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tv   [untitled]    February 21, 2012 6:00pm-6:30pm EST

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real headlines with none of the mersey come alive out of washington d.c. now tonight we're going to take a look at a leaked memo that says the debt deal that finance ministers just agreed on for greece may only be making things worse than reuters reports the venture capitalists are dealing with more under twenty one theo's than ever so how to make sure this boom of young entrepreneurship continues and spreads beyond silicon valley and then at an annual conference of thousands of scientists they spoke gloom we're going to talk about how citizens united and anti-science lobbying as a powerful force to be reckoned with are not all bad warfare night getting a dose of happy hour but first take a look at the mainstream media has decided to miss. so today just like every other day the mainstream media spent hours obsessing over really silly political stories and if you don't believe me take a look for yourself. the energy of city towards crowds contrasted sharply with the
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single blue energy event romney held yesterday in cincinnati amid a pile of boxes i'm going to talk first about bill and barbara here separate interested reason by a box you're at maybe a lecture but sure you say santorum has searched for three reasons what are the yes first of all winning helps you here's what happens when you rise to front runner status everything you say comes under the microscope and is the sec did it well rick santorum is now to explain a lot of what you said here to my right why bring that up. when he was asked about it chris and much to my dismay a lot of times rick actually answers questions he asks and we have to talk about it afterwards there is that question floating around could someone who is not currently a candidate wind up being the g.o.p. nominee here are some of the names that come up over and over again you've heard them many times former florida governor jeb bush and current governors chris christie and mitch daniels those names have come up none of them have indicated they have any interest in running for president in fact quite the opposite. now
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pulling. right questions like who is stepping behind the box rick santorum once again invoking jeremiah wright's name those are the big hard hitting topics that deserved plenty of time to be discussed pretty pathetic not to mention insanely boring i was wondering who actually watches this stuff so anyway today i'm going to keep it short and i could sweet india as a nother example of the pentagon providing misleading information wasting taxpayer money take a look at some new information that we've learned thanks to a federal audit report that we constantly on this show talk about the weapon systems that just suck money out of all of our pockets think looting not just through in feigned immediate costs but cost overruns delays mechanical errors that all need to be fixed so while the f. thirty five the v. twenty two might be some of the worst and most blatant examples and actually happens all the way around see the federal audit report concludes that the real costs of weapons projects usually don't make it into budget documents or weapons programs reports while they might outline how much has been or will be spent to
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acquire the new fighter jets ships the new vehicles they don't outline those long term cost things like operations maintenance and repair expenses and when i say usually i actually mean that seventy percent of the time these types of costs are obscured seventy percent and this whopping news that should make everybody cringe at the amount of deceit was all laid out plain and clear in the form of the government accountability office report and the g.a.o. only looked at three years of pentagon weapons reports to come to these conclusions so can you imagine what would happen if you looked at ten or twenty years now not only is this another example of government agencies specifically the department of defense bigger responsible being corrupt being greedy it's also against the law congress in one nine hundred eighty five an act of a law that expanded it in one thousand nine hundred one and one thousand nine hundred four were quire ring comprehensive reporting and analysis of lifecycle cost a person i think the blame goes all the way around here right you can blame the defense contractors you can blame the. pentagon you can win congress for not
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keeping tabs on what they're supposed to be monitoring but the conclusion here is plain and simple while the american people are struggling being asked to make sacrifices and cuts to much needed social programs the pentagon which has is also facing cuts well they get to consistently lie to congress and the people about those expenditures they flout the law and no one i can promise you this nobody is going to be forced to see any representations for it but this is a big deal this is corrupt and it's all of us getting scammed i'm sure the pentagon would love to keep us on it out of the limelight it's out there the audit was done for reasons so that we can know the truth so that we can inform the public so that we can try to fix the problem but if you ignore these reports and how do you expect anything to ever change and so that's where the mean mainstream media once again fails to do its job it's just so much easier to banter about the he said she said then to dig for the numbers and that's been fortunate state of television news in this country today they choose to miss.
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well eurozone finance ministers agreed to a new rescue plan for greece today the one hundred thirty billion euro plan will call for private investors to take a loss of fifty three point five percent on their greek bonds while finance ministers are calling this a good deal a balance a way to secure greece's future a leaked report that reuters in the financial times got their hands on seems to spell trouble they had in february fifteenth this ten page confidential memo was distributed to senior officials in europe and it warns that two of the new bailouts main principles might actually be self-defeating are we seeing denial coming from the european officials or just pack of lies being sold the solutions here to discuss this with me and anthony rendez oh director of economic research for the reason foundation anthony thanks so much for joining us tonight are you like that one right what i call that what package lives i mean you're a degree and so what we have is a dismal set up it's like you know one way or another we're really screwed aren't
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we doing fine call me a pessimist call me a pessimist so we have you seen this leaked memo i actually i was i was watching twitter yesterday for news of you know something coming out of this meeting because it is a thirteen hour meeting between these finance ministers and hours upon hours just waiting and i actually was what was watching twitter when the news when that story broke and all this is just getting passed around everywhere and basically what the what this. the story basically points out is greece is going to fall it's this is this bailout is biding time you know i'm i'm a pretty strong person is that this is well this is it is in a you know really we knew this even before this report came out but it is sort of like solidifies that with the numbers that were in front of the finance ministers greece is going to default this deal is basically just biding time for banks to get their fiscal house in order for countries to be a little bit better prepared but you know we're kidding ourselves if we think that this is the end of it i mean let's talk about some of the specifics too right they look at austerity measures that have been now i guess you could say. forced onto
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the greek population at the same time austerity is really only going to cause their debt to rise even more so as the exact opposite effect of what you want to happen right what else is what will we will do and one of the interesting things in this this whole bail out package is that it's going to force them to lower their minimum wage which will reduce their expenditures and reduce their minimum wage by twenty percent for those who are over thirty or twenty five in those are under twenty five reduces minimum wage by thirty two percent and i think that most of what that's trying to do is trying to warn italy and spain that hey you go down this road this is what you're looking at this is going to be really painful so not only does this deal try to buy time with some aspects of austerity measures but it's also a warning sign to spain and italy who are the next couple countries that are on the brink that this is not the route that you want to go to deal with this now for weeks before it comes to this ok so if this leaked memo has been leaked out there then how do we hear all of the finance minister is saying that this deal that they
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just came up with today is great that it's the right step forward that this is a solution of this is a compromise that whatever you want to call it the words have been pretty positive are they just ignoring us the other politicians. they knew this just because it's been leaked it's not like they're going to turn around and change their story i mean this the whole point of this bailout package is of trying to instill some confidence and it's it's actually fascinating to watch many aspects of the market buy into the short term thinking this is just delusional to think that the greek system you know the problems in greece are over and at best at best in this bailout deal if everything goes well we're talking about just lowering greeks debt to g.d.p. to one hundred twenty percent at worst and what this memo points out is it's going to you know top out it's almost one hundred eighty percent even if it gets to this best case scenario one hundred twenty percent of their debt relative their g.d.p. it needs to be sixty to seventy percent it's no we're even close to what it needs to be so even in the best case scenario of this of this bailout we're probably looking at you know a default in twenty four to twenty fifteen something like that well you know it's
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interesting you bring that up to this something we discussed on the show a couple weeks ago i don't believe that you were here for that but. credit right i was saying that maybe they're just giving them even this hundred twenty percent level of debt to g.d.p. because they're saying that you know italy basically is there right now and so if you tell greece that they have to go any lower than italy which is deemed too big to fail is essentially going to be proven you know unsustainable well they've been sort of tinkering with what that number is going to be was one hundred thirty percent you know one of being one hundred twenty point five percent you know those put like right at that threshold is where you know last night you know that could be the case you know i really think that this deal is mostly a warning sign to think that there's a lot of aspects of the sort of warning signs to italy which is the next one up sort of the precipice and spring pretty close behind them i don't think that deep down in her heart angela merkel will guard actually think that this is going to prevent a greek default i think that you know even greek politicians know that you know they're just sort of biding their time they're biding their political time these
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guys know this you know we're not the only ones with the data to be able to look at it but they're trying to play politics they're trying to buy time for european banks they're trying to buy time for you know france to get its fiscal house in order so that there's not sort of a cascading effect across even non sort of pick countries this is you know this is a very tenuous time in europe and they're trying to do whatever they can to sort of keep themselves you know a step ahead of the crisis are they're trying to buy time but at the same time are they also trying to have a little bit too much control right because greece also has elections coming up wolfgang schauble said that maybe we should just postpone the elections for now and wait until we can make sure that the wrong party or the wrong leader is aren't there that we haven't chosen the wrong democracy which is let a few people to say well you know this is really interesting because it almost seems like greece will be the first colony of the euro zone what do you think it will i mean i think that at the end of the day what by the time that greece does default they're going to just be treated like any other emerging market country
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that defaults in the way that the i.m.f. goes in and basically takes over and tells your country how to. i think that's where they're going eventually and they're just you know if anything this might be sort of like a warm up act for really what's outside control of the greek economy is going to look like i don't think it matters what government you have increased i think what matters is the greek people i don't i don't see greeks taking ownership of their own problems or their own debt crisis you know this is at the reason that greece got into this in the first place is people didn't want to pay their taxes so they paid off their tax collecting the tax collector didn't want to lose his job so you know the fiscal the lords of greece just sort of like fix the books and everybody was fine with this but you're going to like them to take ownership of this right they're just name time i mean they're rioting because now they're being told that they're going to have cuts in the minimum wage there as can restrict austerity measures that take place and you think that they should just look at that and say it's our fault well not just that but look at the way that germany responded to you at the end of world war two look at the way that japan is responding to the
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earthquakes in march there's dramatic fiscal and fiscal crises that hit countries all the time and we see positive ways of responding to them it means don't go raiding you know your music that means don't destroy power grids and you know and occupy transit systems that's not going to do anything you can occupy every greek transit system you want the greek government can't do anything more than what they're doing right now because they just do not have the money the greeks don't have the tax money to pay to do everything they want it's just simply not there but they're buying time by then going along with austerity measures that are being imposed by you can say other countries i mean they're still if they were in the u.s. ratio it's one of the oh i have absolutely no just an interesting point you bring up too because people ask you know how come how can we don't see riots in america americans don't riot anymore right you can see the japanese culture respond in a completely completely different fashion to the tsunami and to the earthquake but at the same time we have riots in london to sure it was a people michael you know occupier tea party our own american form of rise but i
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don't think i think that i don't think that one guy in this ng and i don't think that there are i don't i mean i'm a. actually i think that there's positive things in both the occupy and the tea party movement so i don't see that as a negative about some people you know further that's how we respond to the united states and i think it's a little bit we want to try to take ownership of our own problems by proposing solutions so you've got two party proposing solutions you have occupy people proposing solutions we're trying to get i have not heard a single greek riot put together sort of like here's the austerity package that we think would work well that meets all these you know these debt problems that we have you don't see that. as the job of your legislators that you elect to actually come up with those so what is. the financial experts out there and again thanks so much for joining us tonight. our time for a quick break coming up next. to the streets to protest after and. then the u.s. government subsidizes big business with tax breaks or do they have it all wrong
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should the government really be subsidizing small startups and. people calling like you said for free and fair elections. and they're still reporting from the land as you can hear behind me loud explosions .
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you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lengthly 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 tom hartman welcome to the big picture.
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well here in the u.s. the internet and internet companies rose up to protest and ultimately defeat sopa and pipa for now at least but the government's response to piracy isn't just an issue on a national level it's actually global so we've spoken at length on this show about the and i counterfeiting trade agreement and act and how this piles piracy and counterfeiting fears into one massive international agreement and it's billed as a global effort to stop counterfeit goods whether they be sports apparel computer software or music and movies and it's nothing new actually it's been in the works for about six years president obama actually signed onto the agreement last year and has been joined by australia new zealand canada morocco singapore and south korea and in a secret ceremony all e.u. countries except for five of them also signed on but over time details of active
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leaked out to the public and as he will put the pieces of the agreement together protests an international outcry have followed close behind this is something i discussed with the atlantic's and clark estus last month. obama had the agreement signed last year and when he he did it he did it without the need for congressional approval because he said was operating within existing u.s. law and i think that what we find out especially once we saw what happened with the protests against pippa is that the u.s. public does want to be more a part of these conversations because at the end of the day of yet another something that we all use it it's a free world part of. now well we haven't seen a reaction in the us over act like the ones over pippen sopa thousands of taking to the streets and other countries to protest their governments signing on to legislation that would restrict and govern the internet we saw protests in france poland and lithuania those are all the people's way of saying no to the elements of
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this agreement like a provision to forcing internet service providers to crack down on its customers but most of all if the secrecy of this entire process that's really rubbed people the wrong way and so now some governments in the e.u. are actually starting to pay attention to the people and they are expressing their own concerns over provisions of act up after protest in poland the government announced that it has suspended its involvement in bulgaria they have followed in poland's footsteps pulling out of the signing process lot via wants greater consultation on the provisions of this agreement and lithuania is justice minister has spoken out saying i don't know where it comes from and how it originated but i don't like that this treaty was signed skillfully avoiding discussions in the e.u. in lithuania now meanwhile germany and the czech and slovak and governments aren't going anywhere near the agreement and it's current form so there you have it almost ten countries have formally expressed some form of opposition and like we saw on
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a smaller scale here in the u.s. with soap and it but many of the negotiations for act to have some sort of beef with the current language negotiators excuse me some before the current language for the agreement was really fascinating is that all the small countries have actually risen up spoken out after their government leaders put a foot down to an agreement that gives too much power to hollywood and the governments that wouldn't force their will so it's another interesting development another change for the way the big business and specifically the entertainment industry used to getting things done some people considered act a hollywood backup from sopa and pipa but it looks like they might not have had the sway or might not have this way that they used to anymore so i guess the lesson here is do not mess with the people's internet. now every year the american association for the advancement of science holds a meeting and this year was attended by eight thousand scientists from fifty countries and some claim that usually this meeting is more of a time to pat each other on the backs revel in their latest accomplishments this
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year there is a message of doom and gloom into fedoroff president they asked said that she was scared to death of the anti-science movement that spread it saying that we're sliding back into a dark era james hansen had said that science is under siege and we have planetary emergency and very few people actually recognize it so where is the evidence of this anti-science movement exactly though where you can find it in the statements that we've heard from republican presidential candidates as of late specifically rick santorum just this month. so fully you know. oh mother you know based on the bible. i referred to global warming is not climate science book political science. we were put on this earth as creatures of god had to be going over the earth to use it wisely still want to watch but for our benefit not for the earth spent it never supported even the hopes of. the scientists.
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and it's not just rick santorum in fact scientists who argue that the supreme court's citizens united decision has also played a role they had to discuss this with me is chris mooney science am political journalist and author of his latest book the republican brain the science of why they deny science and reality chris thanks so much for joining us tonight. for starters what do you think of some of these statements that i said right coming from the scientists that were part of this meeting here i mean is this is this a little out of character the kind of it's been building i was actually in vancouver at the meeting and i just scientists have been concerned for a while but it just seems to keep getting worse rick santorum for example the things that he says george w. bush didn't say these kinds of things are right and scientists were concerned about george bush but he never called global warming a hoax is taking it to another level why santorum is just one of them right and we really see this happening on
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a mass scale and so let's talk about the way that you think that now we're seeing citizens united you know money start to influence this debate what money is a big factor because you've got corporate interests who disagree with certain aspects of science and the republicans are in their camp and you also have religious interests you've got to weigh those as well santorum represents both so he denies evolution he denies global warming and you know you just go on down the list both of them i think are involved and it's also i think a real radical free market libertarian ideology the. is fueling a lot of this war saying you know the religious argument i think is a lot of the time where you can definitely pinpoint on rick santorum then we're talking about the fact that it might be big business involved this is what this could be oil companies that don't necessarily want to invest in alternative energy or whose mystically are we talking about. any fossil fuel company is going to profit by the status quo although actually i think that's changing a little bit i actually think that it's partly corporate interests if you talk about the partly corporate interests but also this increased really radical free
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market ideology that doesn't want the government to do anything they just want to go it alone and not really have a safety net really have environmental regulations that's the tea party and so here you have the attacks that we've seen towards the e.p.a. lately i mean really everywhere you could be pointed out one of the things that i thought was interesting though when i was reading from you know what was discussed at this conference vancouver is that the scientist said oh you know we should've seen this one coming we didn't we didn't think there would be this hard why didn't they see it coming well scientists have always kind of wanted to just do their research and stay in their labs and teach their students and get their grants and what they're realizing is they have to come out of their shells because politicians are trampling all over their expertise and they're really not going to take it anymore they're getting a lot tougher they're getting to be better communicators but they don't know really how to deal with the rough and tumble of politics and since when is demagoguing this in a way that we have not seen yet american politics but is it just i mean you know there's always there are also perhaps some dirty games involved here too you know because some of the reports will say these outside organizations the ones that
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don't technically support a certain candidate right that a certain candidate isn't supposed to have any affiliation with that they'll be ghostwriting scientific articles to raise you know doubts about government research that they'll try to undermine the use of science to form government policy that they're all trying to you know ruin the reputation of some scientists out there there's a network of think tanks partly funded by corporate interests partly funded by ideological right wing libertarian interests that are going around attacking. so ok and they're going around sowing doubt they're going around spreading misinformation and they're very effective at it because all you have to do is get your echo chamber to repeat this and it bubbles up in the republican candidates repeated in the nation's polarized about whether global warming is even true even the scientific community is really solid all right so then how do you fix that right you have to see education as one place to start but at the same time you know you have to fight with i guess with commercials and with these organizations that are pushing against any kind of government reform it's really tough because now the
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fight is going to the educational level that's the new strategy is to change what kids are taught so that they're not taught accurate global warming just like there's been attack on teaching evolution for a long time now they're going to attack the teaching of global warming so we're going to have to fight in a bunch of different states all of which are going to teach it differently and we're going to be fighting people in the grassroots level state after state over what kids are even taught so they're going to block us there too it's going to there's got to be some other you know there's has to be some creative solution we're talking about you know some of the smartest people in the world are gathering of this massive science conference that are doing the research coming up with things i could never even dream of and you know and i feel like they have to have more creative solutions time how to get people to pay attention well what they're doing is they're actually studying this is what scientists are good at science of communication and they're actually sort of understand why the mysteries are getting through and they're realizing that beating people over the head with facts doesn't work because the reason this resistance occurs is actually emotional and people are really threatened by the idea that oh my god my libertarian ideology is wrong the government we do need the government to solve this massive global problem of
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climate change and so that's why they reject the science so once we figure out actually what the what the source of the resistance is really get around it better . sounds like if it's really a motions that are driving this for people here i guess you could say their ideology of looking towards the government you know being a fear that perhaps some of the religious ideology that they believe is going the other way i mean it almost sounds like the science community is now trying to apply fear when they're when they're saying the problem is so bad. and i'm scared for the future and you know we have no idea how it's turning out the scientific community is actually really afraid of global warming really afraid and you don't hear that much from scientists they like to because they don't like to show their emotions we haven't done anything it just keeps getting worse. and i will see if they can scare one else into it i guess although i don't really think fear is the best option and thanks so much for joining us tonight chris good to be with you again.
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was. it was. you may remember that infamous video of n.y.p.d. pepper spraying young girls from the first weeks of the occupy wall street movement in new york and i want your video taken by somebody in the crowd went viral spread across the internet and the t.v. like wildfire and led to an n.y.p.d. investigation now also prompted the victims of the pepper spray cell to file a lawsuit against the department and we've seen amateur video after amateur video of police officers behaving badly during the occupy protests and assuming we can thank our smartphones for being able to capture to try and hold the police accountable we see police departments are finding a way to fight back to make sure the story gets told from their perspective and not the people in the crowd several police departments across the country including those in cincinnati and oakland are starting to require their officers to wear cameras the next time you talk to
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a police officer smile and this is just the beginning in fact just today the tourist police where company taser announced that they will be launching a new line of wearable cameras meant for police the best part they can go right on your oakley's so sorry but it kind of just makes me laugh a little i'm still going to film you but still a cool the same time now the new taser camera bills itself as a win win for both the police and the people on the web site notes of the camera health departments because u.s. law enforcement spends approximately twenty billion in settlement each year to resolve claims it improves the behavior of all parties during police interactions and it reduces false complaints and lawsuits by accurately capturing video from the officers perspective now as i mentioned earlier. every police departments are buying the pitch oakland is one of the first apartment to issue cameras to its officers to increase accountability after all the department is facing a federal overtake this march but several complaints of already been made the officers aren't keeping their cameras on this is
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a video that was produced by jacob crawford and journalist allie winston from footage obtained during the january twenty eighth demonstration included activists attempts to break in a city hall. so it's clear that even if police are given the tools to record a monitor their actions and yours not all of them are that keen on doing it don't forget that in three states it's actually still illegal for you to fill the police while they now have all the technology on their side so just keep that in light taking a break will be right back. people calling what you said for free and fair.

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