it's a yearly gathering each july in california bohemian grove is where the rich and powerful from politics media and business gather emails are to give an inside look at the secretive retreat that story coming up. and for years former congressman and presidential candidate ron paul argued the u.s. should return to the gold standard it appears one state is taking his advice we'll tell you about the texas is about texas' plan to order gold. from atlas car chases to cover an every move the royal couple has the mainstream media made that made themselves irrelevant we'll take a look at the state of the media here in the u.s. . it's tuesday march twenty sixth eight pm here in washington d.c.

i'm liz wall and you're watching our t.v. . we begin today with what's perhaps one of the most secretive meetings of the world's most powerful people the bohemian grove retreat is held every summer in monterey california top government am business leaders are among those that attend a men's only event it's been going on for decades but what actually happens there remains a mystery and that's because the two week gathering is completely closed to the media but now infamous hacker is trying to shed some light on what goes on there the hacker goose of our has handed over e-mails to our team here's one of them it shows a new score executive andrew knight allegedly writing to former u.s. secretary of state colin powell and he urges powell to make sure the u.k. prime minister tony blair comes to the bohemian grove he says the event should be a quote top priority for him but these e-mails have yet to be confirmed and our t. has reached out for verification and we haven't heard back yet. these e-mails do

open the door for some interesting questions though why is bohemian grove a top priority what really happens there every year and is something this is something the public should be concerned about to discuss i was joined earlier by elizabeth flock a politics reporter at u.s. news and world reports there's very little that's confirmed about what happened inside bohemian grove and part of that is that they're the people who run bohemian grove are so closed about what happens what they will say is that it's a gathering every year of influential people ranging from former presidents to c.e.o.'s oil. and that it's based around art and music and culture and it's among the red which sounds like a good time but who would make this different from other only events that go on davos for example or some of these all their elite gatherings well it's actually very different because if you look at davos or aspen even though many of the events are invitation only a lot of it is open to the public and the goal is sort of to you know better the

world and have all these thought leaders coming together to share their ideas with the public and you can watch things on you tube and all that bohemian grove is completely different you have no idea what goes on there you don't know who's attending every year you don't know what they talk about and bohemian grove even says that they are not trying to better the world they're not trying to gather people together to come up with ideas that will be world changing they just want it to be sort of a retreat i guess that's how it's described as a retreat and some are going to say you know why not you know these people have the right to have their their private gatherings and private time away from the public eye sure i think the problem that some people have is that there's been a lot of speculation about what actually goes on there some people say druid worship goes on there because there's a lot of worshiping of the redwood tree there isn't a giant ceremony with like a forty foot our whole. there have been switched who've gotten inside and just it's just seems like very. bizarre rituals happening by people who have enormous

influence in the world and so the idea that they gather to do this every year is sort of a little bit of. speaking of these people that do have enormous influence who do we know about who is on the guest list who goes to these events exactly so supposedly every republican president since the forty's i believe has been on the guest list where every single one has gone you know on church nixon went reagan went hoover went bill clinton has famously made fun of it is saying that it was naked republicans rubbing themselves against redwood trees. but nixon definitely on the watergate tape tapes he actually heard sort of making fun of it and saying that it's a gay event but we also know that major c.e.o.'s basically anyone who's influential in america and around the world has come to the right and invited so yeah it seems like of. all of the world's most very comparable the most that the policymakers the influence makers are there you don't really hear too much about it so why do you

think it's not really a concern of the mass media or the general public i mean i think it's just that so little information has gotten out so there's nothing to really say and the people who have gotten information out are people that are sort of kept to the fringes so in four wars of famous conspiracy theorist site alex jones who went in there with a camera he actually was able to videotape the ceremony with the giant owl and i actually i talked to the spokes person of bohemian grove and he confirmed that the footage was real so so it's a legitimate thing that i was able to get inside but alex jones someone new and really take seriously and so i think the mass media just really doesn't want to i think the question is yes yes the video is israel and authentic but some of the messages some of the things that he was saying and it is what is in dispute. what i ask you we saw during the presidential campaign we saw from the former republican presidential candidate mitt romney this forty seven percent video came out and this was something that he thought he thought he was behind closed doors but. in this

modern day and age somebody was recording it and this came out and it's called a game changer and so do you think that these events you know they provide an opportunity just to speak candidly and show their true colors and say things that say things and do things that they may otherwise not do and i think that's why influential people have held on to this retreat as something that is for them to not even really do business i mean the slogan the bohemian grove is weaving spiders come not here and what that means is we're not going to do business here don't come here with your you know dealing in dealing like this is a place to be able to say whatever you want and perhaps like the forty seven percent video i'm sure that people say things that are politically you know incorrect or inappropriate but they know that they can't because no one's watching them i guess the great dilemma is that a lot of the stuff is just kind of speculation because it's so secretive it's all remains a secret we don't really know for sure what does go on but appreciate you coming on elizabeth that was a little bit flock politics reporter at u.s. news and world report. that attacks us where apparently governor rick perry is

thinking about hoarding gold according to the texas tribune the governor has teamed up with state representative giovanni cupcake of the oni to draft legislation that would create what would be called the texas bullion depository here's what prickly only told the tribune quote we don't want these certificates we want our gold and if you're the state of texas you should be able to get your gold so with the backing of some texan lawmakers the governor wants to transfer the state's gold reserves from new york back to the lone state and you've heard the argument for go gold before republican former republican congressman ron paul has been a very vocal supporter of returning to the gold standard paper money is a moral hazard encourages people to break a lot of risky investment mental investments and they overdo things they over him best. so good texas realistically switch over to the gold standard and what would it mean for the state and the rest of the country to discuss i spoke earlier with

wayne allen root the author of the book you see there the ultimate obama survival guide and i asked him what switching to the gold standard would do for the state of texas. bull first of all the gold standard be great for the whole united states of america but politicians will just never allow it to happen it's a ron paul idea to rand paul i.v. it's wayne rooney idea and it's a governor rick perry idea and i fall into those exact themes of politicians i love those guys but they're never going to let it happen live because the gold standard limits the imagination of politicians who love big government who love big spending who love big entitlement who love big unions who love big taxes you can't spend money you don't have or print money you don't have when you have a gold standard so on a national basis i think would be fantastic for the united states to go back on the gold standard because all the problems of america have occurred since one thousand nine hundred ninety one when richard nixon took us off the gold standard that are

all the debt of this country cumulated and all you have seen spending and the obscene salaries and government pensions that are bankrupting this country now to texas i mean texas liz does everything right my book the ultimate obama survival guide actually has a key chapter about the state of texas and how fantastic things are going there and they've got the best economy in america they've now moved to number two size wise a condo in america it's one of the twenty biggest economies in the world and they've created more jobs in the last ten years then all the other forty nine states combined they do things right and they're right to be suspicious of who's keeping their goal the federal reserve in new york is it really their can they get it when they need it in a crisis that's what this new texas gold standards are all about bringing the gold that we own in texas back to texas let us corner own gold and take possession of her own gold to show that we have stability in our state one of business moves here

they want to go but our stability texas can show them not only is the economy great but we've got gold to back it up and it's in our possession and we know it is now going to ask you in our critic. the gold standard is say that it limits economic growth because there's only so much gold as you said that you can't you can't print off more gold so that seems like a major downside to the system well you know what the only thing that limits economic growth turns out to be the federal reserve i'll give you one of the greatest stocks of all time list the federal reserve was founded in one thousand thirteen and it's only goal was to protect the value of the dollar and since one thousand thirteen and the day the fed was founded the dollar is looks ninety six percent of its value better stock that that you but if you had a million dollars thirteen i talk about this in detail in my book the ultimate obama survival guide is you have a million dollars if you're thirteen and you put it in the bank maybe you kept it

in dollars today aleve worth forty thousand dollars because it's gone down ninety six percent value if you put the same million in gold and i see thirteen that same gold that all these experts of government bureaucrats and politicians state and try to get your bliss it will be worth eighty seven billion dollars today so it's just you know the forty thousand or eighty seven million to leave your kids and grandkids i think gold turns out to be pretty darn good of politicians turned out to be pretty darned stupid here is sounds like a huge advocate for this gold for this gold standard i don't think you can make that a says a secret i do want to ask i want to get to this because not too long ago we covered this petition that was going around it was going around several states but texas really took. gained a lot of popularity in the state of texas this petition to secede from the united states and create its own government so now texas switched over to the system they would have their own currencies so i know this is talking like a long shot but if this were to happen a and the state of texas could that possibly

make it more make it possible for texas to operate on its own. well i'll tell you what liz it's a real ball shot i doubt it's ever going to happen but if things get bad enough under obama in the next four years it becomes a little bit less of a long shot you never know how they actually back up that threat with actually doing something about it it will be a net loss for america the second biggest economy in the united states of america and in my book the ultimate obama survival guide i actually quote an expert about moving out of united states because tracks are so high the economy is collapsing and declining and that experts say you know what i don't think you really have to move out of united states you can just move to the greatest country in the united states it's called texas so i think there's a lot of people out there starting to feel like texas spoke out in this right so i know a couple texans myself and they're always really really proud texans and. no exception baer appreciate you coming on the show we are at a time that was away now and root author of the ultimate obama survival guide.

still out here on araa to you from am less car chases to covering every move of the royal couple has the mainstream media made themselves irrelevant we'll take a look at the state of the media here in the us after the break. the same story doesn't make good news new song no puff pieces some tough questions if you. let me let me we're going to we're going to let me ask you a point. here on this network and that's what we're having

a debate we have our name sounds. familiar. this is what staying there to get here is a great way to talk about surveillance. the worst you're going through right now because the. radio guy for a minute. because you've never seen anything like this i'm told.

we're going to take a look now at the state of the media here in the u.s. just last week we reported that a pew study showed that liberal leaning on its eighty five percent opinion but that our work isn't alone when it comes to airing opinion ladies and gentlemen the handcuff necklace is missing i repeat the necklace is m.i.a. sometime yesterday nancy lost the necklace i spoke with nancy just a short time ago about this trying time in her life nancy grace first of all i want to express my condolences that's a day i be that is a walleye it's a ten pounder i love to do that let me just start this by saying that safety is not i wish i wish you would find the way my first so for years that you maybe front find yourself in faith to why kate and if not kate i think i get why if not kate

then who else ranks on your celebrity crushes for. so serious reporting hard to come by to take a look at the state of the fourth estate author chris hedges joined us earlier and i asked him what he thinks is the biggest problem with media today well you know sort of sums it up. wholly owned subsidiary of the corporate state you have a half dozen corporations viacom general electric rupert murdoch's news corp disney clear channel that control almost everything most americans watch or listen to and you know as i wrote in that column a lot of omission is still a lot. a hold of political puppets. you know as part of discussion of sharod. of to deflect attention from where our actually resides and that's in the hands of corporations it's impossible within the

american political system to vote against the interests of goldman sachs and so we don't hear anything about climate change the poor rural and urban poor are rendered invisible in this country and they're really suffering at this point i just finished a book on it two years on a days of destruction days of revolt with the cartoonist joe sacco out of the poorest pockets of the country we don't hear anything about the assault against civil liberties whether that be. section ten twenty one of the national defense authorization act warrantless wiretapping the use of the espionage act or shut down whistleblowers the. misuse of the two thousand and one authorization to use military force act as. through giving the executive branch the power to assassinate american citizens. and climate change we should have given the crisis that is now confronting the ecosystem on which the image species depends for its existence we

should have climate scientists on every night and none of that appears because it's all driven by a celebrity gossip and trivia and yeah ok fox will spin it one way and m.s.m. b.c. will spend it another but it's all the same tawdry useless garbage now what do you think of dr king's editorial decision then are you disappointed also very important stories there on why do you think there isn't more airtime dedicated to these kinds of issues as well because we've lost control of our media you know when general like rick. own as they do m s n b c. and i began a calm writing about phil donahue it was removed tremendous embassy although we had the highest ratings of any show in the evening. because he dares to put people on and question the rush of the iraq war look at iraq which made a fortune off course as as microsoft and they're hardly going to allow

a dissident voice to impede their profits or their ratings and that's really at this point what it's all about these television personalities people like chris matthews a cheerleader for the war on amazon b.c. makes about five million dollars a year they're celebrities you know they're judged on their likeability what in the business called a q score and not on their commitment to news or to the truth now yeah it sounds like you're saying that the state of the media has become more and more of a business model these days chris when you think that this has happened or can you pinpoint an area in time or a point in time where this happened or has it been something that's been gradual. well it's been a gradual descent kind of deterioration over my own lifetime as a journalist and watched especially on the airwaves the deterioration of new i would argue that at this point commercial networks don't even do news but if we had

to point at a particular moment when this process was. accelerated it would be clinton's decision to deregulate the f.c.c. and that of course allowed these corporations to buy it i think clear channel owns about fifteen hundred stations in the united states. and that was a kind of consolidation into a very small number of corporate hands and diminished the capacity for alternative forms of information and independent forms of information to reach the american public. going along with this journalism as a business model business of course that that loss of supply and demand and so could it be that the media is just giving the people what they want but maybe they want someone more some of these kinds of more entertainment driven stories. that's what people are going to watch well they sink to the lowest common denominator you know they build these kind of soap opera scenarios night after night week after week around celebrities it's better taining that's you know really at this point

what the business they're in it's entertainment but i worked for many years including fifteen at the new york times and. news is not about entertaining is about information news is about giving your readers or your viewers often uncomfortable and unpleasant truths climate change has come back to climate change would be a good one. that is the purpose of of news it is about fostering the common good it is about informing the public and when news becomes a business when news becomes about entertainment and issues that are not uplifting so to speak issues that don't have an immediate emotional draw whether it's around sex whether it's around violence whether it's around and you know it's our show to the side and you're reduced to essentially what we have been reduced to which which

is kind of carnival act that chris appreciate you coming on the show that was author chris headless. thank you well i thought catching the bus isn't and style hasn't been toiling in virginia a county just south of washington d.c. just completed construction on a state of the are bus stop with a price tag of one million dollars or to correspond to margaret howell went to the bus stop there has this report. and here is the new bus stop in arlington virginia would you be surprised to find out that it costs nearly one million dollars to build from the l.c.d. screen offering the bus times to homeless proof benches and glass painting over one thing's for sure this county spared no expense i don't think is worth a million dollars and you know with. but from the wind the wind the rain the snow or anything and it is blowing out here and i'm actually code so i don't see it this expensive bus stop is coming at a time when government at every level is tightening their purse strings the

sequester ration slash two hundred million in programs and services to taxpayers throughout the u.s. so it seems some people here in arlington apparently didn't get the message the million dollar project was eighty percent funded by the state and federal government the county has been defending its investment claiming that new retail in apartment buildings are springing up all the time and sixteen thousand people take these buses each day. we do have a lot of people that off under you know under the pay scale let me know need some housing in and they could have but that there is they don't want to bust up with the old ones were better than this one does so here are the local bus stop in arlington where the county is essentially put in over a million dollars worth of gifts money and some building this bust up the only good thing i can say about it it actually does tell you when your bus is going to be arriving other than that you know with us in the city where homelessness is so prevalent that people are actually sleeping on the streets a million dollar investment something like this seems a bit of

a waste now this same county hit hard by budget deficit cut just last week a part of the criminal background checks for all child care providers labeling it as an unnecessary expense that isn't good news considering aware of america national advocacy group gave a safety and quality rating of f for child care centers in the county but some people think it's not a waste of money metro transit has twenty three more of these bus stops planned the next one under construction this coming month incidentally the washington metro transit authority itself is listed as the general contractor for these bus stop projects yes that's right the area transit authority pays itself for creating the bus stop. in arlington virginia margaret howell r.t. . now into the euro zone cyprus has reached an agreement with the european central bank you and the i.m.f. for a bailout the agreement means those that have more than one hundred grand of the bank get slapped with a hefty tax and that part of the deal has some locals outrage even going on bank

runs artie's laurie harshness of the resident has more. i am a financial idiot happily so i've never bought a stock bond or any other kind of financial instrument that term alone is a turnoff to me because i just don't care about making big piles of money not only have i never wanted to billion dollars i've always kind of felt like wanting a billion dollars was morally wrong to still do i've been happy to never focus on money and to limit my retirement planning to scouting the world's beaches for where

my retirement lean to will be but now we have this insane crisis in cyprus which is making me admit to the fact that i am playing along no matter how hard i've tried not to because the truth is i keep my money in the bank i have a basic checking account and a basic savings account i picture my money in those accounts doing nothing just sitting there waiting for me to turn it into rent or a sushi or another black t. shirt but i know that's not the truth the truth is that my crappy bank takes my money and gambles with it every day and their crappy cohort the government tells me don't worry don't worry we will let your crappy bank just gamble it all away but i'm sure that's what the government of cyprus has been telling cypriots and look what's going on there people can't just go away get their money out of the bank their crappy banks crappy gambles didn't pay off and who's paying for it the poor schmucks like me who blindly intrusted this baby and their money to the corrupt

system which sucks so it's time to admit that regardless of the fact that i'd never person. only played the market or invested in a financial instrument i'm buying into the system simply by keeping my money in a bank and if you have a bank account so are you so what are we supposed to do i'm not ready for the beach shack and using conch shells for currency yet i still want to participate in society the answer for me isn't dropping out it's figuring out a new system of exchange hopefully a more honest one that doesn't come with a built in wait for greedy jerks to rape us all luckily some entrepreneurs are working on doing just that one promising new system that's coming to the forefront is a bit coin big coin is a decent realized to digital currency that allows instant payments around the world but point is trying to take a step away from our current crap system you should check them out online to learn more and get

a bit going while it fed up just like i did i don't know of big coin is going to replace the world's current corrupted monetary system it might be some other system that comes along but the bottom line is we should all watch what's going on in cyprus and take it as a big wake up call we are all participating in a corrupt horrible financial system that is great because there are no it's time to start looking into alternative systems seriously before the one percent who own our banks take our every last dollar because that's what they're trying to do whether you're a financial idiot or not tonight let's talk about that by following me on twitter at the red. one the tennessee state capital under one of a chance of one thing in particular became the subject of controversy here is the second question it's

a small portion of the sixteen million dollars renovation but this thing has captured the attention of lawmakers and nash. and that's because the senate clerk was approached by a number of state lawmakers fearful that the new saying was a muslim put back up but you can see here an actual muslim foot bath using traditional islam to wash feet before prayer tennessee lawmakers thought it was thought the new sink was designed for these purposes sun a clerk had to confirm that the same cad nothing to do with islam it's used as a mop sink to fill empty buckets for the janitorial staff that's why the controversy this saying is more concerned with creeping bird than implementing sharia law just wanted to make that clear and that is going to do it and for now before more of the stories we covered check out our you tube channel you tube dot com slash r t america our web site r t dot com slash usa and follow me on twitter as well.