welcome to the lower show where you get the real headlines with none of the mersey we're going live to washington d.c. now tonight we're going to speak with richard f. cow a big bank lending in troubled borrowers again so is that a scary sign of banks think that things are so good that they're returning to their old practices then a wall of violent crime falls the killing of officers is on the rise as a new york times reported this week but we're going to point out a few statistics that they missed with reasons mike raids and a ninth circuit court ruled that you cannot be locked up just for going on facebook

or your work i couldn't even think that was possible and we're going to tell you about the very broad language in the computer fraud and abuse act we're going to have all of that and more for you tonight including those of happy hour but first let's take a look at the mainstream media has decided to miss. now last night the best and the brightest of the republican party joined former president george w. bush at the bush institute's conference on taxes and economic growth in new york city that offended you guessed it the republican economic vision and following a speech by w. himself new jersey governor chris christie took the stage with a rousing speech on the country's future and shocker the media ate it right up. chris christie saying that we have a big problem in this country saying that we are essentially in some ways we're

becoming a nation of output taito years. and never seen a less optimistic time in my lifetime in this country and people wonder why we're going to play this sound the sound bite from romney surrogate chris christie because he hit the president's politics with a one two punch let's listen. we're turning into a paternalistic title in society we have a bunch of people sitting on a couch week for the next government check. so it's interesting paul president obama is going to be he's going to be holding a little news conference is going to be sitting down with millionaires and their secretaries to push the buffett rule and mitt romney is going to go to what kinetic hit well now that he has some strong words from governor chris christie with. his assessment of our society bob mcdonnell is here all right now some. republican governor from virginia governor bob mcdonnell jon meacham and luke russert are back

at the table governor good morning welcome back but you're going to be an ounce where i am. now all those little food if it's there enough for the media to bite into the real meat of the speech was shown any longer but they played on c.n.n. . that just very corrupt us financially it will bankrupt us morally because when the american people no longer believe that this is a place where only their willingness to work or it's actually honor and integrity and ingenuity determines their success in life they will have a bunch of people sitting on a couch week for the next government check. now you'd think the media would have listened to that clip and said wait a second those statements don't really add up in fact they're just not true but instead they did what they do best latch on to the story and the sound bites in the

most superficial way possible and then just run with it and christie just made it too easy he knows it saying that americans are turning into couch potatoes throwing around words like paternalistic entitlement society that's practically media catnip and so he got his headlines he got is throwing punches metaphors cementing his reputation as the only guy who can take on the democrats and the mainstream media world this just becomes another epic battle between left and right away to give people cites about the presidential race a tit for tat obama hits the republicans with the buffett rule but not to worry christie will hit him right back prevent about what these proposals actually me what the broader implications would be for society it's all about the he said she said so in the end christie got he wanted and the networks got with they want it the only people who didn't win in this equation are the viewers because the media just regurgitates christie's talking points without an ounce of skepticism now for some reason the media's totally content to let christie say that the only true way to get ahead in the united states is to work hard and to quote act with honor and

integrity i think it's pretty clear to millions of americans that that isn't exactly the case when they take a look at who is successful in the united states who makes the most and who has the most influence in washington more often than not not those who acted with honor and integrity but those who arrive here with such a little integrity they brought down the entire u.s. you know these are world economy they took of a lot of taxpayer money and now they have the audacity to argue against any regulations in the aftermath and will discuss later in the show tonight wall street is that again they're lending to people with bad credit and dipping right back into the subprime lending arena what can possibly go wrong but the thing is there are americans out there that are angry americans that realize that this kind of rhetoric is complete. yes occupy wall street they got it the tea party they got it and we saw it first so why can't the mainstream media understand why they insist on letting politicians like chris christie pander to the american people as we've

we've all heard about the last couple of years as if he were can be were that dumb that they think that it's only hard work and integrity will make anybody successful in america when so much of the evidence contradicts that when so much of the evidence in fact proves that it's the biggest cheaters that are getting away with all the cash and you know it's really interesting because the media does bear and spend a fair amount of time talking about the crisis of unemployment they dutifully report on all the jobs numbers each week each month how in the last couple of months they've even been reporting the real unemployment rate the you six which now stands at fourteen point eight percent but when looking at the unemployment numbers the mainstream media feigns a little piece of compassion about how it's the economy not just that millions of people are lazy but then when christie calls the millions of unemployed government parasites and count and say toes and those who are successful beacons of integrity well they just can't be bothered to muster so much as a question as to how the hell that's supposed to add up and that's of the mainstream media chooses to miss.

great news everybody the economy is picking back up so much so the banks are feeling good enough to let those in bad credit pharo again that's right the same practices that got us into a financial crisis are now making their return cording to the new york times capital one and g.m. financial are some of the companies that are trying to woo troubled borrowers even those who recently emerged from bankruptcy and are using slogans like we want to win you back as a customer h.s.b.c. and j.p. morgan chase are meanwhile reportedly took to going back into subprime lending and credit card lenders gave out one point one million new cards to borrowers with damaged credit in december which was up twelve point three percent from the same month a year earlier and that's all according to equifax so how do we look at this is it about time to base stocks sitting on piles of cash start lending again or are the

people at their according the exact targets that should be avoided joining me from our studio in los angeles is richard esko senior fellow at the campaign for america's future richard thanks so much for joining us tonight and so what do you say is this a sure sign of the banks are feeling good again well they've been feeling good for a long time the question is how do they translate that into making more money you know they're running out of opportunities to take very low interest loans from the petrel reserve and just flip them they're looking for other places to go they're moving back into the markets that they got in big trouble playing around with before we have no evidence they're going to be any smarter or fairer more honest this time around so it was inevitable that some point that they would do this from where they are. that's the thing though right as if specially if you read this piece of the new york times about it when they try to speak to some of them as they're promising this time around they're being much say further much smarter

about about everything but you know we've been talking about it unites us about it many times before about some of the problems and banks have just been sitting on cash you know and that's what has kept the economy so stagnant but at the same time now they're getting that cash out and you know who we ultimately want them to be giving it to lending it to you well and who should be there giving it out they're going to want it back plus a markup so the question is are we seeing the banks let's get you know what we're seeing now in new york times talked about this these these advertisers going out we want your business back we want to lend you money well that's what they did on an enormous scale leading up to two thousand and eight and then when everything collapsed because of their behavior and nobody could pay back the money they owed because they didn't have drives or the way just restack made and they blame the borrowers and now they're back to seducing people again into borrowing money and when they crash the economy again not blame the borrowers again it's the old game

but should we then hold ourselves more accountable you know should the consumers the people that are being courted by them should we know better and realize that we can't be a take to credit and also think about what happened in the past. well i think in terms that you know we have to be careful sure we shouldn't be i think it's a great credit we should borrow a lot less but remember the kinds of people they're targeting now a lot of them are in such desperate economic shape that right now they're going to payday lenders a lot of which are also being financed by the big banks or other you know getting themselves in terrible situations just to make ends meet just to put food on the table or pay the rent so i think that yes we shouldn't be seduced by the same the same bunch of bastards that took us around the bend last time around but we've also got to be aware that a lot of people are struggling and we should be setting out reasonable financial programs to help them out so what would you suggest as an alternative for these

people that really did get in trouble right for these people in my chest be coming out of bankruptcy what's a better path for the new take well you know the state of north carolina for example have a great program put together to replace payday lending with other forms of community banking you know i think it's hard to find an individual individual solution on a family by family basis right now so really it's up to the rest of us to push and encourage community banking and more responsible local and state laws from programs to help people out because you know it's a problem of our entire society and our society has got to work with people in trouble to help them out i'm curious about one more thing which is that the market for securities of bundled on allowance is apparently growing at a huge rate investors bought up eleven point seven billion dollars last year and again we're hearing the same thing is that going to cancer the mortgage lenders those kind of know those guys you know what they were doing that when it comes to

the auto loan lenders you know these guys have been around the block they're really smart this is much more safe not is risky what's your take on that. the auto loan business is a cesspool it is so bad there's absolutely no underwriting going on a big chunk of those loans are being written by the car dealer who makes a big markup on it so you think he's going to do it and whether the bar you're really has the money to pay the loan back or not it's a mess it's going to explode i want to switch topics to since we've been hearing so much lately about fairness in our system about taxes in our system right as we come up on tax day the president is out right now trying to sell the buffett rule and then he got his bit of information two years ago and in two thousand and nine i guess three years ago now the i.r.s. said that they were going to form a new group new people auditors and they would direct their attention this is what they call the group the so-called global high wealth individuals so these are

people that made tens of millions of dollars that have all their money in volved and such complex financial deals that you don't know of course there's a lot of other offshoring going on and so they said they're going to create a special group of auditors to look into this group of people turns out that since two thousand and nine they've only audited twelve to eighteen people in this category since then and you know a regular working class family with kids they get out of it at twice the rate so look is. pulled city out of it's politics it's the these global high net worth individuals are also high net campaign contributors think about it you know one adjustment on the return for one of those folks would pay for tens of thousands maybe hundreds of thousands of other right it's in terms of what might be found in irregularities the fact that they're not even bothering and they're concentrating their fire power on small business people and families and so on not it's economic insanity is just economically responsible but it shows that the power

of the wealthy still dominates whichever party is in power even when it comes to something like the i.r.s. they need to be put under pressure the administration needs to be put under pressure to really enforce the laws that are on the books now how do you think the president's going to prove them too of course i don't know what he wouldn't think of his job so far in trying to sell the buffett rule well you know the buffett rule is like so many things with this president it's better than what would a lot better than what we have now but it's it's better than nothing i mean maybe that should be the new campaign slogan but it's certainly not what we should have remember in this country's greatest years of prosperity we had top tax rates of fifty seventy sometimes even ninety percent for the super wealthy now all we're saying is that one invited shouldn't pay more than his secretary so she pays twenty eight percent he should at least pay twenty eight percent you know it's better than nothing but. it is a good politics i don't know it's probably better politics the nothing but as the

economic policy it's better than the. wealthy if they are if they pick up your and have him flow get it and take your advice they are entertaining thoughts prayers are in value at democrats. at florida governor rick scott even though a popular law doesn't as. adults think the reasons might raise about reports of rising numbers of. other headlines like the true. story. and the. other part of it and realize that everything in. the big.

book. mr. but. you know that the real headline not. the problem with the mainstream media today is that they're completely disconnected from that he works for what actually matters to those viewers and so that's why young people just don't watch t.v. if they want news they go online and read it but we're trying to take those stories that people actually care about and transfer them back to t.v. .

is the state. speaking russian channel it's kind of like. russia today has an extremely confrontational stance when it comes to us. but it comes to drug offenders the sunshine state has taken a hardline approach on the issue for decades in the ninety's and the state was experiencing a crack cocaine epidemic the state passed an eighty five percent rule and that state of the bills in florida those sentenced to prison in florida who committed their crimes after october first of one thousand nine hundred five will serve a minimum of eighty five percent of their sentences this applies to all inmates

regardless of the type of crime they committed and the rule applies to all offenders but state lawmakers have been working hard for years to come up with a new approach and state senator ellen barkin off introduce a bill that would send certain nonviolent drug offenders to treatment facility that's run by the corrections system and that's once they finish serving half of their sentence so this bill got over whelming support in fact it passed one hundred twelve or in the house passed unanimously in the state senate for once again overwhelming support and then it reached governor rick scott's desk and that's where it was vetoed scott said his veto was all for public safety and a message he went on to say justice to victims of crime is not served when a criminal is permitted to be released early from a sentence imposed by the courts this bill would permit criminals to be released after serving fifty percent of their sentences thus creating an unwarranted exception to the eighty five percent rule interesting because what rick scott calls an unwarranted exception to

a draconian law and it seems all the other lawmakers in florida called a smart humane policy change the last constitutional reason was public safety which is also b.s. or just tell you a little something else which may have influenced his decision it's all about the benjamins by which i mean private prisons in february we told you about how the state was looking for ways to fight their growing budget woes and so they thought that they found a solution and privatizing twenty percent of their prisons governor scott was swayed by private prison lobbyists when they explained how privatization would save florida's costs by seven percent. maybe like you would like to keep. we spend x. there's. the and that's a situation where there's the will it will happen unless we let satan least seventy percent. like to see the sun sets a pretty big deal and it was lord so they could be mistaken we don't get busy as they. go the politics and don't forget we've had numerous conversations on this

show we show you reports of show you studies and of which can prove that the idea of the private prison save states money well none of them can prove it now in fact in some cases they've ended up costing the taxpayers more i don't think of they don't have certain gimmicks of their sleeves either and because fareed explain to us those cost saving moves have everything to do with who's getting locked up. but now the shoes which inmates they take into their private prison system he made sure that the team in healthy prisoners prisoners that do not have any mental health issues so what happens is all of these private prisons get the healthy nonviolent prisoners that doesn't cost very much money to take care of and then the state gets last wish the electricity or is that the taxpayers have to spend a lot of money on. it and the truth comes out the prisons try to save cost by locking up those who are the smallest threat which in this case could be nonviolent

drug offenders so of course the prisons don't want to lose their well behaved prisoners that would throw off their stats or privatized more of the future like the law because they work hard to get on the good side of florida politicians and fact c.e.o. group one of the biggest private prison lobbying firms they've been very generous donor to the florida g.o.p. doesn't six they gave a million dollars to the state republicans in two thousand and ten they are one of the top fifteen contributors to the florida republican party and campaign finance records show that the c.d.o. gave eleven grand gave eleven grand directly to the campaigns of fourteen out of the twenty members on the budget committee who also happen to approve the privatization bill how convenient right right before rick scott becomes governor so it's funny how it all comes down to money and from the looks of it the lobbyist already been trying to camouflage their moves the blatant corruption is the norm in florida and as long as a lobbyist or stuffing the pockets of people like rick scott he's going to do what's best for that now for the people that really need help and says since it

where its priorities lie we can only hope that when the state legislature reconvenes override that the. our headlines go a long way and so if you've been reading the new york times this week and i think that we've turned into a society ripley's but cop killers on april night the headline read even as violent crime falls killing of officers rises highlighting a disturbing trend the article mentions statistics compiled by the federal bureau of investigation and also to six show that seventy two officers were killed by perpetrators in two thousand and eleven which is a twenty five percent increase from the previous year and a seventy five percent increase from two thousand and eight and i.p.t. commissioner raymond kelly told the times that we have not seen a period of this type of violence in a long time but the thing is are we getting the whole story about the other sites like the billions killed by police and a hundred stories like this in fact political discourse even our legislation here to discuss it with me is mike riggs associate editor at reason magazine and reason

. it's really hard i think you want ok so this story came out and a number of people you wrote about it also took a look at it and it just seemed like maybe some of the statistics don't necessarily add up so what can you tell us about well i mean that i think maybe the first number i looked at was the whether or not this was significant is this as a cause of death is this even statistically significant as in in terms of it's increasing if you look at i think fifty six to seventy two over the course of year that is less statistically significant it's less of a change in percentage than the number of people killed by weapon caught between two thousand and two thousand and ten which is incredibly rare disease number of people killed by and suffer lightest which is you know there are disease in the number of people killed by i can route the last one but there are basically just these three like really small rare diseases that you would never think about front page on the new york times or sort of talking about as any sort of like dangerous or alarming trend and it's the same with police officers i mean that's just not

a significant change it's not even a significant proportion of the number of police officers we have in this country as of two thousand and nine which is the most recently available data we have there was one million try. one thousand law enforcement officers in the united states seventy two of them being killed is not ten percent it's not one percent it's not even point one percent i mean so this is completely completely insignificant it's unfortunate but it's true that is what i always said you know he's like i mean really small communities and small communities that affects those communities and small the police departments and a lot of times will make them you know it can make them more aggressive it can make them scared to do their jobs or make them feel insecure in their communities you know it can be it can be devastating so i'm not trying to downplay that aspect but this idea that it's this alarming trend that we have this wave of lawlessness or that anything as your emblem says that there's one police is just totally bogus and then a complete flip side of this is the york times could somehow buttress that story with other statistics like the fact that the only year that we have available data

for violence or for deaths caused by police officers of civilians the only year that we have data for that overlaps with that including time study is two thousand and eight and in that year ten times more civilians were killed by police than police officers were killed by perpetrators that would have gone somewhere in the new york times story which was why do you think it is them that i mean you know clearly. police being killed while they're on the line of duty is not a good thing i think that's something that should be discussed but then why is it that is the headline first is the fact that you have civilians at ten times the rate being killed by police officers i think the real reason is that law enforcement is a public interest group like anything other than not angels they're not on my time and it's a voluntary job they have interests they'd like to protect would like to increase their funding their pensions to worry about i mean this is this is an interest group just like any other industry so the reason this the reason i think the time strictness up is because the f.b.i. promotes this they're saying like hey look at these numbers if you look at the

breakdown that the f.b.i. published on their website and again it's for two thousand and eleven you can't find data that fresh for civilians we need to find for civilians their pay. down is much much simpler these civilians like this amount of civilians were killed over all this was killed by gunshot in this was killed by something else i mean that's it those are the categories you get the f.b.i. on the other hand publish first of all these different words they use killed they use the use gone down these all these in their press releases they brought down the number of officers that were killed in big towns small towns the kind of criminals whether it was used with a gun whether use a knife what kind of police activity was going on and i mean this is not to be crude it was a publicity stunt you want to but it's interesting that you point out that out to you right because it seems like they're being like they really have it all broken down into every little area and get they don't have anything to attribute to as the cause they can't say that more police officers are being killed in line of duty because or because oh no. you know so that's where the problem lies then do you

think because you know the reason we're even talking about this i think is that because when you see these things in the headlines then you start seeing people in the media say there's a war on police and then when it becomes a part of the political discourse there we see you know new policies that happen you see new slavery in and acted and you know i just feel like that's a little dangerous you know but not if they want to they change policies if they don't know what i mean is this is this is sort of where it gets tricky i mean this sort of extrapolation we've seen with crime rates and people try to make the case that the economic depression is caused crime is sort of been banned but yeah i mean this is an opportunity to sit down and say ok if the f.b.i. and law enforcement agencies want to make this an issue let's talk about all the issues because obviously what law enforcement officials care about is increased funding and increased staffing they want better guns but of protection more cops on the streets well you know if you're if we're going to talk about all the possible options on the table you can look at the case in ogden utah from earlier this year in which a man who was growing marijuana who stood in operate on his home he became incredibly scared and he killed several of the officers well i mean how do we talk about the

fact feel like we simply saucers into people's homes at the crack of dawn without announcing themselves their justice paramilitary so. there's they're carrying assault rifles they go into homes with children with dogs with pets they open fire they throw a flash bang grenades so if you want to talk about all the possible policy changes we can make to make law enforcement safer to make the actual police officer safer let's maybe talk about not treating them like armed gangs or breaking the home people's homes middle of the night destroy their property and kill their pets i mean so like there's a whole array of options unfortunately because of you know groups like reason or sort of a minority in calling for like a broader discussion of this kind of thing and the new york times on page one doesn't bring up any of this other stuff i mean there is absolutely nothing in the new york times article about what the policy implications of the sorry or about the number of civilians killed nothing it was just it was a repeated f.b.i. pressure this isn't. a problem if you think we might see any of this try to be used against you know popular movements the way that we see right now you know that's

already going the other way this is the tea party was like that where you see the way that chicago was preparing for the g. eight which now is and yeah you know i mean yeah and if we do you could definitely see i mean this kind of stuff i think it's just becomes one more datapoint along fortunately local governments state governments use when they're trying to argue that they should have more funding the people should have fewer rights and there should be harsher penalties for basically minor infractions that occasionally lead to one force in officers getting harmed you know so i don't think that it will that this one datapoint will become the spearhead for any larger polls and michael thanks for joining us now thank you. so now they're just now he said i read it and then we'll speak with politico josh gerstein but of course i should have a working americans thing aside from.