realize that everything you. are. welcome to be a lot of show that the real headlines with none of mercy are going to live out of washington d.c. now tonight i'm going to take a good look at sopa stop online piracy act after a very loud observation the house committee has now come up with a watered down and amended version but the end of the day is this still fundamentally a fencer should bill cato's julian sanchez is going to join us for that then yesterday occupy protesters targeted towards along the west coast but here we see a lot of questions of strategy emerging are such drastic actions just what we need what even unions can't do or does it hurt the ninety nine more than the one percent

and there is a brand new political party that was just launched here in d.c. this week going to take the influence of money out of politics and it's called the justice party a former salt lake city mayor and the man who wants to run for president on this party ticket rocky anderson is going to join us we'll have all that and more fit in i couldn't he does have happy hour but first let's take a look at the mainstream media has decided to miss. all right so as the campaign gets more intense as we get closer to the primaries and as newt gingrich seems to be on a roll with the polls the mainstream media is going absolutely crazy obsessive lee talking about the new versus mitt that basically amounts of trash talking and making up on both sides you know there's nothing of the mainstream media loves more than a tit for tat boxing match style look at our political culture. and after a fight shaping up for the white house mitt romney just weeks ago was hoping to

seal the nomination early now acknowledging he's got some catching up to do mitt romney says that you demand to be the g.o.p. race for the white house but romney says he's ready for a fight it looks like the gloves are coming off as mitt romney and newt gingrich go on the attack but we're just a few weeks away from the voting in iowa new hampshire and it's been anything but a positive campaign in the last forty eight hours we've seen newt gingrich and mitt romney go after each other newt gingrich is the front runner if you look at the polling over the past several weeks if you look at the enthusiasm he's when he sort of the momentum primary at this point mitt romney still has an advantage in organization and sort of the long term infrastructure of a campaign with three weeks until the first time will cost as you can tell it's only going to get more intense it started with romney suggesting that gingrich should give back to a million dollars here and consulting for mortgage giant freddie mac. and then gay marriage fired right back it didn't take but just a couple of hours for the former speaker to fire back saying that perhaps mitt romney should compensate some of the people he downsized when he was the head of

a private investment firm. are now see the problem here is that once again we just see this massive case of tunnel vision we see a big case of overdoing it in focusing on just two men who are the so-called flavor of the month might be but aside from the money that taints our political system let's look at a few more factors that will in fact the term and how this next election might turn out more than you know more than a poll or a cat fight between the candidates so much of that happens right at the state level let's start with restrictive voter id laws that are being passed all across the u.s. and we've spoken about it before in this show it's a nationwide voter intimidation campaign thankfully and some respects it's being challenged a congressional investigation has been called for or an individual basis groups are challenging these laws and courts take for example the news of the a.c.l.u. will challenge wisconsin's new voter id law basically what that one does is drastically limit the types of identification that. aleph i as something that can be used in order first it is a devote now of the state is giving out these state issued i.d.'s that allow you to

vote for free getting the right kind of identification to get that identification as well can cost a lot of money so once again you have a system that is designed although the never admitted to you to allow fewer citizens to exercise their rights to have their voice heard in our political system and those that are affected are often the poor often minorities often not the people to vote for republicans but you know it it doesn't actually matter which side it would affect because in essence these types of restrictions are wrong on their face they take away your rights and once again it's happening all across the country but the mainstream media and they choose to really spend any time on it newt said to each other is so much more exciting today more of the same media that doesn't represent us all now let me give you one more example briefly from texas has been a battle raging over redistricting first a map was drawn up by the texas state g.o.p. that gave more seats to you guessed it the g.o.p. then a d.c. court ruled that a three judge panel said antonio should drop a new map and that one ended up heavily favoring the democrats so now the u.s.

supreme court stepped in block that original ruling announced that they're going to rule on the issue next year so yeah it's complicated and in fact it's what's happening in our air what's happening here is our justice system at work trying to sort out this issue so that hopefully will be fair and constitutional at the end of the day but again it's just a singular example one example of everybody trying to rig the system in their favor what's the best way to fix it well i'm not sure that i know but i think that it's necessary to draw attention to it to highlight the political war starts of the most local levels and then moves up to the battle for the money for the votes to shut certain people up it's all around us and in the mainstream media which prides itself on its incessant election coverage going to really get into it they continue with the fluff the unnecessary trivia the fake strategizing rather than voices being silenced across the country so the real election issues and what they choose to miss.

well this thursday is going to be a big day for sopa the house judiciary chairman lamar smith plans to hold a committee vote and the next step after that would be the bill going to the floor of the house for everyone to weigh in but it looks like the widespread opposition out there might be making a difference we've documented time and time again here on this show for you about the major push against both the senate version the protect ip act not only have hundreds of legal scholars think tanks such as the cato institute show their opposition but that list also includes all the major tech companies from google to a.o.l. and beyond and in fact we could pedia is now floating an idea to blank out all of the pages on the online encyclopedia as a form of protest so yesterday smith introduced amendments to the stop online piracy act watering down some of the controversial measures but despite those changes at heart is this still just a censorship bill the threatens the internet as we know it or discuss it with me is joined sanchez a research fellow at the cato institute joined thanks so much for being here and i am sure you know are you and i have spoken about this before at length or at least

before i think we focused on protect ip now we have this amended version of soap as i want to go through what some of the changes might be and i think that one of the things that really worried people is that due process was kind of taken out of the picture here right that you never needed a court order to try and shut down a site is that change with the amendments so they've taken this up a little bit under the old. copyright holder could basically just send a note to payment providers in ad networks and require them to cut off type basically starve starve of revenue a site that they just accused of being dedicated to infringement and some of the crazier parts of that definition of dedicated to infringement have been tightened up a little bit and now they do actually have to go to a court and get a court order that requires these intermediaries to cut off a site to third be infringing it's still a. though basically a one sided proceeding right i mean this is not the the kind of process and vision

by the course of interpret the first amendment to require an adversarial proceeding and a final judicial ruling before a speech centrally can be silenced and this is really an indirect way of trying to shut down sites ok so that amendment still not enough in your eyes let's get into this fact that before it was this very definition of what a site dedicated to infringing activities might be what's the difference now well there's a couple of differences there was one of the really awful things in the private action side of it before was this language you're bound to be dedicated to infringement if it's operators took deliberate actions designed to avoid confirming a high probability that the site would be used for infringement i don't know what it means to take a deliberate action to avoid confirming i guess it means turning a blind eye there's actually also explicit language now in the very beginning of the building as well this is going to be interpreted to impose an affirmative duty to monitor and he says you know this doesn't require you to police use your content

then it becomes a little bit mysterious i mean if you're assigned that runs let's say a music discussion forum and you don't police or user content your user sometimes throw up links to bootlegs of the album they're talking about how do you avoid being dubbed a site dedicated to infringement as well you don't have an obligation to do this policing but what else do you do i mean because otherwise if you don't police some of your you know some of you will offer those links some of your users will all uploaded to a file locker contents they're infringing so how do you avoid being. dedicated to infringement it's not fair now one of the things that's up to is that it was going to hold you know you could say that some of the providers liable here is that still part of it so there's different sections or we just talked about the private right of action or copper holders can take their own initiative to try and blow. these sites or at least cut them off from money also the attorney general can seek

a court order that would require internet providers to basically refuse to resolve the domain name so you type in you know infringing website dot com and that's the you know the people are tens it doesn't know who that is. they can still be forced by the courts to do that they've given more latitude though in how to comply they can't be just bullied into anymore can they go to the guys there or can they just get a letter from somebody and care a court was always required for that part to require providers to do something. the problem here though is that again it leaves open exactly how they're supposed to do it they sort of bend over backwards to avoid the panic that all the cyber security people went into because the way it was supposed to happen before they were actually supposed to falsify the d.n.a. record you know faking an entry in the phone book redirecting users to a government site that would say this is been seized for infringement this is the cyber security people including the security experts employed by the government all

flipped out basically said we're going to break an important security initiative if you do that so they took that out and now it's enough basically for the sites to just refuse to answer those questions but it then becomes unclear how how this is really effective because a well designed application if it doesn't get an answer from the first you know d.m.'s or very queries is going to keep asking until it reaches one outside us jurisdiction that does give it an answer and then there's the question of whether the people who make that software can be held liable for providing circumvention tools to get around the laws so in essence if we look at all these amendments that have been made this attempt to water down i mean i think that is good there's at least some type of response because there has been such widespread opposition but at the end of the day is it still a censorship bill that everybody out there is going to hate. me most of the tech companies including. you know this is. i guess you could say a better censorship bill but i don't think there's really any such thing as a good censorship bill ok so you're still in opposition to it you know it's so

interesting to know if you look at it and the fact that sure you could say that congress is really or i guess you could say the house judiciary committee here is doing the bidding of the entertainment industry often they're the ones that are lobbying hard for this type of legislation as they are here and we've shown a lot of the really scary ads that have been put out there about piracy coming from the entertainment industry from the justice department but the tech companies they have quite a sway over politics as well are they also big donors is this kind of a battle between the two behemoths or not you know not not big enough apparently you know a silicon valley has i think perhaps irritated some legislators by never really paying to play at the same extent that hollywood has a politico ran a chart a few weeks ago showing just how much hollywood outspan silicon valley outspends the tech industry even though they're obviously both huge you know the. silicon valley basically has invested most of its money in trying to make better you know software and better products and not in purchasing members of congress how are

people around the world looking at this because one of the things they did in these amendments is they clarify that it can't be dot com dot net re it has to be all foreign web sites but then you have to wonder why in the hell we think we have the jurisdiction to go out there and shut down foreign websites i mean the e.u. has has basically condemned this a lot of folks overseas again because of these provisions that would that would essentially make it. an offense to create circumvention tools there a lot of people overseas who are wondering well our program are still going to be willing to make the same kind of tools that the state department has for years and celebrating and recommending as mechanisms to get around fire walls in other countries that are meant to block political speech so as you know are those tools going to continue to be produced and if hard to see how we can continue to earn. and recommend those tools are really even just well designed security applications

and at the same time expect us to be at all effective in any way oh yeah and it's something you know you can point out a lot of the consistencies in this speech on internet freedom that hillary clinton decided to give at the hague just last week now lastly i kind of like this idea of wikipedia saying that they might just blank out all of their encyclopedia pages and think about it they probably use that a lot on the hill when it comes to writing legislation so you think they're going to go for you like it you know i think it's actually really incredible to see some of these flexing their muscle and you know in a way that is actually pretty new that they haven't done as aggressively before looks like wikipedia users so far overwhelmingly in favor of this kind of protest move tumbler just a couple weeks ago got something like eighty seven thousand of its users to jam the phones of congress you know if we ever see facebook decide to do the same thing i would i would dread anyone who's manning the phones in a congressional office that day ok so basically you have the entire tech world screaming at congress right now telling them not to do it and you know i don't know

maybe this isn't right for me to say but i always say that you know sometimes maybe these older congressman just don't understand what it is exactly that they're legislating but i guess we'll have to wait and see what happens on thursday hopefully some of those cries will be herculean thanks so much for joining us tonight so is your. i just have the so. often overlooked group my friends to homelessness in the us that and work on the author by west coast the weather we witnessed yesterday bought the course for sports to close but will also force unions to oppose occupiers which travel to the top of the state has been written. into that only military mechanisms that do not work to bring justice or accountability. i have every right to know what my government should do if you want to know why i pay taxes. but i would characterize obama as a charismatic version of american exceptionalism. you

know sometimes you see a story and it seems so silly you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm trying hard welcome to the big picture.

i'm laurie mr. you're still believe the roughing it. think what a protester nobody seems to know. that never a pepper sprayed the face but part of the argument that they're being overly dramatic. the mind will come down. so much jill carroll is going to be singing. we have what we like to call a glimmer of hope better and homelessness has decreased by nearly twelve percent

between january of two thousand and ten and january of two thousand and eleven that's according to numbers released by the department of veterans affairs and the department of housing and urban development and the survey found that sixty seven thousand four hundred ninety five veterans were homeless in january of two thousand and eleven as almost nine thousand fewer than the seventy six thousand three hundred twenty nine the rebel to be homeless in january of two thousand and ten and the v.a. says it's committed to eliminating this problem by two thousand and fifteen i shall say that this number puts them right on track to do just that and put their money where their mouth is department of veterans affairs announced this monday but it's going to offer one hundred million dollars in grants to local agencies to help returning troops and meet one hundred million surely nothing to scoff but let's try to put that number into a little bit of context the defense appropriations bill is making its way quite easily through congress right now we're qwest six hundred sixty two billion in funding for defense in the fiscal year two thousand and twelve and for even

a bit more context let's think about the f. thirty five that little pet project that's been in development for years which is expected to cost a total of one trillion dollars and that's without even the new or expected cost overruns while sixty seven thousand four hundred ninety five veterans remain homeless which is just one of the many economic not to mention psychological hurdles that veterans face unemployment for young vets ages eighteen to twenty four returning from iraq or afghanistan was nearly over thirty percent in november and total better unemployment for those returning from war as an eleven point one percent versus the eight point six percent of the u.s. general population not including the use six now these economic realities of lead some vets to take this. it's to show their support for the occupy movement which is made well just parities in the u.s. central to its message better and like former marine sergeant shamar thomas who feel that those who fight for this very wealthy country simply aren't reaping its economic benefits but the people who actually you know put their blood sweat and tears into this country need to be the one instead of benefiting from this country

we have a lot of people in this country you know that are not getting up at six am cleaning the streets or going to war zones fighting for their lives for you know nine hundred dollars a month and then the come home you know they have nothing but you know a g.i. bill to go to college where once you get out of college you know getting a job was still slim. so with the economic hardships the veterans face in mind i think there is the v.a. to continue devoting more time more money and more resources to its fight against veteran homelessness because while twelve percent decrease is clearly a step in the right direction there's still a lot of work to be done. now yesterday the country watched as occupiers along the west coast held a massive day of action attempting out in some cases briefly succeeding to shut down major ports from portland to oakland to san diego and the target ultimately was meant to be the one percent firms like goldman sachs that own it major shipping and transportation companies that i am bringing to light the working conditions of

poor workers at the end of the day it was the poor workers themselves who might suffer from shutdowns who might lose a day's pay the unions and participate in events although there were letters by port workers sent thanking the protesters and as a for the new labor form steven lerner who runs the private equity project to sci you explain that this movement could do what labor could it free from the constraints of the political and economic power structure the unions are connected to so how should we look at these new tactics as a way to really take the left where it should go or is a misstep the could hurt those who need it most to discuss this with me is tim chirac investigative journalist and labor activist tim thanks so much for joining me tonight thank you ok let's start with the basic stuff right if you look at this strategy of trying to go and shut down the ports and the west coast ports essentially right i think that about half of our of our exports when it comes to what comes in on containers exports and imports goes to these ports there is it a good way a good target if you really want to hit the right strings it's a great target but i think the way the grant went about it was it was not the right

way to go at all let me say i'm speaking as a trade unionist someone who supported occupied my union has endorsed it but you know i belong to my place of work has endorsed it i've been there as an individual played music coming out talk to people there so you know i'm a sport of the broad themes of occupy but i think when you declare. a general strike we declare an action at a workplace and you don't get the rank and file of those workers are going to be directly affected by to vote for and part you know participate democratically in the decision i think that's really problematic but at the same time you know her. how else do you necessarily get the system to change i mean do you agree with this argument by lerner where he says that you know unfortunately the unions are quite a bit of a political machine in and of itself they're kind of hooked up to this establishment you could say you know a lot of people out there would say that they think that the union bosses are corrupt too and that there's just too much to to dig through and getting that kind

of you know organization to be a part of it so the occupy movement is actually going where the unions maybe can't steve when it comes from a union suu which is well known as a political operation and has its own drawbacks as a union as a democratic organization itself so i'm really not going to comment on what he had to say i'm going to talk about my own experience i think if occupy wants to build bridges with labor needs to respect the concept of union democracy you need to respect what rank and file people face on the line every day what people when you actually call for a general strike for more for the most part public employees in this country are banned by the law from striking federal employees cannot strike you can't just say you know let's all go out on strike one day and expect people to give up their widely hood risk their jobs risk risk their whole you know economic future on a strike when it's not planned out i mean the general strikes take place only you know very rarely you have to have the right material conditions the political conditions i think it's great to do an action at the port but i think it's best if

you do it in solidarity with the union and it's reported remember the ilo wu of the international launcher warehouse union has a long tradition of democracy internal democracy it was it was it was born out of a general strike in one thousand thirty four and its members fought and died for the right to elect their own leadership and they have their own union in control so at this point do you think that this is a is a turning point of some kind is it a division that's going to that now is a period of my continue to grow between the occupy movement and the things they have been very supportive of the movement thus far if you want to talk about. not only when they shut down the port of oakland last time in november but you know when it came to marching on the streets of new york and all across the u.s. that first store. actually on the west coast had the support of the union this one did not and i think when you have your title occupy wall street versus the unions i don't think we're you know we're fighting like that but i think if you know there's there is definitely tensions there's a lot of people the labor movement did support this yesterday

a lot of people like myself did not and felt that the occupy movement in the west coast was like i said before did not respecting the concept of union democracy and calling the union president their labor boss and big labor which are terms usually used by the right wing let's admit right i mean if you think about the unions where they stand in our political system they are the biggest donors to the democratic party and occupy wall street movement doesn't want to be associated with either party right now right they want to distance themselves from both of them so maybe maybe occupy wall street needs to distance itself from the unions because they're representing part of what they're trying to fight well right now as far as i know only to unions as you know you and i after we have actually endorsed a candidate namely president obama a lot of unions are going to wait until the process continues the democratic convention and so on but they're going to do you know people are going to do to endorse him are not of the on the interest of their members of the interest of the rank and file workers that they represent and you know they occupy people some of

them are democrats some of them are republicans but i think there are you know there needs to be autonomy the newsy independence for movements like the labor movement within occupy i compare this to say you know south africa the. south african trade union federation worked very closely with the african national congress and nelson mandela to defeat you know white power would defeat white control over south africa when the n.c. took power to represent its workers and and had a lot of disputes with mandela and the a.n.c. over issues central to workers like privatization but the union movement was respected within that broader political. context and so that's where you think that you can see the difference between the type of people that make up the occupy movement and unions mean firm for the most part by movement originally started with a very young group of people a lot of whom are college educated just don't have a job right that can go and camp out in a park versus some of these union workers some of these poor guys from yesterday

who maybe need to put food on the table that night for dinner sure there's a big difference so i can't really talk for the movement here i didn't go to occupy wall street in new york when it was going on at the park but i've been here in d.c. a big fierce and square a lot been to the other one freedom plaza and there's all kinds of different people there's union people that are there that is you know college kids are escapees there's anarchists all karaites people united around broad goals and i would like this to stay united around those broad goals and maybe when there is you know calls for general strikes you know think about how that affects the workers that want to participate or don't want to participate in the role of the union i think you know this is a place for give and take there's a place for disagreement and autonomy within a broader move out seems like this is one of the areas where there are you know some fractures again forming we've seen the same thing when they shut down streets in new york and people didn't get to work you know people there get upset what do you think would be the strongest target to really hit because you know some would argue that yeah well the ports shutting them down would be detrimental is it really

going to hurt goldman sachs all that much of that today is going to take a really long shutdown of the ports for it to trickle down to goldman sachs versus the workers that lose their paychecks every day you know for goldman sachs is you know they they own a piece of this this one company stevedore services of america and other banks and private equity funds own pieces of other companies that deal with raid but i mean you know i think the wall street or occupy wall street focus on the banks the financial system was what really got a lot of people into the movement and where to go now going well there's there are issues still there there's no no there's. no question about that that's still a major issue and of course you know what these banks own is another issue but i mean there's there's all kinds of questions that can be asked about you know stopping stopping it portably for one thing a lot of these are publicly owned terminals within these ports that are privately owned privately run but many of them are like the city of baltimore the port of

baltimore public or run by the state of maryland so you know there's differences and we can adopt different strategies for this i don't really you know i don't think this would be perfectly her pocketbook of goldman sachs because their wealth is spread all over the place you know and i'm not going to name a specific target i think there's plenty of targets and i think they've chosen well a lot of the actions here in washington d.c. i guess it just shows how complicated it really is but right now as you know a lot of people asking questions and wondering if in some ways this might hard to move my damage them we'll see if they come up with next and thanks so much for joining us you're very welcome. i just had to show one country is dropping out of protocol in a way that can tell you that is and why after the break and we'll tell you about a third party candidate for the newly formed justice party to speak the founder and president elect and the rocky anderson about his approach to winning the oval office and that's what. i.