top stories this are naughty a brand new russian passenger plane the sukhoi superjet one hundred goes missing during a sales demonstration flight in indonesia with fifty people on board after going. on wednesday. a spectacular display of fireworks enjoyed a victory day marking russia's defeat of nazi germany in the great patriotic war. of the grand parade in red square to all of the red armies sixty seven years ago. the greens former prime minister yulia timoshenko has moved to hospital from the prison and a bit to address concerns of her treatment. so that brings you up to date for the moment. we'll be back with more on this story in half an hour from now in the meantime let's head to washington d.c.

for the. welcome to the ilona show where you get the real headlines with none of the mersey going to live out of washington d.c. and tonight we're going to take a look at the debate over government secrecy versus the need to inform the public as it relates to counterterrorism operations the civically we're going to get to this latest foiled plot coming out of yemen then bank of america shareholders are going to hold their annual meeting in charlotte north carolina tomorrow and they're a first of its kind resolution will be presented to see if shareholders will say no to bank funds being used towards political donations we'll talk about whether this strategy can actually work in countering citizens united and do you want to know just how much speculation is raising gas prices what if i told you it was as much

as fourteen dollars out of every tank of gas and all of that and more if you tonight including a dose of happy hour but first take a look with the mainstream media decided to miss. oh all right so just like every other day in these tough economic times there were a lot of stories out there that the mainstream media was discussing when it came to the economy your money one scandal after another the makes every taxpayer want to cringe begin with wall street we are watching a major sell off right now bank of america saying that the first batch of homeowners will receive offer letters this week to cut the principal on their mortgages the economy in the battle for the white house from the auto industry bailout to the unemployment rate across the country the fed saying that consumer borrowing surging more than ten percent in march that's the biggest monthly job we've seen since two thousand and one dow down about one hundred thirty four points

we're just about two and a half hours into the trading day and yes stocks across the board are sinking suzanne romney needs to prove to the american people that he can fix the economy but there are still some concerns over the future of austerity especially in greece at the moment the senate approving a bailout for the post service postal service. puts taxpayers on the hawk for thirty four billion dollars the post office lost three billion dollars in three months features pointing to a lower open on wall street today this will be about jobs in the economy. yesterday we saw in-depth about the ways in which we should be looking at what is happening is happening in europe in france and the u.k. specifically when it comes to seeing just who are staring really gets you so today i'm relieved that what i'm touched but with all of the endless mindless banter that we see in the mainstream media when it comes to the upcoming election in november really baffles me there's one story that they decided to leave out today and just think about what you hear on t.v.

all the time that this election will be about the economy well yeah when millions of americans are underwater in their homes real unemployment is over fifteen percent and republicans are waging a war on social programs in order to save defense spending in the budgets of they bring up it makes perfect sense but then you hear these talking points that you often go and challenge the real problem is that the president is not friendly to business that our tax policy in this country is that business friendly and that's wide jobs are going overseas or that's why companies companies simply aren't even hiring because there's just too much uncertainty out there kind of funny because we found out today that the fortune five hundred companies generated a total of eight hundred and twenty four point five billion dollars in earnings last year that's up sixteen point four percent over two thousand and ten that also beats the previous record of seven hundred eighty five billion dollars in two thousand and six which that was during a roaring economy now the two thousand level profits represent seven percent of

total sales versus an average of five point one four percent over the fifty eight year history of the fortune five hundred and the companies are also garnering exceptional returns on their capital the five hundred sheaves a return on equity of fourteen point three percent which is way above his. storable norm just twelve percent so just let all of that sink in for a moment it's a really scary uncertain environment out there for big business despite the fact that the global economy is still reeling from the financial crisis they're making record profits and c.e.o.'s well they keep increasing their pain fact last year it increased by fifteen percent and the truth is that if you're in the top one percent life is still good very good in fact it's getting better the truth is that companies are just squeezing more out of their workers and not paying them any more for the truth is that they're not going to be more inclined to hire more people if the corporate tax rate were to be lowered many of the largest corporations out there already avoid paying their corporate taxes as we've shown you in the past

with bank of america exxon mobil and the like they're just focused on profits and so the fewer taxes they can pay thanks to corporate subsidies and loopholes the more they can get out of their workers without having to increase their wages the more profit they're going to make and that's something that they're going to take advantage of because they don't want anybody out there tell you that obama hasn't been friendly to business again these guys are just greedy and our politicians are at their beck and call why do you think it has been so hard to close corporate tax loopholes because these companies are some of the largest campaign donors and it's working out for that within the top four fortune five hundred companies numbers three four and two and one excuse me all of those are companies number two is wal-mart but anyway this is the reality that's out there this is why people are protesting inside out because they see that they're being left behind and yet the mainstream media also caters to the elite continues all with the line that there is a battle between the more business friendly candidates as if either one of them

isn't they continue to talk about the economy and how port it's going to be for this election without bringing in some of the most shocking numbers of the day but this is the real state of the economy and it's also what the mainstream media chooses to miss. well the news is out another terror plot has been foiled this one originating in yemen and what you could call an underwear bomber two point zero approach. the cia director an al qaeda terror plot to bring down an american airliner f.b.i. analysts are picking apart an explosive device seized after the cia disrupted an al qaeda plot to bring down a u.s. bound passenger plane the device was built to go undetected by airport screeners a device authorities say shows a new level of sophistication it was a cia who infiltrated al qaida and for plot they had

a source inside the plot that person turned out to be the actual suicide bomber himself. now it turns out the president was informed of this plot in april it was stopped thanks to the cia working with other foreign intelligence services presumably the saudis since the only way of the cia got its hands on the bomb was because a double agent was able to bring it to saudi arabia before safely getting out of yemen but most of that is according to anonymous officials so can we really know the truth the entire episode start a firestorm of debate again over how information gets released to the public and what kind of representative peter king the chairman of the house homeland security committee he's even suggested the review be done on the way the government handles top secret information so once again we see the contradictions in national security claims versus leaks for political purposes we have to wonder how much will ever

really know joining me to discuss it is kinder friedersdorf associate editor at the atlantic conor thanks so much for joining us tonight and i want to get into the media's role in all of this but we for we get there i just want to get your take on this entire debate right and i think most people out there would agree that there are certain things that probably should be. kept secret if there is an ongoing. terror counter-terrorism excuse me operation that's happening right at the moment you probably need to stay think or if you want to be a success but at the same time how far do you go before you say that it's fine for officials to just lie to you. sure i think it's important to be able to put our secret agents in places where they can infiltrate share plots if we in fact had a mole that was able to get inside of outside of that's a good thing and certainly i wouldn't want that person's identity revealed certainly i want that kind of thing to happen but what frustrates me is when the government comes along and we feels things to the public certainly anonymous

sources you'll see it in newspapers it'll say it's a u.s. official who wasn't authorized to speak on the record or something like that and what that basically means is that the government wants to get information out to people but they aren't willing to stand behind it there are they are not willing to put someone's name behind that information and to be accountable for it they want to maintain plausible deniability if that turns out to be false and it's that sort of thing that makes me skeptical and makes me feel as if sometimes these terror plots that they're discovered are partly being used to manipulate me i think the bring up a valid point right often we talk about the double standard when it comes to certain leaks on this show if you want to talk about how aggressively this administration will pursue whistleblowers and yet at the same time you see these top secret leaks coming out all the time and that's because someone has approved it somebody wants it out there for a political purpose but then so what should the press do you know should they say

no to anonymous officials if they are willing to give them certain information but have this condition of anonymity. but maybe that would happen in an ideal world unfortunately the competitive pressures of journalism are such that there's always going to be an outlet that runs with the anonymous information so i guess the middle ground that i would push for it is to encourage reporters when they're writing up these stories if they're going to grant these government officials anonymity to inject the skepticism that i just articulated in their stories and say although the government wants you to know this. there isn't anyone willing to stand behind it so take it with a grain of salt you know how they want to phrase that i just want the notion that this information isn't as solid as something that the government tells you with a name behind it to be put into these stories now what about you know the idea that people bring out facts that something out there my damaged national security there is a lot of people i saw a lot of angry tweets last night because first of all the a.p.

i guess released it before the administration necessarily wanted them to release it of course if they're talking about a double agent then you can't let people know that there's a double agent or you can't let al qaeda in the arabian peninsula know that there is a double agent but. the same thing where do you draw the line there in terms of what's considered a matter of national security and just telling the public the truth. well it's very difficult to draw that line. when it comes to that larger issue one thing that you can imagine is to have some sort of oversight of the kind of information that administration is classified so for example you could have a panel of judges that could go and look at all of the classified information and decide yes this is legitimately classified and that's legitimate classified but this third thing actually there's no reason for it to be classified when you look back at the documents that were they came out after the wiki leaks. the dumps

you see that there's a lot of stuff that the government classifies that there's actually not really any national security reason for it and so what i would like to see is another check and balance on the executive branches power to classify things and maybe even some teeth of it sometimes of punishment for wrongly classifying things ok but then i feel like you're going to need to create somebody else who's going to provide that check and balance to right the gas we've seen a lot of organizations throughout the years over the last ten years you know as we really have experience over classification in the country from the a.c.l.u. to whoever tried to fight the government in court and if there's something that they think that they you know might be embarrassed by something that they don't want to let out they just use this state secrets privilege and they apply across the board and even president obama who actually criticized president bush for overusing it has done the exact same thing. that's absolutely right and you know all that the average american citizen can do is to try to elect people to congress

who care about this issue and who are going to be more zealous in their oversight of the executive branch i think there's often a focus on the presidency sort people who care about these issues and unfortunately president obama has sort of betrayed those people and really all that's left is getting more people. into the house and the senate who care about these things and you know someone like rand paul has shown how much even one senator who is asking tough questions can make a big difference and in the democratic party and the republican party there are libertarian friendly people who if they were to be put in a position where they were in the legislative branch would press harder than any of the or the vast majority of the legislators we have now and so if you're a person who wants to make a difference that's the answer look for those kinds of candidates support those kinds of candidates well that's the really sad thing though is that you're saying

if there are some libertarian options out there why can't there be republican options out there why can't there be democratic options out there right because everyone else has somehow given up and so just really quickly too i just want to go back to the media one more time on that and just ask about their role because i feel like they don't often cover these stories when it comes to overclassification or when it comes to the erosion of your civil liberties and then is it just. a memory loss thing that they have a short memory span that they have you know you talk about the fact that a lot of people in the media want to portray president obama as someone who's very even keeled and walks a thin line when it comes to foreign policy but that's not the truth the way does a really aggressive foreign policy but it's like everyone has collective amnesia. well there's some fortunate tend to see in political coverage to look at the two parties and to say well the republicans say this and the democrats say this and so some midpoint must be the center and it just creates a misleading impression over time because if you're talking about something like

how hot this a person is or how a person is and their foreign policy maybe that should be judged against a historical perspective as well as a partisan perspective and so on that that's what i counsel is just to look at past american presidents look at the foreign policies of other countries and that's the way to judge whether. whether what we're doing is particularly. hawkish whether it's particularly restrained and i would say that president obama is relatively hawkish president why is everything that you're calling for though requires a lot of homework and not everybody likes to do that carter thanks so much for joining us tonight thanks for having me. ari just ahead tonight show and tell and then we have a show shareholders are going to meetings in mara but this what is the any shareholder meeting where you have the latest for you after the break.

culture is that so much about the mayors and i mean to say she gave me a lot of people an area returning to the russian presidency for the third time by the mere putin has pledged to unify the country and continue reforms to expand the economy. sigrid laboratory to mccurry was able to build a new most sophisticated robot which on fortunately doesn't give a darn about anything tim's mission to teach the creation why it should care about humans and we're going this is why you should care only on the dot com. download the official t. up location on the phone the i pod touch from the top story. one child's life on the go. video on demand on t.v.'s my old posts and r.s.s.

feeds now with the palm of your. question on the dot com. our guys it's time for show and tell on tonight's program last week we discussed the national day of reason a secular answer to the national day of prayer but we asked if you think the power of that group are strong enough to influence public debate rival the religious right so let's go to producer patrice innocency to find out what she had to say i'm of the streets of d.c. to tell people the nation's capital what our viewers had to say on twitter facebook and you tube and see which comments we should keep or delete. do you think that the power of atheists to influence public policy and the public debate will ever be able to rival the religious right i'm going to read your spawn's for sure rog on facebook he wrote in to say perhaps eventually but

definitely not at least for a decade or two so do you believe that will take that long do you want to keep it or delete it i would i would agree with shrug i would say we've had twenty years i mean i read your spawn's from gill's on facebook he believes that christianity will always dominate the politics of this country do you want to keep it or delete it. i would i would kind of agree with that statement it's always going to be a major sector of american politics and there's they're going to have a lot of influence i think that the size is there but they just need to have a larger voice i'm going to read your response from classy mark on facebook he said no atheists typically don't offer up millions of dollars every year to political figures do you want to keep that comment or delete it i think i would keep i think that's true i think that the religious groups are the ones that contribute the most money so that that translates to power in the election so as of this point i don't think that atheists would have a lot of power in the election in today's political climate but yes i mean we are

mainly a two party system so it comes down to that most people seem to think that atheists as a group simply do not have the money power or influence to make a major impact on politics. thank you for your responses and here's our next question for you coming up we'll be talking about the latest effort to hold bank of america accountable to its shareholders from with it tomorrow for the first time a resolution will be introduced at the shareholder meeting to ban the company from making political contributions now if you can depend on congress or the courts to overturn citizens united some say find other ways around it like this so do you think that shareholders of big companies should get more involved to stop their political spending let us know what you think on facebook twitter and who to and who knows a response just might make it on air. so there is going to be a lot of action in charlotte north carolina tomorrow bank of america shareholders will gather for their annual meeting but protesters are also coming prepared to

make their thoughts known outside their anger at bank of america's role in the financial crisis the resulting bailout foreclosure fraud dirty practices of predatory payday lending and the financial backing of industries like private prisons just to name a few things but the city manager of charlotte has already declared this meeting an extraordinary event taking from an ordinance passed last january and anticipation of the democratic national convention so that means that there is going to be more restrictions on free speech and an expansion of the ability of police to search people's property and arrest that there's also something very interesting it's going to be happening inside this meeting for the first time ever a resolution will be presented by trillium asset management to bar b. of a for making political contributions from the companies treasury funds so if the courts and congress are going to stop the insane amount of money pouring into our political system then quit shareholders to it joining me from our studio in new york is william cohen former investment banker and author of the recently released

paperback edition money and power how goldman sachs came to rule the world he's also contributing editor to vanity fair and a columnist for bloomberg view well thanks so much for joining us tonight and you know what's your take a what do you think of this actually have the shareholders sit down and try to vote and say you know what these are treasury funds from the entire company it's not like we're personally deciding where they're going they should go towards political donations. look shareholders the shareholders own of these companies i mean there's no question about that unfortunately they take a backseat role because they just don't assert their shareholder rights and here's an opportunity you know where you see an example of them trying to assert those rights you know unfortunately i'm a little bit cynical about the power of shareholders to actually influence corporate boards and managements they rarely win these corporate referendums which means getting a majority and even if they do get

a majority there they're basically recommendations as opposed to requirements and very very rarely do managements or boards of directors actually do what their shareholders ask them to do if they were to be so fortunate to get a majority of the shares voting on the resolution which rarely happens so you know i think it's the right idea i think they should get more actively involved this is their company they should make sure the b. of a does the right thing and i think it's a welcome sign but i'm afraid it's not going to have much impact i now when you talk about a right wing talk about the shareholders what exactly do you think that. includes because some of the groups that are going to be out there protesting tomorrow while the shareholder meter is meeting is going on are trying to say that the majority of americans are actually shareholders in bank of america right that if you ever had a pension or had a four zero one k. to go through your company and bank of america was somehow involved you were also

a shareholder. you know that's the that's an interesting argument i think it was a real legitimate argument back when. bank of america had tarp loans and the u.s. treasury owned warrants in bank of america but as you know that has been paid off in the warrants have been extinguished and paid off so i think it's you know if you want to influence a corporation then you should buy stock in it and start agitating because that is your right as a shareholder unfortunately unless your cowper's which is a big shareholder in california you're not going to really be able to influence a management or a board of directors but at least if you owned a share of stock or many shares you can use those rights as a shareholders to agitate for change if you believe in it but again i don't think people protesting outside of the corporate headquarters or even passing there or

even advocating for this resolution inside the board meeting tomorrow is going to have much effect unfortunately you know. governor romney may think that corporations are people for the purposes of the citizens united decision but they can't they have no shame like people they can't be shamed into doing the right thing corporations are quite monolithic if they want to hide behind what they're doing and not change one iota. so what do you think of the correct path is mean you know at the same time there's also a lot of pressure being put on the f.c.c. right now i think there's something more than two hundred sixty people actually had submitted comments to the s.e.c. demanding that they actually force corporations to at least be transparent about where it is that their money is going to and who exactly they're donating are regulators a better option or you know what comes next. you know this this is so tough i mean you know the the the longstanding internet scene relationships between

washington and wall street and corporate america i mean this goes back centuries in this country some people would even say this is the bedrock principle upon which this nation was founded you know unfortunately you know i'm winding that relationship is extremely difficult i think you know frankly the regulators have not done their job they haven't done their job for reagan for generation i don't really see that as a particularly good option i don't think congress has done its job i think the dog frank law is a total flop and completely toothless i think frankly you know if shareholders want to affect change at their corporations they have to do it by getting the big shareholders the big institutional shareholders like cowper's or other big pension funds on their side to agitate for the change that they're looking for that that will force boards of directors and management to listen i think that is the best hope absent that you know unless these companies go out of business for bad

behavior i don't think they're going to change and you've got to get the big wigs involved let me just ask you to you know i mentioned and the introduction to this interview that the city manager in charlotte has decided to invoke this provision here they're calling this an extraordinary meeting and so the police are going to have an easier time when it comes to wanting to arrest people suppress free speech and i you know it's like we also seen this before if you want to talk about may day when there are a lot of protests in new york in the occupy movement try to have a general strike and we also saw the banks there hire private security i mean is this just a perfect symbol of where things are going right you have these these banks these groups of elite shareholder meetings that are consistently just being more and more separated from the general public. and even from their shareholders i mean look goldman sachs at its annual meeting this year in india i mean could you be any further away from your shareholders than in india you know this is just another

distressing sign that has been going on since you know after nine eleven with the passage of the patriot act among other civil liberties diminishing actions that our government has taken you know freedom of expression free speech freedom to congregate freedom to protest these are the things that make this country great and if you bridge those rights and those freedoms by you know claiming it's some sort of special event or special meeting it's nothing special about this meeting it's a board of shareholders meeting in a corporate tower you know seventy floors above of the above the street i mean there's nothing remotely special about that and people should be able to protest and say what they want to on the street outside that's what makes this country great and to diminish that or bridge that in any way is a pathetic reaction to something that just isn't a problem and i will definitely take a look at what actually happens tomorrow you know in terms of how many people come out and what the reaction the police is going to be that way and thanks so much for

joining us tonight my pleasure. i start account and i we have an update on the case of a mentally ill man with death by police department california the video is out and extremely gruesome so will anybody be held accountable and then fucks news wanted to think that obama is to blame for high gas prices but it turns out that lobbyists are actually to plan for about half the money they are forking out at the pump.