tv [untitled] April 16, 2012 7:00pm-7:30pm EDT
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if you notice your pockets feeling a little lighter this month that's probably because your twenty eleven tax bill is due that's right it's tax time once again in the us and we want to know what americans think about the current system. and it users consider it a technology with infinite possibilities many u.s. lawmakers see the internet as the next great terrorism threat and they're willing to do whatever it takes to keep america safe even if it means encroaching on your civil liberties in the process so is it really in our best interest for big brother to reign on the web we'll question. what we are seeing on the arizona border is a surge. but it's not just the drug cartels we're talking about these are armed
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civilian militia members patrolling the arizona border and here's the kicker lawmakers aren't only supporting it many one fund it so is this the new era of the border patrol. good evening it's monday april sixteenth seven pm in washington d.c. my name's christine and you're watching r.t. well it's always fun the time of year to hear some of the arguments people make against paying taxes but there are a form of slavery that pain taxes should be voluntary but no matter what nearly everyone thinks changes to the tax system are needed here's the pew research survey taken at the end of two thousand and eleven about how people feel about the tax system fifty nine percent say there's so much wrong congress should completely change it and about thirty four percent say it works pretty well but congress
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should make minor changes. so we think it's a good day to talk to axes and to help me do that i was joined earlier by wayne allen root a two thousand and eight libertarian vice presidential nominee he also wrote the book the conscious of a libertarian empowering the citizen revolution with god guns and gold and tax cuts and i asked him how he feels about the current tax system. well i'm a big fan of moving towards a model a lot more like the state where i live nevada the state of california our neighboring state about as zero state of jack zero business tax zero. capital gains tax and zero evidence tax and the sixteenth lowest property taxes in american the result is for the last six decades we've been number one in america for population growth so people are moving with their feet chris then they will move to wherever the taxes are low what and that is the much of karl of america with the lowest taxes and we've done well because of it well great but it sounds to me that i mean how how do you how does your state about us support things like you
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know maintaining the road then the school system and things like that yeah well you can't survive as a country without any taxes but income is not taxed business or personal about it we have sales tax so when you buy something you're paying a tax we've got a property tax when you own a property you're paying a tax and of course we've got gaming taxes we've even got legal medical marijuana legal prostitution the only state out of fifty states are we taxed in and if people like that great then the rest of us pay lower taxes as a result i think that's the model for all of america and it is interesting when you look at it state by state and also from the federal level for some reason way and they seem to be not quite the third rail literally speaking but to working or complex to deal with i mean because the tax system is complicated and it's still not all balanced. and yet he may i put up the numbers that showed so many americans think this needs to change and yet it doesn't it just keeps sort of as it is what
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have you seen i mean you think the whole country should just adopt the nevada plan and what do you think you've seen out there do you think is feasible to change well for me it's very simple first of all you're russia today and guess what russia and all the xover republics all have lower taxes than america and all of a flat low tax rate i believe i'm going to call. the number hopefully you'll know if i'm right but i've seen that russia as well percent flat tax here in america we have a thirty five percent tax and obama claims that's low well i'm pretty good at math thirty five percent seems really high compared to twelve percent flat tax a matter of fact it's just about triple so if you look at all the xover republics you're talking about ex-communist countries all have between ten percent and a twenty percent flat tax and america we've got thirty five percent plus fica taxes plus state taxes plus loka local taxes plus properly plus sales where he ended up we are actually overtaxed dramatically compared to russia and many of the x.
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republics when we when we give that thirty five percent number even at thirty percent number on individuals on businesses it's very rare that people actually pay that much especially some of the higher income earners in this country there are loopholes there are so many things to be written off and you have a situation often when some of the largest growth in companies in this country actually get money back from the government don't even pay five per cent so that thirty percent mathematically yes that is greater than twelve percent but that's not really what's going on here well i'll tell you what i think that the hong kong model is perfect for america that's the perfect bottle's force officer and it's hong kong is a fifteen percent flat tax if you're allowed to deductions and that's it and that is mortgage deduction up to a million dollars on your home and charitable deductions the capital gains tax is zero the result is hong kong is the most prosperous and gloomy economy in the entire world at only a three point five percent unemployment rate while here in america christine the
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actual unemployment rate they're quoting eight point three percent the reality is if you use the same stats were used for the last century like we did say the great depression one hundred twenty nine our unemployment is really about eighteen percent in the united states right now so to me hug is perfect and you keep it simple it's flat everyone pays the same amount. and you're allowed to simple basic deduction that's the way i'd like to go all right so you know and some ways a lot of people definitely agree with you when you're president obama especially recently going around talking about finding a tax rate and keeping it making it so for example warren buffett pays the same tax rate as his secretary or people who make a lot less than him let's hear a small portion of his speech and then we'll talk about his ideas ok while many millionaires do pay their fair share some take advantage of loopholes shelters and let them get away with paying no income taxes whatsoever that's all perfectly legal
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under the system that we currently have. you've heard that our friend warren buffett pays a lower tax rate than a second here. because he's the one who's been pointing out and saying we should fix it all right and we've heard this before and certainly we've been following the u.s. senate today they're sort of they've put forth a vote on this you know as it's come to be named buffett rule probably won't pass infinite but this is going to be a topic from now until november what about his argument. long want to have a flat tax committee that makes a million dollars. forty thousand dollars well listen the buffett tax a horrible argument it's a jobs killer it'll never pass the senate even though democrats control the senate the same reason that obama's budget last recently i'm sure you know that one hundred forty four to nothing in the united states congress and the reason it lost
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but that's by that score is democrats voted against those who are willing to vote so at the end result is christine that the buffett tax would kill jobs because capital gains a whole separate category of your earned income capital gains is the money you have left after you've already paid taxes on your earned income and all you'd be doing is hurting people who invest in businesses stocks bonds municipal bonds all the things that help america grow real estate commercial real estate you want people risking their money investing in those things and the payoff should be the lowest tax rate possible so i'm on the polar opposite side of barack obama like i said low flat rate of earned income but zero income tax on capital gains and that's why the country is so prosperous we're going in the wrong direction i'm not as rich as any of these big shots i'm not warren buffett i'm not but i'm not mitt romney god bless him here's my theory christine here's our i sum it up if they make an extra two
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hundred million and someone else makes the extra twenty million that someone else would lower taxes makes two hundred thousand i make two thousand i'm happy all i care about is my extra two thousand i'm not worried about whether they make twenty million god bless him. that's what makes america great and just last question when i mean you're kind of breaking it down pretty simply but this again is a problem that has not been dealt with it's a system that has not been changed what do you think is the reason that this is sort of an untouchable issue the reasons pretty simple is that a political party about two years ago and i was standing in front of me was one of the most powerful tax attorneys in the united states of america i told him i wanted a simple flat tax. and he looked at me and said you do realize that will never happen you can never win it's really why he said because i've got the most powerful clients in the united states who will never allow it they love it the way it is for two reasons number one the clients love it because they get carve outs based on that because your vision is they make it so their rates are lower than yours wait
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and second of all congress loves it as long as rates are high and you can do special for eight years for special interest they'll keep getting gigantic checks but if you make it fair and simple and flat for everyone no one's going to write a check to their congressmen to try to get exemption or an exception for themselves and that was probably the best answer i've ever gotten why this battle aki by doing today i die probably will never win i think i think there's a really interesting point there i think you're right that a lot of people do use some of those loopholes to do favor certainly here in washington we know about that revolving door that exists when ellen wrote two thousand a libertarian vice presidential nominee and the author of the conscience of a libertarian and powering the citizen revolution with god guns on tax cuts thanks so much thank you christine oh forget the website it's roots for america dot com that's what i do every day for america. and we do have an update to that interview we've been keeping an eye all day on the bus that roll the senate just voted they
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voted it down fifty one to forty five blocks in the silicon for all of us are not the only people to cross party lines are republican senator susan collins of maine and democratic senator mark pryor of arkansas. well let's take a look now at some of the changes in the horizon for the internet the freedoms that we've enjoyed when we use the internet and some of the increasing attempts to close in on those freedoms and on the privacy that we've enjoyed or at least we have also the federal communications commission today or in the last couple days slapped a twenty five thousand dollar fine on google for apparently impeding and then best to geisha the f.c.c. has been looking into how google collected data for its street view mapping program and said google was quote deliberately impeding and delaney investigation for months by not responding to requests for information and documents and in a rare interview with the co-founder of google search told the guardian he pointed the finger at the government as well as facebook and apple as threats to internet
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freedom all this and today also marked the beginning of stop cyber spying week week all as congress continues to weigh the goods and the balance of cyber intelligence sharing and protecting active twenty eleven response we want to speak now to trevor tim an activist with the electronic frontier foundation hey there trevor are we're seeing what in many ways is a battle for control of the internet right now who's winning and who's losing. well i guess it depends on who you ask i think surrogate rand was referring to when he was talking about governments he was talking about authoritarian governments he mentioned saudi arabia and china and iran as examples of governments who are restricting internet so much that citizens can't do what they want here in the u.s. we have a different problem right now the government is trying to go after privacy online with a new cybersecurity bill that talks about information sharing between governments
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and companies now the problem with this bill is that companies will be able to kind of skirt privacy laws normally they are restricted from hand information over to the government without a warrant or some sort of probable cause but in this scenario they would be able to use of the cyber security loophole to monitor your communications and hand them over to the government voluntarily so we want to make sure that here in the u.s. that constitutional protections stay strong for those who are using the internet and using you know communicate and we also want to make sure that in those other countries that i mention that we can kind of push for a more open internet i think is a really interesting point and when we do talk about internet freedoms for other countries it's very often that u.s. lawmakers people here point to what those countries are doing wrong i want to play something that secretary of state hillary clinton said in a recent speech we want to keep the internet open for the protestor using social media to organize
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a march in egypt apologise student emailing her family photos of her abroad a lawyer in vietnam logging to expose corruption the teenager in the united states who is bullied and finds words of support on line. but the small business owner in kenya using mobile banking to manage her profits so a lot of positive words there are being spoken about the internet but as you say there are also some issues in this country regarding internet censorship and privacy aspects go into a little more detail about this country about the united states and what is being done here that concerns you. well over the last year we've seen that congress is trying to try to introduce actually over one hundred bills that would attempt to regulate the internet in some way but these example is obviously the stop online piracy act from earlier this year which thanks to a large protest on january eighteenth was eventually abandoned by congress now
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we're looking at the system a bill which attacks privacy in a different way than sopa to put it still a similar type of painter in the congress is trying to regulate the internet without really understanding why and it's not just in the u.s. we can see this in the u.k. right now there are a host of dangerous proposals on the table that would that would force google and facebook to censor more that would give the government actually full surveillance powers to monitor every no text and phone call going in and out of the country and there's also censorship proposed on the table to some i censored music videos so there are a host of different ways that governments can go after this you know online freedom in fact in russia right now there's they're trying to use existing laws to go after left leaning bloggers who are. blogging about gay rights and environmental ism so
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you can you can see that different countries you different tactics whether it's copyright laws or cyber security laws or just using national security as an excuse to go after for just speech and so what we want to do is make sure that all of these tactics are exposed and hopefully that people can respond and stop them it is really interesting trevor national security cyber security these reasons given time and time again in this country in the halls of the u.s. congress to try to think about making new laws you know getting in there on the internet and essentially trying to control it trying to use it to get information you mentioned by the south island. the actors keep our piper how to protect i.p.x. these both failed when voted on because people finally understood what they were about what do you think the likelihood is of this but the cyber intelligence sharing and protection act do you think that's a path well i think congress has at least learned some lessons from the
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sopa debate which is mildly encouraging. you know before when we were trying to stop sopa congress wouldn't return the calls of the civil liberties community they wouldn't return the calls of the tech community they were just trying to shove it through congress without any debate whatsoever once they saw the power of the internet and how internet users can organize and really make a difference in the legislative procedure i think they understood that you know they have to be more understanding now what we're seeing with says that the authors of the bill are trying to disassociate themselves the so but they actually took out the intellectual property clause must be which is a good sign unfortunately they didn't go nearly far enough and they claim that they're going to continue to work with the civil liberties community to make sure this is a better bill and we're running a week long protest this week actually trying to convince congressman to vote no on this bill until they take out these privacy destroying provisions and hopefully
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make it a bill which in effect cybersecurity positively but not encroach on the privacy rights of americans and driving your organization has been very outspoken the electronic frontier foundation in opposition to system and from what i've been reading now facebook is supporting we're not hearing a whole lot of outcry against facebook talk to me a little bit about that. well actually another case another digital civil liberties organization is running a campaign against based against facebook they came out and supported this bill months ago i think before we knew actually the true dangers of the bill they can and then after responding to pressure on friday they came out with a statement saying that they actually did not support the provisions that were protesting the provisions that allow companies to voluntarily hand over your private information to the government they said that's not the reason they supported the bill in the first place and they wouldn't if the bill were to pass they wouldn't hand over additional information to the government so part of the
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party do so really just points the fact that this provision that allows these companies to do this actually isn't even in the bill is all and that we can actually pass by brisker the legislation without it and these companies would still benefit so whilst they schools hasn't revoked its support altogether their statement really really proves our point in that the these provisions that would destroy america's privacy just aren't needed at all and let's go back and we were talking earlier in this discussion about this interview in the guardian with google co-founder sergey brin highly critical of what he calls the restrictive walled gardens of facebook and apple which tightly control what software can be released on their platforms i'm wondering i mean is this just a competitor pointing fingers or i do think there's some legitimacy to his argument . you know i think it's probably both i mean google has obviously felt threatened by facebook for a while now simply because of faculty and they have two very different business
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models up on facebook like you said control their apps that run on their systems very tightly so if you want to make your own out you have to get approved through the system and you know there's obvious censorship involved in there if they don't like your app for whatever reason they can say no google has kind of operated under more open scenario and surrogate for and even said that if facebook was a starman as it is today when it will start of the minute it had been able to create because facebook already has kind of its tentacles in in the internet so deep that it's hard to penetrate anymore whatever we are out of time appreciate your insights certainly a lot to talk about especially during this week trevor tim activist for the electronic frontier foundation in san francisco they serve me well the supreme court this month will hear arguments for and against arizona's so-called so me your papers law also known as the ten felony and in the meantime the state has been
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putting together more tough entire legal immigration law on the state senate has passed a bill there which funds and sanctions and armed civilian militia with a distinctly patrolling the border for immigrants and smugglers as i'm living near the us mexico border feel the government is not addressing their security concerns so they think it's their duty to take action but critics feel fear that this bill senate bill twenty three could give vigilantes a free pass to take the law into their own hands one has a good here is the director advanced in need of the usa and i spoke to him about his controversial proposal to look. oh this is a terrible are economically undermines their we thing that we've been hearing about you know the new latino strategy on the part of the republican party to star in political ground they've been losing i mean who would think that by sitting up in independent paramilitary militia to guard the arizona mexico border
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you know that that's going to win. support in the state of arizona and across the country i mean you know it's a terrible idea when we have the minutemen we have nothin but problems along that stretch of the border to now institutionalize a militia and it's like rather than moving forward we continue to move backwards i mean at least in terms of republican immigration politics because you know they can come up with it with an idea that will really ingratiate them with our community you know they keep thinking that the only possible solution to the immigration crisis in america is to continue blaming the undocumented for all problems of the economy and to target undocumented workers through this kind of deal
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conceived ideas even though they present it as though they're going to be going after the criminal element everybody knows everybody they're sinning decency knows that they're really targeting undocumented workers and they want to continue harassing the community humiliating it in undermining it in any which way they can let's talk about the timing of this i mean from what i've been reading there are fewer people crossing into this country illegally and in fact by some accounts more people leaving them coming so why do you think so much effort is going into this now. well you know the right wing in arizona and. right wing circles in the country truly believes that they're the best political formula for them to gain vaults by the election time certainly this next this coming november is by targeting communities in the past not
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have really meant votes for them and so i think that this is like a cynical ploy. on their part. they nor the you know that these politics has run its course none the less keep proving that they don't have the imagination to really increase the latino community the latino vote or to support. republican policies even though they keep cleaning that latinos at heart. are republican you know because of the wholly sure what portion and other such policy issues but saw also you leave me gun fun bit to try and explain rationally why is it that republicans keep pursuing policies that push them further and further away from that like you know border and activist proposed legislation one. i guess i just want to get your take i mean early two million
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dollars coming from arizona general fund i think a lot of that money would be use of haiti's volunteers a stipend to serve obviously you're concerned about if you don't like the legislation at all if it passes though there are some real questions that need to be asked among which who would that these volunteers and how i mean it would be armed volunteers standing at the border how would it you know how are people make sure that they should be doing that. well that's a very important question the truth of the matter is that they will be from the information that i have read in all these militias or citizen militias would essentially be self-governing. and so obviously that poses some very very serious questions because they're going to be armed and any time you are armed in with very little training to handle those weapons you're going to have situations in which people are going to get hurt we had situations where people died during
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the time of the minutemen in arizona and other parts of the country so i'm certain that there will be tragedies that we will all i meant and so obviously you know they're still trying to do something about it in we should we should stop. this legislative proposal before it pains any traction from my point of view though i would like to add that as far as i'm concerned you know all these type of proposals in on the twenty first century i mean. it's not just the disappointing it's not it's not just a disappointment but he should sound an alarm in all of our awareness in all of our consciousness because. he not the proposals that are being made as far as i'm concerned represent nothing more then i pence i did nothing fascist legislation in this country these guys something that is not in the legislation to protect.
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personal property people etc when in reality they're targeting a group or society of immigrants latinos in general you know that's really who they're going after. you know in their in their evening news in you know this whole issue of alliances between mexican drug cartel. ells in middle eastern terrorists that's why they say that they're justified in pushing for this type of legislation . because they're doing the will of of goodwill their healing all the people they're doing this one at a time when you know the supreme court is about to hear arguments about as the ten seven do you know the law that a lot of people call the show me your papers law that will go to the supreme court shortly and yet they're making even more stringent laws let me get your take what do you foresee happening with as these ten seventy if the supreme court says that
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this is in fact unconstitutional what happens next. well what happens next is that of course a lot of arizona will be relieved perhaps many more will be greatly upset and they're going to. a decision of this through the decision of the supreme court as yet another example that the federal government is abandoning its responsibility to deal with the very difficult issue of out on documented migration into the united states and they will manipulate that to get legislative proposals like this one to you know to poo have citizen militias patrol the arizona mexico border and they will continue to poison the well in creating a lot of conflict between different ethnicities in this country for person for political gain and i think that that is a very very dangerous and slippery course to take because you know when you have so
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much conflict over such a long period of time you know something is bound to give and we will have it we can have a violent explosion along you know the arizona mexico border or worse so i would hope because heads will prevail and there arizona governor jan brewer will not take another opportunity to sign into law potential legislation that might get to her desk you know to to have these militias. come into being and the people will start seriously dating in dealing with the whole issue of how do we resolve the problem of undocumented migration in the only and only be done through an act in comprehensive immigration reform which is what people in arizona are not packing about literally.
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