fit that bill perfectly a little bit of everything and it kept people's interest in the the media knew that because the ratings told them that and that's pretty much where we were it goes i think that's an interesting point i mean you talk about these reality shows and

oftentimes they're the shows that are the highest rated so it does there's something there that people see themselves in these other people that are on t.v. every day however the fact remains that hundreds of other parents around the country have been accused of murdering their children and i'm not talking about unlocking years i'm just talking about since caylee anthony went missing so why are we not seeing their story. well i think like in any case in whatever the stories are sure is that captures the attention of the american audience that drives ratings will be continued to be shown for as long as it drives ratings if a year ago the casey anthony trial ceased to interest people then we would have been on to the next story but you know it really is just whatever it is that's it's garnering the ratings and people are still interested in watching reality will we dish out a report that sort of talk about this obsession and i was

a guest on our report chris chambers who is a professor of communications and journalism at georgetown we had him on the show a lot and he sort of talked about the race aspect that you know if casey anthony was a black single mother this wouldn't have the same result when have the same interest people would actually say oh that's happened all the time what's your take on. well let me say this in in the obama administration since we've had him in office remember that we're in a post racial society and i don't think that race does anything to do with this story i really think oh come on the post racial society just because we have a black president doesn't mean that all of a sudden black people who often dominate the unemployment numbers all of a sudden got jobs you know i mean things have not totally same facial society are his words not mine but the fact of the matter is that whatever story i mean o.j. was black and his story he was all the way n.f.l.

superstar. my belief my true feelings are that whatever story at the time hit and stuck it would have been that story whether it was a young black single mother or a young white single mother as long as it had the the pieces of the puzzle that the american public wanted to watch then that's what would have been on t.v. or whatever some of those pieces of the puzzle that. you have a young child you have a young mother you have parents involved you've got lying to the police you have a body that was missing as some of these talking heads on t.v. like to talk about it's a c.s.i. world pretty much every aspect of a crime show and that's what holds people's attention is c.s.i. and law and order of course shows that people seem to be very interested in watching from people like to play detective as well anything else michael i mean i know you wrote this piece what was the reason that you decided to take up this

topic i mean is there any other reason is economic times that people are kind of stuck in and just need a distraction and just as a result i the reason i wrote this story was not so much because of the obsession but because you know in america where we have some of the most intelligent people the most motivated people the most intellectually curious people and we have pressing problems around our society whether it's jobs whether it's the debt ceiling whether it's a nuclear iran whether it's you know an overreaching obama administration whatever it is there's a lot more that people could be focused on but unfortunately we're not. and my objection is that i think there are much bigger fish to fry in the world and i think we need to focus on that well certainly i hope when i start on the t.v. tomorrow morning that casey anthony won't tell me the entire silence of probably

what will happen the next or just or know if that's true michael holland blogger for the political commentator joining us from jericho new york thank you christine . all right i want to switch gears now to the economy just down the street from our studios some pretty big talks going on between president obama and top lawmakers over the battle to come to an agreement on raising the fourteen point three million dollar debt ceiling all raising the taxes on the wealthiest americans seems to be not on the table for cuts to programs that help the poor may be on the table this is a battle that's brewing in a much more concentrated way a little further down the road in the state of minnesota where the state government there is still shut down there are similar issues the republican led legislature refuses to raise taxes even on the wealthiest two percent of the people governor mark dayton a democrat doesn't want to cut more programs i think it's important to keep an eye on what's going on there especially with protesters now taking to the streets to speak more about all of this i want to go to gerald celente director of the trends

research institute and publisher of the trends. hey there gerald let's start with minnesota and with what we're seeing there more than twenty thousand state government workers have gotten layoff notices people there are planning a rally and apparently building a tent city to protest what do you think about what's happening there as it's related to this country on a larger scale. it's the beginning of world we're going to see more of as governments continue to fail state governments we all know about their pension problems and other issues that they cannot need funding issues in the future you're just going to keep seeing this spiral out of control and it's also very interesting to see what because first let's close the poll are you know it's the holiday weekend let's make sure that the people who have nowhere to go the people that could afford it the least and you just keep bringing that but with christina it's the same thing that the obama administration and the republicans it's all being

about it's cutting the people's programs i add it those those veterans are making too much money in their benefits let's cut those why don't we cut some those social security benefits people are getting much now we could even lower that and in the meantime let's give those multinationals like general electric that they were thirteen billion dollars last year they don't have to pay any taxes that or doesn't seem to really make sense i mean it seems to me a lot of what this is about is a growing gap in any quality and what it means now lot of people have been talking about and i want to play a clip of an interview of former national security adviser dr zbigniew brzezinski from yesterday he was on m s n b c's morning joe and he gave some of his projections what could be around the corner. the sense of social injustice to be terribly the moralizing and politically in the long run very dangerous it's

simply to size social economic issues create a right this is class conflict extremism i think that's a real risk in our society five percent scale so talked about seeing a slide into quote intensified social conflicts hostilities and radicalism jerald i mean do you think that this is what's ahead and will go people be taking to the streets across this country yes they take in streets all over the world they have the big lie out there for example that it's the pro-democracy movements going on in the middle east north africa has nothing to do with it look what's going on in spain but what's going on in greece it's the same story this is the radicalization it's called fascism it's the merger of state and corporate powers let's call a spade a spade o.b. near the big guys are getting all the breaks and the burdens falling on all of the people so of course this is going to happen but of course it's old news it's what

we wrote about a year ago or with their heads two point zero it people know the game when the money stops flowing down to the man on the street the blood starts flowing in the streets i think a perfect example and i do i think it's important to look all around the country because country is made up of cities and towns even some of the smallest towns there's one in texas called alto they just laid out their entire police force and from what i understand that state also has no money for new textbooks in public schools so from an economic standpoint i know you say this isn't a new story how should we see this these things happening in our towns in our schools. it's a much bigger picture it's the beginning of the great war that we've been writing about you're seeing the global ponzi scheme collapse the only way they keep it going this guy printing is digital money that's not worth the paper it's printed on

and christina has the great apocalypse see as the talking about you know real rate readjusting the consumer price index we save already readjusted and as they talk about social security and veterans' pensions cutting those what are they not talking about how about the defense budget how about the one point two trillion dollars being spent in defense and defense related projects each year not a piece well i mean i think they are talking about it a little bit but they're making cuts that sounded to us you know the first one i think that was in seventy eight billion dollars but but you're right well i mean that's a drop in the bucket in the defense budget but they are talking about just because they're talking nothing those top five soft forty billion a year doesn't add up in a fourteen point three trillion dollar deficit. so you're painting just picture and i think it's important to geo and i think a lot of people are starting to but now that people are realizing that they are

feeling it sort of trickle down to their own households why is it that things won't change why is it that people aren't going to start calling you know their congressmen their republican senators and saying you know we want you to raise taxes you don't see that happening at all not at all the people have been beaten down there's no resistance the only reason the only resistance comes when it really hits them hard and it hasn't hit hard enough you know america isn't just the country a mommy's boy it's a country a soccer mom these boys just take a look at the people that are in congress with very few exceptions and you can see what i'm talking about there's not a man among them and so what you're seeing now is the people they feel as though they have no choice go back to two thousand and six for example the midterm elections the people voted to end the wars in iraq and afghanistan they do what they want it's like putting al capone in charge of law and order meant by putting

the republicans and democrats in control of democracy. strong statement there i do want to talk about you know what happened today which is another round of debt discussions here in washington president obama of course meeting with those top eight lawmakers to try to come closer at least to an agreement on raising this fourteen point three trillion dollars debt ceiling and really it seems that you know medicare is now on the table more and more things on the table people are starting to get concerned i mean august second seems like a long time away in washington where here we always wait till the last minute but even the c.e.o. of pimco one of the most influential investment firms is put now warnings he said even a short term default by the u.s. on its debt could have catastrophic legal consequences what do you think about that short term long term it's not going to make any difference if they lower the debt limit by of couple of billion or raise it it's really not going to make

a difference and walgren because the reality is that that can never be paid off we're looking at over forty four thousand dollars in debt and each person when you just look at the budget and no end in sight because what are they going to do to create jobs what are they going to do the spur of the economy so this is just talk and it really doesn't make a big difference in the greater scheme of things that collapses happening before us the only way they have prevented it from going down further is by these games called q we too low interest rates record low interest rates and shuffling money in and they're going to keep doing it right all talk and no action that's not what we want to see gerald celente a publisher of the trends journal and director of the trends research institute. and stay tuned for our eight pm newscast for a brand new segment starving for attention inmates in california on hunger strike and demanding better treatment.