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 in just a moment. after being closed for two weeks banks in cyprus finally reopened r t is on the island nation to report on the financial crisis that's having ripple effects are around the globe. and too big to fail one u.s. senator things the mass of banks here in the u.s. need to be broken up as you write a question more. it's thursday march twenty eighth they pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz wall and you're watching our t.v.

starting off this hour protests 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 to this late latest measure designed to help close a one billion dollars budget deficit artie's on a saucy churkin it is in chicago with more. record single school closure in u.s. history versus the people. to. 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 come to school close. thousands of protesters flooded onto the streets of the windy city to rally against this measure on wednesday the demonstrators believe officials are targeting the vulnerable

youths in the least well off neighborhoods. for several hours emotions ran high. with marches and sit ins in downtown chicago. 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 insisted neighborhoods. the protesters have calmed for now. but promised to return to fight for education justice if their voices remain ignored 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 will be shut until august this is already a great example of the need of a system overhaul if budget gaps are being filled at the expense of the future of children and. chicago illinois. now what does this mean for public education moving forward to talk about this i was joined earlier by karen lewis the president of the chicago teachers union i began by asking her who are among the

over a hundred people arrested last night. they were members of the community they were people who work in schools from lunchroom ladies to parents and members of our local council. all right we know that some of the protesters are angry that that anger is being directed at mayor rahm emanuel for these school closings why is that. because america has said we have a number of school closings that he wanted to see done and it didn't have much to do with the specifics about the issues surrounding the 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. i'm sorry i'm sorry to interrupt that 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. the chicago public schools has put forth its facilities master plan they require that i lost so that we know exactly what the plan is to. 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 want that the hearings around each school not be sham hearings and part of the problem is that the mayor has complete and total control of what happens in the schools so it is he is the one who is responsible for the policy in addition lives we have had school coping

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 first of all the drop in a roman is has been overstated they've had to pull back on those numbers because they're absolutely 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

chicago 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 sounds so they keep moving and changing every time we call them out for a law that they have to change and go on the defense and come up with some other set of criteria are you saying that. congo doesn't have a budget deficit because they are saying that they have a one hundred billion dollar budget deficit and. address that you know they're claiming a one billion dollar deficit every single year and they come out with what we call the press release. 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 when

they actually do the budget 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. karen appreciate you coming on the show and telling us about your struggle over there in chicago that was karen lewis president of the chicago teachers union thank you very much for having. president obama this week signed into law a bill that could have huge consequences for the future of the food industry in the country the agricultural appropriations bill has been monsanto protection act by critics of the agricultural giant and that's because a provision in the law protects genetically modified seed. from litigation over health risks so if you get sick too bad you can take it to court since being signed into law tuesday more than two hundred fifty thousand people have signed a petition to president obama as as the law quote is unnecessary and an

unprecedented attack on u.s. traditional review congress should not be meddling with the judicial review process based solely 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 aqua cultural bill without review by a committee the law only remains in effect for six months but opponents say 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 genetically modified fish with spare parts is inches 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 so what is the so-called frankenfish anyway what'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 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 has been linked to breast colon and prostate cancer with the f.d.a. approval this will 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 were only going to create the female salmon for now with three sets of d.n.a. instead of the normal two rendering the fish infertile in ninety five percent of the cases the non-sterile fish may still reproduce with

a real fish in the wild creating untold amounts of damage in the environment. without human 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 at that fancy or get a grocery store about to purchase an expensive piece of salmon you may want to ask yourself is this fish actually fish and washington margaret howell r.t.u. and out of cyprus a small island nation in the mediterranean that has compelled the european union to rethink its policies are its international correspondent tazer tests brings us the latest. you can see behind me that is the bank of cyprus there has been a lie that had gathered before the bag had opened but i have to say that the people there have really remained calm and also the fact is there are a lot of media here if you can just pan there is

a lot of media here and the people there the crowds have gathered also just to see what is going on so it's really quite hard to gauge who is actually going to the back and who is not but as far as the live right outside the bank they have been called hoping i'm happy that the bags of finally opened after two weeks and also have to know that a lot of them are older people they say they don't have a.t.m. cards so they have to actually go into the back to gather their cash let's just talk about the restrictions that have been imposed those capital controls the first time in the euro zone now the people here can only get three hundred euros per person per day per bank and also if anyone is traveling out of cyprus they can only bring a cash amount of one thousand euros maximum and if they are abroad and they want to charge of their credit cards the maximum limit there is five thousand euros now really for the for many for the past two weeks people have been cash strapped or they tried to make the cash and had a fit and all of this of course we know is it falls under that e.u. i.m.f. bailout plan of cyprus agreed agreed upon so this is being imposed in order to get

the ten to billion euro deal now as far as the european leaders are concerned they think the business saved the country from bankruptcy but the people here many of them really feel that they did not get the best solution that they could get and i've been speaking with a lot of locals and here is my report like many in cyprus. this is simply stunned at the manner with which the banking crisis in his country seems to be spiraling out of control he shows us his wallet cash lottery tickets a single parent on the void and caring for a sick mother raveling of cypresses for national comes at a time i think the pension of my mom all of your life is coming up on. the people. of your country. so.

you standing with an empty hands. a sentiment echoed throughout the tiny island nation. seems like things becoming a daily occurrence another day in nicosia cyprus another protest now this one in particular is a gathering of black employees of the country's largest lender the bank of cyprus but they worry that the company is headed for collapse and they may eventually lose their jobs and many cypriots told me that they are well aware that this is just the beginning of a long hard road i believe that. europe treatments germany strolled because we're a small economy they felt the consequences would be minimal what they don't know is that the president has been said and what happened today in cyprus could easily happen tomorrow to italy two fronts choose to spain we just want to be left alone to pick up the pieces and get on with our lives she is part of your peer

european union says profiles on for when cyprus was paying the money for the european union to help. the other cool contras you may remember so i just i'm a old don't know but is that cyprus have a problem or it's a cousin. or something else as economic drama continues with politicians and bankers drawing a painful measures to execute the news of iraq back to the bailout plan it's all too clear to ordinary cypriots who is going to be very deprived need as his mother for example had a monthly pension cut from one thousand one hundred eighty nine year olds to just over one thousand a month ago why they cut from people who have special needs they cut from the people for his part allies the question all cypriots would like answered as well. yes or sylvia our team because c.s. cyclists. so i had on our t.v.

breaking up is hard to do a u.s. senator wants the big banks broken out though is he right could it really happen well discuss that story next. the same story doesn't make it news you saw snow possibly says to me tom clancy thank you. many attribute the financial collapse in the u.s. to banks that are too big and have too much power and 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 startled 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 that these stabilizing effect the prosecution might have on the financial system of our country in the world in other words we have a situation now where wall street is a lot of ollie too big to fail they are too big to jail the sand of this bill would give 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 was joined earlier by our key producer bob english i asked him if this meant too big to fail was 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 designates 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 likes 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 and senator elizabeth warren here she is on the floor grilling ben bernanke on this issue if we can take a listen to that. well i didn't 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 their 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 you heard it right out of elizabeth warren that these banks have gotten bigger so what kind of resistance do you expect this bell 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 they're 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 dollars 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 i created 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 well the right time 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 the leverage of all time and that's going to force what i would call over a. committing to a reckoning fortunately or 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 looks like it's going to stick around at least for the time being bugged english

thanks so much for coming on the show that was our team producer. and these times of seaquest ration it's time to buckle down and get rid of wasteful spending right decisions congress makes makes you wonder if lawmakers really have adopted this mindset think the missile defense program the projects contracted by lockheed martin is a joint venture with italy and germany the system both say it's hit the kill missiles and other deadly tactics but according to the department defense the three hundred eighty million dollars program doesn't work the office of the secretary of defense says quote the means program has experienced a number of technical and management challenges since its inception in the mid one nine hundred ninety s. while the program has shown market improvements in recent years it has been able hasn't been able to meet recent schedule and cost targets back in two thousand and ten the department offense 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 earlier i was joined by stephen miles coalition corner for a win without war. that's right i mean i think mead's 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 to repeal 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 and 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 the 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 is right and 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 rocchio 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 a pentagon budget that's exploding and dysfunctional relationships all right well after offense is saying that it's not at this project and others are not helping ash and all security you know i wonder what does it benefit well certainly benefits the companies that make these weapons the one he'd maren absolutely not the market 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 and 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 the fact that these programs create jobs enough to keep them alive well the first thing to remember is that the

pentagon is not a jobs program we have the military to keep america safe and that's what our military should be focused on in the decisions we make about. military should be focused on what's needed to keep us safe but it does create jobs right now any time that any 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 what 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 and 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 this is random at the end of the day though these lawmakers are going to answer to their constituents and 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 the government and one of

the main reasons is because of the runaway budgets at the pentagon and one of the reasons that we're 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 we're in a time of seaquest very sad. what are you now the time i think it was rationed going to be a forcing mechanism you know the pentagon's announced it's going to be doing a major strategic review when the first thing secretary of defense hagel has announced and so it's time that they're starting to be some of this talk of making these choices and so sequenced 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 we're 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 should

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 kinds of decisions and types of conversations we need to have and hopefully we'll start having them. that was stephen miles coalition coordinator for win without war. in recent decades a prison industry has become a booming business but now looks like one state has a problem with that business model larry harkness of the resident tells us more.

of the new hampshire house of representatives recently voted to prohibit private prisons in their state which is news because private prisons are big business here in the u.s. now let them think about that for a second shall we what do you want if you're a business owner more customers so you can make more profit and if your business is a prison your customers are prisoners so how do you drum up more customers if you find new ways to make more people incarcerated and that's exactly how it works in this country which takes great pride in its business action that's why private prison owners have spent more than forty five million dollars lobbying over the past decade here in the u.s. they lobby for things like longer sentences and minimum sentencing regardless of circumstance a lot of that money goes toward influencing lawmakers to pass stricter drug and immigration laws think about that we're going to hear your politicians pounding on their podiums talking about immigration or the war on drugs think about the fact

that the private prison industry stands to make five point one billion dollars from detaining immigrants the next time some suit gets up their day yap about the issue in the u.s. were really good at the prison business according to global research ordered the u.s. how. twenty five percent of the world's prison population but only five percent of the world's people we have about two million people in lockdown here more than any other country in the world by a mile forget about the argument that private prisons save us money too because that's a little of crap as just one example according to recent studies conducted in arizona private prisons there across three point five million dollars more per year than state run prisons. but you can skew the numbers to any argument you want honestly if you're face business that you really want to so let's put the money argument aside because that's really not the point here the point here is that in the us

there are huge multimillion dollar corporations that want more people in prison and lobby to put them there and work hard to guarantee a one hundred percent capacity to their investors to private prison corporations it's not a matter of crime and punishment it's a matter of killing prison cells for profit how is this remotely ethical or just say private prison corporations have made going to prison and big business finding new reasons to take away people's freedom people's lives just for their bottom line and for that we should put them all in their own prisons for being greedy warped jerks now let's just hope that new hampshire has the strength of follow through and prohibiting private prison fare tonight let's talk about that by following me on twitter at the red.