russia needs democracy but not chaos those words from president dmitry medvedev in his last state of the union address the president said that the country is on the brink of a new political era where every voice will be heard he also outlined plans for widespread reforms to the country's political system first in line. arab league observers arrived in syria as the conflict there sees its bloodiest period over two hundred are thought to have been killed in just two days despite more international sanctions imposed against a massive us. and over seventy die as the iraqi capital is rocked by a wave of terrorist bombs less than one week after the american military is look at

all from the war torn country the raging violence is raising questions already over the entire u.s. invasion and the eight year campaign. now up next here in our team the alona show takes a look at how u.s. bankers are trying to fight back against occupy wall street protesters. welcome to the lower show where we get the real headlines with none of the mercy me live out of washington d.c. now tonight we're going to take a look at bankers trying to fight back against occupy wall street complaining that this isn't an attack on the one percent but this is an attack on the very productive but what exactly the bankers produce peter schiff is going to join us for that one then the media is in a frenzy over racist newsletters from the past coming from ron paul now he says he

didn't write them or read them but the response has been a little bit muddled but now that he's getting this front runner media treatment will this be enough to damage and invalidate his campaign or to speak to james fallows and new statistics came out this week showing that nearly one in three americans are rested by age twenty three so what's the bottom of it and could the lack of answers be because the government hasn't been keeping the proper statistics on the programs that they themselves create radley balko is going to listen we have all that and more free tonight including a dose of happy hour but first let's take a look at the mainstream media has decided to miss. all right so the payroll tax cut has yet to be extended and the entire battle seems nowhere close to being resolved in washington at the moment if in a matter of days they still don't figure it out americans will get less money in their paychecks next year and the mainstream media is already counting down the clock. all right working americans all on congress the calendar and literally the

clock we've got nine days to go and congress says that it was time to extend the payroll tax cut the stalemate is brewing in washington right now on your tax pay your tax home pay hangs in the balance in this case with facts into a corner and the clock ticking on money in your pocket the g.o.p. looking for a fig leaf right now the clock is ticking on a deal or if there is no agreement that tax cut disappears on the first of january . and i know what i find to be cute this is the mainstream media actually acts like they care that this is going to affect people all across the country listen up working americans they say your tone taxpayer hangs in the balance it is just so so horrible now unfortunately it's really easy to cut through their b.s. and see that they care a lot more about getting to his account on clog the what the real world effects will actually be and that's easy to tell because of the way they let politicians use the most absurd partisan talking points and completely get away with it take

for example senator john mccain. the republicans are losing this fight we need to get back on track there is no doubt about that but i think it requires some presidential leadership in the past four presidents and i'm sure the number they have each year did a lot more leadership and then going shopping. i mean really maybe you guys didn't notice but while talking about the president shopping for his dog taking time off work senator mccain himself is at home in arizona because the senate is already on vacation but what drives me crazy is that those interviewing mccain of course they're not going to point that out don't ask him to stop talking about the president's dog and about the real issues and the exact same thing happened when eric cantor gave a press conference this morning this dog thing i swear to you it's the new g.o.p. talking point. i saw saw the president yesterday doing his christmas shopping so he brought his dog with him you know we're here he can bring his dog up here we are

pet friendly. and you know again it will not take a long time we could probably resolve the differences within an hour that's why we're here to say let's let's do this is the speaker said let's avoid any more uncertainty let's try and avoid another one of these difficult moments within sixty days so we can get on about the business of putting in place factors for better economy and job creation. oh eric cantor you are just so funny pat riley congress i mean this is something that can really be resolved in an hour then why was it resolved weeks ago washington is completely dysfunctional and just doesn't want to admit it so they just start using these really cheesy lame lines to point fingers at the other party i don't believe this is what every cable network is letting every politician in talking head get away with well then let me just give you one final example to seal the deal here else here's karl rove talking about it last night. lost the optics on it and the only way to win it is to just stick there

and ruin their own christmases and wait until the president heads off to wife for his and then and then lambaste the democrats for having abdicated their responsibilities to pass a year long tax credit. lou there's that christmas line again this time it's about the president's vacation in hawaii too but even more so it's all about the game it's all about who comes out looking like the winners and the losers here in washington and all might really hurt the g.o.p.'s feelings of their own guy karl rove is saying the bay have lost the optics on this situation it still doesn't solve the issue that at the end of the day the biggest losers if the payroll tax is not passed will be the american people they want congress to get their act together stop spending so much damn time talking about nonsense about christmas and just get the job done but you never got that impression from the mainstream media because of the way that they just let these guys ramble on and on and on about each other enough about you let's talk about us but actually worry about what the american

people think and have to say that's what the mainstream media chooses to miss. well looks like the one percent are fighting back against occupy wall street i don't think you can really call it a movement but bloomberg before out this week does highlight well looks like a concerted effort by hedge funders banking executives in the like to craft their own message take for example of j.p. morgan c.e.o. telling people at an investor conference that acting like everyone who's been successful is bad because you're rich you are bad i don't understand it or johnny allison the the fourth director of b.b. and p. saying and set of an attack on the one percent let's call it an attack on the very productive so all right they've got their talking points out there but the question is what i think is going to buy it joining me to discuss it is peter schiff c.e.o. of euro pacific capital peter thanks so much for joining us tonight and i guess i

want to start you know you when you went down to occupy wall street as a party had a little sign i am the one percent you said somebody has got to do it and do you feel like you have some company now well of course there are a lot of people in the one percent but unfortunately i think that particular bloomberg story focused on the wrong question of the one percent they interviewed a lot of bankers a lot of people who benefited from the wall street bailouts and so they're giving the rest of us in the one percent the ninety nine percent of the one percent a bad name and in that way this story played right into you know the playbook of the occupy wall street movement because they're trying to paint everybody with this brush they're trying to say that the one percent is getting all this bailout money and and getting special tax breaks and paying lower taxes than the school the school teachers in the bus drivers but the overwhelming majority of the one percent are not getting any government bailout money they don't work on wall street they're not getting any special tax breaks in fact they're paying a huge percentage of their income in taxes i really want to hear better let me let

me interrupt you there for my because after all it is. old occupy wall street right a lot of people out there have come out and said that perhaps it's ninety nine percent versus one percent dynamic those figures don't necessarily add up perfectly but they're catching right they work for the movement if you think about what this is fundamentally about it's about the fact that the bankers got bailed out on wall street the wall street got bailed out that the government acted like this was such an immediate concern that needed to be handled and now when it comes to the rest of the population if you want to talk about the jobs crisis well apparently that doesn't seem like an immediate concern to them because americans just don't put as much money into campaign yes that's where i am right with the occupy wall street movement there should have been no belts but i don't blame the bankers for taking the muddy anybody would take the money if the government offered it to him the problem is the government the government shouldn't bail them out so the anger needs to go towards the government they're the ones that are going to go in there what then do you blame the government for taking the money from the bankers when you

know j.p. morgan or whoever else out there decides to donate a lot of money to their campaigns i mean this is the problem is not that the government is only giving money to the banks but it's of the banks are giving money right back to the government but that's because the government has the power in the first place they shouldn't have it if we follow the constitution no bankers would give the government any money because the government would have any favors to dole out they would have the power to regulate the economy so we've given all this power to washington the only solution is to take the power away the problem is the occupy wall street movement wants to give government even more power and that's just going to exacerbate that the image but why do you think that they wall street wants to give the government more power i think that quite the opposite they want the government to be what they think of the government should be which is representative of the people you know yeah that's what the constitution right that's the way that our government is set up as it's supposed to represent the people it's not supposed to represent those that just choose to million dollars into the campaign the movement is a is more of a marxist socialist movement they want the government turned gay are going to go

out if they social it why do they not support the bailouts. no i did that well that's the irony of it the bailouts are very socialistic they just want different bailouts they want the government to take money away from people and give it to the middle class or give it to the poor or give it to students they want that money redistributed in a different way they want to govern to take money away and give it out to different special interest groups i don't want the government taking money from anybody and giving it to anybody i want capitalism i want free markets i want you know i don't want that kind of a central government plan and they don't really see the hypocrisy in what they're arguing why i think that you know it's kind of hard to say i use that as a blanket statement to represent all of occupy wall street right it's one of the things that has been a major critique is that they don't necessarily have this unified message as to what they want and if you look at polls out there it's not just occupy wall street that thinks that the richest individuals in this country need to pay higher taxes it's actually it's a majority of americans so then the majority of americans are according to you are

a socialist but well obviously i was i was not as sure as come on that is that i don't know how you can answer just want a free at a fair society and it doesn't apply here as they are in america it depends on how you ask the question see most of the people asking those questions don't realize how much taxes wealthy people already pay i pay about half my income in taxes right now if i asked a question to most americans what percentage of the wealthy person's income should be paid in taxes it's normally a lot lower than what i'm already paying so that's really not true yes there are some people that have special tax breaks but the vast majority of the wealthy do not in fact most people today who are paying taxes are paying a much higher percentage of their total income than similarly situated people were paying thirty forty fifty years ago and of course for most of america's history there was no income tax whatsoever and what people have to understand is just taxing the rich more is not going to make their lives better raising taxes on the ridge well you know it's a way to do it now and i guess you could say but no but let's talk about peter and you know there are statistics out there and i was really there that people are

paying lower taxes than they were in the last thirty years but let's not kid out let's talk about who gets the. biggest breaks right the biggest breaks are things like banks on wall street bank of america paid zero income tax in two thousand and ten some of the biggest corporations like exxon or g.e. they pay no taxes and that's an american member estimated about corporation you know what i'm not going here at all if i can make this about rocky by law and what is it about and it's not just about people like yourself it's about what's wrong with the system it will corporations remember they don't pay taxes anyway they just collect them either their customers pay their taxes their employees pay their taxes or their shareholders a corporation doesn't pay it but the problem is you've got some special tax breaks like the break for carried interest where hedge fund managers are taxed at fifteen percent when they're actually working and getting compensated for their labor i think that's wrong i think that we should tax everybody equally i'd rather have a we're going to have an income tax let's have everybody pay the same rate let's not have a few wealthy individuals pay a lower rate than everybody else but the vast majority of people myself included we

are being taxed at the highest possible rate so and that is a very significant rate and it's a very a lot of people like yourself included like the warren buffets out there like other millionaires and billionaires they spoken to on the show that say tax me more i want to do tax more but again we're running out of time peter and i just want to go back to since they no longer these are going to me this fair no listen to me i'm going to play a clip for the audience because you were on the young turks on current last night and and jay cut you off so i just want to play it real quick and give you an opportunity to respond to that before we go. so you all say the bankers are not you know where there's at all and spending is a problem of the bankers so you won't see how the of the free market we don't have the benefits of capitalism anymore because we don't have capitalism we have a said slowly plant socialist economy all gathers you why you and i was done with our loader on a chain as day sir peter i'm done the way we want to know you guys don't get it done with always done that move away from it we're going to bring him down he wants

i what happened there peter i could hear a word he was saying i had a prob with my earpiece i would have loved to have answered that question is the first time i'm actually hearing doc if he were talking without hearing the question yeah i couldn't hear him because of my mike i thought he was silent course i can't see him but i got to say something on warren buffett he is lying warren buffett is the largest shareholder of berkshire hathaway he's paying thirty five percent of his income in tax because that's the rate that berkshire hathaway is paying so warren buffett earns ninety nine percent of his income through berkshire hathaway he only earns a tiny fraction of his income on an individual basis so all of the taxes that warren buffett pays only one third of berkshire hathaway he pays through his ownership of that company so he is paying a lot of money in taxes he is lying this is just pure propaganda coming from warren buffett well you know how you know you can say that you think it's propaganda coming from warren buffett but the fact is that he's not the only one out there that is saying that it is saying tax a minute i have to wrap that big

a bank that has to get off that ship again will do not want to pay higher taxes that is crazy you could probably get a handle a bunch of out there like i said we've spoken to some on this show but peter i really i really did i got to wrap but they were leading us to ninety nine point nine percent of the people in the upper brackets do not want to pay more taxes nobody wants to pay more taxes all right good night peter thank you here. coming up next on the show the statistics show that hollywood isn't suffering from a piracy problem that frankly the executives problem explain that in just a moment and the media is finally recognizing ron paul. that doesn't. list. three. three. three. three.

three. three. technology. well as you all know by now hollywood executives have been throwing their political weight and money around to pass the anti-piracy bills protect ip and so we've already told you how dangerous this legislation would be if it did in fact become law but it looks like we're going to have to wait a little bit to find out whether that will or will not happen because in a very quiet move by the house judiciary committee they've decided the bill be put on hold until early next year when this committee takes time discretely learn about the true ramifications of the bill we'd like to point out some of the absurd fear

mongering that's being peddled by the entertainment industry so what hollywood central arguments against piracy is that it's killing at the movie industry as we know it oh my and according to hollywood the r a p a r all of which are lobbying for sopa and protect ip not only does piracy discourage people from making movies because it hurts profits but it hurts the workforce and keeps those who work on these from getting paid however a nonpartisan group congressional research service found some evidence that could prove quite the opposite and this is by no means the only study that would refute that argument it's just the latest see it turns out that hollywood executives are not only doing well they're in fact earning record profits over the course of the past fifteen years box office revenues of double check this out in one thousand nine hundred five gross revenue was fifty two point eight billion dollars in two thousand and nine revenues reached one hundred four billion box office sales also doubled from five point three billion a ninety five to ten point six billion in two thousand and ten and we should know and the m.p.a. did get one thing right in their argument the hiring is dropped the congressional

research service shows the hollywood employment has been on the decline since one thousand nine hundred ninety eight then there were about three hundred ninety two thousand workers and in the past couple of years it's been between three hundred seventy thousand and three seventy four thousand employees but the c.r. as report also points out this interesting little tidbit executive pay is higher than ever check out some of the salaries for these production houses just for two thousand and eleven news corp's rupert murdoch made over thirty three million dollars viacom c. the lead domino ringtone more than eighty four million time warner is jeffrey bewkes made twenty six point three million and if the c.e.o. earned twenty nine point six million sony c.e.o. howard stringer the same guy that was ahead when sony faced all of those severe hacks to their play station network he still managed to make homer to take home four million dollars despite getting hit with a fourteen percent cut due to losses so yeah i think of the cat is out of the bag guys it's not the piracy epidemic that is killing hollywood employment it's the

c.e.o.'s of those major production houses that are doing it news corp viacom disney sony all these companies are guilty of the same actions you can say bankers on wall street are doing despite the fact that most of these companies organizations have weathered the recession they're still not hiring and they're hoarding those profits for the big wigs so it's not some random kid streaming a video that's taking away jobs the entertainment industry it's the c.e.o.'s that want more produced by fewer people now as congress drags its feet over the copyright infringement legislation it's given several groups and companies and have time to learn the real effects of sopa and warn others against it and the outcry has been slowly growing just yesterday we interviewed leah kaufman the woman who wrote the viral hit i've got a crush on obama but as she told me yesterday if the internet censorship bill does pass which the administration supports it could change your mind about the president. if they do support this legislation and people i would no longer have a crush on obama and. you know i think i'd be devastated. so there

goes one of your biggest fans mr president better watch out now lee is opposition is a point that's being echoed by several tech companies out there like was ill a e-bay google and yahoo which makes you wonder why washington is a responding to the lobbying of the pressure from that industry as much as they do to hollywood but is doing stanch as in the cato institute points out it's all about the money. silicon valley has i think perhaps irritated some legislators by never really paying to play at the same extent that hollywood has political 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. 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 although now i can say that i'm surprised for months we've been telling you that d.c.

has become hollywood east if you will where groups like the n.p.a. spend an incredible amount of time and money securing the help of politicians to push their agenda and usually it works but this latest congressional research report is just one more piece of evidence in a vast sea and it is high time to movie executive for movie executives and the film industry to drop their false arguments stop pushing for these destructive bills because the public is catching on. now looks like ron paul is definitely getting the front runner treatment now the media is going absolutely wild today bringing his skeletons back out of the closet. with his rise in the polls ron paul is facing scrutiny as reports resurfaced and we touched on this at the top here about racist newsletters that were sent to the congress and a congressman's name is ron paul leading going to do i will hold the presidential candidate is facing renewed questions about racially inflammatory writings these are extremely inflammatory newsletters there were some comments made racist comments and newsletters which he profited from it's hard to defend yes some of

these writings but the mistake he really may have made was to walk out on the interview and that's gotten so much attention so ron paul supporters you want to be in the. you're in the news. that's right at one point ron paul even walked out of the c.n.n. interview when he was questioned about this story. and you know it is that legitimate i mean is it a legitimate question to ask that something went out when you get real and when you get the answers legitimate that you sort of take the answers i get you know what the answer is i didn't really write them i didn't read them at the time and i disavow them that is the answer. now the story itself is a lot more nuanced than just saying is ron paul racist stories in fact now for years has been recycled many times over but it's paul's explanation that's changed a little bit over time some points he said he never read the newsletters and others and said he's aware of some of the content but he stuck to the fact that he did not write it but some of the questions that need to be asked here are whether or not this could hurt his campaign as he surges and gains more than just his dedicated

followers and whether these letters should carry more weight than policies of his that actually protect civil liberties so joining me to discuss it is james pullos host of the bottom line and reform school on t.v. james thanks so much for joining us tonight and just so we're clear here because i didn't go over the details of what was in these letters but i mean this isn't a smear campaign the stuff that was in them was racist and vile right well it's incendiary stuff in a lot of it you know just this past the smell test when you begin to dig lines it's ninety five percent of all black to washington d.c. or criminal or semi-criminal something like that not the sort of so you want to see yourself do you think that he's done a good enough job trying to trying to refute this like i said this has been recycled many times over it's not the first time he's had to answer these questions but he's changed his response a little bit well there's it's hard to escape the impression that he's dancing around the issue which is where did these students come from it's not enough to say i disavow them good that's proper you've got to say something about where they came

from how it is that they were produced and how it could be that we're a long period of time we're talking about not just this media frenzy it's really just you know it last presidential campaign and then reaching back years before that how does that he's managed to fail to deliver a serious question what were these things keep them and how it is they went on for so long he's responsible for doing this national politics it's not beanbag he needs to be able to muster seems serious responses or else it is keeping this going yeah there were six to eight writers he never read the staff he hasn't released any of the names himself of who is writing the things. out there but you know even though like i said this has been around for a while now this story do you feel like he's getting a little bit of a different treatment right now now that he's number one in iowa we finally see the same effect that happens with every front runner be it newt gingrich or the herman cain's that they're going all out on ron paul well i think he's the center of the attention right now in part because of his numbers in part because he's just

a more interesting story i mean newt is in the spotlight for a while now is to get this number started to pull it the media starts casting about for the next thing to pay attention to you know crass and opportunistic so he was just trying to deliver the american people sort of the most interesting thing that's going on there is right now and for good or for ill ron paul's the most interesting thing in this race and i think he's got enemies on the left and on the right he's got a growing number of supporters even though he's got something that beats and soon i think on the right and he's raising issues in way that no one else is and it's only natural and you some ways great that that's causing the media pain increasing tension if it comes your baggage but i think even his intelligent supporters in the media wants to be dealt with in the right way and. now some other things too that we have to ask here as everybody who is a hardcore ron paul supporter obviously i think they're not going to leave ron paul after this other people out there are wondering well maybe is he racist i think you

know joe is saying on morning joe this morning saying that everything he says has an air of anti-semitism in it but then conor friedersdorf of the atlantic broke it down and said that you know if you really look at the policies that ron paul supports out there that this is the kind of stuff that they excuse me when it comes to america and i'm going to just read his words here america's most racist or racially fraught policies palos arguably on the right side of them also do charges of racism make sense to ron paul if you look at what he supports. oh you know i think this is kind of a false issue there are some people out there who are saying you know there should be a presumption of racism given the fact that ron paul's an old white guy he grew up in jim crow era texas there are other people saying you know hey if you look at his policies as for example in the drug war of the kinds of things you do the drug war would have such a significant impact on just for on policies that have a disproportionately racial sex in this country with regard to drugs that we should actually look at things in reverse way we could get bogged down in this kind of

issue but i think that as far as national politics goes the real bottom line here is public and candidates who are having their moment in the sun here are starting to develop a strange habit of choking ok herman cain had his moment he choked. arguably it is choking right now a little bit rick perry's a guy who you know i mean number of times unforced errors on national television sorry america i can't think of the right answer for this to happen ron paul starts to i think the question whether this whole problem candidates has in some way a bend benefits acted by what's going on with the g.o.p. over the past let's say during the bush era that's that's given us a second rate slate of candidates so i think it's more important even just just more important for for ron paul and for the g.o.p. as a whole to be able to step to the plate here and deliver something right barack obama he had the reverend wright scandal erupts he stepped to the plate he delivered

something you might not have solved the world's problems it might not have even erased the right problem but it did it did mount some kind of force here response that i think was in the end what most people were looking for the american people in spite of everything are pretty forgiving and even with something like this where it's can t. and it's and it's got these this rate these racist overtones these conspiratorial overtones if paul steps forward until response and of course here in direct response i think that's going to get a lot. our james i want to thank you so much for joining us and i think a lot of people out there are waiting for that response because you're not the only one that thinks that you know ron paul really is bringing a very very different kind of argument on many levels to this presidential race and i think a lot of americans welcome that right now thanks so much. all right we're taking a break but we'll be right back.