a free media. same stick different day when it comes to the debt ceiling so if you desperate times call for more desperate measures what about shock therapy is it time for the us to use this extreme. low. york. city and move over tea party because progressive they're serving up their own hot answers to america's economic hold so could we be seeing a tea party type. but it's a little bit of a slap. circumcision is now illegal. not often you see jews

and muslims rallying behind the same cause but enter san francisco's proposed ban on circumcision we'll fill you in on the stove debate. it's thursday july twenty eighth and christine for sale in washington d.c. watching our team here keeping a close eye on what's happening right down the street from here with votes and talks on raising the debt ceiling and here we are one day closer to doomsday in fact four days six hours fifty eight minutes and thirty five seconds away now we have reached a better place a place where this bitter divide over poli party politics has come to a head with a clock well that it continues to take down so here's the question do desperate

times call for desperate measures earlier i spoke to peter schiff he's president of euro pacific capital he also ran for congress in two thousand and ten and i asked him what he would be doing if you was in washington right now calling the shots here's his response. well you know i don't think we should raise the debt ceiling it is a charade for now it's true default is up to us if we want to default obviously we can do it but if we don't want to there's plenty of revenue and at some point that won't be the case with interest rates rise then we did it then we simply won't be able to make the payments but for now with interest rates as low as they are it's still our choice eventually it's not going to be but for now it is but the real problem is not the debt ceiling the problem is the debt and raising the ceiling makes that problem bigger is i mean it seems to me like you're saying then sunk elements that deficit spending needs to be stopped dead in its tracks period but here's the deal the only way to stop it covered congress progress for years to

reduce spending in the future but it never happens it's just like everybody has a friend that's constantly promising to go on a diet to lose weight but it's always next week if you're. serious about losing weight. you don't like junk food now but also don't regard as a partisan you don't starve the person and keep them away from food for several months i mean if that happens i think if we stop deficit spending in its tracks there could be some serious repercussions people who rely on social security on medicare on food stamps they will be out of luck it sounds to me very much later like this is survival of the fittest so you know make the case for me that you're not saying that we're going to toss all the poor people the hungry people the disabled to fend for themselves. well remember one of the reasons that there are so many more people is so many young unemployed people is because of the government because of all the resources the government is draining out of the private sector

so the government actually stop spending all this money we have a stronger more productive economy and so we would not as many or people would have as many unemployed people but who's talking about starving the government is still collecting over two trillion dollars a year in taxes that's funny money because that's all the government was spending around ten or twelve years ago so let's talk about starving the government i just figured i mean there are totally way overweight they need to come down to just a reasonable diet and i think the tax revenues that they already correct is plenty in fact if we can cut enough out of the budget maybe we can have some tax relief because i think americans are overtaxed and putting this government deeper into debt which is where we're seeing even higher taxes on the american public at a future that is not the way to solve the problem but the fact is that i mean i think a lot of people would be offended at the statement that there's so much gluttony going on certainly not about the government as a lot of people would probably agree with you but let's talk about who these

entitlement programs actually affect who that money trickles down to these are people who maybe you're right maybe in the long term i don't think this is a totally invalid argument that in the long term if you have people stuck relying on the government maybe it will make them more apt to go out and do stuff some people for themselves but the fact is this is also a right now problem as to what happens you know with these programs and with this money if these people start getting these checks in the mail there could be some serious issues i mean in a way this is shock therapy a treatment that you know doesn't kill you but it is very painful so maybe you could you could make the analogy to rehab yes you know if you stop taking drugs and go through withdrawal there is some pain there but there's a lot of reward as a result the problem is if you keep doing drugs because you don't want rehab you end up dying of an overdose and that's what's going to happen to the u.s. economy yes it's unfortunate that

a lot of people relied on promises from politicians. that can't be kept but the problem is to try to sustain the lies that's what's going to destroy the country the first step is admitting that our politicians lied over promise and let's deal with today's reality the money is not there and we can't keep borrowing we can't keep printing it we need to deal with reality i think it's a valid point peter seriously but rehab is different than throwing people to the streets with nobody to help and by the way some people can't afford we have and i need help for it so obviously when the government is figuring out where to cut the spending they don't need to throw anybody in the streets so there are plenty of plenty of people who are collecting social security checks right now that are pretty rich that are pretty well off they use their so security money to pay the dues of their country clubs they don't need that money yes are there people that if you took away their so security would be out in the street just so let's not take

away from the people but there are plenty of people who do not need that money and the taxes are being taken from younger people who are struggling to get by we're paying a lot more and security payroll taxes than they are in income taxes we don't want to raise taxes on them if you've got wealthy people that have a decent net worth they'd only done so security check the ones you say i mean just allow at least two to a small extent that your argument is very darwinian it's very survival of the fittest and the people at the bottom are really the ones who lose out and have less of a chance even than they have now of ever recovering from that you are already losing you know look at the cost of living look at the disparity now between the richest in the forest that's a result of these policies that's the result of central planning and central banking that bleeds main street and feeds wall street that pop has to come to an end and it's not going to come when if we keep on running up these deficits all the employment opportunities that are being destroyed by good big government good is

that her. my first war we were trying to work their way up the ladder and the government has taken a ladder beyond their reach all right certainly a different way of looking at it in some ways that you can almost and took away just that of arriving from the rich wall street to help the others but not totally piers i want to thank you so much as always for being i'm president of euro pacific capital in westport connecticut all this talk about how to deal with this nation's debt and sometimes you just gotta wonder how lawmakers measure up in terms of what they say needs to be cut and needs to be funded and what regular people think well i wonder that all the time so we sent our intrepid producer lindsay garfield out into the hot summer streets to talk to people visiting washington to find out how they would spend the money a little experiment that i think may say a whole lot about the divide between washington and well the rest of the country.

for the august second deadline that's approaching those in congress have been discussing where to spend and where to say we came to the streets of d.c. to ask americans where they want their government spending money we laid out stars and only gave people five pennies where did they want to see their money go. oh you got a lot of interest here what would make a good like balance. we're just going to put north side. i think that if we develop infrastructure. definitely have to. do the education infrastructure i think there are a lot of people who would say the military is super important for sure military is the first and i'm going to think infrastructure for sure. just because everything's crumbling military and foreign but i think we spent too much moments or so this already. looks like i'm going to put in health care maybe

two and i would definitely give the last two to the military i will tell you i will not be pretty any in military they're going to put money in military no matter what i'm. going to do social security because that definitely affects me and everybody deserves health care and that's something that is needed right now i'm not going to give any more blood money to wage for nothing for deficit. reduction and those planes so much balls or some of the games are really they just get down to business and i understand that they're a lot like your pennies and more points of view you know. that's politics. there you go so what have we learned today americans want to see most of their money going towards education and other social programs and not the deficit talks are taking center stage in congress not too many people are concerned about and where does the government spend most of its money that people care about

the least. the military. artsy washington d.c. all right from the average joe to president obama everyone in america seems to have an opinion on the budget crisis and the tea party is of course no exception they have an opinion on everything else are they a small crowd of them gathered on capitol hill quote hold the line against a deficit reduction compromise. meanwhile today a group of progressive featuring van jones and representative keith ellison also gathered on capitol hill to talk about their demands that congress not gut social security medicare and medicaid so what exactly is going on here van jones and other progressive trying to start their own sort of tea party only on the left for more on our studio in los angeles we're going to go to richard afghan senior fellow at the campaign for america's future peter richard i want to talk to you about this new progressive movement that we're seeing a little later and so far i would have to say

a little less powerful than what we've seen the tea party do what is this progressive movement trying to say here where. they are basically expressing the viewpoint of most americans according to the polls including most republicans and surprisingly even in some cases most tea party members with their are saying is that there should be no cuts to social security or medicare as part of the deficit discussion that social security should be fixed by raising the taxes particularly the payroll tax about one hundred six per thousand dollars which is its current limit that military cuts should be a big part of any long term plan and that we need aggressive action now to get jobs to turn the country around and i'm going to or we start talking about cuts i'm going to have to jump in there for a second because you said a lot of the tea party thinks it's way i'm going to have to argue that most of the tea party doesn't think that we should raise tax revenue and they also don't think

that we should cut they also are ok instead of with cutting things like social security when you say. well not according to the polls and as far as social security is concerned yes on the taxes and remember you know the tea party has a great advantage over the people who are trying to organize the rest of the country which is they have a coherent narrative and they are all politicians arguing for that narrative on a national scale the other side doesn't have that so the tea party gets very confused we saw it during the health reform debate when people were say get the government's hands off my medicare which is a medicare which is a government program so they don't really know exactly what they're for or against they're against taxes because they think tax increases mean means increasing their taxes when it really means for the wealthiest americans but the polls show that they do not want to see their own social security or medicare cut so they're very confused but they're being given an easy story to swallow and that's what they've

organized around and i think that's an interesting point that you make i know i was covering a tea party rally once and one of the people said you know he was getting that fringe benefits but he doesn't think that you know government run health care should should be part of the system and i said i think you're getting government sponsored health care but anyway i digress here's the deal a lot of time i go to these and you know these progressive they do get together is usually much smaller groups but here's some of their reasoning and they say here's what we need and we need this elimination of this hierarchy that we have now in america with this huge middle class they say let's figure out a way to allocate economic goods to satisfy a human need and they think should be more co-operative well guess what those philosophies last time i thought that's socialism so what's the difference why aren't these people simply just saying hey we're going to socialist in america and we're going to try out of it. you know what they're really saying you know you can argue about what is and isn't socialism what they're really arguing for are the

kind of policies that were put in by franklin roosevelt in the one nine hundred thirty years and we had that same debate about what to label it then but those policies saved the capitalist system there really arguing against dismantling the system that's been in place and kept this country prosperous for seventy five years and that's what we're seeing today on the other side so what they're really saying is let's preserve the kind of social contract that's worked so well for seventy five years and let's then build it and modernize it and make it work for everybody is that socialism if you think medicare is socialism then it's socialism if you think social security is socialism then it's socialism or right now most american households haven't saved even ten thousand dollars toward their own retirement so if at all it's a choice between starvation or socialism call it what you want i don't think people will pay starvation i think it's an interesting point and finally richard i want to know you know we're doing this kind of comparison and we're selling the tea party

members and we're selling this what we thought today right down the street here in washington with these progressive people getting together with van jones sort of leading the movement what are their strongest arguments and what they're going to take for them to sort of the get on the level of the tea party. well they say they were off to a good start they had many more house parties than the tea party did at the beginning remember they're brand new but i think what they need to do is they need to build a very clear simple direct message to the american people it's the party says get the government out of your life well that doesn't really make sense but it's simple so i think the challenge for this opposition to the tea party movement is to get a message that's that simple that resonates with people that they can understand that will get people all across the political spectrum say yeah i bet makes sense to me that's their past going forward certainly can't argue with that is definitely one thing that he party does really well richard ask our senior fellow at the campaign for america's future. well still ahead here on our the

first cut is the deepest or is it that's the question san francisco was trying to figure out when it comes to circumcision of the snippets on the story next. what drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions break through. who can you trust no one who hears you view with nobody missionaries see where we had a state controlled capitalism it's called satchels when nobody dares to

ask we do our t. question more. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear see some other part of it and realized everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm sorry welcome to the big picture. all right so for most of this newscast we've been talking about different discussions taking place around cutting the budget well now we're going to go from cutting the budget to cutting well something else we're talking now about first skin and more specifically whether or not circumcision should be made illegal in this country in one thousand nine hundred sixty along came into effect that criminalize circumcision or any other cutting of the genitalia of females under

eighteen years old now a group of people in san francisco think the law should extend to boy's as well at least in their city but a judge in san francisco now says the measure doesn't hold water because regulating medical procedures is actually a function of the state not cities and today the california superior court ruled that the initiative to ban circumcision will in fact be removed from san francisco's november ballot still this was an issue that divided quite a few people but also brought two very unlikely groups together muslims and jews and also rather a question of whether this is right or wrong into the national spotlight now i just returned from san francisco and here is what i discovered when i was there. it's one of the most colorful cities in america as full of flavor as it is people with homes stacked on top of one another like building blocks san francisco

california has always been a place where the hills are steep and so too are the issue. this time around the battle is over circumcisions to be or not to be forced circumcision is fundamentally a human rights violation i feel that. children whether boy or girl have a fundamental rights to all the body parts they were born with jonathan conti is part of a group that collected more than seven thousand signatures in favor of banning what they call male genital mutilation within the city limits and have to put the issue on the november ballot if passed the circumcision of anyone under eighteen would be a crime resulting in jail time and a one thousand dollars fine this outraged religious groups who see it as a direct attack on their religious rights jews like abby porth have joined forces with muslims to defend age old traditions this is a hate fueled campaign to curtail civil liberties in calif and in san francisco she

and many argue it's a parent's choice. the majority of american men are circumcised and according to the world health organization circumcised men have a lower risk of penile cancer sexually transmitted diseases and the sixty percent less chance of contracting h i v but at the center of this debate religion people want to have their kids circumcised they should i mean major religions believe in it for over two or three thousand years so i think it's a little bit of a slap to jews and muslims to just say circumcision is now illegal your freedom to practice religion and someone else's body religion is not a blank check to inflict harm upon your children and the vast majority of the world sent. america south america zealand australia most of europe the practice is virtually unheard of some have taken it a step further matthew hass the author of the bill is also the creator of the comic

for skin man a superhero that saves babies from the evil doctors and parents trying to circumcise them this comic book has some of the most disgusting vile anti-semitic images that appeared to be lifted out of nazi era propaganda the idea they you know force in man is an area and looking superhero who's going to come in save babies from the the evil jewish you know blood thirsty rabbi is disgusting the debate over circumcision has polarized this city with people taking sides on both religious and personal grounds well we'll all come to a head here at san francisco's civil court where our judge will decide whether or not the issue will be left up to voters some of whom say they'll vote to leave things as they are if you make a law about it it's really defined a lot of people there's a lot of history they're going to make their own decisions in light of i trust him to make the right decisions for their children and others who say they may be children at the time of the procedure but it's

a decision they have to live with when they grow up this is a big. and it's not baby decision vote or no book the battle lines over circumcision have now expanded far beyond the borders of san francisco becoming a national debate bringing what was once a purely private issue into the public domain reporting in san francisco christine for example. and back in washington earlier i spoke to catherine schneider a vice president of community engagement with the jewish federation of los angeles for more on this and i asked her why she thinks this issue came up and why people are getting really worked up about it and here's her response. i think it's because there are because you know this is a parental rights issue and in california in los angeles choices is very important and this is a diverse community many different face many different ethnicities and we recognize that parents get to make decisions for their children and that those rights could

be taken away by a locality was a frightening thing and not just for the jewish community but for the general community but what about this argument that a lot of people make that you know parents might make these decision for a baby it's not a life or death it's not even a health thing for some people in lives some people but it's a decision that even ones that baby grows up and becomes a man that they still have to live with well i think that's the nature of family and parenting parents make decisions for their children across the board that they will have to deal with for the rest of their lives in this case this is this is a religious decision this is a decision this is a decision that parents will make with their clergy with their doctor with their families and parents make decisions like that across the board that's the right of parents. what about this you know we talked a little bit about this law that came into effect president bill clinton signed this one nine hundred ninety six totally made it criminal to perform circumcision

or any sort of cutting on a girl's genitalia and yet it's not the same and a lot of guys that i spoke to in san francisco people behind this bill they say it is the thing you're taking away nerve endings you're taking away from sexual stimulation and vish should not be a women only or girls only build it it should extend across the board. well i think what we're talking about in terms of circumcision is standard medical practice and you know i think that it isn't clear there isn't a clear study that says that it does or doesn't do this and there are many studies that suggest there are in fact health benefits so it's not that we want to compare them but they're not the same they're in fact a very different you say that i'm not as you say this is a standard medical practice but in fact it certainly is here in the united states every figure i read says that you know more males in the united states are

circumcised the not that's not the case though is in the rest of the world. you know we're not advocating for circumcision that's not what this is about this is about parental choice and religious freedom we respect those that choose not to circumcise their sons and we would defend them and their right not to do that this is really about parental choice and giving families and parents the opportunity to act in accordance with their faith or with their medical preference or health preference this isn't about choice if there are key issues right now in california that we have to deal with we're still in the middle of our recession and i think that for most voters they want the state to regulate medical practices and they want to ensure that they have jobs that they have quality of life that's the key issues that we're struggling with are dealt with and this is really a tremendous distraction and that was katherine schneider vice president of community engagement with the jewish federation of los angeles. all right so i got

to bring something up because i've had sort of an unprecedented week for the first time in my two and a half years on twitter i am getting twitter hate mentions over a segment i did earlier this week about comic-con and i interviewed a woman who calls herself a costume enthusiastic and frequent comic con attendees and much of the anger is coming from a question that i asked her about why this convention draws so many people i think this year it was a hundred thousand people to san diego which by the way is my hometown so here's the question i asked her. we're in some really tough economic times i mean i know that right outside the convention center as we just saw in this story that we just showed homeless people goal or really really terrible rate of homelessness there and yet people as you say they're spending a thousand dollars why do you think they're not spending this money maybe even half the money coming to washington to protest the economy or choosing an issue that's

going to make a difference for the world we're giving it to a charity why are they spending it on comic-con all right so i got dozens of tweets about this and i want to read you a few so bought kohn wrote me and said frenzy just wondering how many vacations you take a year and last we checked pumping money into the local economy is a good thing i agree it is ours to say that i should be ashamed of myself that i'm a bully and a failed reporter and finally one of my favorites reporter wrote and simply said. back the fuck off so here's the deal i actually have thoroughly enjoy comic con i intended for several years and as i already mentioned i loved my hometown is economically stimulated by this surge of people coming into town i apologies to our guest and to my twitter haters if you would think that i would discourage you or anyone from having a good time i'll just say this and we'll leave it at this i'm just raising the

point that it's a comic books and costly the draw is one hundred thousand people out in this country and not the fact that millions of americans are unemployed not the fact the big banks and big oil companies are making more money than ever are hardworking intelligent people are having to make the choice between their heating bill and their dinner and i always appreciate the feedback but this wasn't a personal attack it's just another way to look at things and that's what we here at r.t. i do. and that is going to do it for now but for more on the stories we covered go to r.t. dot com slash usa or check out our youtube page youtube dot com slash r t america you can of course follow me on twitter i'm at randi and we're hate mail though going to hurt my feelings thanks so much for watching i'm christine for. the lower back yet.