welcome to the ellen show where you get the real headlines with none of the mersey are to live in washington d.c. now it's i'm not ready to talk about cyber spying week i want to cheating so far there have been revisions made to it is the pressure can be enough to get the bill stopped and alex the group that passes on legislation in states all across the u.s. things like voter id law stand your ground laws are actually caving to the pressure but is it too early to declare victory and today we watched the space shuttle discovery make its the 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 well all that and more for night including

a dose of happy hour but first take a look what the mainstream media has decided to make us. all right so after our show last night as predicted the buffett rule failed in a vote in the senate and is 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 not my research shows hello to me as a little bit to let the people i want so successful possibly become sick and i'll use the economy ok it's not a point i just want to know i'm not missing the point by the way i think we i think our society is becoming more not credible by the day the president responding to the vote blaming republicans for quote choosing one thing 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 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 equitable society on this program to subside if they want to break it down into this economic fairness versus class warfare talking boy 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 willie 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 that 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 if 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. having my commentary because on this tax day i think that statistics will do and then you can decide for yourself what you think so here's 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 said the top twenty percent had eighty five point one percent of the wealth now under the bush administration the one percent capture 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 now 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 help me understand how people can still claim that all it takes is hard work to be successful and to make it i really don't big that fewer and fewer people are working that much harder and so that's where all the wealth is in their hands now you want to talk about social mobility well here are some stats for 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 at thirty percent meanwhile just eight percent of american men rose to the top fifth

and 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 here we double that in previous years all according to a twenty. eleven report report by the pew research center now those are really just a few statistics and we can find many many more of those haven't even touched upon our tax system and who gets to take advantage of the subsidies and all the loopholes but just let this 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 for the mainstream media and they'd rather

just look at it as a campaign topic and not a matter of where the country's had it because that's what they choose to miss. well this week is stop cyber spying week a number of organizations like the a.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 this 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 but yesterday responding to pressure the house intelligence committee announced changes to the bill for 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 shared 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 wrong enough to stop sis but with the same intensity that we saw in the sopa pipa debate joining 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 revisions 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 you do e-mail them we have a nice twitter tool set up where you can tweet your congressmen everything you do

during the day actually to give them an infant but 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 to be a whole host of activities that don't really constitute a cyber security threat letter when they got it right though i mean because that's one of the things that supposedly this ring this in that they made last night that they've changed they think is a better step but they've better defines what a cyber threat is so 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 ends it over for justice critic purposes now the government can use it for national security purposes as well and if they can use it for that or say risk area 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 dissent from ation which has already been accused by including by us that a lawsuit they've been spying on americans already so the problem is not necessarily that the government wants to stop their you know prevent cyber attacks of course everybody does the problem is that this bill goes far beyond that and ends up just this trading americans privacy rights all right so the pressure that's

been put on the revisions and been made so far clearly aren't enough but how far do you really think that this type of protest kickout i mean do you think this could become as big as the movement the least stop pushing against sopa and pipa or are there some certain key elements missing. well the big difference between these two bills besides the actual topic is that a lot of companies who supported this bill when they were against hope are 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 look at last week and released a statement saying they were concerned about civil liberties as well and they said the part that allows them to share information with the government voluntarily isn't even the part of that will be liked 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 allowed companies to end this information or the 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 and somehow the point 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 to get rid of it and not want to vote on it what exactly do you know if you look back at the sopa 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 it was a perfect mix 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 can you do it without facebook taking part. i think we can but

we have to remember the soap to be was kind of getting warm up warmed up for months before the actual blackout and right now we've just kind of started to begin the cyber security 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 informed because when you hear cybersecurity just like you're stopped 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 you 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 so-called debate when congressmen 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 then to act on it once they find out. lastly this is. what i would cut off topic but i just want to ask you about what you think about an interview that sergey brin gave for a co-founder of google he doesn't give a whole lot of interviews that he gave to the guardian and here he is saying that he thought that the threats to web freedom right now are greater than they've ever been before 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 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 government's and i think 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 are 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 get to run which ones they can't so it is a form of censorship in a sense that they are controlling 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 they are his main competitors and you have to take it with a little bit of a grain of salt when he's saying such things but i think his response as far as governments go was correct and hopefully we will see more pushback from google and other companies when this happens in the future are terrible thanks so much for joining us tonight and we'll be covering cyber spying week all week long thanks thanks for having. the content i were to launch a campaign to fight the n.p.a. the latest war it's embedded twenty twelve he want to say that after weeks of

supporters dropping like flies alec has finally kate squaring off the cultural wars and we're going to tell you what's next for the group and we speak with the party. hasn't been easy yet on t.v. . it is to get the maximum political. in fact all six of for source material is one hopes journalism honest rebook. if we

want to visit. something else. if wealthy british scientists are not on the telephone. market why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy which might cause or for a no holds barred look of the global financial headlines tune in to kaiser report. if. any heat. if he. gets to.

see. 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 it was being heard by the seventh circuit court of appeals and their take well the n.p.a. thinks 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 court ruled that way was true and that could be the end of the betting videos as we know it here on the show we don't want to and to come so we made a little called action and here it is. this is a loner 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 mainstream 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 not are trying to regulate them a illiterate that has to rely on my wife for all of the assistance that i can get. something just came out ok. i don't think any of us. are. we but it is and recently a judge made

a ruling that would essentially kill her dream of making the invisible stories visible pale and. so this is an article on the blaze you see how they embedded 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 and betting videos oh well that's bad. now i can explain the whole thing to alona because she's busy and had 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 that copyright material now you may be thinking but if they're eating 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 and better videos 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 stands companies might have to stop allowing users to embed videos at all to avoid prosecution and blogs might have to stop inventing videos as well because how do you distinguish a video someone once imbedded versus one they don't the internet in new sharing worlds as we know it would cease to exist but you want to know the biggest problem yeah. nobody knows it's happening but i know it's happening that's why we have to tell people right now your thoughts to yourself how can i have this video while i'm here to tell you how can you not we're starting this year twenty twelve and we're targeting you 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. tonight everyone will go to sleep and tomorrow we'll wake up surrounded

by them but if. 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 dreaded videos are and that this. so i'm dead twenty two has the gun and alibi is in your court. well 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 texaco mcdonald's wendy's into it mars crabs food and others have all stop supporting the group that's

a day alec announced that they would be disbanding their safety and safety elections task force that 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 following investigative reporter for republic report thought or me thanks for joining us and i first started with us through 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 it has existed for some thirty years it's a nonprofit group but it's composed of for profit corporations that fund the organization of a growing corporate lobbyist together with state legislators such state senator state assemblyman may help them cracked clearly 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 in other states with gun lobbyists from the n.r.a. but this is a large group that actually legislation across the board. yes a large group and i mean you have to pay to be a member of the screwdriver when they really go and as you mentioned they've been around for decades now when they actually start doing more of these pieces of legislation like voter id laws are like stand your ground and step away from just doing economics based policy. well you know they've tiptoed around some more social policy like voter id laws for a very long time and granted though this organization brand itself as a nonpartisan bipartisan type of thing it's mostly republican lawmakers probably

more than nine to one so they really reflect their own membership in a lot of these republican lawmakers are very socially conservative so when a corporation like or a corporate interests like the n.r.a. which represents many gun manufacturers comes in and was like a bill like the stand your ground law passed there happy to oblige and because the republican party is pushing so many voter id laws again 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've been criticizing for a long time but really in recent weeks obviously the pressure the grassroots campaign against it has picked up and is this something do you think would have happened without the trayvon martin case. you know and. there's been pressure on alec to the past actually two years ago or about a year and

a half ago when s.p. ten seventy law in arizona was passed that gives local police powers the obligation to enforce immigration law and. many said was was a very racist law because it encouraged police to get it to use racial profiling a lot of different organizations on the left started targeting alec because alec in conjunction with private prison interests wrote that 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 so the trayvon martin tragedy and in that case how would you look at this move by alec right now they're saying that there are 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 you know 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. or do we don't really know what exactly goes on behind closed doors actually kicked me out of their conference pretty violently last august so they're very secretive organization we don't know through 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 best the question that we should all ask moving forward because that's what really matters anyone can put out any type of

pressure really statement but what matters is what 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 we have to be especially skeptical considering that just last week alec put out a statement where they were defending themselves where they call this an intimidation campaign and they were bemoaning it 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 too 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 impacts you know education or the environment but i guess my other question for you too is how many other groups are there 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 there's the whole issue of corporate were nation's ghost writing legislation 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 government unit 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 those in secret they 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 wider problem that people are not 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 all transparency and really highlight the issues thanks so much for joining us tonight i think you're having me. coming up tonight show and tell and then we'll toss hates the spaceship discovery made its final

flight today right over washington d.c. so we can look at the future of space exploration the part. it's. the easiest.