tonight on our t.v. it looks like president obama has some stiff competition in this quest to be reelected but i'm not talking about mitt romney see how a felon behind bars almost beat obama in the west virginia primary what's the clear message here. the student debt clock has ticked past the one trillion dollar mark the occupy movement doesn't want recent grads drowning in debt to shut up and all of their bold moves directed at the one percent. she's the woman who blew the whistle on washington the f.b.i. translator turned truth teller is now dishing it all out in her memoir we'll speak to authors of bell edmonds about the rough journey she faced to get her book published.

wednesday may ninth eight pm in washington d.c. and that is martin you're watching our. topping the news this hour something that's catching the attention of numerous news outlets today well dead people one elections in the past so could felons be next if west virginia democrats have something to say about it the answer may be yes take a look at some of these headlines that pretty much tell it all texas inmate wins forty one percent of the vote versus obama in west virginia's primary obama loses to felons several west virginia counties four and ten choose convict over obama in west virginia primary against obama even a jailbird get some votes why felon keith judd did so well against obama in west virginia that's right folks the man you're looking at right now is a man named keith judd and he's actually giving the president a run for his money judd is currently serving a seventeen and a half year prison sentence at a federal correctional institution that isn't even in west virginia for making

threats of the university of new mexico in one thousand nine hundred nine now for many of the people who voted against president obama in this primary it was exactly about electing a convicted felon to office it was about sending a message to president obama that they're willing to take almost anyone over him and they better shape up or ship out and take a look at the breakdown from the vote from the democratic primary president obama won fifty nine percent of the vote while judd took a whopping forty one percent of last night's vote that's enough to earn him multiple delegates at the democratic national convention but no one is registered as a judge delegate yet west virginia is a democratic state but it's voters voted against obama in protest of his crude policy which they feel impede the industry's growth in the state west virginians aren't the only ones who are unhappy with the obama administration's policies. students leaving academia in this country are being left behind with the blue lurch the ball and chain of debt that will follow them for life a couple weeks ago it marked one t. day where student debt the one trillion dollar mark take

a look at some of the stats currently sixty seven billion dollars of student loans are in default and the education department is twenty. three private debt collectors chasing the borrowers so with this much debt hanging over the heads of students how can those entering the workplace possibly be expected to ever get back on their feet for a look into the occupy movements efforts on student debt i'm joined now by independent performing artist erin color photo arun what is the occupy movement strategizing here to deal with the debt crisis well i think a lot of it has to do with just specifically trying to figure out why it is that you know students are coming out with you know twenty five thousand dollars worth of student debt now their degrees are devalued mean we you know in my and so my work i talk about the bachelor's degree kind of becoming like a piece of american cheese and i think a lot of people like american cheese and sandwiches i don't know how valuable that is in the workplace and in all seriousness it's just this concerning because the

value of the degrees are going down and as you guys have reported and other media outlets the prices are going up the skyrocketing so it's putting our young workforce into a lot of debt and it's really hurting i think creating sort of a stagnation with the current economy and why should the average american care about this enormous balloon of student debt i mean a lot of people aren't in college and they don't really have any relation to the debt crisis for students why should they care. well i think it's interconnected i mean we have one trillion dollars of student loan debt in this country that surpassed credit card debt so if everyone if you think about anybody who's watching this program or listening you know if you have a credit card in your pocket think about that across the country and just know that all of that credit card debt combined does not equal the student loan debt that we have in this country and i would say generally you know in the last twenty years a lot of the younger generations my generations were kind of pushed to go to school in the sense that look i mean at one point in time you had sort of

a choice when you got out of high school there were you know factory jobs available so college wasn't necessarily something that you had to do well you know as industry started to leave cities like cleveland ohio and philly and pittsburgh in detroit in excedrin those options became very slim so then it became you know to get a living wage with this high cost of living if you're living in a city or a metro area or even a suburb you had to get a college degree and i think in that twenty years they sort of short sold the american student and that's been fortunate so i think everyone should care because it affects i would say everybody what about the you know we saw the student debt clock trick and ticking away behind you there while you were talking but erin i mean let's look at the reality of the situation there's twenty three private student loan industries who are you know going after the borrowers pretty aggressively here what is it for the students to do they can expunge their debt into bankruptcy so what what can they do and really what is the occupy movement

doing about it. well i think you know there's been a couple of things i mean i know the occupy movement with my association and some of the writing that i've done performing and being brought in by occupy dayton which is a city in ohio so i think the occupy movement it's it's a it's an argument it's a small sliver of what they're trying to talk about but i think where we're at right now is trying to essentially organize what we're going to do i know you know for instance robert apple bomb who i'm sure you're familiar with who has forgive student loan debt dot com and he's talking about the idea of forgiving student loan debt to stimulate the economy so i think where i'm at right now i can speak as an artist you know my responsibility is to start that conversation and you asked a very important question you know what can we do i think to be honest with you we haven't really asked that particular question it really asked it and really started to try to find answers so i think you know through my play in the work that i'm doing as a as a performing artist and then through my association with occupy and robert and different individuals who are involved in reform specifically we're trying to

create a specific question that will actually lead to eventual change but we have to have a conversation a real meaningful conversation first so erin you're talking about kind of different artistic ways and just ways kind of out of the box to start the dialogue to start people talking about this issue we just had one today which was a good pentacle for people to be aware of the crisis and you have other people calling for more extreme measures occupying foreclosed homes trying to occupy even facilities that school campuses do you agree with those measures to get your message across. well i think you know for me where i'm at right now personally is trying to figure out those particular options i think and you know in some instances you know i read an article today where they talked about you know voluntarily defaulting on your loans now that's something personally i don't advocate i know you know people i've associated with robert apple by you know rand

roco people who have been involved in this room reform movement we don't necessarily advocate defaulting and that's not to say that that action wouldn't be a measure that would cause change but right now there isn't a support system for an individual to say ok you know i'm going to voluntarily default on my loan because you know as you mentioned they're going to go after you and you have no support system you have no bankruptcy right so it's really difficult but i think to answer your question i think specifically some of those ideas are viable i just think what we have to do is is really kind of create a cohesive dialogue between people in occupy not in occupy students former students artists and entertainers people who are writing i think that kind of conversation needs to come together so that we can actually create you know a unified dialogue to figure out what we're going to do because there isn't a really definitive clear answer for giving student loan debt that's a definitive answer but you know there's a lot of us who think that that could work but at the same time as you know there's a lot of opposition against that so we're trying to find something that's effective

and helpful for everybody and what do you think about the current battle on the hill right now do you think that's a distraction from the larger issue at hand. i think to be honest with you i think we're not and asking simple questions you know one of the things that you know i'm no you know a deep expert but i do know because of my personal experience look you know i i worked for a year at a for profit institution. much trained actor but for a year i worked. the way ssion where i you know and the reason why i took that job was because i had high student loan debt i had a mixture of privatized loans and federal loans and these privatized loans were so high that you know it caused me to sort of shift my approach and look for a job that i could pay those awful that's fine but was interesting was i got it was sort of my insight into the into the larger issue that you're referring to you know i'm here as missions advisor for a year at a for profit school and enrolling students and putting them into that so that i

could pay off my own student loan debt and so when i started looking at that situation you know there's a lot of a lot of talk but i think we need to ask really simple questions one why why is it you cations so unaffordable why is it so high that's a question we need to ask another thing why do employers specifically demand that people have higher degree masters and doctors where there's a lot of jobs frankly that really require specialized training or a bachelor's degree why are colleges now making it so that students are having to get take you know five years to get a bachelor's degree instead of four so i think to to be clear about i think it's a very multi-layered problem and it includes colleges it includes the government it includes students who are borrowing it includes transparency so i think you know not just to add to the conversation but that's what i'm trying to talk about is that it's more than just a school's need to bring down costs a lot more goes into it it's a lot more complex than that well aaron let's explore some of those simple questions i mean what do you think what do you why do you think the caller's

question costs keep rising and that you know more and more jobs are requiring these higher degrees of education but as you said i mean it's near impossible to get them without having this giant burden of debt following you for life why is that you know i think well i don't know what. right and my in my opinion i think that what happened is there was a short selling of the american student and by that i mean there is a short sighted economic. approach the same sort of thing that we saw in the mortgage crisis i mean the idea of ok let's let's not worry about the long term let's worry about the short term and that means the the facilities the lenders of the universities the private lenders the government all these different agencies involved saw a huge profit opportunity and here's my thing look profit is good i mean the market is a good thing but i think what we need to start asking is where is the line and for me personally i feel that you know having a well educated healthy society is a better society but i think at times when it comes to high you know profit you

don't know if that's necessarily a good thing i think you know less educated you know less free people makes them better consumers and so i think we have to find that balance and i think personally myself i think that the universities and employers and the lenders found an opportunity to make a ton of money and they have and what happened was it worked for about twenty years and then now we're in a situation where students are coming out of school with twenty five thousand dollars and student loan debt or more that's an average i mean people having hundreds of thousands in student loan debt and then they go to to be productive citizens and you know as you mentioned they get a job but then the value of the degree that they pay for. it's not yielding a salary that makes sense look i you know i'm willing to talk about you know college there was a time when people went to school you know paid for the school they maybe had a few part time jobs working at you know their ice cream store and mulling lawns or something like that and they worked hard and they had to get good grades to get through look you know i'm not you know the majority of people who borrowed money to

go to school they want to pay it back we want to pay it back but the but the question is look we've the game is sort of rigged and it is becoming increasingly hard to pay office and that's i mean when people maybe want to take a nonprofit job and they don't have the option to leave. school and so there they have to think about their attorney divs aaron thanks for coming on and i was aaron qualified oh independent performing artist thanks for having me appreciate it while so many of america's youth are struggling with high unemployment rates and out of control student debt it's a very different story for x. presidents we all know about the perks that president while in office and those vacations personal chefs well the list goes on and on but you know that these perks continue after they leave office until the day they die and that it's all at our expense taxpayers are currently shelling out four million dollars a year to fund the lives of the rich and ex presidents just take a look at this the perks include five hundred eighty thousand dollars for bill clinton's so went to new york office eighty three thousand dollars for george w.

bush's phone bill and fifteen thousand dollars for jimmy carter's postage i know you're thinking who writes the letters anymore but seriously this all started in one thousand nine hundred fifty eight when harry truman had to take out loans to afford the cost of speaking engagements after he left office. but now these former leaders of the free world seem to be part of the one percent and they make millions every year through lucrative book deals and speaking engagements in two thousand and eleven clinton made ten million dollars alone giving talks and bush made fifteen bodyguard fees alone to protect them are cost twenty million dollars a year so in times of austerity should taxpayers really be footing the bill of these millionaires well currently there's a house there's a bill on the house that proposes to cap these expenses at twenty two hundred thousand dollars a year whether or not these perks will peak only time will tell. them with all this talk about monies influence over politics one has to wonder who is really behind it all and if arius group of global elites the new world order thanks c o's in

a smoky room who people think is really running the show or harshness of the resident tries to find out. do you believe a secret elite is running the world this week let's talk about that there doesn't seem to be any compelling evidence the world has too many. disparate and independently acting things and functions if for there to be sort of a single. ball of individuals instructing them where to go it just doesn't seem credible to me what about groups like the bills or bridge group boy or the bohemian club this kind of thing i think a lot of that is just sort of overblown and just rhetorical but there are groups of people that are powerful men that get together once a year and no one knows what they're talking about but we know they get together what do you think they're talking about. i get together with my friends

a couple of times a year nobody knows who are talking about either so. i don't really care about what they talk about so you don't think that they're making decisions that influence your life not at all i think you're very do exist and they run the part of the world but not the whole world so i think there is a lot of different groups with different goals so there's a little element of it but it's not as evil as people might think yes exactly does that worry you i mean they probably don't have our best interests at heart i don't . really know you don't care yeah. war is laid out yet it's just the way the world works i don't want it worry about that. so if you think that the people who might be in control are happy that we're not worried about it so much. you know they worry more because they want to they want to be in control so leave the worry to them yeah yeah i don't really have an opinion on it i mean if you know rich people rich people are going to have their own little country called

that's fine with me to really bother me but money influences the world right true but many of these people probably are employing us right kind of goes both wish they're going to be a part of it one day oh yeah you're waiting for your invite to come in the mail and then and so how does it work better how do people become part of it do you think. that's a good christian i'll tell you when i get so it seems like most people don't even care whether or not there's a secret elite group of people ruling the world and if they do exist that's probably just the way they like it. now for all of obama's talk on the campaign trail about the importance of protecting whistleblowers his administration has the worst track record in silencing and prosecuting those he once called to protect one of the most startling cases of government whistle blowing is sabella admittance she's been called the most gagged woman in history she's an iranian born she's an iranian born former

f.b.i. translator who's been fighting for years to tell her story until now after waiting three hundred forty days for f.b.i. clearance of her memoir she decided to release the book and her on her own in full without any approval or redactions the book gives explosive allegations that indict multiple levels of the government and traitorous deception and cover up inside the f.b.i. . sabella admin's is the founder and director of the national security whistleblower coalition and author of the book classified woman she joined me earlier and discuss the details take a listen well it took several years to be exact five years to fight this case or try to fight this case in courts and through congress and through executive agencies such as the inspector general's office and basically every turn i was classified in fact the government and this is during the bush administration

attorney general at the time john ashcroft ended up invoking another gag order on congress they'd retroactively classified everything congress had investigated in my case so after joe six years i was just i was exhausted so i went away for two years came back in two thousand and nine thinking that we are going to have a new administration and that we were going to see at least hopefully some some kind of a change and that didn't take place but i started writing this book and i abided by the justice department's own regulations the law i submitted to them they had thirty days to reject it and gave it back to me they didn't and they kept sending letters for a year to my attorneys thing that i cannot publish think award in this book but they would not give us every day that version be fulfilled our obligation i have i have constitution on my side so i went ahead and i finally publish this book so it's out in your book you talk about government officials actually working against

the interest of national security and you talk about very clear warnings about nine eleven that were either ignored or or censored from different elements of the agency could you talk about why all of the government work against our national security and not prevent attacks such as that well in nine eleven cases. is there were cases were information was intentionally blocked and in some cases it was a matter of incompetence but in many cases it was intentional and after nine eleven this information they were classified furder they were not given provided to the nine eleven commission they were not these information they didn't make their ways into the senate and the house joint inquiry into nine eleven so if you look at these all these reports from these various bodies you don't see any of this evidence that f.b.i. had in its possession for years and so that had to do with nine eleven but with

corruption cases it mainly involved foreign lobby and foreign organizations working with high level u.s. officials elected in congress we still have some of those just through my section division we had twelve thirteen congress people we also had people with at the state department you're looking at people who were as high as second third highest people in state department who were working with certain foreign entities that organizations and they were providing information to these organizations. well of all the alternative media who i mean many alternative media have persecuted you for providing an alternative theory that doesn't quite joell with the government's nerd's about these events and about what you're saying do you think the media is complicit in this cover up well you have to look at chu kinds of medias today what is the mainstream media and i believe as far as they are concerned everybody you know i don't think they have any credibility left with neither with the american

public so nobody even take them seriously and you're looking at new york times that that sold all these lies with iraq war i mean they had judith miller so for example if they were to review my book and they would say something positive i would really panic because considering where days that that would be a very very big insult for me and as far as the alternative medium small we have places like archy here that has been very consistent and independent but many alternatives they are receiving their funding their money from these foundations that are owned by those corporations large mega corporations the same one percent in the screaming about so how could they be independent and even you have soros foundations several stores giving millions of dollars to a particular alternative media what is alternative about that so i refer to them as quads i alternative and unfortunately today we have very few media

channels and whether it is print or radio that is truly alternative and truly independent let's talk about what would you say is the most explosive allegation that your book puts forward to serve agree for this book i as i said i submitted it to the f.b.i. and i did not disclose anything that i proceed and knew to be classified now for people who read this book they know that there we have the in for example cooperating as a country with whom we call terrorists whether it's bin ladin or bin laden related groups. we've been working with them since mid nine hundred ninety s. ok and we've been working with them in central asia and this continued even after september eleventh two thousand and one we have been directly as a country as a nation and the congress budgets that these are the secret legends they've been funding terrorist groups like chechens any kind of activities that have been

carried out the major ones between one thousand ninety six and two thousand one less say by major chechen terrorists were directly on their our order our funding our army and our direction and be walked very closely with the individuals and the groups from afghanistan pakistan saudi arabia and most importantly nato ally turkey to put in place various cells in central asia and caucuses to create terror so what about these domestic cases that we're seeing all these continued four year old terror plots that somehow it all comes out that there's cases of entrapment i mean do you think that these are legitimate or do you think that this is just a justified police state measures at home an endless war abroad it is so hard to tell as i have said several times because the media and the government has no credibility it's hard to judge which one is real which one is not but one thing is real and that is that government needs to keep this fear factor alive and in order

to do that they have to have these incidents otherwise nine eleven is going to get all that people are going to say wait a second the biggest attack store nation to our constitution they'd not come from some terrorists it has been coming continually from our own government because al-qaeda can't attack our freedom they can't attack if they exist now today they can't attack our constitution the only attack on american people and our constitution our liberties are even that national dignity whether in terms of. in the eyes of the international community or here when you go to the airport and if you're funded this is the nation this is the government that considers every single citizen a suspect and they don't have warrant yet they search you while these attacks are coming and they are being inflicted upon americans by the united states government no outsider whether it's in the south of the border or if it's some kind of imaginary al qaeda in yemen talk about al qaeda

a little bit and also this recent bin ladin killing. it is a tactic and until nine eleven no one really referred to it as an organization i mean do you do you look at the entire war on terror and just say you know this is completely fabricated and and what do you think about the bin ladin killing i mean there's all these reports of him dying ten years ago and really we've been presented no evidence put forward i think confusion is one of the main objectives that that that this psyop on people people you see here and that is they create so many of these layers and confusions nobody knows what is real what is and even the logic doesn't work and as you said you brought up a very important point within the f.b.i. the work with files dating back to mid one nine hundred ninety s. there was no unit in the f.b.i. that dealt with al-qaeda anybody who claims that they those people are liars because they had units called would just heed while mujahideen while f.b.i.

were conducting some investigations to other branches of our executive branch and that is the state department and the cia starting from one thousand nine hundred five were closely working with this people in fact they were using nato planes to bring these entities from afghanistan from saudi arabia from various places in central into turkey and turkey is a nato country they've been given turkish passports and they were being sent to bosnia so how could they have units chasing. outcry. it was our biggest partner and it was not called al qaeda they referred to them as our allies it is very interesting and like you said working with bin laden and very closely with these organizations before and after nine eleven that was sabella adman's founder and director of the national security whistleblower coalition and the author of the book classified woman. that's going to do it for us for now but don't change the

channel the big picture is coming up in just half an hour president obama has made his storch announcement today coming out is the first president in our nation's history to support marriage equality this comes just one day after north carolina passed a radical constitutional amendment to ban same sex marriage on the other side of the aisle mitt romney's again spoke out against gays and lesbians marrying each other today so as you can imagine this will be a major topic of debate heading into the general election tonight host tom hartman will break down the issue with the senior political editor of metro weekly which is d.c.'s l g b t weekly paper and then later tom will take on a panel of conservative experts to discuss a slew of issues including wisconsin's recall elections and falling oil prices that's all new at the top of the hour so stay tuned for that and that does it for now if you missed part of this show or any other show today don't worry we post all of our interviews online and full just go to youtube dot com slash r t america and you can watch as our videos as many times you want or check out our website our to

dot com slash usa you can also follow me on twitter abby martin and of course we want to hear from you always leave us your comments stories suggestions and feedback we want to know what it is you want us to cover that's it for now have a great night and we'll see you later. we just put a picture of me when i was like nine years old i like to tell the truth. i confess and i am a total get of friends that i love rap and hip hop music and pretty much. it was kind of a yesterday. i'm very proud of the role that i'll just see its place.