welcome to the alone show or get the real headlines with none of the mercy or can we live in washington d.c. now it's not ready to talk about cyber spying week i want to cheating so far there have been revisions made to sis but what is the pressure going to be enough to get the bill stopped and alec the group who passes on legislation in states all across the u.s. things like voter id laws stand your ground laws are actually caving to the pressure but is it too early to declare victory and today we watch the space shuttle discovery make its last flight on the back of a seven forty seven so we're going to talk nasa space x.

and the future of space exploration of all that and more for night including a dose of happy hour but first take a look at the mainstream media has decided to miss. right so after our show last night as predicted the buffett rule failed in a vote in the senate and this naturally sparked a lot of media discussion mostly resulting in a right versus left who's to blame type of banter. the senate rejecting the so-called buffett rule which was aimed at raising taxes on millionaires successful low limit yells a little bit to let the people who aren't so successful possibly become sick and you know you donnie ok tonight i just want to know i'm not missing the point by the way i think which i think our society is becoming more neck with by the day the president responding to the vote blaming republicans for quote choosing once again to protect tax breaks for the wealthiest few americans at the expense of the middle

class setting up an issue of economic fairness of course what democrats call economic fairness republicans call class warfare and most people where i'm from believe that you can still succeed in america and get rich in america even if you're working class and everyone knew they were going to reject it it's still going to be a hot campaign topic right the playing field is not level and at its core if you strip away all the the unpleasant things that some people described about the the occupy movement that's what it's about about creating an equitable society honest broker in a society. they are to break it down into this iconic fairness versus class warfare top kind of discussion a hot campaign topic and nothing else according to fox news now on morning joe they least tried to get a little bit into it really at least brought up the occupy movement its attempts to create a more equitable society but then joe scarborough made sure to point out that where he's from most people still think that if you work hard that's the way you get

ahead here is what i think we should do i think cut through all the crap let the statistics speak for themselves because the truth of the matter is that this is a country where inequality is on the rise we're playing by the rules doesn't bring rewards but rather gaming the system does on wall street and so something needs to change and the people feel that and you can call it class warfare or you walk out the truth is is that there has been a class war going on but it's been waged by the wealthy by the elites who have had an influence over washington and use that to their advantage anyway again. i'm going to talk about in my commentary because on this tax day i think that some to six will do and then you can decide for yourself what you think so for some fun once in two thousand and seven the top one percent had thirty four point six percent of net wealth in the united states also in two thousand and seven the top twenty percent had eighty five point one percent of the wealth now under the bush administration the one percent captured a disproportionate share of the income gains from the bush boom of two thousand and two to two thousand and seven they got sixty five cents of every dollar and that

was up twenty cents from when bill clinton was president and under the obama administration it's only gotten worse the one percent got ninety three cents of every dollar created and we know that thanks to i.r.s. spelling it out for us the point is that the amount of wealth in the country is continuously moving in a direction where it's in the hands of fewer and fewer people so please let me understand how people can still claim that all it takes is hard work to be successful and to make it i really hope big that fewer and fewer people are working that much harder and so that's why all the wealth is in their hands now you want to talk about social mobility well here are some stats from a project by marcus chanties an economist at a swedish university and he found that forty two percent of american men raised in the bottom fifth of incomes they stay there as adults and in denmark that number is twenty five percent in britain a country that famous for its so-called class constraints that number is only up thirty percent meanwhile just eight percent of american men rose to the top this

was sixty two percent of americans male and female they raised in the raise in the top fifth of incomes they actually stayed in those top two fits similarly sixty five percent born in the bottom fifth stay in the bottom two fifth's and that's not it recent socioeconomic status are also there to play a role in two thousand and nine the average white households wealth was twenty times that of the average black household nearly double that in previous years all according to a twenty. eleven report report by the pew research center well those are really just a few statistics and we can find many many more of those haven't even touched on our tax system and who gets to take advantage of the subsidies and all the loopholes but just let us be a little reminder of where we are as a country of where the trends are going and then you can understand why people are frustrated why those who are at the top are fighting so hard to stay there and forget the republican versus democrat lie the class warfare or not line these are

the figures and they speak the truth of the mainstream media and they'd rather just look at it as a campaign topic and not a matter of where the country is headed because that's what they choose to miss. well this week is stop cyber spying week a number of organizations i pay c l u the center for democracy and technology electronic frontier foundation and fight for the future are all getting behind the next battle over the internet that's happening here on capitol hill and this time is the target now cispa stands for the cyber intelligence sharing and protection act and it's working its way through the house so under the banner of cyber security business bill would allow private companies to share personal information with the government yesterday responding to pressure the house intelligence committee announced changes to the bill trying to appease privacy advocates now the

new provision would use a different definition for what constitutes a cyber threats and would require the homeland security department have access to all information share with the government but also give people in companies the right to sue the government if it mishandles their information but we have to wonder if these changes are enough and if we can really get a mobilization efforts strong enough to stop sis but at the same intensity that we saw in the sopa pipa debate join me to discuss is trevor tim activists at the electronic frontier foundation thanks so much for joining us and so before we get into the specifics of these provisions tell us more about this week in general your organization's taking part you know what is the point of stop cyber spying we what exactly do you have going on is it just online petitions are we going to see people marching on the streets. all we really want to do is have people contact their congressman to explain to them how bad this bill would actually be for their privacy we have two ways to do that you can either e-mail them we have a nice twitter tool set up where you can tweet your congressman and everything you

do during the day actually to give them an infant give them an idea about how much information they're actually going to be able to get under this bill and how it goes far beyond cyber security the problem with this bill is that it allows companies to voluntarily hand over your information whether it's your communications or otherwise or your location or your identity just because for sums big cybersecurity purpose and the cyber security purpose isn't defined very specifically so it could turn out of the all whole host of activities that don't really constitute a cyber security threat well let's say that when they got it right though i mean because that's one of the things that supposedly in this revision that they made last night that they've changed they think is a better step but they've better defined what a cyber threat is what's their definition now. well they didn't actually change the definition that much it's still unclear about what could or what couldn't be and then the problem is even if the information originally is some lead to some sort of

cyber security threat must the government gets the information they can then use it for other purposes and that hasn't changed yet either they narrow they narrowed it a little bit back a few weeks ago but so when the government gets the information now just when the company hands it over for just cyber security services now a government can use it for national security purposes as well and if they can use it for that or cyber security that means they can use it for any other purpose after that so it's still very broad and the department of homeland security is going to be the one that ends up getting this information but what the bill also allows it to do is to pass on this information to other agencies at its discretion and so what we're really worried about is the n.s.a. getting a whole different permission which has already been accused by including by us of a lawsuit they've been spying on americans already so the problem is not necessarily that the government wants to stop there or you know prevent cyber attacks of course everybody does the problem is that this bill goes far beyond that and ends up just

eviscerating americans privacy rights all right so the pressure that's been put on the revisions that have been made so far clearly aren't enough but how far do you really think that this type of protest could go in the do you think that this could become as big as the movement police stop pushing against sopa and pipa or are there sort of certain key elements missing. well the big difference between these two bills was size actual topic is that a lot of companies supported this bill when they were against sokol for example facebook came out in support of this bill a couple months ago but there's a really key distinction here because facebook actually responded to pressure will look late last week and released a statement saying they were concerned about civil liberties as well and they said the court that allows them to share information with the government on terribly isn't even the part of the bill they like or would even use if given the opportunity so facebook is actually on our side in this in the sense that we don't

need these provisions in these bills that allow the companies to end this information or government and they can take it out of the bill and still there would be a lot left which would benefit the companies and the government to allow them to actually. defend against these attacks as well how important is that i guess what i'm trying to get to here is that you know what do you think are the things the key ingredients that would make a movement to actually get a law like this off the books right to pressure congress and to get rid of it not want to vote on it what exactly do you need you know if you look back at the soap an example and i keep using it because i think that it's really one of the first times that we saw something get so big how in your mind did that really come together was it the perfect mix of of all the internet giants putting an ad out of taking part in blackout day as well as organizations like yours and the reddit community or did you notice did something play a bigger role like you do that without a facebook taking part. oh i think we can but we have to remember the so to be was

kind of getting warm up warmed up four months before the actual blackout and right now we've just kind of started to begin a cybersecurity campaign there's a you know there's four bills going through the house and the senate right now you know this is the last we're going to see of this whether or not mike rogers changes the bill or not i think he is making sure everybody's informs because when you hear cybersecurity just like you better stop internet piracy you think oh well that sounds great and everybody is for that but it's really when you get into the details of the bill that it starts to become scary realize what they're actually trying to do or what the bill would would allow them to do so right now we're just trying to make sure we get people as informed as possible and you know the best way you can do that sometimes is through social media and once people realize what the dangers in the bill are we're confident that they will contact their congressman just like during the sopa debate when the congressman had to basically you know disavow their their co-sponsorship of sopa because they realized how many constituents cared so we really want we just want people to know what's in the bill

and for them to act on it once they find out. lastly and this is. why i would cut off topic but i just want to ask you about where you think about an interview that sergey brin gave co-founder of google he doesn't give a whole lot of interviews that he gave to the guardian and hearing this saying that he thought that the threats to web freedom right now are greater than they've ever been before and he put some blame on governments but then to me it seemed like he mostly just pin the rest of it on his competitors like facebook and apple for what he called these these walls guardians and so you know how do you see that is that just showing that at the end of the day these are companies that it's about their bottom line and pointing out their competitors rather than the governments that might be passing more dangerous legislation. well first i think he did point out the governments which was great and we have seen that throughout the world actually western governments and authoritarian governments using kind of the same tactics to

go after the free and open internet and i think as far as his criticism of facebook and apple i mean some of it is legitimate walled gardens allow apple and facebook to decide what apps to get to their developers to run which ones they can't so it is a form of censorship in a sense in that they are controlled tightly controlling what's going on in the internet at least the part that they control and he even said maybe google wouldn't have been able to survive if they were brought up in such a market but again you know if they are his main competitors and you have to take it with a little bit of a grain of salt what he's saying such things but i think his response as far as governments go is correct and hopefully we will see more pushback from google and other companies when this happens in the future terrible thanks so much for joining us tonight and we'll be covering cyber spying week long thanks thanks for having me . so we're going to launch a campaign to fight the n.p.a. the latest from north if and then twenty twelve you won't want to miss that then

after weeks of supporters dropping like flies alec is finally kate's squaring off the cultural wars and we're going to tell you what's next for the group and we speak with the very. you know sometimes you see the story and the six so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else here's some other part of this and realize that everything you say you don't. charge is the. thank. you.

so you know there's a real headline. the problem with the mainstream media today is that we disconnected from the viewers and what actually matters so that's why young people just don't watch t.v. if they want to they go online and we're trying to take those stories that people actually care about and transfer them back. is the state. speaking russian channel it's kind of like.

russia today has an extremely confrontational stance when it comes to us. our we spent a lot of time on this show talking about copyright and internet regulation and just last week the m.p.a. weighed in on a copyright case was being heard by the seventh circuit court of appeals and their take well the m.p.a. things that people who embedded videos and websites that facilitated the embedded copyright material are just as guilty as the person that posted the source video if that appeals were. was true and that could be the end of the betting videos as we know it and here on the show we don't want that and to come so we made a little calls action and here it is. this is a loaner she's the host of

a show that works to dig up the stories that no one else on t.v. is talking she has a dream that eventually people will care about the stories that are often overlooked by the stream media this story as yet another example of our constitution our freedom of speech being put in jeopardy and that's right the same practices that got us into a financial crisis are now making their return now we constantly talk about the obama administration's war on whistleblowers on this show but the fact that under his ministration already six people have been charged under the espionage act that's in three years and that's more times than ever before in our history but she was born into a pretty complicated world one where lawmakers and judges who don't know anything about that and are trying to regulate our family illiterate that has to rely on my wife for all of the assistance that i can get. something else something.

i don't think any of us have. or. tweet it without is in recently a judge made a ruling that would essentially kill her dream of making the invisible stories visible haleigh so this is an article on the blaze you see how they impacted our video yeah that's great well if the seventh circuit court of appeals up holds another judge's ruling websites are going to have to stop inventing videos oh well that's bad. now i couldn't explain the whole thing to ilona because she's busy and i have to do actual work but here's the jest back in july a judge ruled that someone who was betting copy written material could be held equally as responsible as the person who posted and is hosting copyright material now you may be thinking but if they are aiding the spread of copy written material they should be punished but the reality is not everyone wants their material locked away and out of sight shows like ours love it when people on bet are pretty o's it

means that more people see the story more people know what we know and slowly the invisible becomes visible but if the judge's ruling stance companies might have to stop allowing users to embed videos at all to avoid prosecution and blogs might have to stop reading videos as well because how do you distinguish a video someone some better versus one they don't the internet and new sharing worlds as we know it would cease to exist which you want to know the biggest problem. nobody knows it's happening but i know it's happening that's why we have to tell people right now you're asking yourself how can i said this video i'm here to tell you how can you not we're sharing this year twenty twelve and we're targeting new the internet because you know how important embedded videos are so please embed this video posted on your blog on your facebook link to

it on twitter making it faint tonight everyone will go to sleep and tomorrow they'll wake up surrounded by inventive. we can fulfill our dream of making the invisible stories visible but only with your help please tell the seventh circuit court of appeals how important and bad videos are and bad this me. so bed two hundred twelve has begun and now a ball is in your court. but it looks like our lake is caving to pressure alison behind anti-union legislation voter id laws and stand your ground laws across the u.s. but since the trayvon martin case the pressure to get corporations to leave the

group has really picked up and in recent weeks coca-cola mexico mcdonald's wendy's into it mars kraft foods and others have all stopped supporting the group it's day alec announced that they would be disbanding their safety and safety elections task force the dealt with more social issues so in a statement alex chairman said the group will be refocusing their commitment to free markets limited government and pro growth pro growth principles so is that a victory yet joining me to discuss is we investigate reporter for republic report or it could be thanks for joining us and i first started let's do a little bit of background we've spoken about before on our show but if you can just refresh for our audience how is it that a group like this goes through the process how do they get legislation passed in states across the country. well alec has existed for some thirty years it's a nonprofit group but it's composed of for profit corporations that fund the organization they bring corporate lobbyist together with state legislators that

state senators say assemblyman may help them craft of cruel corporate legislation and expands you know different issues areas from the environment taxes to the stand your ground law that was written. in florida and and passed in other states with gun lobbyist from the n.r.a. but this is a large group that impacts legislation across the board that a large group and i mean you have to pay to be a member of this group ripert when they really go on as the times when they've been around for decades now when they actually start doing more of the. pieces of legislation like voter id laws are like stand your ground and step away from guess doing economic based policies well you know they've tiptoed around some more social policy like voter id laws for a very long time and granted though though this organization brands itself as

a nonpartisan you know bipartisan type of thing it's mostly republican lawmakers are really more than nine of wine so they really reflect their own membership in a lot of these republican lawmakers are very socially conservative so when a corporation. or a corporate interests like the n.r.a. with represents many gun manufacturers comes in and would like a bill like the stand your ground law passed they were happy to oblige and because the republican party is pushing some of the voter id laws again now and is happy to oblige. now you know this is something our an organization that a lot of liberal groups out there have been trying to shine a light on for a long time and i think criticizing for a long time but really in recent weeks obviously the pressure of the grassroots campaign against it has picked up and is this something that you think would have happened without the trayvon martin case you know and. there's been

pressure on al if you don't pass actually two years ago or about a year and a half ago when s.p. turned seventy on that law in arizona was. gives local police powers the obligation to enforce immigration law and. many said was a very racist law because it encouraged police to shoot you for racial profiling a lot of different organizations on the left started targeting alec because alec in conjunction with private prison interests well well now even after all that pressure nothing happened so you know there's been campaigns against alec in the past but nothing has really changed until the trayvon martin tragedy and in that case how would you look at this move by alec right now they're saying that they're going to disband a certain task force that they're only going to focus on certain pieces of legislation is that

a victory or you know at the same time is the damage already done because you have stand your ground laws have been passed in more than twenty other states across the country. well i see it as a positive step however i take a little bit of caution because you know this could just be p.r. we don't really know what exactly goes on behind closed doors are alec actually kicked me out of their conference pretty violently last august so they're very secretive organization we don't know if they're really changing their internal policy making and you know if you look at reality i mean a lot of these laws have already passed if alec is really stepping away. from these types of policies are they going to encourage their lawmakers to repeal these laws are they going to tell legislators who have sponsored these laws in sessions that are going on in states across the country to back away is there going to be a substantive change in policy and i think the question that we should all ask

moving forward because that's what really matters if you want to put out any type of press release statement but what matters is what's laws are being pressed and the laws that we all have to live under how are they going to be affected by out yeah and i think you have to be especially skeptical considering that this last week alec put out a statement where they were defending themselves and they called this an intimidation campaign and they were bemoaning and then suddenly a week later you know they they they changed their minds and i think a lot of people out there have noted to you that you know even if they do start focusing only on economic policy is there a lot of causes out there that people should be concerned about a lot of anti-union legislation or legislation that in fact you know education or the environment but i guess my other question for you too is how many other groups either out there that are like alec you know how many how many other alec's are there that we just don't know about whose names haven't really made it into the news. well this whole issue of corporate variations ghostwriting legislation

it and giving it to law makers is the big story that no one's really talking about because it's not just alec this happens across the board not just in state governments either this happens in the federal government as well that's why lobbying firms exist that's why big trade associations like the american petroleum institute and the u.s. chamber of commerce which is funded by big multinational corporations this is why they exist they help lawmakers draft bills in secret represent corporate interests that are looking for legislation that is not in the public interest at all. and in many cases the public and the press are constantly shut out of the process so well alec is. kind of a good embodiment of this larger problem that people are now focusing on they're certainly not the only group i guess all the more important than right that we have campaigns like this to bring it on transparency and i highlight these things lean thanks so much for joining us tonight and i think you're having me. coming up

tonight show and tell and then we'll start space the space ship discovery made its final flight today right over washington d.c. sort of a look at the future of space exploration after the break. let's not forget that we heard in the park right now that. i think. he'd want to well. we're never going to shows they're going to keep him safe get ready and to give them the freedom. to be with. us and they alone are so they'll get the real headlines with none of them or the problem with any.