top stories this hour the u.n. urges both the syrian regime and the rebels to lay down arms prevent the country from sliding into a full scale civil war this comes as you and observers are visiting the site of the latest massacre near the city of hama. a big day for european football is the euro twenty twelve tournament kicks off for the fair play has been dealt a blow with boy called survey human rights abuses and claims of racism most recently from the dutch national team. and eurozone on the experts predict spain could ask for a bailout as soon as this evening with a new car has tried to keep the single currency afloat and one is banking on the cost to turn a profit. well that's it from the news team here in moscow for the moment we'll be back with more for you half an hour from now in the meantime we go to washington

d.c. and the eye on the show which takes a look at whether ben bernanke you can sort out america's finances. welcome to the ilona show while you get the real headlines with none of the mersey were coming live out of washington d.c. my name is christine and i'm filling in for a loan while she's on assignment she's at the net roots nation conference in rhode island and i will take a closer look at our economy and our financial check up with lauren lyster and break down the big day the big man ben bernanke himself on capitol hill testifying

on the state of the economy we'll talk about whether what he says will make a difference and take a look at the prospects of greater supervision for the big banks today m.f. global and j.p. morgan teach us a lesson and who make sure it won't be just more of the fox guarding the hen house then the occupy wall street movement maybe one that's leaderless but one of the more involved prominent participants is running for congress we'll speak to him on our show about his campaign and about where the occupy movement is now we'll have all of that and more for you tonight including a dose of happy hour but first let's take a look at what the mainstream media decided to miss. all right everyone's of the historic recall election in wisconsin has come and gone and this is about everywhere you looked you found someone talking about the role money played in this election the first big one really in this post citizens united

era. governor walker will keep his governorship after the most expensive campaign in wisconsin's history about two thirds of governor scott walker's donations are from out of state and special interests it's seven to one it's unbelievable i thought what an army that voters are casting ballots in the most expensive race in that state's history they're doing it with insurmountable amounts of money this is what the money and that's looking like in this recall election in wisconsin this is to scale walker is outspent his opponent seven to one republican governor so this is a ship that about nine million dollars because we believe in scott walker more than sixty million dollars has been spent on this recall effort nearly forty six million on the republican side almost twenty million on the democratic side pro walker outside organizations have spent a total of sixteen million dollars including six million dollars from the koch brothers super pac americans for prosperity that money has come from the right it's

not from the u.n. it isn't on the left that's the overall amount of money that went to scott walker the red part is the proportion that is the money that he raised from out of state people power versus the money only by citizens united. all right now i actually just got back from wisconsin late last night i was there like many other national media covering the recall election with so many people i spoke to said their biggest fear is gone walker survived the recall effort how to do with the environment frankly i was shocked i hadn't heard of any connection between scott walker in the environment but over and over people said governor walker was selling out the state to the highest bidder and they had some major concerns. it's like allowing more phosphorus in our lakes which will damage the lakes and i think all the out of state money mainly to cope brothers was just unconscionable my biggest fear is that he will destroy the environment of the state he will sell off our

public lands to the koch brothers to private interest. all right so i looked a little more into this and i found there are actually multiple direct connections to the koch brothers and wisconsin other than all that money they gave to help governor walker keep his job koch industries actually has an energy firm with about three thousand workers in wisconsin last year scott walker's budget contained within it a little known provision that would allow the sale of state owned power plants without bids. why on earth would governor walker who talks nonstop about wanting to save money want to not sell power plants to the highest bidder and then there's the mining bill that was the cause for a big statewide fight go give a tech tectonic is a mining company that wanted to do business in wisconsin but only if the major changes took place changes that would make it easier to do their job so the mining bill was introduced to essentially loosen regulations in a major way i won't bore you with the details but basically it's far fewer rules on

mining itself having to do with the environment and transparency even the permit in process itself one example within the bill the once required public hearing you know when they discuss all the environmental impacts gone contract leases recordkeeping which before had to be made public and transparent would no longer have to be now insiders say that the bill was basically ghost written by alec the koch brothers funded american legislative exchange council it failed in march that bill but many believe that with the walker win it will now give it a green light to welcome back to the state some of those koch funded entities particularly some of those environmental ones you know it's really interesting ray bradbury died this week. in the martian chronicles brander imagines a future in a series of short stories in which humans depart earth and travel to mars and those great american conquerors colonize the red planet bringing with it and he problems they sought to leave behind bradbury wrote in the one nine hundred fifty s.

of a world where the government used to fire departments to burn books to make sure the citizens remained ignorant bradbury himself said the novel fahrenheit four fifty one was not about censorship but on how television could control and limit knowledge composed of factoids partial information and devoid of context his words not mine it's appropriate i think to connect a future now a present bradbury imagined and which large corporations and the government even have the power and the will to promote ignorance and the fear of those who do keep their eyes open including some of those people in wisconsin still mourning the loss of that recall election and what they worry will eventually be much of their pristine land wisconsin in more ways than one could symbolize a few different versions of the future in this country but we might not be aware of it until it's already happened because those potential paybacks and favored owed to those who helped fund one of the most expensive statewide elections ever well those are all things the mainstream media chose to miss.

all right it's time for our weekly financial checkup and there's a lot to discuss today the presidential campaign is in full swing and therefore the economy center stage it dominates headlines in newspapers and pundit discussions on the big networks and therefore is on people's minds constantly not even touching upon all those people who are unemployed or underemployed and have no choice but to think about the economy the financial crisis in europe of course remains of major factor and contributes to quite a bit of an uncertainty about the recession depression and well full implosion of the global. on a me all this plus fed chairman ben bernanke you spend most of his days testifying on capitol hill in front of the congress joint economic committee and what he says is being watched very closely by whole bunch of have heavy hitters but what does it all mean well let's get started on our financial checkup.

all right and here to discuss this is lauren lester hopes host of the capital account on our t.v. lauren let's talk about those testifying on capitol hill today by ben bernanke a lot of people watching this pretty closely a lot of people watching this closely christine because what investors are speculators traders politicians savers want to know is is the fed going to do more are they going to stimulate more is more q e three coming so that's what everybody is looking towards the fed has a meeting later this month where they may or may not act but everybody's trying to read the tea leaves ben bernanke you on the hill today saying that they do have tools and they can't rule anything out but he's not giving any hints about what they're going to do but recently we've seen some regional fed presidents and i said governor janet yellen hinting that they would be on board for more easing which should raise concerns for people that think that this is a solution because what we've seen with this is

a lot of unintended consequences without the benefit to the real economy that this was supposed to produce and that advocates of it are looking for it to produce it just has not produced the results that people are looking for and so people should have a real note of caution when they look to what the fed's doing but but did bernanke you say those magic words that everybody needed to hear today. it depends on what you want to hear of a guys if you're maybe you know want to trade on it and you're a traitor and a speculator then you were you know maybe looking for indication of what's going to happen that you didn't get but it depends on what you're looking for and the reality is you know he didn't give any game changing news today absolutely not but a lot of people would say that the. fed probably will act they probably will do more it is likely at some point in some way to stimulate it's their central bankers they can't help it but the problem is that it's not what the economy needs it's not the solution and i know in the testimony today a lot of people questioning chairman bernanke he kept referring to the c.e.o.

the congressional budget office they recently released a report and it sort of was a little scary basically we're nearing the edge of the cliff because that we are lowering taxes because the government is spending too much things are getting dangerous. talk about you know the c.e.o.'s role in all of this and why it has been brought up time and time again well this is something that i think is a really important to look at because there's this whole conversation that's going on in these hearings where they're throwing out numbers from the c b o reports or the findings of the stress test but what you have to think about is the very assumptions that they're making not you know on its face value but what the cvo assumptions are what the stress tests assumptions are that the fed conducts and that those on its own raise a lot of questions that c.b.l. for example so they have a report out a fiscal outlook that has you know bleak bleak look at the budget a bleak look at the debt but you have to question ok the cvo supposed to be objective the cvo supposed to be nonpartisan that's if people take it as face value

they'd be looking to support going ok this is what we need to do ok look we need fiscal fisk's fixes or here's what i know policy is going out and they say it's not politics the thing is i just interviewed a whistleblower who says she was fired from the c b o because she refused to paint a rosy picture of the housing market the housing market the mortgage market and the banking sector because she refused to incorporate the research of wall street advisers from banks like morgan stanley and goldman sachs so you really have to question the objectivity of these so called objective sources that then become just that kind of like the baseline facts and figures that congress is looking at and what the stress test same thing ben bernanke he says ok. stress tests for the banks are the assumption that he uses to justify all of these things that he says in his economic outlook or forecast but the stress tests were problematic lots of people said that you can't have the fed with its projections of what a collapse would look like then saying ok banks would be able to withstand this

collapse that we concocted i mean that's just not realistic and there are a number of things that people said were problematic of those real estate being just one that the fed did not factor in properly so the very assumptions need to be question and i think people should look at these with a skeptical eye when they are watching them it's so hard to because when they when they talk about painting these realistic pictures a lot of times those people who defend their position say you know what we don't want to cause worry because that will make things worse but guess what it doesn't seem to me that it's up to the c.e.o. to determine whether worry will be cause or what the reactions will be it seems to me they should just be the ones sort of painting the realistic picture and that's really to be now it's really sad to hear the people have been fired for wanting to tell the truth i want to talk a little bit about bank oversight something i know that you talk about a lot we've been hearing it in the news a lot because of the m.f. global problem that you talk about a lot of the j.p. morgan chase issues. did we learn a lesson i mean do you think there will in fact to be more supervision over these big banks because of what we saw happen i think what's really difficult to know is

if anything can rein in the banking sector because what we saw ok regulators were on the hill j.p. morgan's main regulator one of them the o.c.c. the office of comptroller of the currency was on the hill the head of that this week it's the first time we've heard from him and you know he said ok well j.p. morgan didn't have adequate risk supervision well yeah does whose job is it to believe that the regulators there are sixty five full time in-house from those c.c.i. j.p. morgan chase ok well really you couldn't have been going on now to looking at it and i mean the problem is not that we don't have regulations we have regulations on the book lots of them the problem is they are not being enforced regulators are not catching this stuff they're not. doing their jobs if they are catching this stuff and that is a theme we see again and again and again whether we're looking at the j.p. morgan two billion dollar whale trading loss that's likely to be a lot more or whether we're looking at a now defunct firm like m.f. global that stole customer money that used accounting shenanigans regulatory arbitrage you could argue it came out the trustee report really looks like that and

yet they got away with it under the noses of regulators under the noses of auditors and it just continues and just real quickly and we have just about thirty seconds i feel like we've got to get europe in here a lot of people saying spain on one hand is too big to fail on the other hand it seems like we're really close to them asking for a bailout what does this mean yes spain's banks are in trouble it's just the next domino they're all in trouble the problem in europe if you want me to sum it up in a few seconds is that there is too much debt and it has not been dealt with all of these solutions are either piecemeal or they're based on some kind of political consolidation but with no dealing with the debt overhang it's going to need to be written down forgiven or something if the root of the problem is ever going to be addressed most of the capital account loyalists are always good to have you on break this down for for those of us who don't quite get it all thanks so much thank you for having me. well it's time for our first break of the evening when we come back we'll tell you about an effort to crack down on an alleged marketing scam and

why that's a glimmer of hope then kevin zeese will be joining us to talk about the latest and bradley manning pretrial hearing. which was that so much easier to make even a lot of people in your resume look at lunchtimes with the with the greek economy and tigers and spain on the financial green the future of the monetary union looks anything but bright. it's.

the sky. light will come down. so much wires will be singing. and i clear of hope has to do with the frequent hot topic on this show for profit colleges they're known for routinely ripping off students particularly veterans who want an education this is wrong on so many levels first our vets volunteered for

a pretty tough job and they deserve to be treated with a little respect and they deserve a quality education and one that can help them get good jobs that lead to successful careers now it also cheats the taxpayer out of a large sums of cash was a temper of the senate education committee found a just under a quarter of g.i. bill spending over a billion dollars went towards eight for profit colleges between two thousand and ten and two thousand and eleven these goals are also among the top ten recipients of g.i. bill funds a sum of money that has vastly increased in the last decade now this trend wouldn't be bad one be a bad thing if the schools provided a great education but more often than not they don't five of the eight schools mentioned in the report saw more than half. if the percent of their students drop out and oftentimes students find that their degrees from those for profit colleges aren't respected or accepted by employers and many of defaulting on these government backed loans so why do students particularly veterans keep attending these institutions adam weinstein was on the show last september and he explained

it has a lot to do with lax oversight and slick marketing executives. in addition to which you saw these web sites that are kind of picking up. in general curious the service members looking for information online you've got recruiters that are having access to a campus but he says we have one report that was before open by bloomberg businessweek a couple of months ago about a recruiter from one of these for profits that walked right into a wounded warriors unit in a marine base in north carolina i mean also sure advertisements on the american forces network which is generally not supposed to show advertisements. well tuesday it came out that attorneys general from fifteen states are actually trying to hold one marketing firm accountable and they're investigating quinn street a company with many for profit college clients and this is according to the company's quarterly f.e.c. filings from last month you see quinn street has been operating websites such as

g.i. bill dot com and army study guide dot com to connect veterans with for profit colleges but the problem is they've been accused of branding themselves as an official as official government publications and presenting the for profit schools they exclusively recommend as the only one accepting veteran education subsidies before the inquiry was launched for example g.i. bill dot com didn't even contain a disclaimer stating it's a non-government privately sponsored website does now so you can forgive that's unfamiliar with higher education for getting tricked especially considering it's an ethical it's an ethical approach to search engine optimization if you do a google search for g.i. bill college g.i. bill dot com pops up right next to the official veterans' affairs website g.i. bill dot v.a. dot gov the quincy web site also contains a page of military from the colleges military from the colleges and surprisingly this list consists solely of for profit schools so it's not really shocking that

the government officials are looking into the company's practices and quite frankly it's about time and. it is being led by kentucky attorney general jack conway his counterparts from fourteen other states have joined in too and that is impressive but you might have noticed a major absence here the federal government the one that actually issues veterans benefits it's not a surprise though for profit colleges spend a ton of money on lobbyists on campaign donations to both republicans and democrats but it is encouraging that the states prosecutors have decided to actually do something about for profit college scams that cheat a lot of people including a whole lot of veterans and taxpayers enough for us to consider it a glimmer of hope. so let's take a look now at the latest in the bradley manning case today is day two of three of a three day present trial hearing for private first class bradley manning his events team is working to get several counts specifically ten out of the twenty two against him dropped they've also asked the government to turn over damage

assessment reports that resulted from the two thousand and ten leaks that were posted on the whistle blowing web site wiki leaks today two officials with the state department testified and talked about their role in efforts to control damage after the secret documents were leaked i want to talk about the latest and also some of the bigger implications of this here to discuss is kevin zeese he serves on the steering committee of the bradley manning support network and is also the organizer occupy washington d.c. and co-director of it's our economy kevin thanks for joining us so you know i think it's important to sort of break down what's going on now and i want to start with a question a whole lot of people have been asking if nothing bradley manning leaked did any damage to the u.s. why are these documents that are being held called classified that's exactly the root of the issue because that's the that's one document should be classified as if they are going to have an adverse effect on national security if the public or other countries learn about them and so that's why the manning defenses are fighting so hard to try to get access to those docs and so far we've heard nothing

that indicates that any damage was done by these documents that we both heard former defense secretary gates secretary clinton both minimizing the effect of the release of these documents that really raise the question should these documents been classified should be prosecuted all i think what really comes down to what these teachers as truth truth is the first casualty of war we had two dozen people in court today wearing these shirts to try to get their message across we had are making they're making it clear that people are following this case closely want to see the truth come out that's in this case is about should the american public know what our government is doing in our name both in the military and in the state department their work with corporations and they work with allies who are mostly part of the us empire. and respect about this yesterday with having us still on our show. he said that the judge yesterday asked the government to actually go through item by item and sort of say it explain each item and say if there was evidence for it it seems like a little too late not too late but

a little late however i think it's a good thing that it's happening what do you think is going to come down out of this i think it is late i mean the trial schedule started september we're talking about tens of thousands of the hundreds of thousands of pages of documents and so obvious surprises is this trial go off in september the government were dragging their feet i think. bradley manning's lawyer david kusa the great job of making the case the government's been dragging their feet on this they've been fighting for discovery like this for since the beginning this is routine discovery it's called brady material reverse the united states requires the government both military and civilian trials to give evidence that's relevant to the defense this material to the defense and these should be expect to be given rarely lawyer by accident got a document because the military found they had not even begun to search their files for brady material nine months after coombs started asking for and that happen to get to him in a circuitous way but he got that dogman just like florida that here we are and they are in court fighting for these documents the government's making the claim to the

so much is so voluminous is already given all and it turns out they even started the story live why do you think that is i mean do you think that the government just you know the prosecutors in this case just thought that they were going to be so backed by the government that they were just going to sort of slide through or not have to present anything well i think this case is it looks like a kangaroo court a most of the judge is really listening carefully david coombs she's starting to really question the veracity and credibility of the prosecutors because they give multiple answers to the same question depending how their questions are asked she's learning they have to ask the question exactly the right way we're knocking at the full answer from the government lawyers and so i think there's so look so you can record except the judges are in a wake up and i think if they can recall because you're the commander in chief president obama saying he's. guilty on tape you have the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff saying at a press conference that was published in stars and stripes the semiofficial publication the military not to mention a suspect held in solitary confinement for i was no i was just imagine that you have the means for you to have the solitary confinement for almost

a year before resuming formally charge right and then you have the dragging their heels in discovery not even following what there is basic rules of discovery and providing better so it looks like a kangaroo court and i think the prosecutors are assuming that this is going to be a slam dunk and you know we hope that by being there and being present and showing the public concern and that the great worry about david coombs that we can actually get a fair trial of this and if that happens this case should be dismissed for outrageous government conduct as you mentioned just solitary that under command influence and the discovery lapse lapses that's outrageous government conduct you can't get a fair trial in those circumstances come and we just had a segment called glimmer of hope what are your glimmers of hope in terms of this bradley manning case i mean there certainly on the other side so many things that are really hard to swallow when it comes to this case when it comes to the treatment of the suspect in this case is there anything that gives you hope that it that it may be dismissed or that maybe some of those charges might at least be dropped i think david cruz made some great arguments today and some of his co-counsel as well arguing for dropping some of the charges the judge was very

tough to some hopeful that some of these charges were dropped or winnow down a bit and i do i do think the judge is getting sensitive to this case is about the fact that we started off with that there may have been no national security image at all. making example of this this young guy i mean there are meetings twenty to twenty four he's always been two years in jail you know almost ten percent of his of his life has been spent in jail and case and he's has even gone to trial yet and so my hope is that by the public coming out the public showing their concern their great learning from from coombes his team that will get some justice in this case and they will see this case handled with a dismissal deserves i want to talk about the state secrets aspect of this case because this is time and time again and i'm not sure to what extent the prosecute. hers get to determine what state secrets are. but you know this whole classified aspect this whole seeming desire to not have this case be public talk a little bit about that you know there's been a real effort to prevent the press and thereby print the people the public from

knowing what's going on in this case it's very hard to go to these trials and understand what's happening because we don't get to really see all the filings a lot of stuff is provided to the court where the court only sees it and then she has to decide was made public in the end when you and you saw we could see some of the documents the few documents that the government has given david coombs and bradley manning the pages just blacked out and blacked out the governor says they gave twelve thousand pages you look at the pages the roll you know all black you can see so there's a real effort i think keep the truth out and that's what this case is about bradley manning is being essentially prosecuted for getting the truth out the truth about what our foreign policy is about how the u.s. military behaves on a daily basis and how our state department bases really prosecuted some of the people who were exposed in these documents those of you prosecute bradley manning is a whistleblower who has just got the truth out in a time of war and that's a very risky thing to do and you know the other side says it's risky because he put

our lives in danger he he gave secrets to the other side and i think you're right of course we see no evidence of that actually putting lives in danger actually undermined u.s. foreign policy restore national security what it did was embarrass us by showing the good there's some good in our foreign policy the bad the ugly and the illegal in our foreign policy and that really is the embarrassment it's about embarrassment it's not about undermining your success if you i think you hit the nail on the had to when and when you said i mean it seems in so many ways they're really trying to make an example out of him make sure this never happens again appreciate you come on the show have been seized with it probably want to support network keep us posted play it well thank you. also it comes and i will speak with the candidate running for office with the ideology. the occupy movement and as we mentioned alona is up in rhode island at the network's mission conference so we'll find out what's on deck for tomorrow's show i.