get corporate money out of politics and it while the winter cold and nationwide evictions may have damper on the occupy movement for now they've got big plans for the spring jesse lee greg is going to fill us in on what's being called phase two of occupy and have all that morphy tonight putting it to us of happy hour but first let's take a look at what the mainstream media has decided to me. so as i mentioned today the president gave a press conference from the pentagon something that the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff says is the first time in history to have happened now you guys know obama oh he's such a president setter unfortunately it is usually is in a negative way if you ask me but today the event was ascribed a new refocus strategy for our military a leaner approach if you will and not leader because the pentagon suddenly woke up one morning realized hey you know we could be doing the same thing we're doing now or maybe even more but by spending less now of course that's just wishful thinking

instead of this comes as the pentagon is going to be forced to cut almost four hundred fifty billion dollars over the next ten years as congress agreed upon last year and you know the war hawks out there already crying out saying this is going to endanger our country put our national security into jeopardy but i have to give it to the president he made one very important point today during this press conference that should make all the critics of defense cuts shut their mouths a very incredibly important reminder take a listen i think it's important for all americans to remember over the past ten years since nine eleven our defense budget grew extraordinary pace over the next ten years the growth in the defense budget will slow but the fact of the matter is this it will still grow because we have global responsibilities that demand our leadership. in fact the defense budget will still be larger than it was toward the end of the bush administration. parts of the sad thing here is that the

president says this to appease washington to appease the defense contractors and the like what this statement should do on the other hand is make people angry if worse in such a dire economic straits people out there are struggling they can't find work they can't afford their homes social programs are being cut federal and state jobs are being cut because the government needs to tighten its belt then why the hell re still spending more in offense than we were at the end of the bush administration all of this or winding down our wars downsizing now in a sane world i wouldn't be the only one asking this question though our mainstream media all their expert analyst and former generals that are on the payroll they'd be doing it too but sadly that's not exactly the case. speculation is that the army is going to be downsized and again the president and the defense secretary didn't give us really any real hard numbers you cannot fight two ground wars at the same time does that put our security americans at risk for well ever since i can

remember always wanted to be prepared to fight two wars at the same time anywhere on the globe this new strategy basically as i understand it abandons that proposal that we're going to use our command and control capability our capability to attack the enemy susan guided munitions we're not going to have a big oh we have a much smaller army is this not motivated more by money and budgetary concerns than security interests. you know i feel like i'm living in the twilight zone has everybody forgotten in the last ten years since nine eleven our defense budget has more than doubled then we were doing just fine before that it was in our small military that made us unprepared for nine eleven it was bad intelligence and so here we are ten years later making some cuts but still in essence spending more on defense and the mainstream media these commentators are just completely ignoring it they just keep fanning the flames that were on say they were not acting out of strategic rather budgetary concerns well guess what people say that it's about time

we have a few budgetary concerns about artifacts about the fact that we spend more than the rest of the world combined on it not bankrupting your country through its military endeavors is also a strategic concern so before we get that far let's take a really good look at what we're doing and scale back the saddest part about all this of course is that the president didn't deny it once again like i said for the wrong reasons in my mind he said it to appease but still he said it outright and it could be the easiest bit to jump on for our press that is supposed to be the government watchdog is supposed to keep the government in check but even something that easy it was just too hard for the mainstream media to get they just continued to miss it. all right so now that i've said my piece on that let's move on to some more concrete details of what a new u.s. military strategy could actually look like here's how the president described it

today. as we look beyond the wars in iraq and afghanistan and the end of long term nation building with large military footprints will be able to ensure our security with smaller conventional ground forces. we'll continue to get rid of cold war era systems so that we can invest in the capabilities that we need for the future including intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance counterterrorism counter and weapons of mass destruction and the ability to operate in environments where adversaries try to access. so in short you could say that means shifting away from land wars moving more to air and sea saying goodbye to nation building and counterinsurgency and hello to a lot more drone strikes special ops missions intelligence gathering cyber combat you know shadow wars but who exactly are the threats were planning on countering with all this if you listen to the president the secretary of defense they call it the asia pacific strategy what do we want to call it or discuss with me stephen

clemence senior fellow and director of the american strategy program at the new american foundation thank you so much for you to be with you first let's go back to what the point i just made during my mainstream mess which is that the president himself came out and said it reminded everybody that despite this four hundred fifty billion dollars in cuts we're still spending more than we did at the end of the bush administration right after this american about i'm going to say that but while the scary of that but you know it is a very important point you're making that that some people call it the bin laden effect if you go back to nine eleven and look at what the u.s. government was spending on our defense at that time and you account for inflation we've actually spent two point three trillion dollars above what we thought it took to be safe on nine on september tenth two thousand and eleven so we've spent a vast amount of treasure in addition to the lives lost since that time to feel safe and what has happened is that mission creep and hard choices didn't have to be

made basically is reaching if you really asked me who is the real father of this plan we're hearing from it's donald rumsfeld because if you go back to january and february two thousand and one he was going to wrestle with the generals and he was going to think about the way. war and conflict had changed the you needed more nimble forces and you need to make hard choices when nine eleven hit there were no more hard choices everything got funded and so now we're back into that era we're having to make hard choices but even then they're not really bringing down the level of defense expenditures to to what i think should be substantially lower so in that sense is this really some strategic turning point the way that people want to want to call it which i get i get the idea that perhaps we don't want to be fighting to lead wars at the same time forever but is focusing more on what we're already doing on counterterrorism on drone strikes on special ops that really it is important because there's one debate about dollars spent and that's what leon panetta has been talking and i've been critical of him for doing that because in

part what you want to talk about is what is your strategy for the security deliverables you feel your people need and and you know when don rumsfeld again you know i'm not a great fan of don rumsfeld generally but where he was or he was right was that smart systems information technology being applied to the battlefield and today we've got space to you know space based systems that the combination of all of this whether it cost more or less nonetheless should give us some ability to generate military superiority or to play what's called an offshore balancing role between contending powers that doesn't mean we have to have this big you know mammoth like sprawling presence wherever we may be the right way to do it if we really want to shift our strategy was is really to become more nimble but then perhaps call the little things point to the one hundred hundreds of bases that we have a lot i would recommend that i mean a lot of people been recommending that you know you basically decentralize you create a very different but you know the fact is the u.s. military with all due respect to those folks that are fighting for us and i do

respect them have a lot of beaches around the world that they don't want to give up they like a lot of real estate they they like in japan and asia for instance in japan in okinawa this imputed full really gorgeous bases they have the japanese actually pay for bases there we're not spending that money per se on. our military capacity there but we have a we have a big sprawl in a way it's kind of like general motors where you've got a lot of capacity you're well branded but when you add it all up it's not delivering the kind of security i think we deserve so i do think that it's an important discussion with the present but on the table i still think it cost too much one of the things that they're saying that we've heard so much from secretary defense is that this is in order to prepare ourselves to counter new emerging threats in asia pacific region and anything really that new or do we just have our eyes turn around the entire time it's i know but how many aircraft carriers do we need if they only have what well china is growing china is changing the way global economic gravity is working i lived in beijing for a few months last year and if you know i lived a mile from the white house in washington i lived in beijing and you could feel the

wind whipped up as finance ministers foreign and foreign ministers heads of state were chasing china and you don't feel that in d.c. quite as much i mean a lot of people come here but china is the heavyweight in terms of what people think it will mean in the future if they get a premium on their power today based on what they think china will grow into is it do you think and so shifting more to you know our naval superiority i already indicated i was that a little unfair touristic that's a little bit of the problem we're trying to communicate to our allies that we're going to stay and not depart because one of the criticisms of the bush administration and one of the jokes that friends of mine in china used to make i would ask the chinese what's your grand strategy and they said well how to keep us americans distracted in small middle eastern countries was was there was the best thing for china and to some degree what obama and his team are doing is is rebalancing in and doing that joke that we need to basically deploy less in the middle east find other ways to tip and tilt are doing that however that because so our troops are now leaving iraq at the end of the year but since then we've heard

that we're only sending more troops took away we have more weapons deals in the war in the saudi arabia with you know the night arab emirates so there is still another move now to well to keep surrounding around see a lot of. arms sales to middle eastern states you'll see some modest personnel increases but overall the overall picture you'll see a drawdown of forces in the middle east in europe and a and not as we have beefing up in asia as they've been saying i don't think that's quite true you're going to they're going to hold the line and holding the line on a relative basis while you're shrinking the other is sending the signal that the united states is not going to draw back in fact what the intelligence capacity and the synergies that come from different kinds of systems and that is done basically is a placeholder in fact you know in the white house talking to a senior official who said you know even china recognizes fundamentally that it has benefited from that from american presence by keeping stability in the region and to some degree even though they'll be skirmishes between china and the us china

benefits from stability wants largely to maintain stability but it also has new swagger about what about iran what about for example at the moment right there are thousands of u.s. troops on their way to israel for what's going to be one of the largest missile defense exercises do you think that these drums really are beating in terms of some of the threats that we see of the. iran saying that they might close off the strait of hormuz if you look at any g.o.p. candidate right now they want to go to that's not trial card i mean it could be a black swan that comes up and and changes the game i tend to be one of those who think that ultimately logic unrealism will prevail that this isn't all about me jerk reactions of you know some statement from iran about an aircraft carrier and that we're going to automatically a railroad track to war and conflict because the war will be such a strategic significance if we were to have that kind of thing it could reshuffle. alliances with europe and japan which are so structurally dependent upon iranian oil it could change the way china and russia look at an opportunity with iran to

basically partner an ally with iran that had been attacked to do this so so my stance is no no no we're not hearing that because of the behaviors we'd be seeing if the united states was serious about that or even if israel. in israel would wouldn't israel do a deal with a palestinian state essentially to win the sympathies of the arab street instantly if there was a genuine conflict of the next the stench will battle in threat with iran so to certain degree there's a lot of puff and i know that puff feels very real and we seem to have this on an annual basis i remember in september of two thousand and seven i had a piece in the salon where both the neo conservatives on the right and the liberals liberals on the left were convinced george bush and dick cheney were going to bomb iran and you went and talked to intelligence officials and generals and others we were nowhere near that i and i and i know it's hard to hear i hope you're right as all that i have to say is that we've had far too many guys that have come on and say that it just seems if you if you go back in the files of the patterns and you

look at the build up that happened to iraq it just seems like there are you there. and it's important to think about it take it seriously but i don't think we're anywhere near to a real war i'd like to ask you quickly now that we're shifting away from counterinsurgency we decided the nation building isn't worth it for us because guess what we've been trying to do it supposedly for ten years in afghanistan it's been quite a waste what does that say for general david petraeus is this really just an entire if you can. there's a saying he was a big failure. no i think betrays his reinventing himself and has had much more influence on this defense budget we have seen roll out that people know betray us was essentially a pageants the intelligence dimensions of it because part of the counterinsurgency strategy and part of the drone strategy is to have these nimble forces out in the field collecting information and intel return synthesizing human intelligence on the ground to technical and. sort of the new world of i.t. if you will applied to these areas and david protégés is the new king of that arena

and has partnered with leon panetta in achieving that so while these big counterinsurgency sort of occupations seem to be coming to an end david petraeus is getting the most important slice of that pie and he's doing just fine so he's got to move on and i guess you could say reinvented washing hands of some of those aspects and i want to give i want to thank you so much for joining us tonight thank you. i still to come tonight it's been almost two years since the supreme court ruled on citizens united but the battle against it is just heating up after the break we're going to hear from jane about the growing momentum to stop the ruling on a state and local level. internal where military mechanisms do not work out to bring justice for 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 terrorist and

a 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 here sees some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm sorry welcome to the big picture. before. you.

love to take out my lord mr. through there don't believe the roughing it. one protester nobody seems to know. the number of pepper sprayed the face but part of the argument that they're being overly dramatic . it's now been nearly two years since the supreme court's citizens united ruling where the doors were blown out wide open for corporate cash to flow into our elections and the effects can already be seen by the creation of super pacs the rising numbers of money spent but two years on the course against this ruling is

growing louder and the push to overturn it amended to race it from our system is only getting stronger take a few recent examples as reported to you earlier this week montana court ruled that the state's ban on corporate political spending still holds in new york city council voted yesterday to call on congress to pass a constitutional amendment overturning the ruling and similar resolutions have been passed in los angeles boulder oakland and albania and november senator mark udall and others introduced a constitutional amendment to overturn the supreme court's decision so the momentum is there but what are the chances that this could actually work or earlier i caught up with james host of the young turks and i first asked him what he thinks of the resolutions that are being passed so if you city council voted but is actually going to make congress act. well yes and no so if you're asking is it going to specifically lead to the resolution that we're looking for no because for example

in new york city doing this is fantastic but you really need new york state to call for a constitutional convention to get a constitutional amendment if you're going to do it at the state level but yes in the sense that all this is great momentum because it's all these different cities and the supreme court of montana and so many amendments right now in the house in the senate saying enough is enough it's so obvious that money is corrupting politics and we've got to do something about it so all these voices are enormously important and we need every one of them as we fight for that amount well in terms of that ruling in montana specifically and apply to their ban on corporate political spending that's been in place for ninety nine years already but some are saying that maybe we can look to this ruling here as something that can guide other states do you think that'll apply. well i like that idea a lot and i think the other states should do this and then throw it back in the conservatives and go what i thought you like the tenth amendment the tenth

amendment states' rights right you guys are always thought about states' rights so of course you should be an activist judge and try to overturn what the state supreme court decided in montana or in other states so it's not a bad way to approach it at the local level but remember that doesn't stop federal politicians from being bought at all so that you can still buy the senators and montana you still buy the congressman in montana you just can't buy the state officials. well so that's something that i wonder you know when the first amendment was even proposed by six democratic senators back in november for citizens united to be overturned i got a chance to speak with anna about it and her take was that she was still pretty skeptical because what is actually would do if we went by this amendment here is it would put the power into the hands of congress and she said well i don't know because is congress actually going to go and bite the hand that feeds that which is of course the corporations what's your take well you know we sort of will go into action committee wolf and then members we want to pass publicly finances all watch

not only those who killed corporate personhood is the most ridiculous thing ever but says it publicly finance all actions it solves the problem entirely and you know people complain about the critics on the right say oh my god it's going to cost those couple of million dollars or a couple billion dollars who cares compared to the trillions of dollars they are giving away because they're bored it's the best bargain you can imagine publicly financed elections and that takes it so that our representatives will represent us because we're paying them they're representing the lobbyist don't give or think that we overestimate the role that money might play if we for example go back to this entire charade that was played out in iowa as the iowa caucus mitt romney won by only eight votes and rick santorum was second and the washington post had a few calculations there it turns out that mitt romney had spent three hundred dollars per vote and rick santorum only spent seventy three cents. yeah and one calculation had rick perry spending over four hundred dollars per vote

that he got so the results you get from is mixed right. for example one part where money made a huge difference is all that and he newt gingrich chance that they ran and they devastated him with those ads one after another forty five percent as they were run were against newt gingrich and it wound up driving in the polls from number one all the way down to number four so money can definitely have an effect that doesn't mean that he guarantees you a victory and there's been some interesting work done showing that as long as you get to a certain minimum amount which is very very large by the way that you're in the ballgame that if your opponent has more than that for example meg whitman in california spent a ton of money but jerry brown had the minimum amount to be able to fight back then it becomes a little bit more of a balance playing field so it's a mixed bag but what's much more important is the race is a don't get a lot of it so rick santorum could overcome that stuff because television all the

free media is concentrating on this race twenty four seven but if you're running in you know it's a race in arizona or why you're wherever you are not getting a lot of media attention the only you know way that you can influence the race a lot of times is those ads with the money that you get in from your donors. united stuck in a lot about money but since we haven't had a chance to catch up with you in a little while i want to switch topics because it's one thing you know we're fighting right now to get so much of the money out of our political system but how do you fight other things that you can necessarily say are motivated by money for example this national defense authorization act with indefinite military detention put into it i don't think that that was personally motivated by money i would call that an abuse and excessive use of executive power. that's absolutely true power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely everybody knows that right is that one of the oldest sayings there is and so

whenever anybody gets in the executive branch even if it's a constitutional law professor will promise to bring our civil liberties back he can't help but grab the power these are all you know me for might be more executive power yes i jump in it so you got to be ever vigilant about that and you know it's old quote to benjamin franklin said you know you've got a republic if you can keep it and that's where the right wing of the left wing got to get together and realize that a lot of the people in the media honestly are splitting us apart when on eighty percent of the stuff we actually totally agree whether it's fighting for middle class americans or it's fighting for our civil liberties i mean those guys on the right wing side when they say they care deeply about the constitution i believe them they just don't act like you and if you told them hey wait a minute look at what they're doing to your beloved constitution i think a lot of people would come around to that point of view but unfortunately most of the mainstream media never tells them they have no idea that our constitution just

got a bit surreal but is that why somebody like ron paul is such an important candidate because right now there is this debate going on as to why certain people on the left are supporting ron paul and his foreign policy views and only picking to highlight those and does that mean that they actually are supporting some of his other views when it comes to the civil rights act or when it comes to the economy but if he's the only one that saying it shouldn't we be then pointing him maybe holding about honest pedestal at least in some regards that he's the only one willing to talk about the military industrial complex and our civil liberties. but i have a lot of issues with ron paul but one of things that i like about ron paul is that he's bringing up these issues that a great majority of americans agree on and that this stablish despises so and our civil liberties are not that untied to money so part of the reason that we continue to have all these wars and the executive branch wants more and more power is that the depress contractors want those wars the oil companies want those wars

so they pay the the executive branch and the legislative branch to give them all the power they want in the executive so they can have more wars so the fact the ron paul is pointing that out is a great you know testament to his candidacy and it's a great benefit to the country unfortunately there stablished for media hates it right so they don't as for the reason they don't want to talk about ron paul and you talk about him positively and they typically as we've done on the young turks just bring out all the facts about him they don't even bother to do that they want to avoid it as much as possible he only comes in first place and iowa comes in you know third but just two points away from first he's coming in second in new hampshire anybody else that had that kind of momentum in any other race they'd be talking about nonstop with ron paul the like don't don't even talk about it because if you talk about how disastrous the wars are a lot of americans will go oh yeah i totally agree if you talk about how they're taking or said i was a maverick sense let me just interrupt you because because we got to hurry up for

a second here if this comes down to obama and mitt romney is there that big of a difference between the tail. yes now the thing is look i'm the first guy to say there are two sides of the corporate coin and so you're not going to get huge big change with obama no way if you're banking on good luck go put your money somewhere else right and you know obama wants to go five percent of the right direction romney wants to go at least twenty five percent in the wrong direction but that's a big thirty percent so for example what mitt romney wants to do is cut taxes by trillions of dollars for the rich that's going to destroy our economy mitt romney would consider attacking iran that could also destroy our economy and lead to another disastrous war so it sucks that those are two choices but between those two choices remember the last time we thought there was a much of a there was the candidates was al gore and george bush turned out we were totally wrong about that it was an enormous the best of the two evils and i guess you could

say thank god thank you so much for joining us tonight and congratulations on the new show currently we have spoken to you since then thanks. thank you so much. ari coming up next i have tonight show and tell and the winter is a tough season for those involved in the occupy movement but the demonstrators say not to worry because they have big plans what they call face to occupy when to find out what they have in store and come back. into it on your new mechanisms to do the work of bringing justice for 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 they care is now a version of american exceptionalism. you

know sometimes you see a story and it seems so. you understand it and then you glimpse something else some other part of it and realize everything. you don't know i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture. of the capital account i'm lauren lyster.