sure is that so much resentment easy these people are curious how many people are turning to facebook's timeline to share all kinds of experiences the moment others are concerned about the security and safety of this news. tonight on our t.v. if you notice your pockets feeling a little lighter this month that's probably because your twenty eleven tax bill is about to be due that's right it's time to time once again in the u.s. and we want to know what americans think about the current system. and users consider it a technology with infinite possibilities but 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 rain on the web question more. what we are seeing. what is not the drug cartels we're talking about these are armed civilian militia

members patrolling the arizona border and here's the kicker lawmakers aren't only supporting it we want to fund it so is this a new era of border patrol. well good evening it's monday april sixteenth eight pm in washington d.c. i'm christine and you're watching our team. all right guys let's talk taxes there are many of you who just might be working on yours as you watch this if you're even reminded of the bigger picture of the tax system in america and some issues and that's not these things though that's a large portion of the population here's a pure research survey taken at the end of two thousand and eleven about how people feel about the tax system fifty nine percent say so much is wrong that congress should completely change it and about thirty four percent say works pretty well but congress should make minor changes so we want to talk taxes earlier i spoke to the

market taker's karl denninger and we started off by looking at this from a historic perspective this was an american back in world war two era this was sold to americans as a program to help help uncle sam during and after the war that it's every citizen's patriotic duty to pay taxes and help defeat the enemy while seventy years later we're still paying taxes to defeat the enemy from the system is still flawed and complicated so he talked about the road the tax system has taken. well the the income tax goes back to the sixteenth amendment of course which gets to approximately the same time as the federal reserve so it's been around for an awfully long time but it was originally only supposed to impact a very small number of people and of course like all taxes and like all government programs it starts out small when it turns into this might be headed to get through that you can't seem to chill no matter what you do at this point we have

a system to some convoluted that when you file your taxes you're not really sure that you do them correctly you followed all the forms you call instructions on the letter not you actually paid the correct amount of taxes an unknowable thing for most people and i don't know seventy thousand pages i don't think even a charity that specializes this is ever completely sure when he signs his return that everything there is true complete accurate and to the letter of the law so you do the best you can but this doesn't mean that what we have is a desirable system because on the one hand we have a large number of people who paid very little tax some of them hate no tax whatsoever due to refundable credits and such and those tend to be people at the very bottom of the higher social economic ladder but then we also have people with that return from the social economic ladder who are affected we pay no tax either and somehow we need to change this because if you have no skin in the game then what incentive do you have to see the government operate efficiently and the bigger

question is though when we look at the tax system we say will desist terrible we we all pay too much i don't like writing a check every year but on the other hand a government is spending almost fifty percent more again from what it extended and that we can't either so from a historical perspective we have some problems very clear the government is not taking more than twenty percent of g.d.p. in taxes that we're in right now so even if we were to raise taxes close the deficit we have to be talking about this as a holistic yeah certainly the government buy now pay later mentality i've got a lot of things if. frustrating when you're the one funding them to do that and live like that but the call this is not groundbreaking science that you and i are talking about this is a problem for many americans for the majority of americans say that there is a problem i'm wondering if you've heard anything. you know any ideas because this has been sort of a topic of conversation politically speaking have you heard anything that really

you know you think is feasible is the most feasible replacement it would it would be also a replacement is called the fair tax it's essentially a consumption tax you can look at it as a sales tax it has an exception for incomes up to the poverty line so for those people who are poor they would not pay anything however it is also progressive as your income goes up if you spend more then the bottom section pay goes up the problem with doing this is that it becomes impossible to bribe people if you have a tax system like this because you see the tax that you pay on every sales receipt at the same time there is no preference so doull this big business goes to congress and says we would like a tax break if congress is well there isn't anywhere in the code that we can gives you a text break because you're not paying the taxes that people pay when they actually buy your goods and services so this is one of the challenges is it's essentially a crony capitalist and state were to dispense in system that we have now rather

than a means to raise revenue certainly a major topic of discussion president obama has been making as several speeches about this and central to many of the speeches is the tax system i want to play something he said about just last week 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 and that's all perfectly legal under the system that we currently have. you've heard that. my friend warren buffett pays a lower tax rate than a secretary because he's the one who's been pointing that out and saying we should fix it. now today of course a vote is expected on a plan being pushed to raise taxes on those who earn more than a million dollars a year and salary at and called the buffett rule the senate is expected to fall short on these votes but this is an issue that we think that president obama is

going to point to over and over on the campaign trail that you know this is the sort of the dividing line we're in which he separates those who vote against it talk a little bit about how effective you think that's going to be to bring class warfare alive but in terms of actually solving the budgetary problems we have it does absolutely nothing you could tracks every dollar of every was incredible richard thirty thousand dollars one hundred percent of the words everyone makes more sort of fifty grand to keep the debate over that about if you would still not close the deficit there just aren't enough rich people that you can levy taxes on to pay for what the government currently consumes so it is a great political weapon to the people over there but in the end that's all it is the pocket rule is not going to solve anything we're going to respect and there's not enough rich people as you say to make up this gap and make up this deficit however. that being said as a result of that i mean is that

a good enough reason to just say well now let's just keep things as they are. you know we should solve the problem which choose to rationalize our government have a have a conversation an adult conversation with the american people and say what services would you like the government to provide improve each of those services this is for much that service costs now how are we going to devise a tax system and i personally think the way that we should do is take the current code and put it to paper shredder and start over but regardless of how we do this we have to have a system that says these are the services you want this is the tax revenue this doesn't say we're going to collect today not ten years from now or even worse on your children to have it yet but for karl we wanted to speak to some regular american people about their socks on the i.r.s. i want to play really crack what we found and then we'll talk about it. basic feel like a patriot a lot of pressure attention. trying to. make things better

for you i just think about my taxes and money going out of my pocket and you think they're bad. because america has are going to end up paying. and since it is here we defeat got married. and we had about jointly to time and worry about the whole marriage penalty and angry that i have to face any taxes as a working person i work hard for my money i feel that we are wasting our money our tax money on a building such as these and a lot of people a lot of them that unnecessary bertha now works here i just think that parity taken out of money we don't need to give many more so words like nervous and angry. what do you think in general and mean do you think americans realize. the need for taxes or where their money actually goes though i don't. publish and are responsible for the us the fact of the matter is that between the stones medicare medicaid social

security and general welfare programs you have a socially seventy five percent approximately of our spending when you look at the rest discretionary budget is it is actually quite small and ex-military it's even smaller so you have. one commenter was saying you know this building back here and all these people work at it you can take all the people washington d.c. and fire them in your significant day if you have the total picture of the government's budget so we need to actually look at where the money used going it where it's coming installed it and say ok what is it that we want to do this culture as a government and everything else is left to the private and israel quicker than a time a lot of people kind of bring up that old idea of the flat tax and simple it's fair why do you think it hasn't taken hold. well the flat tax is yours to tax all in coal and if you're going to try to a lawyer to go on with the success of the economy you more so you don't use it is

broader based and so would every sales taxes so it should tax those that because it's always government revenues directly to outward. that would be in all probability the greatest per to economic progress because now the only way the government can be or money is you to raise taxes at a very visible way really once you say or do things as opposed to better that all the private economy of florida all right certainly an interesting and important discussion that needs to be had i think you're right a whole lot of the american public has doesn't understand exactly what's going on here and architecture is karl denninger well the supreme court this month will hear arguments for and against arizona's so-called show me your papers line also known as as the ten seventy and in the meantime arizona has been putting together more tough into yellow illegal immigration laws the state that has passed a bill there which fines and sanctions and armed civilian militia with a distinct tutti of patrolling the border for immigrants and smugglers some living

near the us mexico border say the government of simply not addressing their security concerns so they've got to take matters into their own hands a critics fear that this senate bill ten eighty three could given vigilantes a free pass to take the law into their own hands earlier i spoke to one who has a good here it's the director of the usa about the controversial program take a look. well this is a terrible law completely undermines everything that we've been hearing about you know the new latino strategy on the part of the republican party the star. political ground they've been losing i mean who would think that by setting up. an independent paramilitary militia to guard the arizona mexico border 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

a minute mean we have nothing but problems along that stretch of the border to have now institutionalized a militia it's late 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 a wooden maybe 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 undocument there for all problems of the economy and undocumented workers through this kind of ill conceived ideas even though they present it as though they're going to be going after the criminal element everybody knows everybody there has any decency knows they're really targeting undocumented

workers that they want to continue harassing the community humiliating it in undermining it in any which way they can what kind of 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 even so much effort is going into this now. well you know there are right wing in arizona and i think you know. right now in circles in the country truly believes that they're the best political formula for them to gain vaults election time certainly this next this coming november is by targeting communities in the past not 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 numberless they keep proving that they don't have the

imagination to really entice the latino community the latino voter to support. republican policies even though they keep cleaning them a heart. a republican you know because of the whole issue of abortion and other such policy issues but saw in also easy for me the unfounded to try and explain in a rational way why is it that republicans keep pursuing policies they push them further and further away from the latino border and activists propose legislation one. i guess i just want to get your take i mean nearly two million dollars are coming from arizona's general fund i think a lot of that money would be used to pay these volunteers a stipend to serve obviously you're concerned about it 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 that means volunteers and how i mean it would be armed volunteers standing at the border how would it you know how people make sure that they should be doing that. well that's a very important question in the truth of the matter is that they will be from the information that i have read in on 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 the time of the minutemen in arizona in other parts of the country so i'm certain. there would be tragedies that we will all i meant and so obviously you know there's

still time to do something about it in we should stop. this proposal before it gains any traction from my point of view though i would write to add that as far as i'm concerned you know these type of proposals in on the twenty first century i mean it is not just that this appointee is not is 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 than pence i didn't acting fascist legislation in this country this guy is something that it is not you know legislation to protect. personal property people etc when in reality they're targeting a group or society the immigrants are 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 middle eastern terrorists and that's why. they say that they're justified in pushing forth with this type of legislation to go because they're doing that well of of good will there is doing 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 though what do you foresee happening with as these ten seventy if the supreme court says that 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 point the decision of this little this issue in the supreme court as yet another example that a third of all government is abandoning its responsibility to deal with the very difficult issue of of undocumented migration into the united states and they were manipulated to get legislative proposals late this one to you know to 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 in i think that that is a very very dangerous insulin pre-clearance to take because you know when you have so much conflict over such a long period of time you know something is bound to give in we will have it we can

have a violent explosion along you know the arizona mexico border or worse so i would hope that cooler heads will prevail and their arizona governor jan brewer will not take another opportunity to sign into law potential legislation that might get to her her desk you know to to have these militias. come into being in in the people will start seriously again in dealing with the whole issue of how do we resolve the problem of undocumented migration and i may only be done through an act in comprehensive immigration reform which is what people in arizona are not talking about yeah. right absolutely and certainly a promise that president obama made as candidate obama i think a lot of people still waiting for that to happen one has a duty as a director at a time of us in our studios in los angeles. well let's take

a look now at some of the changes on the horizon for the internet those freedoms that we've enjoyed when we use the internet and also some of the include increasing attempts to close in on those freedoms and on the privacy that you've enjoyed or at least thought you enjoyed also a rare interview by the co-founder of google search gave grin he told the guardian he blames the government as well as facebook and apple for impeding internet freedom and also we should mention today marks the beginning of stop sign over spying week all as congress continues to weigh the goods in the bads of the cyber intelligence sharing and protection act of twenty eleven also known as suspect now earlier i spoke with trevor tim an activist we've with the electronic frontier foundation about all of this and i asked him who is winning and who's losing when it comes to this battle over the control of the internet. well i guess it depends on who you ask i think sergei brin was referring to what he's talking about governments he was talking about or syrian government to mention saudi arabia and

china and iran as examples of governments who are restricting internet so much that sort of things 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 the new stiver security bill that talks about information sharing between governments and companies now the problem with this bill is that companies will be able to kind of privacy laws normally they are restricted from handing information over to the government without a warrant or some sort of probable cause but in this scenario they would be able to use a big 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 e-mails communicate and we also want to make sure that the countries that i mention that we can kind of push for a more open internet i think is a really interesting point that when we do talk about internet freedom 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 inner not open for the protestor using social media to organize a march in egypt a college student emailing her family photos of her so broad the lawyer in vietnam blogging to expose corruption the teenager in the united states who is a bully and finds words of support on line. but a small business owner in kenya using mobile banking to manage for profit so a lot of positive words 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 has tried to tried to introduce actually over one hundred bills that would attempt to regulate the internet in some way but the thing sample 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 we're looking at the cisco bill which attacks privacy in a different way than soap it but it's still a similar kind of type of danger in that congress is trying to regulate the internet without really understanding why 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 e-mail text then phone call going in and out of the country and there's also censorship propose on the table to semi censor 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 as i'm so you can you can see the 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 the speech and so what we want to do is make sure that all of these tactics are exposed and hopefully the people can respond and stop them it is really interesting however national security cyber security these reasons given time and time again in this country and 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 mention felt by this opulent. hires the actors people piper how to protect ip had these both failed when voted on because people finally understood what they were about what do you think the likelihood is of this spot the cyber intelligence sharing and protection act do you think this will pass well i think congress has at least learned some lessons from the 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 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 the authors of the bill are trying to disassociate themselves so but they actually took out the intellectual property clause last week 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 go no on this bill until they take out these privacy destroying provisions and hopefully make it a bill which can affect cybersecurity positively but not encroach on the privacy rights of americans and driving your organization has been very outspoken electronic frontier foundation in opposition to suspend and from what i've been reading now facebook is supporting says we're not hearing a whole lot of outcry against facebook talk to me a little bit about that. actually another another digital civil liberties organization is running a campaign against based against facebook they came out in support of this bill months ago i think or 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 provision that we're protesting the provisions that allow companies to voluntarily hand over your private information to the government they said but 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 heartily already do so it really just points the fact that this provision that allows these companies to do this actually isn't needed in the bill all and that we can actually pass cybersecurity legislation without it and these companies would still benefit so whilst facebook has been revoked its support all together 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 i 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 . yeah i think it's probably both i mean google has obviously felt threatened by facebook for a while now same thing goes with capital and they have two very different business models apple and facebook and like you said control the apps that run on their systems very tightly so if you want to make your own after you have to get approved through the system and you know there's obviously censorship involved in that area if they don't like your app for whatever reason they can say no has kind of operated under more open scenario and then sergei brin even said that if facebook was as dominant as it is today one who will start as they may not have been able to create from before because facebook already has kind of its tentacles in in the internet so deep that it's hard to penetrate more.