well. technology innovation all the developments around russia we've got this huge earth covered. today on our team u.s. lawmakers are playing a game of political hot potato with iran one side of the aisle accusing the other of sympathizing with the so-called rogue nation and we'll bring you the latest example and ask what this fingerpointing actually achieve. plus it's one small step for the u.s. one huge opportunity for china despite the mars rover landing and nasa is taking a back seat in space exploration while china aims for the stars is this the makings of the next great space race. and now that isn't the only one taking a backseat for so many struggling to find a way out of economic ruin there seems to be no end in sight for those elected to help not even addressing the problem coming up we'll show you how big the

disconnect is between congress and the people they claim to represent. the good evening it's monday august sixth six pm in washington d.c. my name is christine from and you're watching our team. a big story today on the front page of the washington post it's an article about president obama's two thousand and eight campaign manager david plouffe and how he has links or supposedly at least to iran plus apparently accepted a one hundred thousand dollars speaking fee from a company that does business with the government of iran the company is a subsidiary of the m.t.n. group a south africa based telecommunications company now the article states that pluff was paid for two speeches he made in nigeria back in december of two thousand and ten and it goes on to suggest that although nothing he did was illegal for a close obama aide to have accepted payment from

a company involved in iran could prove prove troublesome for the president as the white house toughens is stance toward the islamic republic of iran of course one of the chief boogie mans in this presidential campaign with governor romney just back from a trip to israel in which he pledged the utmost support and also just a few months ago at a campaign event criticized the president for his lack of action against iran this is a president who has failed to put in place crippling sanctions against iran he's also failed to communicate that military options are on the table and fact in our hand and that it's unacceptable to america for iran to have a nuclear weapon while they find out how troublesome this will be for the obama administration and more i was joined by jim ob the policy director of the national iranian american council take a look. well it is troublesome for the obama campaign and i hope that the irony is not lost on people that this is a president who is being criticized by mitt romney for being too soft on iran and

yet he's passed the strongest iran sanctions the strongest nations frankly that's ever been imposed on any company in any country and they're so broad that his own top political advisor is now being ensnared in the same sions so you know either the same things are too broad and are having a counterproductive effect you know or this president has actually been pretty tough on you or on to the extent that even his own guys are now being sucked up in this in this nonsense now under this current round of sanctions i mean wouldn't david plouffe be interactive violation of some of what the obama administration's put out there well the thing is that this company that he spoke for it's a subsidiary of a larger company the largest telecom company in africa. he spoke for nigeria and subsidiary of that company neither of these companies are actually sanctioned at this time now there's a lot of talk that they will be sanctioned in the future because pretty much if you're doing business inside of iran there's going to be a way to connect you to

a sanction entity that's just the way it is right now and so the fact the matter is in the near future he may actually have spoken for a company that is going to be sanctioned retroactively the doesn't necessarily make sense and you use. you know the word you know it's ironic or whatever here but you know there are countless examples i think the biggest thing for me is that this is not that out of the ordinary there are countless examples of lobbying firms here in washington you know that work with countries believed to be you know quote unquote enemies of the united states there's also richard perle who worked both under president ronald reagan and under president george w. bush this is a man who made a least a couple trips to libya to have many meetings with colonel moammar gadhafi and i want to show you just really quickly how this story was portrayed by at least one of the mainstream outlets here in the u.s. . a shocking report this morning obama's senior adviser cashing in on doing

business with the firm a link to iran. so why is this so shocking look there a few months ago it was the democratic congressional campaign committee that was hitting the koch brothers for their millions of dollars of investments in iran's petrochemical industry which is now sanctioned. just a few years prior this actually this whole incident reminds me of in two thousand and seven when mitt romney was on the campaign trail the first time he was writing these public letters to folks like then senator clinton and other senators and governors calling for them to divest from iran well then it came out that bain and co actually had invested in iran's oil company and actually was working on a strategy to make the an i.o.c. which is now sanctioned. to make them the largest oil company in the world and so this sort of this is this is i think campaigns playing with fire because these sanctions are sucking everybody into into them there's they're so broad that there

are very few folks who actually you can't find six degrees of separation between them and in the iranian government it really is a small world after all what about them all the fact that for every rule there seem to be a lot of exceptions i know i recently interviewed california congressman dana rohrabacher about the fact that china has been given a waiver as one of the few countries has been given a waiver you know even though china does still import oil from iran i want to play what he said when i asked him about this. it is a horrible double standard that we have. we have heaped on russia all kinds of requirements and restrictions and mandates if they're going to get anything even if it's the repeal of jaxon van eyck which should have been done twenty years ago which less most favored nation status while china has had no liberalization at all and russia's had enormous liberalization their churches are fold now and you have

opposition groups and opposition papers in russia you've got nothing like that in china whatsoever. he you know isn't so let's not focus on china but let's just focus on the fact that even when the u.s. makes rules regarding iran there are always exceptions to those rules look the hypocrisy here right now is that level eleven because for instance even mr rohrabacher himself is somebody who if you look into his campaign donations is taking money from a designated foreign terrorist group the m e k which is an iranian exile group that is dedicated to overthrowing the iranian government but relies on terror to accomplish its goals mr rohrabacher is one of a number of officials including officials working for the romney campaign who is taking the same speaker's fees from this group from a group that is designated as a terrorist group in order to advance their political agenda and at the end of the day it's money that's driving these things it's politics it's you know with the any

case example it's not getting the same type of scrutiny because this is an organization that supposedly wants to overthrow the iranian government and because of that because iran is this bogeyman the enemy of our enemy is our friend so somebody like dana rohrbacher can go ahead and speak for a terror group like that was my last question really i mean when we talk about this bogeyman of iran this is nothing iran has been you know kind of the bad guy for it not years but decades here so our president our lawmakers are simply passing the buck when it comes to actually dealing with iran i think so i think that this is really an example of how the sanctions have been. an excuse to not actually resolve the tough problems that we do have with iran and to make the tough decisions that need to be made such as actually pursuing a serious engagement and diplomatic strategy in lieu of making those tough decisions we've relied. pretty much exclusively on saying sions and now for the obama administration and campaign the chickens are sort of coming home to roost in

that they themselves are now getting swept up in the politicization of our foreign policy and in the sort of fetishization of the sanctions against iran seems to be a never ending process here always good to have your insights magdy policy director for the national iranian american council thank you thank you. so let's talk now about syria where heavy fighting is reported in the commercial capital aleppo over the weekend the government reportedly amassed tens of thousands of troops and columns of tanks all around the city meanwhile the government's already pushed the last rebel forces from the capital damascus after three weeks of fighting there as both sides reinforcements now a large numbers of al qaeda linked fighters are reportedly bolstering the opposition's ranks and these groups are also being supported by the u.s. despite those extreme views and intentions as r.t. correspondent reports. as simple traded to the syrian opposition forces and its

power there is growing i spoke with one of america's leading experts on counterterrorism and he told me that all kind of is effectively exploited the revolutions in the region they're well armed having looted cut off his arms stockpile and they're now taking advantage of the crisis in syria six months from now they could be a major force of the opposition hope blocky force ok opposition concerns about the growing al qaeda presence in syria are well echoed here in washington but right now we've used more as an argument to justify a foreign intervention the reality is that the u.s. has already intervened it is just come to light that president obama reportedly signed a secret order earlier this year authorizing the cia and other agencies to provide support to the rebels in syria but there was no information on the extent and the recipients of that support reports on the ground show that various extremist groups are doing the fighting al qaida in turn brought in a wave of suicide bombing sturman intelligence is attributed at least ninety terror

attacks inside syria since december most recently i went to a senate hearing on syria and the sense that i got was that there is there still is no fool understanding of who the syrian opposition forces consist of but nonetheless there is fighting that could tie to provide them with weapons whether overtly or covertly that's another matter of discussion. what we need to do is assess ok which groups could we arm and should we arm at what point and make that decision and i think that we're actually at that decision the u.s. group that supports the free syrian army has received a waiver from the u.s. treasury department also rising it to provide financial and logistical support to the armed rebels in syria it's called the syrian support for their base in this building in downtown los ing said they just know dennis the building is just being renovated so the money will be channeled to the syrian rebels through this group how much money and how it will be distributed the questions remain unanswered we didn't get the chance to ask the group if i details of the newly opened support

channels because they never return our calls i want to go back to the senate hearing that i attended the experts invited to testify were asked about what direct u.s. interest is in the fall of assad this would be a a decisive blow for the islamic republic of iran i can't emphasize that enough and i think that is in our interests to roll back iranian influence where we find it is not any more effective i think to put the uranium threat in some perspective and reduce its pressure on israel than to slip syria in this urge to flip syria if you will the u.s. maybe helping those who never wanted a peaceful solution for syria in the first place and one of the elements of that force is al-qaeda which thrives in a civil war environment in washington i'm going to shut down. well over the last few decades there's been a major shift in the money and the resources this government has poured into space exploration over the last twenty four hours though there's been some exciting news

just found out the nasa rover curiosity successfully landed on mars earlier today in a mission to better explore the red planet but projects like this are difficult and even though the u.s. still spends more money than most other countries a lot another country is now looking to compete china is spending more money on space exploration and is planning a mission to the moon by the second half of next year and has even more plans in the works meanwhile here in the u.s. just in the last few years we've watched the shuttle program disappear entirely and funding for nasa cut exponentially i was joined earlier by philip plait astronomer and blogger at the bad astronomer and we first discussed of last night's success was a much needed fresh start. well there's a lot of stuff going on in space right now in the us is not the only one doing it that's something to be aware of though any of curiosity last night was amazing it was incredibly complex mission that went off without a hitch and there are

a lot of ways it could've gone wrong so that shows very clearly that nasa is still doing what it does best the problem of course is that they're being government cutbacks in its funding at the same time though we have private industry coming in and building rockets which are also having successful missions so there's kind of a weird economy going on there in the meantime as you said china is looking toward the moon and that's something we should be aware of and you said are we coming into a new space race well maybe you know what i really hope or not because i don't like the idea of racing other countries because that tends to. tends to make people rush to do something and then forget about it when it's done i'd rather be in this for the long haul so that we have a permanent presence in space but you know as far as a race that was also a competition and a competition that growth that drove countries to develop of course before it was between the u.s. and russia russia now and a lot of cases a sort of our chauffeurs these days i know that our international space station the

u.s. international space station sort of writes this and not that long less than ten years and twenty twenty and china's hoping to get to get in on that i mean do you think that this could bring back a new drive to develop. i hope so i just it was done in the right way we need to invest in space because when we do it at the very bottom line we get a lot of money back apollo was paid itself off in innovation and technology long time ago despite the vast amount of money we put in it and space exploration always pays off even if you don't know exactly what part of it will come back and make you more money right out like you said russia is the only way we can get into space as far as astronauts go although just announced that three different companies are going to be sponsored by nasa with grants to bring humans back into space by around

twenty fifteen so right now there's a lot of there's a lot of you're pulling a lot of running a government so i suspect by twenty sixteen or twenty seventeen we're to see the dawn of a new space there now when we talk about china kind of pouring more money into this and they're also planning to go to the moon now the u.s. of course has been there already they're planning to go there in the next year or so do you think this announcement is simply. step one in a much more involved process that they're preparing for. sure. the chinese have not really been boasting that much they've been saying you know we're going to do this and then next thing they've done it so their space program is for real and they're doing what they're claiming going to the moon at first with the orbiters and landers is a prelude to landing there and with with people with america when they're in the ninety's sixty's and early one nine hundred seventy s. but we abandoned it we didn't go there with the idea to stay we went there with an

idea to be the soviet union well we did and we have been back it was far as humans go and china is not stupid you know they're doing this they feel that there's a reason to do this and the reason to do this is in the spirit of exploration but also because there's a lot of stuff you can do on the moon as far as natural resources and just having a presence in space and it's something other countries america russia and the other should be taking seriously yeah you know i interviewed a california congressman dana rohrabacher a few days ago and i asked him you know just kind of focusing on this relationship with china on one hand of course china has helped the u.s. significantly when the u.s. gets into some financial trouble that on the other hand china is often seen as you know our number one competitor so i want to play a really quick a hell of his response. we have build china into a major economic power without demanding any type of political reforms we've given the most favored nation status one with free trade we permitted them to steal

our technology they get away with murder quite literally economically or figuratively economically but quite literally. you know in reality when they're murdering dissidents and taking the people religious dissenters like the falun gong and throwing them in the prison so what we've got is we created a monster what was a very weak country before we are permitted to build a man into a massive economic power so i guess so my question for you is is this a drive by the chinese to space just simply another example of them sort of catching up well they are catching up but they're also surpassing us in many ways. they have actually the capability to put humans in space and they do have the capability america probably will again soon if the nasa rocket program doesn't get off the ground literally or figuratively space x.

and other companies are building large rockets to do that and yes you know china i know a lot of issues with china as the government i mean they have a lot of issues the united states government to do so i'd rather see us cooperating in doing this in a friendly manner than in any sort of space race or competition yeah i think that's a really good point too that we shouldn't forget about companies like space x. and some of those companies developing space on a more commercial basis a lot going on there and it is really interesting to follow good to have you on the show philip plait astronomer and blogger at the bad astronomy. well u.s. lawmakers have gone their summer recess is after many months of saying over and over that their top priorities as lawmakers would be to deal with two things jobs and the economy well many of them are home right now in their districts saying this very thing at this very moment and yet if you look back very little action was taken during the last couple years the action we see often revolves around trying to lower the debt and take the burden off of future generations trying to lower the

unemployment rate for this current generation while very little has been done so does the majority of congress actually care about this dr nicholas carnes assistant professor of public policy at duke university gave me this insight on the problem earlier today. what my research shows is that you're absolutely right all titians tend to be drawn overwhelmingly from the most affluent americans and people for the working class are almost never the ones making rules that govern working class people and that has real consequences for public policy and for the well being of americans from all walks of life so you have a you know extreme lack of working class people actually coming here to capitol hill to represent people so that means a lot of times i think what you're saying is that some of the policy created actually serves the upper class more than some the other groups that how does this work i mean how do these people keep getting reelected then while those are those

are two really interesting questions the first one so basically yes if millionaires were a political party that party would make up about three percent of american families but it would have majority control of the u.s. senate and people from the working class are manual labor jobs for service industry jobs if they were already they would make up a majority of the electorate but they would never had more than two percent of the seats in congress at any time in the last century why does it matter while people from different classes tend to have different opinions about the government's role in the economy if you look at the minimum wage for instance on average somebody who works a minimum wage job is going to support a higher minimum wage than the person who is signing more paychecks. that works the same way across lots of different economic issues tax policy the social safety net and it works the same way for politicians as it does for the rest of us politicians from the working class tend to be more supportive aussies that help working class

people unemployment insurance progressive taxes and politicians from white collar private sector backgrounds and to be less support of those policies and so at the end of the day the kinds of economic policies our government act really reflect the occupational of the social class make up. congress is tilted as it is that means of the working class people who care about the working class. and it's in washington yes certainly in order to become elected to any office these days even you know local more local you know city council members seem to have to raise a lot of money and they're not going to be able to raise a lot of money from those people with minimum wage jobs you were talking about some numbers there i want to take a look at some numbers compiled by the pew research center that shows sort of just how a representative of congress actually is. we have it you know education with people with bachelor's degrees or higher ninety two percent of house members ninety nine percent of senators and thirty even though it's only thirty percent of americans

over twenty five years old some other numbers that we have here too when it comes to wealth the net worth is over one million nearly forty seven percent of congress and only nine percent of u.s. households you know some really interesting things and then of course something that's very apparent and that is gender sixteen point eight percent of congress is female even though more than fifty percent of the total u.s. population is female and of course that is very similar with race eight percent of congress is african-american thirteen percent of the u.s. population is five percent of congress is hispanic sixteen percent of the population is and three percent of congress is asian pacific american versus five point two percent so if you look there and you see just some really big differences between the makeup of congress both in how they look and the socioeconomic backgrounds and how that differs i guess i just want to ask you i mean you know

getting back to my other question you know how do these people keep getting reelected. well school you're absolutely right to sort of color and statistics all those things matter legislators from different. different classes vote differently men and women in our legislatures vote differently racial ethnic minorities some in congress vote differently in the white numbers all those things are important the question of why those inequalities exist why there are so few women why they're so your racial minorities why they are so if you're working class people who are whole cost versus is sort of one of the front two years of research best practice work right now and that's still a question mark for scientists it could be that for instance working class people as some people often say voters just don't like working class people but in my research i shouldn't actually voters really like working class people but for some reason they are making it to the general election so what's keeping them out is that money probably that's probably huge part but even before money was as

important politics as it is today go back to one thousand no one in congress was still less than two percent working class like it is today so there's something else about our process that makes it really hard for working class people to break into u.s. politics and that's what i hope to find out in my research in its years yeah and you know it's really interesting one of our producers actually took some time to reach out to her congressman mike coffman from the sixth district of colorado she said that you know she's from littleton colorado and she wanted to discuss the unemployment issue here and asked them simply what he and his fellow members of congress have been doing to address this issue on asking what steps have been taken in both the immediate future and the long term to bring these unemployment numbers down and was wondering if anything will actually be resolved congress of course on vacation right now for the next four or five weeks we we haven't heard back she hasn't heard back from her congressman but we're going to keep our viewers posted

better about yes that's my final question we're almost out of time but having any. will this pattern change us all while a lot of left something else changing. one of the things we know is that this is one of the oldest and most widespread features or oracle process you can look at any local government you can look at any theory american history and they're all those working class people at the table in our political institutions that has real consequences for all or c. and their organizations try to change it their socio new jersey runs a candidate school for working people are less those things less those things take off we're going to look at more of the same millionaires already it's going to stay in power dr nicholas carr is assistant professor of public policy at duke university but we often talk about how wasteful the u.s. government can be when it comes to spending on the military recently we told you about the two hundred million dollars use for the iraqi police development program a u.s.

government funded program that has been highly criticized by government officials in iraq as well as here in the u.s. in regards to wasteful spending but this is hardly the first time the government has made big investments with very little return to take the case of the sea shadow the vessel while boasting some of the most advanced stealth technology on the planet will never actually used for any operational purposes it was never reproduced and eventually ended up in the navy's fleet nearby california after trying unsuccessfully to give the sea shadow away to a museum the navy decided earlier this year to sell it for its scrap value alone it was built in one thousand nine hundred four by lockheed martin and cost the united states fifty million dollars at the time and was sold for scrap to the highest bidder this past week for a fraction of that for two point five million dollars. on a more recent purchase of virginia based huntington ingles was recently approved for a project to build one more lending platform dock ship despite the defense department's

director of evaluation suggesting that the ship's critical systems are not reliable the price for that one point five billion dollars the pentagon purchased one more of these warships anyway adding to the eleven they already have and turn service now says the financial support from the us for building projects in afghanistan and iraq peaked back in two thousand and ten we have heard countless reports of rampant waste ranging from a one hundred million dollar water treatment system in fallujah that has cost three times more than originally projected while serving only a fraction of the people it was initially intended for waste is also easily easily spotted in the form of abandoned projects all around iraq that includes a forty million dollars prison built to hold thirty six hundred inmates instead that's it's vacant in the desert north of baghdad and then there was the one hundred sixty five million dollars children's hospital and that also goes on used in the south now in recent weeks we've heard talks and read headlines about how the

department of defense may be forced to make cuts to defense spending but what does this actually mean is it possible that the days of military waste may be coming to an end well don't count on it and the reason being that although the former secretary of defense robert gates made a lot of efforts to try to reduce wasteful spending it's all to millie up to congress to approve a budget and with powerful corporations operating in the districts of many lawmakers the interests of government contractors weigh heavily on budget decisions after all government contractors are the ones who stand to profit from all that waste. well that's going to do it for us for now but for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r t america and then we're going to leave your comments and story suggestions and your feedback we're listening also for the very latest information on the stories we cover today and also if you we didn't have time to get to check out our web site.