for your media. free media are to. say on our t.v. thanks but no tang's thousand at the u.s. army and defense secretary leon panetta are telling congress when it comes to be one abrams but despite the pentagon's attempt to save three billion dollars congress is forcing the pentagon for a pair of the tanks anyway we'll tell you about the latest case of wasteful government spending. and he is the private first class accused of leaking u.s. secrets to the world it's a case both r.t.m. the intelligence community are watching closely and one that's hard to keep track of coming up will ask why the records from the case of p.f.c.

bradley manning are more closely guarded and those of accused terrorists. and if the u.s. were a motel the vacancy sign would be burning bright millions upon millions of empty houses and no media plans for what to do with up should we bulldoze them or fix them up that's a bait i had. it's thursday october eleventh five pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz wall and you're watching our t.v. . well as government officials debate the best way to cut the budget the country's massive defense spending has come under scrutiny but it turns out even when the pentagon wants to cut back they don't have congress's support take this example the pentagon wants to save three billion dollars by for going to refer bush and the army tanks with the winding down of the wars the army is finding they don't need as many of them. many lawmakers say if we stop making the tanks of her it would hurt

the economy it sounds of jobs on the line but it also turns out that the companies that manufacture these tanks are major contributors to congressional campaigns so is this the kind of defense spending now is it about national security or is it about getting reelected to talk more about what's behind this push for defense spending i was joined by ben freeman national security investigator for the project on government oversight and also paul mcleary land warfare reporter for defense news. it's a clear example of when politics interferes with good policy and with good national security we have a pentagon who saying to you hey we don't need these tanks we need to find a lot of ways to save a lot of money there are some serious cuts to pentagon spending right around the corner and the pentagon has basically said we can afford to cut these weapons here we can save a lot of money by doing it but then you have these politicians many of whom are getting campaign contributions from the very firms that are making these tanks

saying hey we want you to go ahead and buy these tanks anyways even though you don't need to this is just bad government spending this is bad for national security what it involves is another example of wasteful spending. the army in order to close down the plant in lima ohio where the tanks are made. in two thousand fourteen want to be opened in two thousand and seventeen at a cost about six hundred million dollars so they'd save two point four billion. roughly so. the tanks the army wants the tanks in there and it just depends when they want them and what kind of what kind of variance they want but it looks like they have more than enough tanks as it is to meet the defense needs so why bring any more in there. i think a lot of it is mud modernizing the things they have there is they will be building some new tanks of congress because so way most of it is monetization program bringing them up to the next level of networking and communications ok presumably we have the winding down of the wars and iraq and afghanistan and therefore the

army doesn't need as much of this equipment these tanks more specifically but i mean what do you think do you think that they are still relevant and modern warfare in the climate today they are you know so the marines have some tanks in afghanistan currently i know that the canadians in the danes had great success using tanks in the concert as the counterinsurgency campaign in afghanistan but in a counterinsurgency you don't need the number of tanks that you need face. off against a threat so tanks do have a place in the future not as large as maybe we thought they did ten fifteen years ago but the will be a force to be reckoned with and future conflicts all right perhaps they have a place but not as big of a place you know who is kind of on the forefront of this speaking out against wasteful spending is senator rand paul let's take a listen to him speaking about this very topic but the overriding problem to me in washington for our country is that debt the only way we're ever going to figure out

our debt problem is we have to compromise conservatives like myself who believe national defense is very important will have to say that not every dollar spent on the military is sacred. what do you think about do you think that military spending is considered sacred and off limits. i think in a lot of cases it is in i think we need to change that mentality we've heard from admirals and leading figures in the military itself that the national debt is the greatest threat to national security and when you start taking that more seriously when we consider the weapons were preparing for example the asia pivot well if we're going to pivot to asia and we're going to devote a lot of resources to bear if we're simultaneously increasing our debt to china by doing that it's sort of hypocritical to do in the long run we need to think about national security we need to think about jobs and economic security is a big part of that our military is the greatest in the world and there's no danger in that if we cut a little here and there where we can and you had mentioned earlier are lobbying the

lobbying dollars that goes from the defense industry to what extent do you think that lawmakers are swayed by the lobbying power of the defense industry or i think it matters immensely especially in a campaign season there are thousands of lobbyists working for the defense industry every single day and those lobbyists are also making campaign contributions those companies are donating tens of millions of dollars into these campaigns and so in an election year when every single dollar matters when when you need a lot of money for those campaign commercials literally your job is on the line for some of these representatives so with these deep pocketed pentagon contractors can come in and provide that money it does it matters immensely all right by lawmakers are saying if we cut this kind of spending it will lead to significant lobs job loss which will in turn hurt the economy polity you think about that is that a good a good reason to justify the spending is it's

a part of it i mean the plant was able as tanks are made are is in lima ohio and there are jobs at stake in the auto. what the members of congress from ohio and don imus will say is that these are highly skilled jobs to how drew placed if you shut the line down for three years it'll be hard. to reconstitute the line and to hire back those skilled workers because all of gone to other jobs right but you know what the economy isn't it kind of supply and demand is the pentagon is saying that they don't need this we don't need this is an oversupply why should we keep feeding a demand that isn't there. it comes on the jobs and all politics is local in the shouldn't there be a reorganization of jobs and instead of pumping out things that we don't need i think that's probably above the above what the army is capable of doing well that the army is now saying that they don't need them they're there at the forefront of this saying hey we don't need these tanks and then the congressmen have to answer

to the voters of ohio are saying yes we do need them who need the jobs so well i guess i'm going to ask you to respond to that what do you think ben i think the question here is if we're going to assume that we want to government to create jobs for us we need to ask what the most efficient way to do that is in research has found that military spending is one of the least effective ways that the government can create jobs there's plenty of more beneficial programs out there education very example health care these are all shown to be better producers of jobs with government spending than the military so if this really is a question of jobs the military simply isn't the best way to do it all right and this is just one example we're talking three billion dollars and if these this seaquest ration does take into effect and congress cannot agree on the budget we're talking five hundred billion dollars that's what the defense industry stands to lose so is this just this is kind of just scratching the surface right. it's important that five hundred billion dollars in context number one that's over ten years number two when you consider the scale of the defense budget that's really

not a gigantic cut that basically would take defense spending to what it was in two thousand and six two thousand and seven we're fighting two wars then. the military has grown exponentially since nine eleven so this is a cut out of out of a department that has grown measurably so this is not going to destin. it's not going to be catastrophic we'll still be by far the strongest military in the world all right well we have a big debate tonight in the vice presidential debate paul do you expect this defense spending to be on the table. highly unlikely i'm sure that although i'm sure joe biden will will make reference to it just because he's noble foreign policy and he's defense and he's he pushed them or a program. the army marines didn't necessarily want so i'm sure he'll bring it up but i don't imagine will be too large of a piece and what do you think ben before i was ron paul's kind of rallying point we heard him kind of this was what he tried to press over and over and over again the

fact that we should take a look at defense spending now you know we're down to the republican and democratic vice presidential candidate you think it will be part of the discussion i think it will be but i think paul's probably right it probably won't take center center stage jobs are going to be the key issue tonight possibly health care and in taxes some of those other issues but hopefully we do hear more about it because it's a critical issue absolutely and i guess we're going to have to tune in tonight to find out gentlemen appreciate both of you coming into the studio that was then frame in the national security investigator for the project on government oversight and also paul mccleary land warfare reporter for defense news. lifting the veil of secrecy the military's highest court heard arguments for greater transparency in the case of accused wiki leaks whistleblower bradley manning journalists and advocacy groups have been fighting to get access to legal documents and other records which have been kept from the public the first private first class facing

the sentence of life behind bars for allegedly leaking hundreds of thousands of military documents to wiki leaks to talk more about the fight to get the facts out on this case i'm joined by kevin to fill a blogger for firedoglake kevin welcome so tell us more about the way that this court hearing played out it appears yesterday and the first oral argument in this case we were arguing over more access to court martial records of the proceedings and i myself have been to be a place this so the center for constitutional rights is turning the courtroom was representing myself and others including join us on the league. amy goodman divide to see about the nation jeremy scahill national security reporter and. all of us in along with thirty media organizations that have filed a grievance support so a majority of media support this and what we really went down in this hearing was

questions as to you know does the court have the jurisdiction to rule on this there's a maser a major first amendment issue in this case a major cost to tional case and so the judge actually asked the government you know is is this reasonable what you're doing here i'm paraphrasing it instead of just handing over the documents you're making this into a prostitution all case could you is really what you want to do and. so that was a critical part of the hearing. all right of any idea if or when a judge will the judge will issue a ruling on this. well there's much more that needs to be litigated so there's going to be two more weeks here where some questions are answered by the lawyer that represents the media side of this argument the government will also have to answer some question the government has to survey and say that freedom of

information act is a mechanism that's available for the press and the public if they would like to know more about what's happening in these proceedings. i'd take issue with that because as it is happening we should be able to get the information in real time so that people can be informed as to what is going on particularly in this court martial. let's say you were to go that route and you were to file you said you want to get this information in real time if you were to go that route if you were to file an a freedom of information act request how long would it take to obtain that information . i actually have filed a freedom of information act request and it came up in the court room yesterday and the judge asked questions about the whole process of the freedom of information act request process because it does not provide responsive documents immediately you

have to wait a month or more than a month or if they don't respond then you have to send some kind of message to agencies asking about it they can play games they can play hide the ball and they can say you sent it to the wrong agency and send it to another agency outside of senate so the place that the briefer who handles our press pool told us to apparently it was sent to the wrong location so there's a sort of gaming that can go on in the background of this is really really bad for the public which has a right to this information so it sounds like a grueling process if you're going to get that information at all at the end of it did the prosecution indicate why they didn't want to release the records so that reporters and concerned the ag activists and advocates like yourself can get a hold of the information as it comes out they haven't put forward an argument so in my coverage of the bradley manning court martial i had

a reason for answer this question when it was put to him and he seemed to suggest that this was for the benefit of military counsel there is no public records for life like federal trials those have records but military trials don't use because they have to be able to move on to future cases and take cases it was quite absurd i was at i'm in an argument about timing. i mean he was just suggesting that they give the military council's cover to take new cases without having previous cases follow them to the next case so it alleged you cover up your record as a military counsel as is close to an answer that i've gotten because so far they've just maintained that the proceedings are open and the president public have complete access because they can go inside the room and they can hear what is being said and you know i'm there i'm able to go cover it as friends so the public has

a way of getting some information on what is going on all right so if they're making that argument and you are able to attend the trial and these hearings and you're hearing what's going on what do you think what more do you think could be hidden in these documents that aren't being released. well it's everything that i've heard publicly because i've been sitting in the courtroom and there's there's nothing that we're asking them to make available that isn't already being shared with bradley manning supporters who are present or anyone who is helping to assist the prosecution on the other side we also then this room we hear. what's being said and all we're asking is that when we want to use these documents to provide a context and we want to take some of the theories that are being floated in the room and ask the legal experts we'd be able to reference actual documents so that. we can just create more understanding around what is happening is a quite

a high profile case and what is happening with this trial there are trailblazing legal theories where the government is alleging that bradley manning aided the enemy which is a capital offense so it's incredibly critical that we would be able to use this information. and you know as you said a very high profile case a lot of people arguing that at this point a fair trial is not possible for a manning do you think that this is more evidence of that sort of having a fair trial means that there is transparency it means that the press and public would have access i think there is no reason in my mind having been there experiencing the proceedings to think that the same level of transparency in a federal civilian court could not be present in a military court right kevin great to have you on a thanks for filling us in on all of that was coming to

a blogger for firedoglake. speaking of transparency it may be more difficult to come by in the government and that's because the requests you make when you want the government to disclose information the freedom of information act requests that process is about to get a lot more complicated artie's adriano said it has more. transparency it was the name of the game almost four years ago and president obama took office yes the promise of creating an era of open government has not exactly been met earlier this week newman new analysis from bloomberg showed that up to twenty five government agencies have begun to outsource freedom of information act requests better known as for is the name of efficiency private companies have been contracted to take the ease off of the foyer process landing some pretty big paydays in the process the report notes that over two hundred fifty companies have been awarded such contracts among them a com technology corporation as one at least nine point one seven million the like

consulting has gotten a cool one million for its services and what are they in charge you may ask along with administrative services they get to redact and recommend information that gets released on all color coding to bloomberg at least twenty six point five million has been spent on for a contract in two thousand and twelve alone but let's backtrack a bit here how does this all work well and acted in one nine hundred sixty six the freedom of information act is a federal law that establishes the right to obtain information from government agencies so who can file a request well pretty much anyone that includes u.s. citizens private organizations and foreign nationals exemptions of course can apply to certain parts of the government but on the whole these requests serve as an important tool to keep those in charge accountable it's also pretty simple to file just go online fill out your name your address then your ego question seven ask you for what information you want access to and from where in order to keep track of

the documents you ask for question eight ask you what key phrases in particular you are interested in order to narrow down your search results sort of like a library catalogue then a couple of questions about money in payment for the surgeon there you go you have successfully filed a formal request with the u.s. government but why. filing those requests might be as easy as one two three getting an answer to your questions is the tricky part during twenty eleven over six hundred forty four thousand to four recross were filed according to the government and only sixty three percent of those requests were approved so you have a one in six shot of getting what you're looking for all the more interesting to find out that those in charge of the task have decided to outsource transparency so on one hand you have the government attempting to make filing these requests more streamlined but the red tape of filing for requests through private companies perhaps is a good example that actions may be speaking louder than words from washington are

modern photo r.t. . government officials here in washington are trying to figure out what to do with millions of empty homes the problem cities across the country are facing some of the homes are vacation homes others waiting to be rented or sold but many of them are not even on the market it's the aftermath of a bleak housing market here's a look at just how many of these homes are vacant one point nine million homes have been foreclosed upon since two thousand and eight and as of two thousand and eleven there were about fourteen point three million year round vacant housing units in the u.s. and vacant properties have increased by forty three point eight percent nationwide since two thousand so what exactly should we do with these empty homes well as a bit do the federal reserve board governor is posing this question she says it will cost money to tear them down or convert them but with doing nothing be even more devastating to the economy to discuss i was joined earlier by john taylor president and c.e.o.

of the national community reinvestment coalition and from our new york studio anthony randolph though director of economic research at the reason foundation i asked them if they think neighborhoods played with abandon homes can recover on their own. i think it's certainly a case for most of them now there certainly are going to be neighborhoods where there's no homes that are being occupied and so you want to maybe can that that's going to be a little bit of a different neighborhood in detroit absolutely it's my hometown there are neighborhoods where you know every home not only is it vacant but it needs a lot to be put into it and i think the people to carry those costs are the people who invest in them in the first place they're the ones that made the bad investment they're the ones who sort of reap the costs if they're going to walk away from that and then it's put onto the city then if there is a role for government it's only then when the owner completely walks away from it weiser hand of it they're going to get nothing back could something be done and then actually i think the whole thing is holding back here and think i just want to

say it's that same free market in that same investment community that got us into this mess to begin with creating you know these these bernie madoff kind of schemes in which. all sorts of investment money was used to buy mortgage backed securities that were just bad loans that were unsustainable that were made by brokers and lenders just for the purposes of getting their fees it didn't matter to them whether the homeowner paid it back because they were all being sold to the to wall street and everybody in between except the investor and the homeowner was was making money so you know and this and by the way fannie and freddie are in fact selling a lot of these homes and guess who's right in the buying all these properties and that's that same investment community is talking about so what you're saying is is in fact happening and happening creasing on a big scale the question is are they going to make these homes are they going to simply sit in these homes until the market turns around and then and then two three

years later flip them so that they're making double digit returns on investment or are they going to rehab these properties and really help stabilize neighborhoods and create decent affordable sustainable housing that's going to make a difference in the detroit's of the world. and elsewhere i mean. it's i think what we need is a sensible mixture of the private sector the government working with the local mayors in cities and towns and you know making sure that there's jobs created in this think of the opportunity with fourteen million homes if we began to train people and hire people to become cooperatives plumbers electricians sheet metal workers roofers whatever to reclaim these properties and rebuild them we're talking about having you know a tremendous job development program while we're reclaiming these properties bring them back on the market and you know and they'd be on the market like any other property competing for prices and then rents and then that's really a good thing for this country for that and john without sort of like getting into

a whole debate over the financial crisis one thing i point out is that we actually use the same language back in the eighty's and ninety's about sort of a healthy mixture of the private sector and government planning to try and create jobs and create more homeownership and what we got was fannie mae and freddie mac. and what they do is they collaborate with wall street and many of the ways that you're complaining about the the fannie mae and freddie mac. programs right now of selling homes to investment banks isn't terrible idea neither one of neither one of us supports that idea so evidently we must lived in different countries because my recollection of what happened and i was right in the middle of observing all this as perhaps like you. was that fannie and freddie actually lost tremendous market share to the subprime market which was selling to wall street and they went from being two to two point seven trillion dollars agencies. assets on the management securitized portfolio to one point seven they lost

a trillion dollars in three years to the private sector market so you're not talking about getting rid of the market are you not talking about holding the market accountable or are they you know you're actually saying i'll bring those guys that can let them now buy the properties that are that have been devastated by the. policies look i agree with the oversight of fannie and freddie accountability absolutely necessary thing but let's let's not give this broad brush free pass to the private sector market as if they didn't play a role or they don't have a rule of law that also needs to apply the word him of course not john i wouldn't give a pass to to wall street whatsoever that they made a lot of mistakes and i wouldn't give a pass to the regulators so i think i also made a lot of that by saying bolt's i think we probably agree both sides are in a huge met part of the whole mess that we got into the question is right now in terms of dealing with these homes is the answer to go back to another similar program that could create a whole bunch more of these sort of unintended consequences or is the answer for those homes to go to families that can afford them at prices that they can afford

which would be lowering than they are right now i don't and having them develop those pro and have them to fill those homes now you're right you're right i don't think anything but that is on the table nobody i think we now have a consumer protection agency united states of america did not have a consumer financial protection agency so a lot of these things happened without anybody having in the oversight to ensure that bad things were reined in so we now had i they also let me just say we also have dodd frank you know for all the criticism of dodd frank what dodd frank also has in it is that prohibits these unsavory unsustainable lending practices including making a loan to someone who doesn't have the ability to pay so whatever you think of dodd frank this stuff in there including the consumer agency that's going to ensure that that's the thing that you were just talking about is not going to care occur in the future and i agree with you working with the private sector you know but they're not going to do things in a way other than to maximize profit which may be just to be

a slum landlord for two three years flip the property down the road when the housing market comes back and we just need more thoughtful purposeful you know gauge made by the private sector and that's not going to happen if you just say let the free market be free free to abuse free to only think about one thing and that's profit for the for their investors. john taylor president and c.e.o. of the national community reinvestment coalition and anthony ran down as though director of economic research and reason foundation. coming up next breaking the set that's coming up in thirty minutes here on our tail let's check in with abby martin to see what is on today's agenda abbi what's going on liz so do you know that today is an anniversary know who's anniversary what anniversary it's the anniversary it's actually an anniversary as should mourn instead of celebrating the anniversary of the senate authorization of invasion of iraq so today they totally authorized to invade the country a sovereign nation based on a complete lie what we're asking today is why is it even ok to invade

a country if they have weapons of mass destruction that logic makes no sense we're going to be smashing the said breaking apart that whole narrative we're also recovering the t.s.a. the enormous abuses of the t.s.a. loses you know that you're more likely to die of cancer by one of these t.s.a. body scanners than you are to die of an actual terrorist attack really yes we're talking the blogger that expose it all just about how they're expanding these viper teams across the country putting the ban body scanners across the country and what the dangers of that are the police say they've been critically set and then lastly we're going to wrap it up with an awesome interview with greg palast b.b.c. investigative journalist who's going to talk about rigged elections the elephant in the room hello when we're talking about all this election build up the campaign build up that's one issue that they do not talk about in the corporate press in the alternative press alike rigging the election from the top down who owns the voting machines how these elections really happens who are we talking to him about that occupy wall street the corporatocracy much more coming up on that.