welcome to the ellen show the real headlines with none of the mersey are going to live in washington d.c. now tonight we're going to speak with laura lister host of the capital account here our city for our weekly financial checkup the i.m.f. and world bank spring meetings are underway here in washington so we're going to highlight what you need to know then suicides attempted suicides allegations of abuse of pennsylvania prisons we're going to see how a justice department investigation might pave the way for a change in our prisons and our policies of solitary confinement and the feds are taking down a server used by hundreds of people activist included all because of one possible threats we're going to take

a look at what they're calling the sledgehammer approach of the government will have all that and more for you tonight including those happy hour but first let's take a look at the mainstream media has decided to miss. so this morning we were trying to watch the news there was one story and one story only it was being talked about by the mainstream media and actually there wasn't even all that much talking going on as for almost an hour all the cable networks rolled live on george zimmerman's hearing in florida. julian sim of of george zimmerman george zimmerman george zimmerman george zimmerman george zimmerman this morning apologizing in court for the first time to the parents of trayvon martin zimmerman that neighborhood watch volunteer who killed trayvon martin florida courtroom where george zimmerman's bond hearing is about to take place as the question is whether george zimmerman will be granted beyond hearing george zimmerman expected in court the judge has to decide if he's a pretzel others or

a threat to him he claims that he acted that night in self defense under florida's stand your ground law dressed in a suit in a time with his arm shackled d.c. given there so far zimmerman's wife and father have testified but via telephone a judge said bail for george zimmerman the man in the center of your screen there one hundred fifty thousand dollars will be freed from jail the judge granting zimmerman was one hundred fifty thousand dollars and the judge in a case has set bond for zimmerman at one hundred fifty thousand dollars you will not be walking out of jail today because they have to work out some specifics about the ankle monitor exam room and also expected to asked to leave the area entirely due to concerns about his safety. now you guys know my feelings about this i think of the trayvon martin case is an important one and if it's looking people up to problems within our justice system the fact that we are not opposed to racial and the fact we have laws on the books that allow you to kill somebody and not be

arrested for it and that's all good right these are things that need to be discussed but i'm not really sure how much that's happened as we've spoken about on this show it's unfortunate that a story like this is turned from something that could open up a national discussion really going to one of the media obsesses over to the extent where honestly i think it has the opposite effect trayvon story is a tragic one but as our one of our guests like michelle alexander has pointed out we see so many deaths have it on a mass scale words not a neighbor a neighborhood watchman the does the killing but it's the police and rare. really it's a question as there never is it blown up to a story of this magnitude but again the point is not those cases are more important than trayvon it's that i think we should be talking about all of it and when you turn it into a charade where you just play the video you show the pictures over and over again for twenty four hours a day people can't defend the thais the same way that they do with the wars that we're fighting abroad more bad news every day eventually makes people tune out and

then the media goes to the opposite extreme and turns to ignoring it almost completely so delicate balance right anyway what i'd really like to bring up today the mainstream media hasn't touched upon is another story entirely one that doesn't fit into their one track mind set that can only cover one or two stories at a time and one has implications for all journalists and in many ways helps to describe why or mainstream media is the way that it is the usa today publish a story talking about a propaganda a smear campaign against two of their journalists who reported on a pentagon propaganda campaign the vicious circle now has to do with one reporter tom band and broke and editor ray locker so they were together to do critical reporting on a pentagon campaign or the pentagon was paying contractors to run information operations to try and improve the image of the u.s. military's adventures of specifically those in iraq and afghanistan and what usa today is now contending is that at the same time they were contacting the contact at the pentagon and the contractors for comment on this story some strange things

started happening web sites are set up with time and raise names there were competing of pages were altered with misleading information to discredit their reporting and even fake twitter accounts of here now the web sites using their names to register through false adversus and then routed through proxy servers can feel the origins and that's something that's cheap to do and it's easy to do for somebody who knows how to do it like i don't know maybe a contractor that works on information operations well nobody knows who's behind it exactly in the pentagon course is of. are saying that they were unaware that anything like this was going on and they call this activity unacceptable but the point is that somebody out there trying to launch a smear campaign against this reporter and this editor and happened right at the time it was becoming obvious if they were working on a piece that was going to be critical of the spending on program that's something that you would think the media just might care about intimidation a smear campaign against members of the press. but of course not for talking

mainstream cable networks right these guys are the establishment serving press and the last thing that they can serve themselves with are whistleblower cases moves by the government that threaten press freedom because they're not planning on doing anything that might piss the establishment off anyway most of the time it's liberty gossip it's partisan tit for tat every now and then one legal case they'll go big on and pretend that they really care about social justice i know it you know it the mainstream media is a constant. well it's time for our weekly financial check up this week i m f and world bank are having their spring meeting here in washington d.c. so we're going to tell you why you should care then as obama starts a campaign to keep student loan interest rates from rising students riot in montreal over their tuition increases and the timeline for the volcker rule has been set for two years from now so let's get the full check shall we.

all right here to discuss with me is lauren lyster host of the capital account here on r.g.p. lauren a lot of these friday check ups always a pleasure so world bank i am meetings here in washington d.c. i kind of get the feeling that probably a lot of people don't even know that this is where they're based that this is where these meetings occur but what can you tell us about why you should be paying attention what's on the agenda yeah you're probably right i would argue most average americans if you ask them what the i.m.f. was there one thing they do i doubt they could really mention that but i'll tell you in the countries that have been impacted by i.m.f. policies and the conditions of their lending they all know what the i.m.f. is the average population now why people should care about this particular meeting i can't really sell it because hey i don't really think a lot goes on at these meetings that people need to care about but the big headline is that the i.m.f. is you. whatever they say about what's on the official agenda it's all been about

not only guard raising money to boost i.m.f. firepower to stand any kind of financial contagion or crises that arise obviously the big one there is europe that's financial global financial risk number one and regardless of what anybody is trying to play this as a fund for everybody come on it's all about the worries coming out of your regard as you like to call her she's looking for alarms of money out there saying that it's quote doing fine right now we're trying to collect four hundred billion dollars and we're doing fine so we already know that the u.s. isn't really all that keen on i think they want to get i have to be pretty clear i'm not so who exactly is giving all the money well actually quite a few countries have pledged and one thing that's interesting in the release i just saw from christine legarde office in the i.m.f. is that china russia brazil india and some of these developing nations which were there was a question about if they would contribute they are contribute they're not specific contributions yet but not

a lot is taking them that they have that they are going to and will be among the contributors now the big thing there is that developing countries want a greater say in the i.m.f. and the i.m.f. is due to adjust its quotas the irony is that that's going to happen in october and you know what's in november u.s. presidential election so now there's reports that europeans are worried that the fact that u.s. elections are coming up could mean that there could be some roadblocks in the way of changing those quotas so somehow the u.s. even though it's not giving money a look at always finds a way of possibly getting in the way of some of these changes are given so the concern here is how are they going to get money in the pot whether there's going to be voting on how much money is going to be in the pot but then what exactly are they going to do with all that money is part of the greater conversation that needs to happen here whether or not throwing money at a problem like europe is really what's going to help it that is a great point so this is to boost i.m.f. firepower to presumably bailout or provide assistance in the case where there's a crisis or contagion. which is again about europe but exactly it doesn't get to

the problem that the issues in these economies have not been addressed and the bailouts impose such harsh terms that are crippling these economies where everything is going to debt repayment and not to rebuilding the economy so what happens is the deputy was even heavier because the economy gets worse the population suffers the country suffers the creditors and the banks do pretty well comparatively everything is on focus on getting them their money back which is the big you know take away that people need to be focused on in my view let's shift focus a little bit. to the i.m.f. the world bank our domestic since it's happening here right now in washington d.c. but you know what i mean when it comes to u.s. policy or how about our neighbors this is really just a couple hours ago i think we had some video of protests in montreal students were protesting because of a hike at the end of the day it's three hundred twenty five dollars a year over five years of the increase and there we have got the video playing

right now. i hate to say it too though but that kind of increase doesn't even sound like that much compared to how much money people are paying for their education here in the u.s. you know the president is about to launch this campaign basically just a pressure campaign to try to convince congress not to let student loan interest rates shoot up from three point four to six point eight percent in july of this year but i mean what do you think we can say about these situations comparing right well here's the thing i don't know what canada doesn't star is subsidizing student loans but the core issue with the interest rate you're talking about with that obama is talking about in the u.s. these are federally subsidized stafford loans so there's an argument to be made that some economists do that when you subsidize an interest and industry when you subsidize tuition with college loans and by the government then you're in essence contributing to an increase in prices which is what we've seen and without that we may not have seen this increase in prices which leaves tuitions in the united

states so high there is that case to be made that said the fact that these are going to double and it is a situation that they are heavily subsidized i think when you look at that and the fact that wall street is subsidized by dizzier percent interest rates of the federal reserve they're speculation is subsidized when you look at those rates are going to be capped at zero percent for three years possibly more at least so far as what we can tell from what the fed is saying and they're doubling these rates for college students that just seems like an inequity that really just how does your. anybody probably should be subsidized and should get a little help from the government i think personally that it's students that are trying to get an education which everyone has told you that you have to have you have to have a degree if you want to go out there and get a job but their rates are going to go up and it's already. reached over trillion dollars this is near and now these these interest rates are about to double again the last thing i want to bring up with you is the volcker rule ok right so this is part of the financial reform it was to have been and now basically i only after

a lot of negotiations they're putting more of a time stamp on it but they're taking it down. on the road again two more years right so banks out that they may have to comply with the volcker rule by this july which was originally the date regulators have come out this week and said no no no you have two more years july of two thousand and fourteen is when you'll have to comply which to me watching on the sidelines is we've been seeing banks lobbying the regulations lobbying this rule that could have been thirty pages in is turned into hundreds of pages of what critics say are loopholes that allow banks to get around it what this two year says to me is this is two more years for banks to either lobby regulations so they look more like the way they want them to get around or to restructure their businesses so that they can still engage in this proprietary trading in a different department with a different name structure differently as though to look like or sound like proprietary gadabout about letting them have this two more years question i think it's having to do with compliance and the concern surrounding compliance i mean i really don't know i mean there's some speculation to be had about what kind of

rolled the financial industry has had and successfully lobbying to convince regulators that they can't do this in time but you know that's a good question for the regulators to next aren't always that always a reason that these things are difficult and they take. lauren lyster of most of the fallible accounting arky thanks. for taking a quick break but coming up today is the two here anniversary of the oil spills we're going to check in and then could an investigation into prisoner abuse in pennsylvania lead to a cave in policy on solitary confinement going to speak with a journalist has been following this story for the british. you know the story of the siege so. you think you understand it and then you do something else some other kind of realized. you don't. charge this is the.

you know the real. problem with the mainstream media today is that we disconnected from the viewers and what actually matters that's why young people don't watch if they want to. we're trying to take those stories that people actually care about and transfer them back and.

state. speaking russian channel it's kind of like. an extremely confrontational stance when it comes to us. today marks the two year anniversary of the start of the worst environmental disaster in u.s. history on april twentieth of two thousand and ten b.p.'s deepwater horizon oil rig exploded killing eleven workers and injuring seventeen others and over the next three months approximately two hundred million gallons of crude oil gush into the

gulf of mexico wreaking havoc on the environment and the fishing and tourism industries of the louisiana alabama mississippi and florida and that's just where b.p.'s troubles began he last month the company agreed to settle two class action lawsuits with over one hundred thousand plaintiffs paying out seven point eight billion dollars to companies and individuals and attorneys are presented to a federal judge this week and if approved this deal want to be will be one of the largest class action lawsuits in history and there's no cap to the damage payments either and as the full extent of g.m. it is revealed over the next few decades the value of this settlement could rise so b.p. has agreed to monitor the health of claimants every three years for the next twenty one years as well and the settlement doesn't include what he already paid out to other individuals and businesses b.p. says it's paid eight billion in claims on top of his field but considering the unprecedented damage to individuals and the environment resulting from the spill

some seven point eight billion dollars some people think is really just. and drop in the bucket now we spoke with louisiana lawyer danny back nose participating in another suit against b.p. he blasted the so-called plaintive settlement committee for accepting this deal and pointed out that b.p. had set aside twenty billion in anticipating in anticipation of civil suits yet the even with the money already paid out on top of that settlement the company's deep water litigation trust will have a few billion left over now back now also know that there is little doubt over b.p.'s liability here and the victims didn't get fully compensated by not going to trial but that's not all the plaintiffs settlement committee. dismissed claims against a company called now co now that's the manufacturer of a dispersant used by b.p. in the cleanup and defendant case and the dispersant question is called corexit and b.p. used one point eight million gallons of the staff to try to clean up an al-jazeera

investigation showed this week there's growing concern that it's added to the long term damage could be done through gulf coast residents. i use in the gulf for an entire year and witnessed the decline in human health respiratory problems central nervous system problems haddix dizziness nausea exact hallmarks characteristics of the oil spill exposure people have measured loyal dispersant in their swimming pools on their doorsteps people work school. now studies are also showing that wildlife is suffering as well the situation is only getting worse last october the national oceanographic and atmospheric administration said the couric sit along with the oil may have caused dolphins off the louisiana coast to die and mass and marine wildlife is still turning up mutated two years after the explosion so to speak show the fish are being caught in the gulf in normal numbers but a lot of them contain abnormalities that include eyelets shrimp crawl is crabs and

claw is crabs and fish with out fully formed hearts just to name a few examples so without suspicion or with suspicion in the courts that is pretty bad for anything with gills or lungs you have to wonder why wasn't nalco included in the plaintiff's settlement committees suit and why did these lawyers back the settlement when they could have won more for their clients by going to court well there's suspicion that it could be the same reason that disaster happened in the first place which is good old fashioned greed as part of this deal lawyers working for the plaintiffs settlement committee are sent to collect it whopping six hundred million dollars in lawyers fees close is good but in perspective last year the drug company merck agreed to a settlement worth just under five billion dollars in that deal lawyers agreed to take three hundred and fifty million and i was only after thousands of lawsuits in dozens of jurisdictions it took years to litigate so in this case the point of settlement committee lawyers didn't even have to go to court and they still took over half a billion in fees something your pitiful little fishy right with

a whiff of crude oil and dispersant and just plain sad that two years after such a tragic calamity the victims don't appear to be getting the justice that they deserve even as the gulf region continues to suffer. a last december the department of justice launched an investigation into allegations of prisoner abuse at pennsylvania state correctional institutions cresson and pittsburgh there have been suicides attempted suicides at the prisons leading many to question the true. of prisoners i think facilities across and specifically the stories involve inmates who've been placed into solitary confinement that's all very even just the norm in pennsylvania it's used all across the country some estimate that about twenty five thousand prisoners are living in solitary confinement but if you look to solitary watch dot com they pointed out that nationwide total is actually closer to eighty thousand when you include not only supermax but also state run prisons like those in pennsylvania so what exactly are these prisoners being subjected to and could

this investigation pave the way for a change in our policies are going to discuss it is not strout free last year unless writing for publications including the nation the atlantic and reuters and i want to thank you for joining us tonight and first if you could just give us a little background in terms of why this investigation was launched by the department of justice i know there's two separate prisons here but you know how many cases are we talking about of suicide of attempted suicide alone or thanks for having me. the story i wrote is about sci crescent nerds who parts of that particular investigation but involves the suicide of a guy named john mcclellan the other involves mistreatment of developmentally disabled prisoner i mean tracy had repeated. as far as i know the department of justice investigation came about because allegations about treason attributed to receive the tribune as an i.q. of seventy he also is going to tie social personality disorders schizoaffective

disorder. and there were some pretty severe allegations made about how the corrections officers and administrators of that prison betrayed him so that i believe that is what brought about the department of justice investigation and then it was followed up after the suicide of john mcclellan who also exhibited signs that he was mentally ill that was placed in solitary confinement i mean let's talk about some of these really gruesome allegations that you wrote about in the way that on these prisoners was treated. have the details please if you don't mind for our audience where the case with with tracy but you do is particularly unsettling to get he has an i.q. of seventy and what happened with him there's something called a secure a special needs unit within this prison it's that unit is specifically designed for people who have mental disabilities but the most restrictive part of that unit is called phase five and apparently from allegations that i've received from people

who work at the prison who formerly worked at the prison as well as. prisoners who were there and who are there now if you will formally there they are saying that he was placed into a cell alone twenty four hours a day his clothing was taken away from him his property was taken away from him and he was just left there to languish all day. for months and months on end while a lot of this time was during the winter there was a broken window in the cell and supposedly the temperatures went down to below freezing during some of these days when he was confined to these months when he was confined in these circumstances that the grocer allegation that i had heard about involves. well they would take away his clothing they would turn off the water in his cell they would refuse to give him toilet paper and then he would use the bathroom and then shortly thereafter they would feed him food his food and he would be forced to use it as the hand that he just wiped himself with the feet and so.

and so that's that's the type of allegation we're getting here and that supposedly by current and four former staff members at crescent went forward to the department of justice to make these allegations and to bring about this investigation oh it's you know it's definitely horrible and here you know in this case they obviously went very far it seems the father validations are true but it brings up a number of patients that you know and it's a graphic. back but solitary confinement is actually something that's used in prisons all across the guts and if you listen to a lot of psychologists out there a lot of rights activists they'll tell you that even putting somebody inside very thin climate is tantamount to torture here it seems like this particular president pennsylvania went far and beyond with that and so you know when we talk about this department of justice investigation might be be able to what they actually do to address not only this case you know might have other broad sweeping of facts on the

prison system across the united states it could have other effects the fact that the department of justice is interested in this case and has said that it's going to question the treatment of mentally ill prisoners. but in the fact that not only all prisoners are supposedly been placed him so if you're an environment that's that's meaningful but it there are court precedents that have been set that have said that prisoners have no special access to the general population of the prison so in other words it's it's legal to place an inmate into solitary confinement the other the other part of this that is going to be tricky to get around is that yes the department of justice is a federal entity and this federal entity is looking at the possibility that mentally ill prisoners are being mistreated and being placed into solitary confinement but we need to consider is that federal prisons also use solitary confinement and from reports we're hearing people who are mentally ill are also

being placed in solitary confinement in federal prisons so if the findings of this department of justice investigation seem to point toward a ban on solitary confinement for the mentally ill who are the federal government is going to have to add it's are some serious questions about the way it treats its own prisoners and of your of prisons. which you know would be definitely a big deal if they actually had to answer those questions and so you know i mean here let's not talk about the other things in this investigation here in these prisons which is that not only were these people placed in solitary confinement or maybe suffered abuse of the hands of the prison guards or whatnot but they may have been mentally ill and so how is it that things like this are how do they slide is it just because of whoever the psychologist is at one particular prison or is it an entire attitude towards people like this the way they choose to punish. allegations have been made that the chief psychologist the c.i. kristen was acting sadistically toward this kind of prison there were allegations

that tracy attributable to get out of the most restrictive phase of the secure special needs unit at sci prison we need to go through something called a program review committee meeting. and what we heard is that there were certain program review committee meetings where tracy wasn't allowed to go through those meetings unless he sang a little teacup and did it cancer but it was in there and so that's that's indicative of something the other the other at least in the sci question investigation is that of john cohen jr john coleman jr committed suicide last may and from solitary confinement and. his case is is. different because he displayed. it seemed like he was mentally ill he he showed signs of mental illness but he hadn't been diagnosed mentally ill so he was placed in solitary confinement and nobody really gave it a second and in fact he was in solitary confinement in several state prisons in the

state of pennsylvania. and it crests and he started to tell people that he was considering suicide and from what we're hearing from other prisoners who were in solitary confinement at the same time that he was there people who were in prison cells adjacency is they're saying that he was telling everybody he was getting ready to commit suicide it was thinking about committing suicide and that there were administrators that person who just said if he was going to do it he's going to do it and so be it so take from that what you will those are the allegations that were welling up added to the riot here about that hopefully we will see some action happen from this investigation wrapping so much for joining us tonight thanks for having. our half way period but only have bath certain but you have says congressman gephardt small time award for. calling somebody a liar and i will meet one of the victims of the f.b.i. the latest how do you have that server things ever.