welcome to the lower show we'll get the real headlines with none of the mersey we're going live to washington d.c. now it's an hour we're going to have our monday hangover panel anthony rand hours on edward harrison will join us to talk about the economy in real terms then we have a couple more interviews we filmed while we were in providence for the net roots nation conference rolling stones michael hastings spoke to us about his latest piece. the last p.o.w. from our wars in iraq and afghanistan we're going to ask the pentagon would really leave a man behind and we spoke with truthout straight and leopold about the outcry over

possible white house leaks to the press could john brennan be the man behind the leaks all of that and more few tonight including a dose of happy hour but first let's take a look at the mainstream media decided to miss. now i'm not sure how many days this nonsense has gone on for now but the mainstream media is really showing how useful it is useless it is lately with their coverage of the finger pointing he said she said obama versus romney lines on the economy. or six of. the political part of the obama campaign is still trying to contain the damage can supplant the romney biden and now obama slip up ten days or a club that made president obama's campaign doing damage control after republicans blasted comments that he made on private sector jobs brock obama said the economy was fine and mitt romney said we don't need more firemen policemen or teachers what

republicans are calling his mccain moment the obama campaign though using that same strategy in its return volley once again attacking romney's massachusetts record just. a few hours ago the obama campaign released its own web video going after mitt romney with trading fire over president barack obama's remarks that the private sector is doing fine the new fallout from those comments from president obama new economy and our in curtis's him of his friday gaffe saying the private sector is doing fine while still struggling with it they are pushing charges that it's mitt romney who is more out of touch the republicans already have a web out the r. and c. put that out you know their head in the d.v.r. and they're making the thing that has like that you have to take it out of context what's the shelf life of a gaffe romney campaign turning the president's words against him in this new political ad these videos they're trying to use the candidates remarks against them . now the fact that this is what the cable networks like to call news these days is

honestly and barest just think of a state of the country's and unemployment eight point two percent officially if you look at the u. six the real unemployment rate it's a fourteen point eight percent we have over forty nine million people that are living in poverty we have millions of people that are underwater in their homes and yet since the financial crash now much has changed on wall street because we have a congress that's to fact list to take the big banks on and let's face it they are often their biggest campaign donors we've also completely ignore the lessons that we've learned from the great depression and so there is plenty to actually critique when it comes to the president's economic policies and the policies that mitt romney is proposing if for some god forsaken reason he actually becomes the next president and yet instead of looking at the facts in the figures and trying to explain to the american people why the economy is still faltering the mainstream media acts like finger pointing and name calling is the real scandal how many hours can you possibly spend playing clubs back to back asking who had the better response and what it means for their campaign strategy how dumbed down is the conversation within the media become a we pick apart the phrasing of

a speech as that of the actions the policies of the person who gave it and if you want to focus on rhetoric let's at least point out whether or not it makes sense in regards to economic data that's out there take what joseph stiglitz is warning about his latest book where he reaches some very depressing conclusions that america is no longer the land of opportunity that the american dream is a myth he says he points to statistics that show how increasing income inequality is leading to rapidly decreasing social mobility if you're born rich or poor you're more likely to stay there then and any other advanced economy now these are things of the news should be discussing but instead they will just play these clips that to back act as if they are the biggest issues of the day and then one day they'll wake up and we'll all really be in trouble then again maybe they won't wake up because they're the mainstream media and they seem determined if not able to do anything but miss.

all right so it is monday and as usual we have a lot to talk about it will discuss the economy sequences warnings about the end of opportunity will talk a little tax policy and will continue to look at europe and the spanish bailout in particular so grab your pain pills because on monday hangover panel is here to hash it all out if you want to thank you. for. joining me tonight to discuss of anthony rand dad's zero director of economic research of economic research for the reason foundation and edward harrison founder of credit write downs dot com gentlemen thanks for joining me tonight i don't know how much you heard of my little rant there just now but i mean what's your take of terms of the obsession over this bomb a said something about the private sector and they call it a gaffe and then mitt romney said something about firefighters and they call it a gaffe but then actually rather than discussing figures from the private sector how many firefighters and other public sector workers are losing their jobs they

just talk about gaffes for hours and hours on end and it baffles me is it with us the political system that we're you know it's actually the one thing that i think is always fun is when the administration likes to throw job figures like oh we've created four point three million jobs as if every job that was in a body that was hired over the past three years is somehow attributable to the white house you know there's people losing their jobs and the executor exactly and that's the problem is that on the other side is you'll have you know the romney campaign this is going to say you know like every negative thing that's happened in the economy is all because of the obama administration as if to suggest that the white house has a magic wand or that it's using or is not using that's causing all this to happen it's a it's a game of politics that's completely devoid of actual economic analysis well actually ok on that note we have a clip so we were at providence rhode island for the net roots nation conference with the show over the weekend and so we're going to air this whole interview tomorrow but i just have a little clip i spoke with congressman keith ellison his representative from

minnesota and obviously there was some politicking involved but it seems to me like like he believes what he said take a listen. you recently said you were on the hill that you're not here to say the republicans are sabotaging the economy but a lot of people think that's the case but do you think that's the case yes i think i think certainly yeah i mean i think you know a one word answers an answer right. yeah i like one word answers are actually you know sometimes good sometimes dogs are good for t.v. but ok yes there's a lot of politics involved but is there a case to be made at all you think that the republicans are trying to sabotage the economy in terms of just blocking any kind of legislation politics i mean that's why they're going to. basically it was in two thousand any two ever since the clinton days that you could go back to bork nomination and all of that it's been completely political it's been you know ever increasing in terms of how political

it is and part of that is because of the sense of the lack of a center you know all of the conservatives who you know the so-called blue dog democrats are really being driven out of the democratic party and they're becoming republicans all of the conservative democrat all of the you know the liberal republicans like chafee from rhode island they're leaving and people who would replace them are becoming democrats you have this sort of this political partisanship that's become ever increasing in terms of you know on the social issues but on the economic issues really you know i don't think that there is a huge amount of difference between the policies except for maybe tax cuts let's say that so in that sense if there aren't that many differences between their policies except for you know as he rightly pointed out tax cuts and as everyone asleep at the wheel i mean you know i brought up his latest book harry's talking about how america is no longer the land of opportunity you don't have you don't have this ability to necessarily have social mobility anymore if you compare us to

a lot of other advanced economies out there we don't do so well and if this idea that it's no longer about what it is that you do in your life and what you personally achieve but wherever you're born into rich or poor you're likely to stay there all the things. we don't have a free market economy anymore and i i mean most of what was in the first. it's not anything new he's just sort of popularizing a lot of identity to be thinkers and then there's you know we've been rehashing this stuff a lot and so it's helpful to have stuff sort of boil down to i guess at a certain point a platform to talk about it one of the things that he says is that we don't really have a free market economy anymore or we never really did that i absolutely agree but the answer to that having for market economy is not to try and reallocate resources to try and fix this problem you need to look at some deeper problems as to why that's being caused and i were talking before the show about how you know housing does a huge problem of just how just personal debt which he can talk

a little bit more about you want to talk about education for instance as we've poured a lot of money into education on the federal level the cost of getting you know a good education has gone up going to college is expensive so if you're poor we're driving people away from being able to get a quality education by spending a lot of money on it so is the answer to spend more money on a program like that to try and reallocate more resources probably not what we're not spending the money wisely right if we actually knew how to spend the money properly then that i don't think that many people would be saying we should be spending money on it but so in that sense that we don't have a free market economy anymore crony capitalism is obviously probably what's your take here just on d.c. you know we're talking about this in our editorial meeting this morning and my boss was talking about how five years ago when he first moved here he didn't see a lot of ferrari's and a lot of fancy cars now if you live out in the suburbs in virginia or maryland suddenly you see a lot of these cars the cars under little thousand dollars where's the money come from coming from twenty five years ago i lived here in d.c. . d.c.

was a government was basically zero one. one politics that was the only thing there was nothing else and you didn't see any for hours you can barely saw a mercedes maybe you saw the jaguar now you see them everywhere in friendship heights you have this whole sort of i call rodeo drive on wisconsin and really when you go to. to rosalyn which used to be dominated by the u.s. department of state because they had something there now instead all you see of things like boeing mcdonnell douglas all of the lobbying type of activities all the people who are here only because of government here because they know that that's where they're going to get you know they're free to take it they're free lunch and that's where the money's coming that's where a lot of them is kind of all these counties in the country are we one is right around wash and you say they don't understand why the. american people are going to start is it going to get to the point like that says there were people live in gated communities with armed guards and you're just going to have this massive

separation i mean i don't think that we're necessarily going there but you know one cannot particularly tell you know these particular socially social issues i don't think so that it's impossible for somebody that's born in the ghetto of chicago to . grow up to be the president of united states or something i thought of that the likelihood the probability that happen it will and so on and so the you know the question becomes is this because of crony capitalism is this because of rich companies that are keeping poor young children from being able to get good jobs or is this because there's a dependency mentality in the united states that didn't exist in the one nine hundred forty so this is because we've grown up in a higher welfare state where people are more dependent on something like unemployment insurance which we've talked a lot about whether you know there's values or harms to it and so you have an america today that's different than one thousand nine hundred fifty s. nine hundred sixty s. when that mobility was was higher we're running out of times i just want to get one

last thing in that i mean if you want to talk about dependency maybe let's look at where everyone is so dependent on actions by the federal reserve right or by other central banks or these other institutions these days and so when it comes to spain and this bailout now is that supposed to make anyone feel better how is spain going to pay it back where is the money necessarily coming from you know what are the possible other issues again that the. brings up well. it's not going to work i mean it's already dead on arrival the interest rates have gone up in spain and italy already and the problem in spain basically the exact same problem that we have here and i think that's where the social ills are coming from it's you know the debt the private sector debt household debt you know that huge property bubble to their banks are insolvent as many banks and united states have been stalled and what's their answer their answer is to bail these banks out to build the the bond holders of these banks out and to lump all this stuff into the taxpayer luckily in the

united states we can print money and get out of it in spain they can't print money and so now they're going to they're potentially installed and that's the that's the problem i'm sorry but were really tight on time today for having the show so i got to wrap it up but gentlemen thank you both of you for the talk. coming up after the break we have you said i read it and then i'll speak with michael hastings about the last p.o.w. of the afghanistan war why i consider that one of the most underreported stories of the time.

ok guys it's time for you said it i read it right take time to respond to our brilliant are engaging viewer comments from facebook twitter and you too because when you have something to say i listen now it's and i our comments are all related to the show that we did from the net roots nation conference in providence rhode island first bruce miller responded to my net roots miss on twitter and said at the alone a show alone at you were too hard on net roots two thousand and twelve about civil liberties sessions and it was also a link associated this where our guest outlined a number of panels and spoke about everything from the drug war to raise to voter rolls let me just repeat myself clarify a few things now first as you asked yes i was differentiating between civil liberties and civil rights although the two are obviously intimately connected and i was also pointing specifically to the policies of the president that are being ignored by liberals executive abuses that nobody else could get away with like throwing out due process and playing judge jury and executioner now these other

panels in topics were on credibly important we spoke about some of them with our other guests as well and so the congress deserves some credit for bringing them up but in my mind you have only one panel as i mentioned on civil liberties the go until pro two point zero panel well that is still amiss this president has carried out actions that should be completely unacceptable and in my mind deserved a whole lot more attention by the progressive's the put the event on. coming up. in our next thing is founded by susan they had this to say about our occupy comes to net roots segment on you tube i'm sorry what occupy providence was outside the conference all week and many net roots goers joined our march on saturday we might check the conference we were out panels and workshops so yes we were obviously aware that it was a panels and workshops because the two men who we interviewed were on some of those panels and that's what we talked about but in regards to occupy being outside they did in fact show up on the street. outside the convention center but after we had

filmed our interview with nick and matt although i still think of our numbers were a little sparse there was a development in their presence and will follow five said this about how to be black race in america our panel there that interview he said about the interview he said humor is a great way to get people's attention build a report with the people you're trying to reach build bridges between groups promote solidarity i would say i definitely think humor is a great tool to use to help address issues relating to issues between different ethnic groups and within such groups you know what i couldn't agree more comedy is always a great way to get people to open up and i think that often makes it easier to approach sensitive topics also just makes it more fun gets the audience more engaged and more excited and we all see the successes of jon stewart and stephen stephen colbert and we definitely see them as an influence here on the show i personally still try to work on my comedic chops guys so please be patient and fortunately i just wasn't born with the gift of hilarity but that is it my rantings

and i can always back with more as usual later in the week. three years ago private first class bowe bergdahl walked off a small combat outpost called mest lock on the border he was then taken prisoner by the taliban and all we've seen of him since have a number of propaganda videos released by his captors he's the last p.o.w. from our wars in iraq and afghanistan and is reportedly at the center of the negotiation process which includes up to this point a failed attempt at a prisoner swap but why do we know so little about him all we don't know why bergdahl ultimately left the last e-mail that he sent to his parents three days before shows a man disillusioned by the war rolling stone's michael hastings obtained this e-mail and included the following lines he wrote of the future is too good to waste on lies and life is way too short to care for the damnation of others as well as to spend it helping fools with their ideas that are wrong i have seen they are doing their ideas and i am ashamed to even be american the horror of the self-righteous arrogance that they thrive it is all revolting he also wrote i'm sorry for

everything here these people need help yet what they get is the most conceited country in the world telling them that they are nothing and they are stupid that they have no idea how to live so is a possibility the bergdahl is a desert of the flood the pentagon to be so tight lipped and to let politics get in the way of rescuing this american one province we caught up with michael hastings contributing editor for rolling stone to talk about bergdahl space and why he thinks it may be one of the most important get under covered stories of the war in afghanistan just a step back that i think this is the most significant and under covered story about the war in afghanistan from an american perspective story about the only prisoner of war who's left in these two wars and in normal circumstances he would be a cost liberal everywhere but because of the nature of why he left and why he did and how he got captured he's been sort of buried the pentagon has attention sort of buried his case for right reasons ok so as to what drove.

as to what drew. bo bergdahl to leave you first you have to look at he was a twenty three year old kid who joined the army and he expected that he was going to go to afghanistan and help people and be involved this nation building in essentially humanitarian activity what he found when he got there was completely different he thought that he had been sold a lie he thought that he was not being treated with respect by the superior officers there was a serious command problem within his unit in package in afghanistan there was a serious break in the command one officer die another got fired three of his the people he respected were kicked out and so that created this sort of perfect storm you have this sort of disillusionment happening. plus all these sort of horrible things you seeing it with war that drove the decision to leave but this is crazy to me i mean ok fine we don't know exactly what happened we just know that he walked off the base we know that he had asked

a few people prior to that what he could take with them we knew that he sent this letter or this e-mail to his father but it's an american you know so so why should it matter suddenly is it going to be ok to have an american life. by this administration because it might embarrass them or look bad in regards to the word well that's that's the question right officially bowe bergdahl is still a member of good standing within the military and the white house to their credit has made this a priority in terms of negotiations of the taliban was was name was on the table to swap with five guantanamo bay detainees and that trade almost happened the reason it didn't happen is because the taliban themselves actually pulled out of the negotiations so there has been an effort a good faith effort i think on the part of the white house to do this i'm not going to i wouldn't go so far to say that that's happened within the pentagon i think there's a lie that he's much more contested in that community and within congress you have these hard line i mean when we make this point in the story you have these hardliners in congress who are as bad as the taliban i mean they they do not want

need these negotiations. succeed and they want to extend this war as long as they can i think that's very real yeah they should know if you get the prisoner of war handed over and they can extend it anywhere they can exist you lose an argument you know i think they lose an argument they lose their when they lose their gravy train and they lose but it to give them credit as actually having principles and sort of a moral view that's not just totally corrupt you know they believe that there are people within the pentagon who believe we should still be fighting in afghanistan for the next ten years they truly think that that's a good idea i disagree with them and i think you know bowe bergdahl clearly decided he disagreed with them but i think the point that the question you asked about why are people forgetting bowe bergdahl right and i think it's because of this this point because of the reasons of his capture if he was just had been have been kidnapped into a firefight or something like that he could like you know his face would be on the backs of every but how much of that is you think the media just choosing to ignore it how much of that is the government trying to force people to sign non-disclosure

agreement thank you. and you know what about his family why why is his family been so silent for the last three years first the government angle it was unprecedented the sort of wall of silence they tried to create over the bowe bergdahl case they made everybody in the in the brigade sign a non-disclosure agreement not to talk about bowe bergdahl and their and the rescue effort so you have that so that now the parents i think it's much more complicated for a lot of has to do with the emotional reasons as well they immediately knew why their son left and when that that new sort of leaked out originally there was this horrible backlash in the right wing media calling their son basically a traitor and i think the parents made the calculation that it was a very difficult conversation to have publicly they're going through this horrible trauma and they should just stay quiet and let the process work itself out hope for the the rescue operation or something like that hopefully they'll be able to do

some sort of trade they were actually experienced up to the rescue operation i should make the. but they were hoping that eventually they could get him released in a way without having to go public that was three years ago and they kept on for three years and finally they felt that they needed the needed you know that they're out of options you know and what else do you do like the tried everything else or felt they tried everything else so going public they felt was was one of their final options steve ing of this i mean obviously there is recently a lot of scandal in the media because of something that chris has said on m.s.n. d.c. where he questioned whether you should call every troop every member of the military a hero he said in the round oriel day also a sensitive time but how do you think this story plays into that debate well i think i think the debate is saying every soldier is a hero is like saying every priest is a saint we all know it's not true but because of the of the place that the american military has within our culture it's very difficult to criticize the military in

a way that's honest and even talk about the pentagon or the military the army or the navy whatever honestly is very difficult because of all the sort of cultural baggage from vietnam you can go back to because so few people serve so so you know i think this story and if you look at what bowe bergdahl you mail set i mean he's not painting the army in a flattering picture you know he is is you know is bowe bergdahl a hero right i mean he calls it by the way an army of liars back stabbers rules and bullies and that's just just as one line of the email so so i think you have this this dynamic is that basically says you're only allowed to talk about soldiers in a certain way i think that's not a way that's necessarily reflective of reality paul fossil great world war two historian i'm going to paraphrase here said that the army of world war two wasn't just the greatest generation it was filled with a lot of thieves dirtbags drunks and maniacs as well but because our society has. a

little interaction with the sort of active duty military our instinct is to just. glorify them rather than sort of give them critical analysis ok and so the my last point on that is that will you and i are in providence rhode island right now over at the net roots nation conference you just wrapped up doing a panel about progressive foreign policy what is progressive foreign policy you said you didn't know there was a line and it seems to be this debate of it's either intervention or its isolation but overall i a feel like there is a lack of discussion about that here at the entire conference there out of fifty years seventy panels and i'm blanking on the number i think is seventy panels there's only a few on foreign policy only one panel really focused on civil liberties and you're not even a progressive so what is it that you're doing here being one of the most critical voices when it comes to of the obama administration's foreign policy and drone strikes and what not will because i'm not a part i'm not partisan i mean i think it gets down to the fact that you know we

saw this during the bush years all the progressives and the left and the democrats were kind of unified against the bush foreign policy for the region that supported the iraq war but for the most part they had unified against the bush foreign policy because it gave them a political advantage right and i thought it was at the time i actually believe that maybe there was some principle behind and they really were anti-war and they really had to sort of view what we found was when when president obama when their own guy. got into office and essentially continued the same polls the bush administration escalated the war in afghanistan to a scope that had a republican president to do would have been riots in the streets from liberals so i think it gets out an issue of partisan politics they don't want to i mean i think most progressive have told themselves and i see this online not all there is a hardcore wing who who sort of stick by you they say well we'd rather have him killing terrorists with drones than invading iraq or afghans and that's exactly in line here all the time that you know they would actually say here is a lot of people like to claim that they're nonpartisan here and that it is a progressive conference but i think he's really start to see the lines blur there

with the speakers i mean. there are people in the audience panel who i think were more in line with what i was saying then with other members of the panel was that all right michael thanks for joining us and. just ahead on the shelves of the outcry over leaks things more restrictions on the press because they can just speak to days the leopold and the but. sometimes you see a story and.