welcome to the loner show we have at the real headlines with none of the mercy if you live out of washington d.c. now and i'm going to speak to and his spirit of the young turks about a new report that shows that twenty five of the c.e.o.'s for america's one hundred biggest corporations they got more income first compensation then their entire company paid in taxes last year not exactly what you would call paying your fair share but another story to get your blood boiling commission on board time contracting is found at least thirty billion dollars have given out contracts for iraq and afghanistan have been wasted because steve england about how that's just

a drop in the bucket of our overall military waste and how it is that we really got to this point then also have you seen a video of two robots talking to each other you know about things like unicorns lying and god we're going to speak to professor behind this project about how it works and what it means for the future of artificial intelligence we have all of that and more for you tonight including a dose of happy hour but first take a look at what the mainstream media has decided to miss. i have written a few things a little bit differently today we're going to start by going back to exactly one year ago today when president obama made this announcement from the oval office. i am announcing that the american combat mission in iraq has come to the united states has paid a huge price to put the future of iraq in the hands of its people we have met our responsibilities now. it's time to turn the page. that's

right blunt year ago today our combat operations in iraq are supposed to be over of course the mainstream media had already turned the page even before obama gave that speech like ten days before august nineteenth of last year we saw the top reporters writing in tanks hanging with the troops acting like it was really and truly the end of the war. as soon as all the soldiers leave iraq operation iraqi freedom the combat mission in iraq will be over to the war in the morning. we hear. there are. combat soldier cos it's a great guess the gates are closing right now seeing what we just saw right here live with that gate closing down the last u.s. combat your heart totally covered in grease spot it's so important it's an important moment. you know it gives me goosebumps it's the fact that one year later one year after the official end of combat operations in iraq was announced we're

still there and fact we have almost fifty thousand troops that are still there and if everything goes as the pentagon wants it to or so can have up to ten thousand troops left after the end of this year even though by agreement they're all supposed to be out by the end of two thousand and eleven that of course doesn't even include the thousands of military contractors that are in the country the five thousand or so strong mercenary army that the state department is decided that it needs. and you know one year later the mainstream media is completely silent about this where the reporters on the ground are the goosebumps now are they embarrassed about all the fanfare year ago you know they'd rather just not bring it up so they don't have to look like well they overreacted a little bit personally i think that it's a disgrace what should be giving everybody goosebumps is not only the war still going on for the people are still dying we've seen more some months this year to be just as violent if not more violent than those in two thousand and three when it we've seen fifty nine american service members lose their lives and those

statistics only go up to the month of july and they have been one thousand seven hundred and ninety recorded civilian deaths but those real numbers are undoubtedly much higher and we don't even know for sure how many contractors lost their lives so i just wonder how their families feel about the fact that last year the mainstream media threw a huge party and this year everyone's already forgotten about it we can all just have a bout of collective amnesia and expect things to change or get better the more wars that we sit by and forget the war will be waged against the mainstream media doesn't feel guilty about that because this is something that today one year later they've chosen to miss. or here's something for the congressional super committee to think about while americans are reeling from the great recession and thinking of which budget cuts are going to come down hard on them it's a new report from the institute for policy studies and it shows that out of two thousand and ten the hundred highest paid corporate chief executives in the u.s.

twenty five of those took home more than in their c.e.o. pay and their company paid in federal income taxes now these are some of biggest corporations in the world we're talking about the rise of boeing honeywell of general electric evade ford motorola and dow chemical and all the twenty five c.e.o.'s averaged around sixteen point seven million dollars in salary that is well above two thousand and nine southbridge of ten point. million then when tax time did come most of the companies actually came out ahead collecting tax refunds from the i.r.s. the average of three hundred four million dollars so far we get into what that means let me just give you two more statistics in the report that my kitchen fuming at eighteen of the twenty five companies operated in subsidiaries and offshore tax havens and twenty of these twenty five companies also spent more money on lobbying and they paid corporate taxes so now can we say hello washington why are you letting this happen joining me from our studio in los angeles is an experience host

of the young turks and a thanks so much for joining us tonight now there is a think there's a lot to pick through here but what was her first reaction about seeing these numbers my reaction was that i wasn't surprised at all i mean one of the problems in our economy right now is not just the fact that we're spending nearly forty percent of our federal income on defense but the fact that we are giving these massive corporations these huge tax breaks and in fact not only are some of them not paying taxes they're getting tax refunds to give you one example of that general electric c.e.o. he made fifteen point two million dollars last year the company got a three point three billion dollar federal refund and they invested forty one million dollars in lobbying ok that is the reason why our country is in such an economic disaster we're having these huge corporations not care pay their fair share of taxes. it's something that gets my blood boiling personally and it's

a huge problem and i think that one of the things that becomes a distraction here often is of course we hear a lot about c.e.o. pay and how much their pay has risen i think it was eighty three percent or some of the statistics that we've seen earlier this year but it's not just about the c.e.o. isn't it i mean this is about entire corporate culture where as a c.e.o. you are rewarded the more you get away with not paying any taxes that your company . that is absolutely true in fact sixty minutes did a really great report on this back in january lesley stahl was reporting on this and she talked about all of these overseas tax breaks that the u.s. gives these massive corporations now we're supposed to give them incentives to create jobs in the united states but in fact we are giving them incentives to move out of the country so what we're seeing is these corporations setting up these boxes in countries like switzerland where they pay less in taxes and where they get

overseas tax breaks. overseas tax breaks here in the united states so they claim that they're incorporated in switzerland but then when lesley stahl and the sixty minutes team goes to switzerland to find their you know main offices what do they find they find appeal box ok so they're finding ways to dodge taxes and not pay their fair share and in fact in that sixty minutes report they also talk about how if you are a corporation that is pain even close to your fair share in taxes well then all of a sudden other corporations laugh at you because you're not good enough in terms of taking advantage of the system that's right you can't be a c.e.o. because clearly you have figured out how to work around all the loopholes but how do we make sure that the congressional super committee right just started meeting for the first time yesterday that's going to be deciding one point two trillion dollars in cuts and ways to figure out how to fix our budget how do you make sure that they see this report how do we rub it in their faces and we keep hearing that

corporate tax rates are too high and that everyday americans need to pay their fair share. alona you know better than that they don't care about the report why would they care about the report when these corporations are spending so much money on lobbying when those corporations are the same corporations that are giving them so much money in campaigns and fattening up their pockets they don't care about this you know all the politicians right now are bought and that's the reason why we have a huge problem in the united states with the economy and with these corporate tax loopholes with the extension of the bush tax cuts why are all these things happening it's because corporations are now seen as people in this country the citizens united ruling made it possible for these corporations to fatten the pockets of politicians that's why this report doesn't even matter until we can do something to change the citizens united ruling and change the way that corporations donate money to these politicians so it's really discouraging but that's why when i come on the show i talk about the fact that we need you know our own arab spring

something that al gore said we really need to fight against this corporations are going to do he think about it they're taking advantage of the system politicians aren't going to do anything about it they're getting rich from the corporations the american people need to do something about it so it's important for the american people to really look at this report and get angry about it and really protest what we're seeing here in this country by the way in the beginning you mentioned how ford is taking advantage of these corporate tax loopholes one of very underreported story is the fact that ford motor company is going to spend nine hundred million dollars in india to create a new factory and that factory will employ five thousand indians not american workers so our corporate tax loopholes which are supposed to give them incentives to create jobs in the united states apparently aren't working yeah definitely the only ones that are getting rich from this here right are of course the corporations the corporate c.e.o.'s and the politicians because in fact as i mentioned eighteen of the twenty five companies there they paid more in lobbying and then they did in taxes so you can say that was going to the government but it was going to

individuals pockets in the government there and i want to. one last thing which is akin to you which is trying to get through its thirty nine billion dollar merger with t. mobile which actually the justice department decided to file a lawsuit today an antitrust lawsuit to try to stop that but before the justice department tried to stop the eighteenth he was trying to sweeten the deal i guess you could say and they just said that we're going to bring five thousand call center jobs back to america what does that tell you about the fact that companies are saying right now that it's too uncertain the they can't create more jobs but oh i guess if it comes to a merger of this beneficial for them five thousand is easy it tells us what we've known all along we know that the reason why they're sending jobs overseas is because they can get cheap labor but if they can make a sweet deal and get a profit off this merger then all right share will sweeten the deal will bring five thousand jobs back to the united states shibani t.n.c. you're taking advantage of these corporate tax loopholes you're taking advantage of these tax breaks you have the responsibility to create jobs in the united states so

for you to take advantage of the situation and bring up something that is so politically charged right now in this economic situation is really just disgusting r. and i thank you so much for joining us tonight thank you ana. and already today president obama announced that he's going to address congress in a joint session next wednesday night to present his brand new improved jobs plan and we decided to send our intrepid producer patrice and essentially out on the streets of washington to ask americans what they want to hear from the president. what do you think obama should do to create more jobs for this country. i'm a firm believer in supporting the infrastructure of the united states i think we need to look towards their cultural side of the united states in the things and you know maybe supporting our own maybe growing around i think the moon before you go. back and. think he alone as president can't create jobs you can blame the president

but we've got several hundred people on capitol hill who have to agree with the plan and can override whatever the president puts out there to be honest job market's not very good right now so it's kind of been a little bit more difficult than i would have expected or hoped i know a lot of people out of work and a lot of people have been out of work for a very long time in the south who really really feel it hard and they're losing their jobs not being able to pay their bills and they're not getting not feeling a lot of support from him how would you describe his job so far oh i love obama i feel like he's he's losing a lot of our country and i don't feel the patriotism here anymore would you reelect obama now. i don't i would i will not vote for him would you reelect him. probably not can we vote can we vote. so sounds like the president is going to need to change at least a few minds if he's going to win a second term in office. now coming up next it's the military industrial complex

that work ahead we'll talk about yet another report highlighting pentagon waste and how that is just a drop in the bucket of the one trillion dollars the pentagon coming out for christmas speaking about that with stephen blaine author of space first of defense the battle to find america's empire. into the only one with the mechanisms to do the work 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 some love to see a story and it seems so silly you think you understand it and then something else here's some other part of it and realized everything you saw you don't know i'm

sorry love is a big issue. let's not forget that we had been a part party. i think. one well. we never got the that says they're going to keep you safe get ready if you give them their freedom.

well here's a shocker more weight has been discovered and spending on our conflicts abroad and i played the be a great place for the debt reduction super committee to start the after a two year inquiry commission on wartime contracting released its final report today and they found that more than thirty billion dollars has been wasted from u.s. funded contracts for the wars in iraq and afghanistan that's about one in every six dollars of one hundred ninety two point five billion spent on those contracts and grants from two thousand and two to two thousand and eleven and the report also

predicted that unless the government bring significant changes to the way that it plans awards oversees these contracts never grow to sixty billion in waste in the broad spectrum of our massive military industrial calls like that sixty billion is really just a drop in the bucket and back there's a least a trillion dollars in the pentagon can't even account for and its own spending so if we want to fix that waste i think we have to look at why we've become so militarized to begin with and discuss this with me is steven green author of state versus defense the battles defend america's empire even thanks so much for joining me on iran now if you can so i had a little bit of sarcastic tone there when i said that this is such a shocker i'm not shocked i'm assuming that you're not shocked that at the same time we heard claire mccaskill who actually asked for this report to be commissioned two years ago saying that she was shocked at the result is congress blind how can they remain so blind to what's going on they're being very disingenuous here on every year the of the pentagon's own inspector general issues a disclaimer on pentagon's accounts. and the it disclaims any

responsibility because of the view enormous amount of substantiated or unsupported expenditures these irregularities can reach the value of of hundreds of billions of dollars sometimes over a trillion dollars every year and every several years congress and the members of congress that this must stop there has to be reform there has to be more transparency and nothing ever changes that we see nothing will so like i said i think that probably we have to understand how it is that we got to this point right because this wartime contracting that really only is a tiny bit of it that isn't even including the rest of the war spending that we do that is new clues in these weapon systems that take decades in cars and also maybe a trillion dollars like that pretty five right straight right here program and so you write about in your book how it is that this empire of america became such a militarized one percent that for us well it really goes back to the end of the world works through one beginning of the cold war and during the truman administration with the doctrine of containment trade heard of and it was basically

a policy making the policy of the nation to confront the soviet union or to become a chinese from anywhere in the world that by definition for an enormous military infrastructure which the united states was in a position to build because it was the only major power that the world works and not only. are not as rubble as we as russia or china other parts of europe of course was but. so that was really the beginning and it and ever since the military is in congress and the white house. and to a certain extent and the pentagon have fostered an intensification of this militarization and i should point out that in my research of the book it was quite clear that the source of the militarization was less the pentagon and more civilians in congress pushing for a tough moment of the soviet for example the people that we see. today i guess you

could say they are the john mccains or the lindsey graham's of the world and some of the pundits the john bolton's as well there but do you think that there is another option if you're going to call american empire is there another way to do it other than militarily i mean as we were seeing that history could you just be a wonderful diplomatic loving empire or you're the you could argue that the british went through a similar transformation in the nineteenth forty's and fifty's where they simply lost that it was for a very very exhausted because of the sources that they need to maintain their own empire we may be inflection point right now it's interesting that the suddenly difference burning is on the table now the question is what are they going to cut and till they start talking seriously about withdrawing some of these enormous for deployment of the u.s. house in asia and europe over to when it's in the middle east. you know the u.s. taxpayer is still going to be on the hook we're talking about some of the bases

here right i mean at the end of the day there's not even anybody who knows the exact number of bases you know you can go to a number of different pentagon officials you know a whole different very different numbers and some people will tell you more than seven hundred more than nine hundred there could be over a thousand that's insane where you can bet there's more to it than your group we're told it was ok so now let's go through this one trillion dollar figure do you think you throw out what the pentagon's baseline budget budget is six hundred fifty billion are but we add in the wars in iraq and afghanistan and pump it up about seven fifty then you're talking about the national security related expenditures that are off the pentagon's books so for example the forty or fifty billion dollars that the current energy spends military in order to stockpile the intelligence budget and who knows what that comes to and what it's been estimated at sixty seventy billion dollars. the department of veteran affairs which is america's third largest department has enormous hours plus the interest on all this since we are of

course a better nation. but the time you add all that up it exceeds that sort of dollars which is what twenty twenty five percent of the federal budget but how much of that normally do you think is waste and how do we please them and where does this go i feel like somebody has to know it's some point where it ends up going it's probably maybe a little bit easier to figure it out if you're in afghanistan you're assuming that we're paying off warlords but in america who are they paying off well that's a big question since the nine eleven we've seen the last creation of this enormous national security droppers much of which is underground the number of federal employees who have top secret clearance has skyrocketed so we don't know what they're doing or how much they're spending so it really was a block or so now one of the things that you wrote to you is that a plurality of pearl out excuse me the reality of citizens have been convinced that their best guarantee of security is not peace but war do you think that most americans really believe that or i think you certainly didn't you know aftermath of the nine eleven terrorist attacks because they were told by the president that

these terrible attacks were not to provoke ation for what we do in other words our policies but who we are values that was not true we were shocked on nine eleven because of certain policies that we that we maintain as a sovereign nation in the middle east which is a source of great frustration and aramis from many people it was not just the extremists. so it really was it was not an existential threat and i think president bush at the time to do their job i was stoking this national hysteria about the threat the nature of the threat the motivation of the times which he was able to ride for three years do people still believe that now i don't know who it will be interesting to see and i think that americans are growing a little a little weary of that but can we actually change this system anymore or like you know is already the build up to some war with china that people democratic i don't

think is inevitable under way. it's a drone from one of my books if you look at what's happening in asia there is an arms race between the u.s. and china there is enormous build up with the pentagon as is it was engaged in addition to the rather short order considerable distance that already has there. and the two sides are talking past one another you know the view that the americans say we welcome are ok so we're honest with china but we're not going to concede to the authority or control over of the strategic ceilings of of asia the chinese are saying this is or historically this is our sort of influence you have your monroe doctrine and we expect the same products absent any good faith effort to try to reconcile those two positions i think some kind of conflict is in this water so we can talk about defense cuts all we want but we are you know they're building out for this next arms race but china stephen thank you so much for joining us tonight for having. now let's look at an area that our defense department should devote more attention to the needs of our soldiers and veterans and the consequences of their service and the secret p.t.s.d.

the huge problem months to our soldiers who return from war it is the military the military do enough to respect their struggle archies very important i got a chance to sit down with a marine veteran who experience that ultimate cost of war far too often. thank you thank you very much into the infinite world of literature enters this twenty eight year old ex marine an american who abandoned her weapon four written words to tell a story she says is kept censored from u.s. citizens even people may know that it affects us i don't think that they understand that way. and the toll that it takes us and seeing the effects or. the literal effects of the bodies that were made i couldn't figure out why why are we already are we doing again why are we why are we doing you know and as it was this person's life force was just goodell's memoir she did black details

a traumatic and human account of war in two thousand and four good old spend eight months in iraq collecting cataloging bagging and boxing the bodies of dead marines at the mortuary affairs unit and experience no u.s. president who's declared war has ever endured if it was a result of or an explosion there could be several body pieces so sometimes that would require us to you know fall under a truck or crawl into trucks or just as you mentioned. you know you want to. push this that you can get back to the feeling i dealt pieced fallen soldiers back together after receiving body bags filled with limbs on one occasion a bag she process was carrying only the heads of her comrades we didn't know what we were seeing when we had opened up the bag we didn't know what was in the bag. when we had gotten that particular body back so when we had uns it you know as soon

as you call that a flap and you see that it's had to mediately you know look away i mean it's difficult to look at but you have to look at that because you have to you know put them in their respective body bag. some to their respective family nearly four thousand five hundred u.s. soldiers have returned from iraq in caskets more than fifteen hundred flown in from america's other war in afghanistan that was a marine and there for the millions who do make it home alive many like a doubt are twelve mentored by memories post-traumatic stress disorder depression and substance abuse i couldn't leave my apartment you know i didn't have friends and talk to anybody. and a lot of it you can't deal with. you don't deal with a nice suffer from flashbacks and nightmares and i i couldn't process that i had a really hard and make sense of it more than six years later adele says she's still

searching for reasons to justify the damage and death caused by the u.s. war in iraq as a marine she did what she was told as a civilian she questions why u.s. leaders glorified soldiers as heroes but neglect to speak about the consequences of their service i don't know that the government respects the trends because if there is like that i don't think that they would send us to these places. to carry out what they're asking of us so i don't think that their respect is there from the get go. declaring war is the prerogative of politicians over the decades us wars have resulted in a reported twenty three million american veterans and many left struggling to adjust to life following the battle or a shift from fighting enemies to fighting demons or in a fortnight or r.t.

new york. so the contact we have our wednesday night edition of you said it i read it and a video of two of us talking to each other and gone viral and how disappointed you might be surprised by the technology we're going to chat with one of the men behind the madness interest payments. into an american military mechanisms if you don't work to bring justice or accountability. i have every right to know what my government should do if you want to know why i think taxes. but i would characterize obama as a charismatic version of american exceptionalism. you know some good to see a story and it seems so silly you think you understand it and then a glimpse something else hears you so.