with my. no holds barred look at the global financial headlines. coming up on our t.v. mass arrests in chicago more than one hundred thirty people taken into custody at a protest over plans to close fifty four public schools a report from chicago just ahead. and too big to fail one u.s. senator thinks the massive banks here in the u.s. need to be broken up is he right question more. than you'd think that during the seaquest ration every dollar saved would count but tell that to congress as money is spent on a missile defense program that the pentagon doesn't even want more of that later in the show. it's thursday march twenty eighth four pm here in washington d.c.

i'm liz wall and you're watching our team. starting off this hour protest coming out of chicago in response to school shutdowns after announcing the closing of fifty four schools in the city the largest single closure in the history of the united states parents teachers and students took to the streets to voice their disapproval and this lee latest measure designed to help close a one billion dollars budget deficit artie's on the stasi a church is in chicago with more. record single school closure in u.s. history versus the people. chicago the third largest city in america plans to shut down fifty four public schools by autumn this year and makes us feel like we are not important to anybody and makes us so much harder for us to get an education thousands of protesters flooded onto the streets of the windy city to rally against this measure on wednesday one hundred sixty demonstrators were arrested including this organizer we're talking about

a number of school closures that has not been paralleled in this country's history other than hurricane katrina a total of sixty one school buildings including this one are targeted currently teaching thirty thousand students and amounting to ten percent of all elementary schools in the city chicago officials say the step is key in closing a one billion dollar budget deficit the district says it will save five hundred sixty million over the next decade though the transition will cost approximately two hundred thirty three million but parents teachers and students refuse to accept this. activist and parents sabrina morey lives in a home with eleven children she calls the closures racism ninety percent of the schools are in african-american communities where is our kids going to go to school they go to cross through terrible neighborhoods gay infested neighborhoods even

though the final vote on the mass closures and the cuts to teachers' wages won't come until the end of may and the schools won't be shut until august this is already a bright exam. the system overhauled its budget gaps are being filled at the expense of the future of children and. chicago illinois. so what are the long term effects for the communities caught in the crosshairs of these closings and what does it mean for public education moving forward to talk more about this karen lewis president of the chicago teachers union joins us now hi karen so over one hundred arrests last night who exactly was among those arrested. they were members of the community were people who work in schools from lunchroom lady to parents and members of our local school council. we know that some of the protesters are angry that anger is being directed at mayor rahm emanuel for these school

closings why is that. because the mayor has said he had a number of school closings that he wanted to see done and it didn't have much to do with the specifics about issues surrounding school. one of the things that people have said in the past is that it is impossible to do this without sending children into very dangerous parts of town and that each school should be taken care of and dealt with on an individual basis before a mass closure like this happens so now you are i'm sorry i'm sorry to interrupt you. and i was just going to ask you because we're seeing these pretty heated protests some of our colleagues teachers coming together can you tell us what exactly you're demanding and what would you like to see change certainly the first thing is that we want to clear a moratorium on school closings and tell chicago public schools has put forth its

facilities master plan they require. exactly what the plan is to move forward they have not done this in the past so we're asking that they do that which is we're actually going to have to probably change the law to have that done and so that's one of the steps the other issue is that we walked up the hearings around each school not the sham hearings and part of the problem is that the mayor has complete and total control of what happens in the school so it is he is the one who is responsible for the policies in addition liss we have had school closings for the last twelve years they have not saved money they have not improved educational outcomes for children this is a bad policy that is only amplifying itself. most akmal still say fifty million dollars a year out of a six billion dollar budget it's not a lot of money when you look at it now there is

a lot of anger there is some anger there's anger on both sides and also there is anger directed at the teachers union and they say that you're protecting your own jobs at the expense of the city's economic future and that's the school that is the fact that they are experiencing a huge drop in enrollment so what's your response to that accusation well first of all the drop in a roman is has been overstated they've had to pull back on those numbers because they're absolute lies the good thing about the chicago teachers union is that we have a research department that has proven that the number using using by the way should congo public schools own statistics they started this thing there were one hundred forty five thousand children who no longer were going to public school when in effect that number is thirty thousand so they keep moving and changing every time we call them out for a lot they have to change and go on the defense. and and come up with some other

set of criteria are you saying about chicago doesn't have a budget deficit because they're saying that they have a one hundred billion dollar budget deficit and. address that they're claiming a one billion dollar deficit every single year they come out with what we call the press release deficit. in eight of the last ten years we've actually had surpluses but they started talking about a huge budget deficit that in effect did not exist then they come back and say when they actually do the blodgett they have another number but when that budget is correctly audited it comes out to not having. a huge deficit at all so this is something that the board of education has been very very clever in doing all right karen appreciate you coming on the show and telling us about about your struggle over there in chicago that was karen lewis president of the chicago

teachers union thank you very much for having me. well president obama this week signed into law a bill that could have huge consequences for the future of food in the country the agricultural appropriations bill has been dubbed the monsanto protection act by critics of the agricultural giant and that's because a provision in the law protects genetically modified seed packets from litigation over health risks so if you get sick too bad you can't take it to court since being signed into law tuesday more than twenty five thousand people have signed a petition to president obama it says the law quote is unnecessary and unprecedented attack on the u.s. judicial review congress should not be meddling with the judicial review process based only on the special interests of a handful of companies but beyond what's in the bill critics are angry about how it was passed snuck into a huge agricultural bill without a review by a committee the law only remains in effect for six months but opponents say this is

this is an example of giant corporations trumping the health and safety rights of the average joe that's not the only food news turning stomachs the f.d.a. is on its way to approving so-called frankenfish artie's margaret howell has more. a genetically modified fish with spare parts is engines away from our food supply chain the f.d.a. is giving general electric the go ahead on an application that's been pending now for two years the so-called frankenfish anyway well it's the biotech industries genetically engineered fish that grows twice that of the of the normal rate of a real fish that means it goes into the consumer market faster and at higher rates this lab animal is loaded with questions that science just can't answer the biggest one how does this affect the health of somebody who eats it here's what we do know the lab test of only six of these fish showed an elevated level of the growth hormone i g h one which have been linked to breast colon and prostate cancer with

the f.d.a. is approval this would be the first genetically modified animal allowed in the u.s. for consumption this is important because this fish it sets the regulatory precedent for every g.m.o. animal after it consumer watchdog groups say not so fast a concern that she shares with them this modified fish could escape into the wild survive and actually reproduce there they say that they are only going to create the female salmon for now with three sets of the an a instead of the normal two rendering the fish infertile and ninety five percent of the cases the non-sterile fish may still reproduce with real fish in the wild creating untold amounts of damage in the environment. without cheema labeling consumers would not be able to avoid the new fish when it arrives in grocery stores and fish markets to really want to eat something that's genetic integrity is so questionable the company making it is afraid it will reproduce with a real fish. the next time you're about panther or get

a grocery store about the purchase an expensive piece of salmon you may want to ask yourself if the fish actually fish and washington and margaret howell are too. many attribute the financial collapse in the us to banks that are too big and have too much power now at least one senator is trying to change that senator bernie sanders says he plans to introduce a bill that would break up the big banks he says if it's too big to fail it's too big to exist i must say that i was really stunned when the attorney general of the united states recently suggested that it might be difficult to prosecute wall street c.e.o.'s who commit crimes because of the these stabilizing effect that prosecution might have on the financial system of i will country in the world in other words we have a situation now where wall street is not only too big to fail they are too big

to jail. sanders as a bill would give secretary treasury secretary jack lew ninety days to come up with a list of banks and insurance companies that he sees as too big to fail and within a year those institutions would have to break into smaller pieces for more on this i'm joined by our t.v. producer bob hi there bob hello so is this a sign that too big to fail may be on its way out on the way out i think too big to fail is just getting started more properly probably in the seventh inning stretch here what sanders is trying to do is notable and perhaps a bit commendable he's a guy that got the mini audit of the federal reserve a couple years ago along with ron paul but like you said what he's trying to do here is within ninety days designate some of these institutions as too big to fail well dodd frank already tried to do that and we're going on three years and we still haven't compiled the list thanks to you have to see in the federal reserve and some other agencies so the big banks are still getting

a pass right now yeah well one senator in addition to mr sanders there that that has taken notice of this is senator elizabeth warren here she is on the floor grilling ben bernanke on this issue if we can take a listen to that we like to go to the question about too big to fail that. we haven't gotten rid of it yet and so now we have a double problem and that is that the big banks big at the time that they were bailed out the first time have gotten bigger and at the same time they are investors believe with too big to fail out there that it's safer to put your money into the big banks and not the little banks in effect creating an insurance policy for the big banks that the government is creating this insurance policy not there for the small banks we've now understood this problem for nearly five years so when are we going to get rid of too big to fail. yes so you heard it right out of

elizabeth warren that these banks have gotten bigger so what kind of resistance do you expect this bail to face epic legendary i'd like to think that but i don't think that's going to happen because this bill unfortunately is dead and that on arrival look who there are good they're going up against some of the most powerful institutions financial institutions in the world bank of america goldman sachs j.p. morgan chase these are the same guys who got their goldman sachs friend hank paulson who was treasury secretary to go to congress and force them into blackmail them into a seven hundred billion dollar tarp bailout these are the guys who went to the federal reserve and got sixteen trillion dollars in guarantees and loans these are the guys are created murders which is a phony fraudulent title registration system that led to innocent people getting foreclosed on and they're really not having to answer for any of this so i have to think that this probably isn't the right time for this bill when will the right time be then i think we're going to see market forces eventually force short term

interest rates up and we're seeing that these now heavily leveraged institutions once again they've taken on all kinds of new derivatives and bets and whatnot they're going to be forced into one of the biggest to leverage of all time and that's going to force what i would call of reckoning so reckoning on how does how it fortunately are saying we're going to have to face a day of reckoning before any changes happen yes i guess as you say too big to fail it's like it's going to stick around at least for the time being english thanks so much for coming on the show that was our team producer. taxi is and for millions of americans filing taxes is a miserable task and if the tax filing companies get their way it will stay that way forever there are europe there's something called return free filing and this ystem spares you from filing taxes yourself or hiring a company like turbo tax or eighteen hour block to do the job for these companies tax season is their favorite time of year taxes can be complicated to do the tax

alone isn't for everyone to use the pros who have completed over a billion returns already you don't know what you don't know and that's why you go to h. and r block each in our block get it right. but there has been a push throughout the years to switch to a system where a government prepared tax return comes in the mail already done using information from your bank an employer sounds great right but perhaps not surprisingly a tax preparer companies have spent millions of dollars lobbying against the measure take a look at how much they've directed toward killing any bill that would make filing taxes easier capital tax partner spent two hundred sixty thousand dollars h. and r block spent more than one point five million dollars and r r in g l c spent two hundred thousand dollars and that is a grand total of more than two million just a few there now some of these companies say changing the system will lead to an i.r.s. takeover of taxes proponents say the fears are overblown and no one would be forced

to accept the i.r.s. accounting of their taxes. all these times of seaquest ration it's time to buckle down and get rid of wasteful spending right some decisions make you wonder if congress really has adopted this mindset take a look at the defense program a missile defense program the project contracted by lockheed martin is a joint venture with italy and germany the system boasts its hit to kill missiles and other deadly tactics but according to the department of defense the three hundred eighty million dollars program doesn't work the office of the secretary of defense says quote the meads program has experienced a number of technical and management challenges since its inception in the mid one nine hundred ninety s. and while the program has shown market improvements in recent years it has been unable to meet schedule and cost targets. on two thousand and eleven the defense

department said they didn't want the missiles because they didn't need it couldn't afford to pay for it and it didn't help national security so why are taxpayers still paying for it the discuss i'm joined now by steven miles coalition corner for win without war. so how can congress continue to fund defense projects even when the department of defense itself is saying that they do not want these projects i think that's right i mean they need is exactly why the pentagon's budget has just exploded over the last decade as you point out this is a program that the military says it doesn't want that congress has overwhelmingly said they don't are interested in funding it anymore but here it is twenty thirteen we're going to be spending a couple hundred million dollars on it what it really gets down to is how parochial interests and how the dysfunction that exists between congress and the pentagon can really keep these programs going for long after everyone agrees they should anyway i guess it's just so strange because this is a program that has got all these all this money these these missiles would go towards a partner defense and they're saying we don't need it but congress is still saying

you need it and we're going to spend money on it that's right in this is this is not the first time that congress has said we're going to spend money on weapons that you don't want the military routinely says there's weapons we don't want just this past year they once again said we don't need any more tanks congress says we would like to you to buy some more tanks that has a lot to do with parochial interests and jobs and other kinds of concerns but at the end of the day this is how we get to the place where we are which is the pentagon budget that's exploding and dysfunctional relationship all right well air defense is saying that it's not at this project and others are not helping national security you know i wonder who does it benefit well it certainly benefits the companies that make these weapons right. absolutely lockheed martin in this case makes the program and they make lots of other large ticket items like the f. thirty five that have questionable records of cost explosions being behind schedule and even questionable need for the twenty first century in the types of threats we face but these are large companies they have lots invested in these programs they have lots of money on the line and at the end of the day all. that translates when it comes out the other end with contracts that just keep going and buying weapons

that the military doesn't even want what about jobs because that is the justification that we hear time and time again is the fact that these programs create jobs enough to keep them alive and well the first thing to remember is that the pentagon is not a jobs program we have a we have military to keep america safe and that's what our military should be focused on in the decisions we make about our military should be focused on what's needed to keep us safe but it does create jobs right any time in a time the government spends money it creates jobs but the question is how many jobs are created and the truth is that if you spent this money in any other way out of the federal government it would actually create more jobs so if we're talking about is how many jobs can we create we'd be much better off if we spent this money on education if we spent this money on health care if we spend this money in a number of different ways but again the pentagon is not a jobs program and that's not the basis we should be making these types of decision at the end of the day of our these lawmakers are going to have to answer to their constituents if their constituents are going to be the ones that are going to lose

their jobs that lawmakers are going to keep pushing to keep these programs in place right well they're going to answer their constituents in a number of different ways and they're also going to have to answer to their constituents why they've been talking about cuts to programs like social security and medicare why they're cutting back on vital services to the government and one of the main reasons is because of the runaway budgets at the pentagon and one of the reasons as we were just saying for that is because we keep buying weapons that we don't want that don't work and that we don't need and so it's time for politicians to come to terms and make these hard choices that we need to make to keep us safe in the twenty first century and also do it in a way that protects their constituents what do you think it will take for lawmakers to to make these hard choices i mean right now or in a time of sequester a fad here well i think now the time i think it was going to be a forcing mechanism you know the pentagon's announced it's going to be doing a major strategic review one of the first things secretary of defense hagel has announced and so it's time that there is starting to be some of this talk of making these choices and so sequence ration hopefully will force us to make a series of decisions that we haven't made in the last decade. and hopefully that can be one good thing that comes out of this otherwise horrible situation because

right now what everyone's looking at places to trim the fat a program like this isn't that something that is obviously going to go on the chopping block this is this is absolutely the kind of thing that should that you go on and we should look at other programs that the military says it doesn't want to get in like the m one abrams tank we should look at programs that maybe don't have as much utility in the twenty first century weapons like the f. thirty five that were designed to defeat you know to fight against the soviet union in a cold war that ended twenty plus years ago and so these are the decisions and types of conversations we need to have and hopefully will start having them right but as you had mentioned this is not the first time that we have projects that the defense department doesn't need what are some other examples of this of this happening well the f. twenty two v twenty two osprey there's the history is replete with examples of these weapon systems that have strong powerful interests as you pointed out they do create jobs there are people who work for these companies but at the end of the day we need to be asking ourselves what do we need to do to keep america safe and and it's hard for congress to have those questions and have those conversations but

that's where we elect them and that's their job and they need to do i guess at the end of the because you're saying these other programs like social security and these other programs that will benefit more and more people. you're going to say if you said that at some point we're going to make these decisions and the pressure needs to be there for them to take a look at these other programs and instead of trying to funnel money into these other things that we don't need i mean i guess i wonder why why lawmakers are directing their energy here and not in these other places what do you think i mean could have also do with a thousand lobbyists who work for the president is that history could have something to do with it could have something to do with campaign contributions and all the types of things that we know that go on in washington for all sorts of other industries that happen in this industry as well it certainly has an effect and it's hard for it's hard for members of congress to make these decisions but their decisions they need to make at the end of the day. stephen appreciate you coming on the show that was stephen miles coalition coordinator for win without war . now a funny take on a puzzling story

a couple days ago we reported on how tennessee lawmakers were freaking out over what they thought was a muslim foot bath built into their capitol building turns out it was nothing more than a mop sink and the political comedy show the colbert report took notice take a look just spite lawmaker's best efforts show has managed to work around in the state capitol building men's room one of the tennessee state capitol under one renovations one thing going to take became the subject of controversy the senate clerk was approached by a number of state legislators fearful that the new saying was a muslim foot bath oh yeah. muslims are always washing their feet it's supposed to be their pure when they pray but we all know the cleaner the feet the softer the creep. all cold air goes on to mock the state lawmakers demanding answers about

what they thought was a muslim saying he goes on to say that a mob is nothing but a beard on a stick and calls his mop prop osama bin moppin ok hold there of course was poking fun at absurd examples of islamophobia but we're glad they took notice over there called the airport and we're going to leave it off there but for more of the stories we covered you can check out our youtube channel that addresses you tube dot com slash r t america we post everything online there and fall you can also check out our website r t v dot com slash usa our web producer is are busy working on stories we don't always have time to get to on the air and you can follow me on twitter at liz ball we'll be right back here in a half hour. talking about the same story doesn't make it news. no puff pieces i mean tough question if you.

tensional a deadly blizzard taking aim for the northeast it's expected to hit starting in a few hours from new york to maine we have team coverage of the storm. that we're watching is the very heavy snow moving into boston proper earlier today it was very sticky you can see it start to become much more powdery down to the bottom line there is still a lot of snow out here a great place for snowball fight. case and it is been a pretty incredible day there and even record snowfall throughout much of it might still be flooded three brothers listen submerging see through your lyrics actually . as. here's mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that we americans

call a dog and. i'm sorry i'm just a guy who cares enough about my country you sir are a fool you know what that is my terror cells in your neighborhood want to keep us safe to feature isn't the only the current state of. secure the borders. you know for you to distract us from what you and i should care about because they're a profit driven industry that sells a sensationalistic garbage he calls it breaking news i'm happy martin and we're going to break this that it's. ok.

you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you

knew you don't know i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture. show. join thousands of gadget guru squawk into the mobile world congress in barcelona where research and handset makers try to get their groove back. and software super chargers hope to spin previous successes forward turns up the heat on google and despite a new twist on infotainment it's not just fun and games often overlooked video engines pretty flawless streaming conferences to the palm of your hand and there's a new player in town looking to show that isn't that better than one going to be on day if you're on a. potential.