welcome to the ellen show the real headlines with none of the mercy or if you live in washington d.c. now tonight we're going to speak with lauren lister host of the capital account here are to you 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 at pennsylvania prisons we're going to see how a justice department investigation might pave the way for change in our prisons and our policies of solitary confinement and the feds have taken down a server used by hundreds of people activist included all because of one possible threat so we're going to take a look at what they're calling the sledgehammer approach of the government was all

that and more feeder night including those happy hour but first take a look at the mainstream media has decided to meet. this morning you 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. george zimmerman 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 who will be granted bail bond hearing george zimmerman expected in court the judge has to decide if he's

a threat to others were 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 this time with his arm shackled you see him 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 one hundred fifty thousand dollars and the judge in the 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. and i guess no my feelings about this i think of the trayvon martin case is an important one and if it's woken people up to the problems within our justice system to 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

not 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 different from something that could open up a national discussion really keep it 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 happen 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 of those cases are more important to trayvon it's that i think we should be talking about all of it when you turn it into a charade when you just play the video you show the pictures over and over again for twenty four hours a day people can't defend for time 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 right really like to bring up today the mainstream media hasn't touched on is another story entirely one that doesn't fit into their one track mind set that can only cover one or two stories over time and one that 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 vanden broke and editor ray locker so they were together to do critical reporting on a pentagon campaign where the pentagon was paying contractors to run information operations to try and improve the image of the u.s. military's adventures of rot specifically those in iraq and afghanistan and what usa today is now contending is that at the same time they were constantly to contact the pentagon and the contractors for comments on this story some strange

things started happening web sites were set up with tom and ray's names or we could be of pages were altered with misleading information to discredit their reporting and even fake twitter accounts of here and other websites using their names to register through false addresses and then routed through proxy servers to conceal 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 or 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 happen right at the time it was becoming obvious that they were working on a piece that was going to be critical of the spending on programs that 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 a big concern themselves with our whistleblower case is moves by the government to threaten press freedom because they're not planning on doing anything that might piss the establishment off anyway though most of the time it's celebrity gossip it's partisanship for example every now and then one legal case will go big on and pretend that they really care about social justice i know it you know it the mainstream media is a constant in. our world time for our weekly financial check up now 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 chart shall we.

all right here to discuss with me is lauren lyster host of the capital account here on our t.v. lauren oh no these friday check ups always a pleasure so world bank i have 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 their base of this is where these meetings occur but what can you tell us about lives 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 or one thing that 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 tell 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 the. whatever they say about what's on the official agenda it's all been about

madame lagarde 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 been anshul 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 a lot of money right but she's actually 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 the amount that they want to give her isn't pretty clear on that so who exactly is giving all the money who 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 but not all of artist making them but 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 i and that is due to adjust its quotas the irony is that that's not to happen in october and you know it'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 getting money a look at always finds a way of possibly getting in the way of some of these changes are that so the concern here is how are they going to get money and whether there's going to be money you know 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 bail out 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 debt becomes 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 money back which is the big takeaway that people need to be focused on in my view are let's shift focus a little bit. too and not to the i.m.f. the world bank or into message 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 have video of protests in montreal students are protesting because of it she was at the end of the day it's three hundred twenty five dollars a year over five years of that increase and there we have you have 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 has in its far as 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 that's an economist do it when you subsidize an interest and industry when you subsidize tuition with college loans 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 i think recent crisis which leads to asians 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 totally subsidized i think when you look at that and the fact that wall street is subsidized by dizzier zero percent interest rates and 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 to have. anybody probably should be subsidizing 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 good grief you want to go out there and get a job but you know every it's going to go up and it's already right student loan debt reached over a 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

finally after a lot of negotiations they're putting more of a time stamp on it but they're taking it down. wrote again two more years right so banks thought 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 logging 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 reply terry trading in a different department with a different name structured differently so it doesn't look like it's very jack about about letting them have this two more years of 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 role the

financial industry has had in successfully lobbying to convince regulators that they can't do this in time but you know that's a good question for the regulators what i do next i don't know is that always a reason that these things are difficult and they take time lauren lyster host of the council accounting arteries and. we're 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 get an investigation into prisoner abuse in pennsylvania into a change in policy on solitary confinement i'm going to speak with a journalist has been following this story for the for. you for sure you know if you can join the one called talk from the choose option. with. the.

mission. streets now in the palm of your. question on the dot com. there hasn't been a thing get on t.v. . it is to get the maximum political impact. before source material is what helps keep journalism honest we. we wanted to visit. something up.

say 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 louisiana alabama mississippi and florida and that's where b.p. has troubles began the last month the company agreed to settled super class action lawsuits with over one hundred thousand plaintiffs paying out seven point eight billion dollars to companies and individuals and the terms 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 count of the damage payments either and as the full extent of genet 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 money already paid out to other individuals and businesses b.p. says it has 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 he pointed out that bt 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 the deepwater litigation trust will have a few billion left over now back now also knows 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 planes are settlement committee does. to dismiss claims against a company called now co now that's the manufacturer of a dispersant used by b.p. in the cleanup and defendant in that case so the dispersant question is called corexit and b.p. used one point eight million gallons of this stuff to try to clean up as an

al-jazeera investigation showed this week there's growing concern that it's added to the long term damage that b.p. has done some 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 headaches dizziness nausea exact a hallmark characteristics of a wheel still exposure people have measured loyal dispersant in their swimming pools on their door stoops people were explored blood. 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 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 six 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 crabs and fish with out fully formed hearts just to name a few examples so without suspicion or with suspicion of the courts that is pretty bad for anything with gills or lungs you have to wonder why was that nalco included in the plaintiff's settlement committee's suit and by these lawyers backed 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 is that her happened in the first place which is good old fashion greed as part of this deal lawyers working for the plaintiffs settlement committee are set to collect lobbying six hundred million dollars and lawyers fees pushers put that into 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 that 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 put a 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. so last december the department of justice launched an investigation into allegations of prisoner abuse at pennsylvania state correctional institutions cresson and pittsburgh and there have been suicide attempts and suicide in the prisons leading many to question the true. of prisoners at these facilities across and specifically the stories of all of inmates who've been placed into solitary confinement but solitary isn't 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 or that if you look to solitary watch dot com they point 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 which we're going to discuss it is matt strout last journalist writing for publications including the nation the atlantic and reuters and i want to thank you for joining us tonight and first if you can just give us a little background in terms of why this investigation was launched by the department of justice and others to separate prisons here but you know how many cases are retarding about suicide of attempted suicide. alona thanks for having me . the story i wrote is about sci cross and there are two parts of that particular investigation one involves the suicide of a guy named john mcclelland the other involves mistreatment of a developmentally disabled prisoner named tracy attribute. as far as i know the department of justice investigation came about because of allegations about tracy pitcher b. of tracy but treated as an i.q. of seventy and he also has antisocial personality disorder is schizoaffective

disorder. and there were some pretty severe allegations made about how corrections officers and administrators of that prison who treated him so i believe that is what brought about the department of justice investigation but and then it was followed up after the suicide of john mcclellan who also exhibited signs that he was mentally ill but was placed into solitary confinement i mean let's talk about some of these really gruesome allegations the right of that in the way that when these prisoners mistreated. him the details play of the line for our audience for. the case with with tracy but you know with particularly unsettling again he has an i.q. of seventy and what happened with him there's something called a secure special needs unit within this prison that'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 is 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 a little a lot of this time was during the winter there was a broken window. the cell and supposedly the temperatures went down below freezing during some of these days when he was confined space and once when he was confined in these circumstances. the grosser allegation that i've heard about involves. well it 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 through his food and be forced to use it as their hand that he just wiped himself with their feet and still. and so

that's that's the type of allegation we're getting here and that's supposedly why current band or former staff members at crescent went forward to the department of justice to make these allegations and to bring about this investigation what you know it's definitely horrible and here you know in this case they obviously went very far it seems of all these allegations are true but it brings up a number of issues you know and it's about the fact that solitary confinement is actually something that's used in prisons all across the u.s. and if you listen to a lot of psychologists out there a lot of human rights activists they'll tell you that even putting somebody inside anything violent 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 able to what could be actually do to address not only this case you know might have other broad sweeping

the 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 it is going to question the treatment of mentally ill prisoners. but in the fact that not only are prisoners of supposedly been placed in solitary confinement 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. dilution of a person so in other words 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 in solitary confinement but what 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 there the federal government is going to have at its or some serious questions about the way it treats its own prisoners in the bureau of prisons which you know 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 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 and whatnot but they may have been mentally ill and so how is it that things like this are you know how do they slide is it just because of whoever the psychologist is at one particular prison or is there an entire attitude towards people like this the way the page used to punish. allegations have been made that the chief psychologist the c.i. cresson was acting sadistically toward this kind of prison there are allegations

that tracey attributable to get out of the most restrictive phase of the secure special needs unit at sci christian you need to go through something called the 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 i'm a little teacup and did a dance for it but it was in there and so that's that's indicative of something the other the other case in the sci press investigation is that of john the call in junior john to call in junior committed suicide last may and from solitary confinement and. his cases is different because he displayed. it seemed like he was mentally ill he he she 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 thought in fact he was in solitary confinement in several state prisons in

a 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 adjacent to that is they're saying that he was telling everybody he was getting ready to commit suicide he 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 wrong not that it's in the you i hear about that hopefully we will see some action happening from this investigation napping so much for joining us tonight thanks for having. we're halfway through but when we give that certain budget up says congressman gephardt schooltime award for once again calling somebody a liar and i will speak to one of the victims of the f.b.i. is the latest heavy handed server seizure.