we. don't call. people who have lots of finance a. strong ideology or strong belief in a particular candidate have decided that they wanted to get involved in the process this way putting their money where the election is super pacs are spending unprecedented amounts of cash and the two thousand and twelve elections anything to propel their candidate and so the white house will ask of money speaks louder and votes. iranians u.s. lawmakers the more senior officials demand listed secretary clinton for democracy and freedom in iran do you list. and that might not be too far from reality the obama administration is looking to take this iranian opposition group off of its list of terrorist organizations all this despite the m e k it's questionable

history so who's really behind these ads and what will this mean for iran and the u.s. . and speaking of questionable practices the private prison industry is locking up so-called hardened criminals for cold hard cash and lots of it we'll tell you which state is known as the prison capital of the u.s. and just how many people are being incarcerated there. it's tuesday may fifteenth seven pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz awhile and you're watching r t well as voters today cast their ballots in the two g.o.p. presidential primaries and a time of limited campaign spending for millionaires and billionaires we ask does every voice count nowadays and what's expected to be the most expensive campaign in

history as backed by super funded super pacs are hitting the airwaves and of course many of them are negative attack ads here's a look at one of the most recent ones targeting republican presidential candidate mitt romney. if we lost they made money if we survive they made money. simple as that he promised us the same things he promised the united states. we'll give you the same thing he gave. he was responsible for the content separate i think so with so much money being pumped into campaigns by just a handful of donors and with deep pocketed donors funding the message that gets out to the public who really decides who will be the next commander in chief or as a correspondent christine for south takes a look at the faces that fund presidential campaigns today. mo money mo problems not for these candidates whose campaigns and issues were kept alive well past their

expiration date by excessive amounts of money oftentimes funneled in by one person to a large extent gingrich's candidacy as possible thanks to billionaire casino mogul sheldon adelson a new ad is hit the airwaves promoting the presidential candidacy of jon huntsman doesn't come though from the huntsman campaign but rather a super pac when you step me up to sheldon adelson and hans van you know i'm really the underdog billionaire and it's not just the red billionaires there are blue super donors as well like george soros are mover and shaker today hedge fund kingpin your soros a billionaire investor pledging to secure million dollars to two democratic groups and jeffrey katzenberg who gave two million dollars to the pro obama super pac priorities usa people who have lots of financial resources. and strong ideologies or strong belief in a particular candidate have decided that they wanted to get involved in the process

this way bob your sac says the money may not be able to buy the votes but often can control the message a reality that seems unfair to those who can't afford to give some americans can give several million dollars to a candidate they like and a lot of americans can maybe afford one hundred dollars do you think that that's a problem or do you think fast just how it is it's a major problem why is that a major problem i think as they have more say never had the money people to strength quite often the ones pulling the strings are anything but representative of the american people still their choices often determine who makes it onto the ballot the range of of choices is narrowed significantly because certain kinds of interests have a lot of influence here and that comes at least in part in no small part from the money they're able to bring into the political process. john kerry has not been honest about what happened in vietnam he is lying about his record i know john

kerry is lying about his first purple heart remember this ad it was funded in part by home builder bob perry to discredit democratic nominee john kerry this year he's given three million dollars to restore our future super pac supporting mitt romney mitt romney turned around dozens of american companies and helped create thousands of jobs so how much can most americans contribute to help their candidates into office i don't know how much i would give you to be so that you could become a victim. because that would be you know on a budget would you give one hundred dollars. maybe would you give a thousand dollars i think there could be some things change that would make a little bit more fair for people like me to feel like they get more. tis the season for the full impact to be felt with ads paid for by super pacs not just hitting the airwaves but dominating them and if you live in a swing state like ohio or florida or virginia get ready the millions of dollars

are aimed at you in hopes the message mind meld will translate into votes in washington christine for our t.v. . and for more on this earlier i spoke with ben cohen he's the editor for the daily bands or and president of bands or media group i asked him if the election campaign fund raising and spending has gone out of control is different now control of these types of songs all very dangerous when it comes to democracy and when you have a concert to call the tradition of wealth in america where you have such extreme divides it means that power obviously if you if there is a lot of money in elections it means power obviously has cause it to the top more money you have the more power you have so that you can vote for they're going to how they're going to buy candidates that what kind of an interest i want to ask you about because you're british sound you can tell. iraq sad but what a citizens united kingdom fly in the u.k.

this kind of campaign spending would wouldn't be tolerated in the city and why do you think they wouldn't be tolerated there and it now it's flying here. do i think it would be the population the voting public just would they would never except it wouldn't be it's probably even a cultural thing. you just couldn't fry the media wouldn't wouldn't. the press would be whatever it is if anyone tried to kind of rig it actions like this just wouldn't be viable. let's say the leadership and the u.k. i made it so that this this could happen what do you think the response would be of the british people there that we must protest in the street. riots it would be pretty bad i mean again i think the difference between. the relationship between the government and the people in your can the government of the people in america. the british people. don't fear that government but they have they have no fear the

government so they basically tell them what to do a waste of the way around in america you have the people the charity off the government and they accept. that except power and more corruption the rich you know it's just a given it's a fact that. every person and everyone in washington most of the millionaires most of the senate multimillionaires. congress a multimillionaire is this is just a fact of life and people don't really seem to it doesn't really seem to be a big problem in america is that would be a much much bigger problem in the u.k. and why do you think there is a cultural difference where something like this you know it's happening now in the u.s. but it's from what you're saying it wouldn't fly elsewhere wouldn't fly in the u.k. but the difference is there's a working class coach in particular in the u.k. issues of unionization of. you know having kind of responsible press the

genuine left wing press as opposed to the u.s. where is a much more privatized system where you have you need me that's been a gigantic war against unions for for decades in america. one hundred years of of of serious war between organized labor and private capital and it's been quite successful drug and smashing that in the us i don't know about is it is reinforced through the media system which is owned by private companies you know you have a propaganda campaign to verify unions to vilify the working class. in the u.k. coach you just said it's more difficult to do that but they've tried they really tried to do it but it's not quite as far reaching effects they have in the u.k. interesting so we saw there and chrissie's story we know who the faces of the big donors are they and you would presume you know these are very well funded millionaires billionaires so. they are unarmed exactly representative of the

american people so presumably they're quite far detached from the average every everyday american citizen you know the policies that they would push would they be kind of disconnected from what may be in the best interest of the average everyday working class middle class americans of course i mean if you look at the show tonight listen the. multi-billionaire did a large but of cash and you can wish to buy them out who is committing to more money to go bomber out this guy was a democrat. back in the day he was a democrat until he became extremely wealthy and then he basically said well why would i why would i want to give a high percentage of the wealth away to someone who was poor the maybe i don't need to do that so you know he was a boy and he's reading newspapers well. so this this this guy was the believes he

can buy his way into power. he's only a republican because the republican party is using off his own interests his wealth so he's buying elections for the sole purpose of saving himself money now do you think it's possible these days to become elected by soul by small donors a lot of small donors or is it just you know or can small donors not compete with the millions from sheldon adelson and the like i think you're going to see a very it's going to shift quite dramatically as and you're going to start seeing it much much less likely for a candidate funded through small donations to be successful as opposed to. you know putting food policies that the very rich are going to attract the big donors i think because the you know you have been getting five bucks from those two different people who want it you know you can amount so you can different make a difference you know going to be advancing multibillion. and that was ben cohen

editor for the daily banter and president of dancer media group. well a group considered to be terrorists is now moving on up and off america's terrorist list the iranian opposition group known as an ek was named a terrorist group fifteen years ago for its role in assassinating u.s. citizens but any kay has apparently found some friends in washington former government officials have been advocating to get the group delisted from the terrorist list and there's been a push a p.r. push to delist and make a here's a look at one of the ads. m.-e. k. is iran's democratic opposition working for a nuclear free iran founded on human rights unjustly listed a terrorist group and the case the victim of violence the radical regime in iran and their iraqi allies europe has delisted any king and in two thousand and ten a us court order to review iranians u.s. lawmakers and former senior officials demanded listing secretary clinton for

democracy and freedom in iran d. list m e k. now this move could further strain u.s. iran relations so what's behind all bests i asked jamal of the policy director for the national iranian american council those questions earlier. let me say is a well i'll tell you what the state department and organizations like rand had said there a cult there are a terrorist organization they were formally based in iran and helped topple the shaw through the use of through the use of violence and terrorism they had a falling out with the clerical regime in iran and sought refuge under saddam and actually fought under saddam hussein against iran in the iran iraq war since then once the u.s. one man in you know toppled saddam they've been in a camp camp ashraf and have been fighting to basically get taken off the terrorist list they're committed to toppling the government any raunch that they can install

their own leadership and sort of live out the dream that they had in one hundred seventy nine of ruling over iran so we now know there are no longer terrorists in the eyes of the united states aren't that's what the pie says so who exactly is behind the push to the left the group well you here's a funny thing they're not necessarily considered to have given up their terrorist activities u.s. officials have actually gone off the record and said that the m e k was behind some of the the assassinations of iranian scientists and professors that have occurred in recent years so if they make a was behind you know putting these bombs on cars and delivering bombs you have motorcycles it sounds like terrorism and there's an acknowledgement that that's the case. but they you know u.s. officials also said they're working with mossad they're working with israel to engage in this campaign and so among hardliners here in the u.s. there's a view of they're the enemy of our enemy so they're our friends they're working with the israelis there's even evidence that they may have been working with us

joint special operations forces to be trained in the vat a few years ago so there's a lot of question marks about you know how are they how are they being trained and who is funding their activities and it does point to some you know actors that you would necessarily suspect. any idea who those actors are well as i mentioned you know the link to massage the link you know when the u.s. went into iraq in two thousand and three donald rumsfeld actually intervened because they were considered you know enemy enemy combatants and he actually intervene because there was a view that they might be useful at a future date to use against iran to actually use terrorism against iran you also have domestically or here in the u.s. you have members of congress who are accepting campaign donations from supporters of the m e k you have very prominent us former officials like rudy giuliani for instance who have spoken out in favor of them and have received really exorbitant

fees for their support he has this huge money network that is funding these activities and at the end of the day it really is hardliners you know whether it's in the u.s. or possibly even israel possibly even some of the gulf states that are supporting these guys as a cudgel against iran now you are saying that this group was has been supporting financially u.s. officials but if they're a terrorist group how are they able to something doesn't add up here it doesn't seem that officials are supposed to be taking money are even communicating or working with a group that's considered to be terrorists well that's sort of the whole point of having a terrorist list so that these organizations for instance you don't have al qaeda running around the u.s. paying for five. raisers officials the fact is there's been a blind eye turned towards them and now finally that this activity is becoming a little bit more front and center there have been subpoenas issued for some of these officials who are endorsing them there haven't been any subpoenas issued for

members of congress for instance who have hosted the emmy kay on congressional grounds have hosted celebrations for the group in committee rooms on the house side that hasn't yet happened and really it's a matter of they have a very extensive web of financing not just in the u.s. but in europe they use some charities both in the europe in europe in the u.s. to funnel this money through and what they claim is look we are just concerned iranian exiles who want to support this group the fact is iranians don't support the group and they're operating some very shady sort of networks here in order to finance their activities that jamal how tehran viewing this move how could this affect the u.s. relationship with iran a relationship that is already shaky well i think given that you have negotiations that are ongoing with iran right now that this is actually potentially dangerous

it's a dangerous signal to iran that the u.s. may be willing to use a terrorist group against iran sort of poisons the well for these negotiations that are supposed to be occurring in good faith and it really says to iran. how can the united states and its allies credibly urging iran to not support terrorist groups when it appears that we may be opening the door to openly supporting terrorist groups against iran and that was jim all of the policy policy director for the national iranian american council. and we turn now to the present capital of the world the state of louisiana has a higher prison rate than any other country take a listen. a look at these statistics that will really put things into perspective forty thousand inmates are one and eighty six louisianans are behind bars there's more than two thousand private prisons in the state and they hold more than half of

louisiana's inmates private prisons are a one hundred eighty two million dollar industry there so as you can see in louisiana the prison industry is profitable and there's big incentives to put and keep people behind bars to talk more about this i was joined earlier by alter net running a colic i asked him what's behind this astronomically high rate. well . you know it's not that there's more crime in state although the easy and it has a really high crime wave crime rate the problem is the fact that there's a lot of there's a lot of these small rural towns that have local privatized prisons that are run by sheriffs and a couple of them are run by companies i buy a couple companies that make a lot of lot of money off of more prisoners being in jail. it's the more you know it's the private prison system the way the private prison system is run it's just it's a conflict of interest because the only way to make money is to have more inmates

for the state to pay for you to howards so now it is what it sounds like is that this is really in grained in the system from the sheriff's to the judges to the whole justice system. seems like this is a systematic problem. yeah absolutely it's you have an economic model where you have where you have somebody anybody making a profit off of locking people up so you don't want the prison population to go down because then you'll you won't make any money you'll go in the right so you need to keep people in your beds and in louisiana you actually have the sheriffs who are running these local jails who are in rural areas they don't have enough prisoners from there so they actually have to call around usually to up to more urban areas and see haiti in the inmates and this also makes it really hard to reduce the prison population when you have such an investor interest in keeping it high so you have a lobby right which gives campaign contributions and lobbies against any kind of ah

new legislation that might reduce reduce mandatory sentences rate or life without parole and all these are all these you know policies that that keep people in prison for so long in the. they have some of those drug company and harsh of these kinds of things where the judges and have any discretion people are just sentenced to you know a certain amount of years for really no. violent and sometimes petty offenses and louisiana a safer place because of this of our what are the effects of us know that the crime rate is higher i mean there's no correlation even between the idea that you know blocking where people love gives you gives you more. and on top of that louisiana. actually locks up more have more nonviolent offenders locked up than violent offenders so it's actually these people that they're locking up are generally because the people in these local prisons which make up fifty percent of the prison population there. are not are not violent offenders in fact violent

offenders get to go to state run prisons and we see any far better facilities if you think about it in terms of offering you know offering rehabilitation programs education. and ways for people to better themselves now since this is obviously a huge business in louisiana as is seen as a job creator not only for the prison you know the owners of these and the these institutions but as employing people a in the in the state. i guess you have some guards employed but actually with private prisons they tend to try and keep costs so low that they're not efficient local prisons i mean they don't have a medical team prepare they don't have you know that's that's that's being employed they don't they don't offer education programs it's not is that it's creating so many jobs and it's worth it and in fact you could say that you're blocking people who could be in the workforce you're putting the behind bars rather than you know

allowing them to be a productive member of society also the money that gets spent on private prisons by the state. that's money you're taking away from other programs right so you're taking it away from education you're taking it away from programs to help people out of poverty you're taking away from programs that might help people get jobs so you know you're spending it on locking people up. instead of you know helping the public become a better place for people to become productive members of society so you can't make that argument yet doesn't work that creates jobs although you could say that because in the in these rural communities there's just a set up where the communities actually reliant on these prisons for some employment so that also can make it harder to shut them down in the long run so running out is there any incentive in keeping people out of prison. well you get profit was for these companies you know for society absolutely but as long as we

have this system where we allow companies to profit off of putting people in cages then there's going to continue to be an incentive to keep the progress of population as high as possible now if there is so much money to be made and if it's so systematic in the state what can be done to reverse said. well. what can be done is it's reforming laws like reforming mandatory military sentencing laws that you know if somebody commits three drug offenses they might get life in jail not roll. you could also instead of putting people in jail for drug offenses you could come up with new legislation or you just you need to reform laws that put a lot of people in jail right but you need the public will behind them that's what's not there in the museum and a lot of these more you know all of the southern conservative states and even in liberals as well as there's this notion of being tough on crime is really really important but you know in the long run you're just locking people up for nonviolent

offenses and it hurts everybody so if the public will need to be there there's ways to reverse it but not without people wanting to reverse it if that makes so it seems like there needs to be at least more awareness about this to kind of get this public response wrong and i want to switch gears a little bit to a related issue he recently wrote an article for salon dot com about a texas man who was executed back in one thousand nine hundred ninety he was by the name of carlos de luna an investigative report by the columbia human rights lawyer of you know now says that mr de luna was likely innocent now you've been covering this and similar cases talk a bit about this and is it example of a broken system. yet you know carlos de luna the man who was executed in one thousand nine he was a very poor. hispanic man who actually had a very low i.q. he knew he would basically like he had the mental the mental intelligence of

a child. and he was he was sentenced to death for a murder that he is going into and he didn't commit and throughout the entire process from that you know from arresting to the trial there was all these signs that in. other man had done it who looked a lot like him another man also named carlos who had a really violent history the police knew him very very well because you know he was constantly hurting people and he was in and out of jail all the time. and at one point carlos de luna even said look this is the guy that did it and nobody believed you have and so at every you know in his case really is it serves as an example of everything that could go wrong in in a capital case to lead to somebody and then you know being sentenced to death and that's what's most important takeaway from it is that the death penalty while lots of people like the idea of putting awful terminals who have committed heinous crimes to death. the whole point is that our system is not perfect it's always

going to be broken you can never have one hundred percent perfect system and it makes mistakes it puts people behind bars that aren't guilty sometimes and because of that you have innocent people like carl is deluded who we don't find out until after the fact that they were likely innocent but it's too late to do anything about it because already to a very heartbreaking sad story there and thank you for staying on top of it there was independent journalist running out colic well this is supposed to be a joyful time for a college grads but a lot of graduating students are drowning in a mountain of debt and facing bleak job prospects are to correspond a marina par in iowa takes a look at how student debt is taking a toll on america's youth and how they plan to bring attention to the problem a graduation. it's the heaviest investment a young american can make now becoming a trillion dollar ticking time bomb for the nation i have twenty thousand dollars to forty thousand dollars and one hundred fifty thousand in the us soon loan bubble

has inflated larger than car or credit card debt in this ballooning crisis graduates now have financial deficits that rival home mortgages. and i in new york many have taken to the streets protesting against the on the portable cost of higher education we're already seeing of a large increase in the number of student loan defaults across the country and that's coming at a rate that is similar to the rates when the when the mortgages mortgage loans started to default as well and like i said this has a cumulative effect and it's a downward spiral of according to reports more than fifty percent of recent college graduates are unemployed or working wage jobs that don't even require a degree now unlike other that student debt cannot be dismissed for bankruptcy this means loans that u.s. students get out for higher education following them for a decade or possibly the rest of their lives i don't think i'm ever going to be

able to pay my debt off as long as i live. and so you're creating literally class and then people that vanish basically mike freedman has a ph d. in biology and works as a part time teacher because he can't find a full time position it's the option of getting an education and then being in a state of financial or economic and security for the rest of your life according to the federal reserve bank of new york americans sixty years or older still owe thirty eight billion dollars in student debt and ten percent of that group is past due on payments senior citizens can even have their social security checks taken away the money reportedly redirected to getting waiting to collect. as the investment of a degree morphed from security to risk it. more americans are reportedly turning to online colleges to save money while others.