a mess. if we don't have jobs recovery and everybody knows that the people are saying where is our hoover dam the moment. she took the words right out of my mouth so so is america celebrate seventy five years since the hoover dam started working we want to know where did all those damn innovative ideas go. for seven years of school and what i do. you know you've started to work your way up and with the economy dana bailout blues president obama aims to hit a high note with his jobs plan including some kind of public works project but will it be music to the unemployed years. that thinks that this is should go in the bank as a business and that somehow it's been turned into something else from failing to

bailing on the third anniversary of fannie and freddie bailouts should the u.s. have just let them burn a one artist thinks so. and is the news that just won't fly in the mainstream media at the sentencing of a russian pilot convicted of drug smuggling but the u.s. played a shady role from the cases stark love to detail i temporarily in a live report from new york. evening it's wednesday september seventh it's five pm here in washington d.c. i'm lauren lyster and you're watching our t.v. today is the seventy fifth anniversary of the hoover dam starting to work now this is an example of a large federal government project that cool people don't work and it created energy it's the kind of public works project that some call for today as

a solution to the country's economic problems which have persisted so where have those big ideas gone and with you. be possible today as we gear up to hear president obama's jobs plan this week when it's expected to call for some public works they are important questions to be asking and host of freedom and radio stuff on molyneux is here to hopefully answer some of them thank you for being here it's nice to see you so as you hear calls in the u.s. as we've heard for big projects such as the hoover dam that we saw you know earlier in the one nine hundred sent in the one thousand hundreds my question is was this kind of a project even be possible to date when you have to factor in all of the bureaucracy and to us that now exists. i think that these kinds of stimulus packages did not solve the problem of the great depression i mean you had massive amounts of government spending throughout the 1930's increased regulation and control of

business which resulted in pretty much a thirteen year long depression that was only ended by the second world war the breaking up of those kinds of monopolies after the second world war up here in canada we had almost no stimulus package and we're already out of a recession so i think what we're seeing here is the fact of the first is that governments have no money to do these kinds of stimulus packages unless they're going to print their way into hyperinflation so that's the first thing the second thing is the idea that governments will spend in times of recession and then save in times of economic growth is no longer feasible nobody really believes that you are going to spend and spend and there's no money left for these kinds of projects and so i think we're really going to see the end of this kind of paradigm i think we'll see a lot of talk but not much action with this kind of stuff ok i want to get to that but you did exactly answer my question because aside from the arguments arguments that you're making about whether these kind of big projects actually solve the economic problems if for example the u.s. tried to build the hoover dam today what it even be possible for that to happen and

any kind of a timely manner that addresses the need now for jobs they need now for stimulus when you factor in the department of energy the environmental protection agency osha i mean the list goes on every good story agencies that this would have to go through now. well there's no question it would take years to get through all of the various hurdles and gotchas that these kinds of mega projects need to go through you could do things like you could put monorails then you could extend the existing rail system you can always build and repair roads but i think in america what is needed more than new projects is simply the repair of the existing infrastructure a lot of it was thrown up after the second world war with the baby boomers when their kids went to school and it's really facing a lot of the crumbling infrastructure in the us and i think that the kind of money that needs to be spent identity just don't see whether government becoming the government got a huge amount of retirees heading into retirement for who are going to be drawing on the public sector pensions and social security problems medicare medicaid wars

overseas unless there's going to be some savage test elsewhere i don't see where they're going to get the money for this kind of stuff well aside from where the money is going to come from you're talking about repairing infrastructure and that is something that president obama is expected to announce as part of his jobs plan which is coming out with on thursday night so is this something that could help with the united states as unemployment problems. there's no question that when government fires their big water cannon of money at unemployed people they get picked up and thrown into jobs but the problem is is seeing the unseen costs of this kind of action so you might get millions of people who get government jobs from this kind of spending but that money is going to come from somewhere it's going to come from the private sector it's going to come out of other people who might be otherwise creating jobs what america needs to do with my very strong opinion is. cut oversight of small businesses cut taxes so that there can be a kind of economic growth but at the moment you know they'll be lots of people who'd be very happy and will vote for obama if he's going to promise them jobs but the unseen costs of this kind of stimulus spending can go on for years if you seen

this in japan twenty years of stimulus and they're still in a recession and my question to you is what do these kind of shovel ready construction jobs are you know obama's plan it's believed it will be repairing roads are helping to build schools those sorts of thing one of those jobs for for example laid off bureaucrats or laid off financially professionals or people who work in i.t. that can't find work or college grads who can't find work well with the exception the last two i would think would put them through some useful benefits or rather that mean i'm not bureaucrats out there building schools and shuffling paperwork that at least there's something tangible to show they get a few calluses and look a little better perhaps i don't know if it that simple though we actually sent our producer out to talk to some construction workers next door there is a charge that kind of repair we asked them how easy it would be for a stockbroker to do you his job here's what that worker said. yeah you could definitely it's like anything over the years here with me and i have seven years of

schooling and what i do is you know you've started the model work your way are you anything you know of. would come in go on from there to yeah it would be a smooth transition but it would be could be done so it's not like you just you know block out of corporate america and are qualified to go build a school i mean you just heard from a construction worker who said that he trained for seven years or something so if it's not that easy to put just everyone to work in these kind of jobs well but remember in the u.s. of course there's massive amounts of people who were involved in the housing boom who have from passing trade skills who are currently lying idle so i think that there's enough unemployment that sector that you could for the foreseeable future no matter how much you spend you'd still be able to drain off unemployment numbers from those people before you got to be sort of white fingered white collar office workers who may not be that much use but what about all those folks well i mean. i was in the i.t. industry for many years there are booms and there are

a bus and you just kind of have to right now you know you should be like the government is supposed to be you save your money when things are going well and you use your savings when things are going badly if those people who want their money then you know you have to learn your lesson but i don't think there's any magic to put those people back to work perhaps they can do more to bring your real if the government can get out of the way of allowing people to start new businesses but what a lot of those industries are mentioning i.t. another would be the financial industry and people say that the united states was overbanked to begin with and that it was due for a correction so some of these industries are coming back on. no i agree and that's the natural cycle i mean there are a lot of people working in the horse and buggy industry when cars came along you just have to move you have to retrain you have to be nimble and not expect that you're going to get that great of the great security that was around in the fifty's and sixty's so with all of those unemployed construction workers from the housing boom and it's about thirteen point five percent of that industry according to the bureau of labor statistics if they go to do these construction jobs and don't

retrain for other industries what happens when the road that they're building that the government subsidized is done. well yes that's the problem the stimulus is you know the idea behind a recession is that you've had a mal investment the money has gone to the wrong place it's going to build too many houses which you know nobody wants and if you give stimulus to allow construction workers i think you're quite right to stay in that industry all that happens is you're prolonging the amount of the amount of time that they're in there and you're preventing them in a sense from going and developing other skills in other more necessary areas so this is the problem stimulus spending simply continues the malinvestment that keeps recession racking on roads and it's i really appreciate your insight because there are just a lot of questions they come up it's not as simple as you know building a road and solving unemployment it doesn't seem in just a little context for our viewers this this bill is expected to be the clan obama's plan is expected to be three hundred billion dollars just for perspective that's

just twenty two percent of defense spending across two years for the u.s. and it's more than the four hundred fifteen billion dollars that the u.s. paid on interest on its national debt in two thousand and ten so maybe there's some places where the u.s. could get the money we're going to leave the conversation there though for today i appreciate you being here that was host of freedom maine radio on millennium. now as we look toward solutions it's also worth looking back at how the country got here in the first place well three years ago today there was a milestone the united states are the largest bailout and its entire history now when the u.s. took over the mortgage giants fannie mae and freddie mac. that is what hit this milestone it put taxpayers behind five trillion dollars in loans that those companies backed mortgages but what did this do for the u.s. economy exactly and looking today unemployment is nine point one percent close to

twenty seven percent of homeowners with mortgages are underwater that's according to those who track it and politicians are still looking for solutions to help us understand if any of them can work earlier i also spoke with andrew schiff of europe a set of capital and i asked him what those bailouts did for the u.s. economy to start it off here's what he said. it's been a thing for the u.s. economy it certainly saved it saved the holders of fannie mae and freddie mac. bonds what it saved i mean basically you had fannie and freddie being completely bankrupt after having made ridiculously foolish loans into the mortgage market now i don't think there's anything criminal about offering. foolish loans or even buying shares in a company that's making foolish loans that is stupid it's not necessarily necessarily criminal but as a result of the bailouts these companies should have gone down the mortgage market a completely disappeared i mean the essential u.s. housing market should have been returned to a cash business which was which was not what didn't happen but instead all of the

losses that should have been borne by fannie and freddie shareholders and bondholders and the banks that bought and sold fannie mae braun's and any loans those people should have borne the losses i mean i think the banking system would have survived in a much more truncated form in a much more much smaller more manageable form instead of all those losses get socialized absorbed by the u.s. government and now all of the taxpayers are on the hook for those losses and the mortgage industry is pretty much survived intact and they're still making bad loans and they're still artificially pumping up the housing market which has still haven't had a long way to fall and we haven't even recognized those losses we just push them off into the future in short has been anything and you meant tendo that it has added to government debt and you i've heard you be a fierce critic of countries that you called addicted to debt or at least each day that they're facing recession as a result now it's not just the u.s. i'm guessing that with their debt at one hundred twenty percent i g.d.p.

that you would think that italy falls into that category sure and positive start let me just let me just get my question that's part of their austerity package that they're voting on now includes a three percent wealth tax for the rich could be part of the solution for the u.s. . well i don't think so i mean i believe that progressive taxes quote unquote are actually very regressive for an economy you cannot tax your way to pop prosperity the way some may think and i think the problem extends from all the qana means that are that are basically haven't lived beyond their means for many years and that includes united states and that includes most of western europe certainly including italy and these are countries that you know have provided a very generous social safety net and who have been you know provided the means to pay for it and that includes united states. and you know certainly what we're doing is we're by all these measures transferring our debts to the government and then printing trying to print money to pay those debts we're just kicking the can down the road to use an overly overly use metaphor and you know some day to piper's

going to be paid and it looks like the day of reckoning is moving ever closer based on the volatility we're seeing the marketplace the confusion we're seeing in the markets and some of the more egregious examples of of over overly indebted governments around the world and clearly we need solutions and i hear what you're saying that your position is that you can't tax your way to prosperity but when i ask you can i talk about your personal question just to kind of sure he what you think your do you plan a ferrari do you like ferrari. love ferrars well i wouldn't necessarily have them myself but if you want to give me one for free i wouldn't turn it down ok so you're a fan of her are you ok well let's hear a man a ferrari which is a pretty expensive car needless to say this is what he's saying about taxing the rich just solve government debt if you told an italian paper that he said you have to begin by asking it of those who have the most because it is scandalous that it should be out of the middle class so as to feel

a ferrari which is one of the let's admit symbols of wealth is saying that come on and you don't have to mean something well i can't i can't really talk about italian tax law i'm not really fully up on it unfortunately but i can talk a little about the united states tax policy and i can say there is a widely held myth that the that the rich now pay as low a percentage of their income as if they ever have which is untrue i mean warren buffett got a lot of press because he says he doesn't pay that he his secretary made the case more taxes than he does which is only true because all of warren buffett's income comes in the form the form of dividends and capital gains and those are taxed at a fifteen percent rate but the average person who has a salary makes three hundred thousand or two hundred thousand dollars a year they pay more. than the middle class as a percentage of what they make in fact we have more people in the united states now workers who pay zero income tax than we ever have so much forty seven percent of american workers pay your income tax they pay some payroll taxes that social

security stuff like that but even that is very very progressive so i mean i know i you know i make a decent salary and i get taxed close to fifty percent of what i make when you when you factor in state taxes we have state the state of new york as a tax which you don't see that second level of taxation you don't see in other countries and then we have local taxes as well and sales taxes so we get taxed everywhere and i know you make taxes too much higher you know the the incentive to work diminishes and the more productive elements of society stop working and they say why bother i mean it's very easy for the chairman of ferrari and warren buffett is a i've got enough money but. but those are the very the top one percent don't you know the real issue is the top ten percent and a lot of those people work very hard i can guarantee you lou if we do look at that just top one percent of the super rich if in their case to be made that they could contribute more. well i don't know i mean if they still pay a lot of taxes they pay a lot of taxes but whether the twenty or thirty forty percent is enough i'm not sure but you got to have those top one percent those are the job creators i mean it

sounds like a cliche but those are the people in the companies those are the people that are the innovators and those are the people that create jobs the government doesn't create jobs private the private sector creates jobs and you want to make it as easy as those people as easy for those people to continue their job creating efforts as possible and i did question answer more on that so if you want to see the whole interview you can check it out on the web site that was andrew chef of euro pacific capital now big banks may have gotten off easy with government bailouts as my last guest just explained they've gotten their risk back by the government while enjoying the rewards of their profits and despite the mortgage meltdown an overwhelming evidence of fraud that still exists today authorities have not gone after any c.e.o.'s that were in charge during the collapse but police questioning a middle aged artist with a political message for those banks well that is fair game archie's ramon glenda found a painter who is being treated like a terrorist suspect as a result of his painting watch. i'm not

a terrorist i am not firebombing in banks i never even entertain the notion in anything more than just a bit like this alex shaffer has laid out all his frustration with the financial system on campus bad banks bad businesses should fail and banks a business and somehow it's been turned into something else artists are known for catching the spirit of the times cheaper recent pains to keep in bank buildings ingolf and planes caught the eye of the los angeles police chief who was first approached while painting in front of a chase bank three weeks later the police visited his home asking him if he hated banks and planned to do that it's just bizarre because i don't feel like i've done anything outside of everything i've ever done in my heart and yet this is really

touched a nerve in recent years it seems like large banks and their bosses have been protected from prosecution for their role in the devastating financial crisis now it appears banks are being protected even from an artist brushstroke the chaos depicted in alec sievers painting is just symbolic but the truth financial chaos caused by d.p. morgan chase and other big banks is very real to many americans it's a different kind of. of terrorism that they're causing since two thousand and eight know the bank bosses in charge during the mortgage meltdown have done any jail time instead they were the recipients of bailouts and bonuses well millions of americans suffer through foreclosure unemployment and financial ruin cheapest flames symbolize bringing the current system down i think we need to reform our banking

system quick. besides the repeated visits from police chief are also says recent online visitors to his blog include employees that j.p. morgan chase as was members of the department of justice well that's what my dad said this morning when i call it you need to get a lawyer and find out some hours here on the life left chafer maintains a good sense of humor about the ordeal and his symbolic bank burning seems to be resonating with the public and i started the bidding off of nine hundred twenty bucks and it's a ten thousand one hundred now that's the big money statement he definitely plans to take to the bank in los angeles ramon gil endo r t. ok so maybe hopefully make a little bit of money off of his travel and we've been speaking a lot about money and government spending with the bailouts now something else that the government spent a lot of money on but point two trillion dollars has gone to wars in iraq and

afghanistan since two thousand words of course that began after the attacks of september eleventh in the name of the war on terror but ten years later do people feel the money spent post nine eleven has been worth it well that is the question that laurie harkness of the resident dot net asked people on the streets of new york here's what they said. the so-called war on terror that launched after the tragic nine eleven attacks on the u.s. has cost hundreds of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars by some estimates so ten years later what the african worth it this week let's talk about that i think it's more secure now i think that i believe that yes is it trillions of dollars safer. i can say that i don't know the war actually started more terror as. that's my opinion but that's the european opinions of this as you know

the europeans are not as aggressive in the war against terrorism as the americans so america anybody's involved just just back off. you know because if you. break one. and you don't want to it's so it's just it's not easy to come up with the right answer if anybody wants to you know to cause trouble or to or to provoke some kind of attack they can do so with or without a war so would you categorize the war on terror as a failure. as a necessary do you think the world the safer because of it i don't know i think of that we have been. waiting for to get him more than three hours and i think that. maybe it's as if i don't know though do you think we're giving up too much liberty in the world in the name of security i think that yes if the danger is very close we have to give more liberties and if the world becomes safer maybe we can get them

back you're ok with giving them up for a lie oh yeah i think so we should probably stop using the word for some for for starters in the war on terror stop using the phrase just it's just such a stupid phrase and it was coined for political reasons i think we should should stop using bad and just just do what needs to be done whether or not you think it's been worth the effort the bottom line is the war on terror has been bloody and costly and we still have yet to see any clear plan for it then. and as we come up on the tenth year ten year anniversary of the attacks on the world trade centers on nine eleven it'll be interesting to see how many of those kind of opinions especially the european perspective you're going to see on the us mainstream media i challenge you to see you let me know. all right well there is so

much going on in the world but what are these big stories happening now that you are not likely to see on u.s. mainstream media well what about four hundred that thirty thousand israelis who took to the streets across the country over the weekend in the biggest protest in the country's history look at this behind me they're demanding social justice a lower cost of living and government solutions for a struggling middle class sounds a little for mayor actually also what about the execution of troy davis a date was set today for that to happen later this month that's after a u.s. supreme court decision cleared the way for this now who is davis well he is a high profile death row inmate who claims he is innocent of killing that savannah police officer you saw there now there is no physical evidence linking davis to the crime and seven out of the ten witnesses in his trial later recanted or changed their testimonies which are just a few reasons why he's become a focal point for anti death penalty activists and critics of the u.s.

criminal justice system around the world and also constant in your shame go he's a russian pilot accused of conspiring to smuggle drugs his sentencing is scheduled to be handed down in court today now he was arrested in liberia and secretly taken to the u.s. where he was reportedly put in solitary confinement now russia has protested the way he's been treated in the u.s. and for one the u.s. failed to inform russia of his arrest in the first place and the u.s. side of the story well they fax the info to the wrong country those are just a few of the issues going on here but joining us now to talk about so many more of them and the latest about what's going on in this case from new york is archie's own anastasio churkin an associate so nice to see you so while we're waiting for the sentencing to come down because we don't know yet of your shame because fate exactly let's talk about some of the bizarre curiosities of this case they started right from the beginning didn't they. absolutely lore and this really is the

curious case of constantine your son called the russian pilot in his forty's was snatched up in. a secret agent operation in liberia by u.s. officials pretending to be international drug dealers they snatched him up last year brought him onto u.s. soil for got to really inform russia that they had basically kidnapped a russian citizen and brought him on to u.s. soil for trial and russia was of course very disappointed they said wait a minute this really is a breach of international law when you snatch up a citizen of another country from a third country and bring them to the united states or anywhere else the country of their citizenship has to be informed that was not the case and as you mentioned the united states said oh we're sorry we actually pressed the wrong fax number so the notice of this man's being brought to us so i was actually sent to romania and even more shockingly russia didn't know for quite

a while where this man was including his family that effectively thought he was missing take a listen to what constantine wife told us a little while ago in liberia he was surrounded by five agents the second he stepped off the plane he was accompanied by guards he spent day and night in his room only during the trial did he find out that all he had around him were agents that introduced him to some men who transported drugs that's it nothing else happened they wanted to jail him and they did. so there you go lauren this man snatched up last year are now facing up to thirty years behind bars here in the united states and we're going to wait and see exactly what his faces of faith fate is going to be in a little while and as you mentioned he was possibly kidnapped that this could have been a breach of international law so for someone in that circumstance what kind of prison time are we talking about here. well lord it really is interesting because we have the prosecution that says they want this man behind bars for as much as thirty

years and we have his lawyers who are saying wait this man has never had a criminal background he's never sued any kind of criminal charges in the united states in russia nor anywhere else in the world plus this man has never actually stepped foot on american territory and now he's here facing this much potential prison time and basically this is what we're going to find out really the result today we know that in april a jury of twelve unanimously found this man guilty but curiously your schenkel was arrested with three other men from africa one of them was a mastermind found to be the mastermind of this so-called conspiracy he has already been found guilty for thirty years but the other two men who basically admitted to being international drug dealers but said they didn't really have any intention to bring drugs to the united states were found not guilty will continue to follow the case but that was the latest from our team correspondent and. now we do have an update for you and a story that our t.v.

is covering as it's breaking it's a deadly plane crash involving a local hockey team it happened in the center of yarl's labile in russia two survivors of yak flight forty two are in critical condition tonight and forty three people are dead after the plane crashed during takeoff again most of the victims were members of an ice hockey team the local one players on that team are from all over the world though three of them were former members of the florida panthers it is the first ever deadly crash involving a sports team and modern russia and you can go to our website r.t. dot com for the latest coverage our chief correspondent in isa now is there we also have a slideshow with pictures from the crash and the response from the international hockey community. but that's going to do it for now that's all we have it five for more on the stories we cover go to our team dot com slash usa or you tube page to its you tube dot com slash r t america you can follow me on twitter at lauren lyster and you can do.